On Charlie Lindgren, backup goalies, and the rare joy of a man who doesn’t need the spotlight

Let me tell you about one of my favourite kinds of people. In hockey, in books, in life.

It’s the person who knows exactly who they are, is perfectly happy about it, and doesn’t need to be the loudest one in the room to prove it. The one who shows up, does the job, cheers the hardest when someone else gets the glory, and goes home content.

In Washington, that person wears goalie pads and answers to the Outlaw. His name is Charlie Lindgren, and I adore him.

* * *

Let’s talk about the backup goalie for a minute, because I don’t think people give that job nearly enough credit.

Being the backup is a strange, slightly lonely sort of role. You practise like a starter. You prepare like a starter. And then, most nights, you sit at the end of the bench in a ball cap, opening the door, tapping pads, being the first one out to celebrate when the other guy gets the win. And then, with almost no warning, you’re thrown in. Your starter tweaks something, or gets pulled, or just needs a night off, and suddenly it’s you, cold off the bench, with the whole season in your hands.

Charlie has done that job with the Caps for years now. And when Logan Thompson arrived and took the number one spot, there were plenty of people who expected friction. Two goalies, one net. That’s usually where the drama starts.

There wasn’t any. Instead there was Charlie saying things like this:

“We get along really well. We have a lot of respect and admiration for each other.”

And this, which I may have read out loud to the cats:

“Success for LT means success for our team.”

He calls it iron sharpening iron. LT pushes him, he pushes LT, and the team is better for it. The Caps apparently think so too. Over the summer, when his name popped up in trade rumours, the word was that they kept him because he’s too important to Logan’s success to lose. Which is a lovely thing to be. Not the star. The reason the star shines.

* * *

I love that in a player. Honestly, I love that in a person.

There’s something deeply attractive (in every sense, I’m a romance author, sue me) about a man who is secure enough in himself that he doesn’t need to be the head honcho. Who doesn’t need his name in lights to feel like he matters. Who can look at a teammate getting the starts, the headlines, the glory, and think “good, that’s good for us” and actually mean it.

That kind of ego, the healthy, quiet, self-assured kind, is rarer than it should be. Especially in professional sport, where everyone’s been told since they were eight that they need to be the best one on the ice.

And it’s not like he hasn’t earned the right to want more. Charlie took the long way round. A Minnesota kid who played college hockey, went undrafted, signed with Montreal, then St. Louis, and bounced around the minors more than any goalie would like. When he landed in Washington, he was supposed to be the backup. And then in 2023–24, when the Caps needed him, he took the net and dragged that team into the playoffs on his back. He’d have been well within his rights to decide he was a starter after that.

Instead, when the team brought in LT, he slid right back into the role the team needed, with a grin and a shrug and not a single complaint anyone ever heard.

That’s not a lack of ambition. That’s character.

* * *

I should confess something about my first impression of Charlie, though.

The first time I saw him walk in, I didn’t think “cowboy” at all. I thought “seventies.” Specifically, seventies movie star. Not the respectable kind, either. I mean the films that existed somewhere on the outskirts of respectability, all disco lighting and suggestive saxophone, the ones that were one tasteful soundtrack swell away from being a very different sort of movie entirely. Studio 54 energy. Starsky and Hutch energy. He had the hair. He had the sideburns. He had the moustache. I swear I could see the hipster flares and the open collar, even when he was wearing a suit.

He looked, and I say this with the deepest affection, like the heart-of-gold pimp from a seventies cop show. The one who knows everyone on the street, slips the detectives a tip in the back of a bar with a wink, and turns out to have been quietly looking after half the neighbourhood the whole time.

Which, now that I think about it, is not that far off a backup goalie. Quietly looking after everybody, getting very little credit, and looking fabulous while he does it.

* * *

Now. The glove.

I have to talk about the glove.

Charlie’s catching glove has a name. Her name is Josie. And yes, “her.” It all started when Charlie referred to the glove as “her” during a postgame interview. The Caps’ play-by-play announcer, Joe Beninati, picked it up and decided that if the glove was a she, she needed a proper name.

Charlie already had his nickname by then. A fan had suggested “the Outlaw,” and Beninati backed it because, with that moustache and those sideburns, Charlie looks like he’s just ridden into town to settle a score at high noon. So the cowboy theme was already in play. From there it was one small step to The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Beninati pointed out that Josie works rather nicely as a girl’s name. Charlie picked it over the other options (one of which was “Snappy,” and I think we can all agree he chose wisely).

So now, when Charlie flashes the leather and robs someone blind, that’s not just a save. That’s Josie. The Outlaw and his trusty Josie, riding out to defend the crease.

As someone who grew up on westerns, I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. Clint Eastwood in hockey pads. A man and his glove against the world. I’m only a little bit sorry that nobody’s added a harmonica to the goal horn yet.

(And I have to mention, in the spirit of full and fair reporting, that Ovi’s given him another nickname, “Ch Ch,” which is now on his mask. So the man has a cowboy name, a glove name, and an Ovi name. That’s three more names than most of us get.)

* * *

I’ll let you in on a little secret, too.

I’ve recently written a character, a certain goalie in an upcoming book, who might just have grown out of Charlie. He’s perfectly content to be the backup. He doesn’t need the crown. He’d rather do what’s best for his team than what’s best for his stats, and he’s the first one off the bench to celebrate when someone else gets the glory. I didn’t plan it that way. I just looked up from the page one day and realised who he reminded me of.

I’m not saying who. Yet. But if you read him and find yourself thinking of a certain moustache, I won’t argue.

* * *

So, a small wish to finish on.

In a month or so, I’ll be in Canada, in the stands, watching the Caps play live. I know Logan is the number one, and he should be. But I’m hoping, quietly, with my fingers crossed and my fleecy trousers on, that at least one of those nights the Outlaw gets the start.

I want to see Josie in person. I want to watch Charlie snatch a puck out of the air and shake out his glove like a gunslinger blowing smoke off a barrel. I want to be the loudest Tasmanian in the building.

Come on, Charlie. Saddle up. Just one game. Josie and I will be waiting.

— Bella