Tucker Tynan – Niagara IceDogs – Player Profile

Height: 6’0”

Weight: 159 Pounds

Date of birth: June 7, 2002

Hometown: Chicago, Illinois

Position: Goaltender

Catches: Left

OHL Draft: Round 10, 192 overall, 2018 Priority Selection

NHL Central Scouting Rankings

Pre-season	November	Mid-term	Final
N.R.	N.R.	N.R.	N.R.

During Tucker Tynan’s OHL draft year, he played for the New Jersey Rockets of the National Collegiate Develop Conference. The NCDC is a developmental conference in the northeast United States under the umbrella of the U.S. Premier Hockey League whose mission is to develop players for the NCAA.

Tynan appeared in 24 games for the Rockets posting a 3.31 goals-against-average (11^th in the NCDC) and a sparkling .924 save-percentage (5^th in the conference).

Prior to joining the Rockets, Tynan played Minor Midget Tier 1 hockey with Little Caesars Under-16 squad during the 2017-2018 season. He appeared in just 5 games but posted incredible numbers with a .80 goals-against-average and .956 save-percentage. The IceDogs were able to select Tynan in the 10^th round of the 2018 Priority Selection – 192^nd overall.

Much wasn’t known about Tynan coming into the season and NHL Central Scouting didn’t have him on either of their Players to Watch lists, though he soon started garnering attention.

But on December 12, 2019, everything came to a halt. In a game against the London Knights during the second period, one of the Knights players was knocked down on his way to the net, entering Tynan’s crease skate first. His skate caught the young netminder in the leg causing a gruesome and scary injury. (we won’t post the video here.) At the time, the IceDogs said if it weren’t for the immediate actions of the IceDogs and Knights training staff and the immediate medical attention, it could have cost him his life. Tynan required emergency surgery and the game was never completed.

Up until that moment, every bit of attention Tynan was getting was warranted. He was among the league leaders in most goaltending stats, including shots faced. Tynan, quite simply gave the IceDogs a chance to win every game. At that point of the season he was easily their most valuable player.

Let’s look at some of those numbers. Tynan appeared in 23 games and ended with an 11-8-3-1 record. Not Earth shattering without context, right? Tyan faced 50 or more shots on 4 occasion and boasted a .920 save-percentage and a 1-2-1-0 record. He faced 40 or more shots on 12 occasions with a 5-5-2-0 record and .905 save percentage. He finished with a 6-3-1-1 record when facing 39 or fewer shots.

The IceDogs record without Tynan: 7-31-2-0. Despite playing in just 23 games, he finished 24^th in shots faced with 916 or 39.8 per game. By comparison, Jacob Ingham of the Kitchener Rangers led the league in shots faced with 1636, or 35.5 per game.

Sure, some of that decline was the fact that the IceDogs traded away star Philip Tomasino at trade deadline. But that should have hurt their goal scoring more then their goals against. The IceDogs goals against went up drastically from the 3.56 with Tynan to 5.80 without.

If the eye test wasn’t enough to tell a story, the numbers should be.

By all accounts, Tynan is doing very well in his recovery and well on his way to returning to the game. But one must ask themselves if they believe the type of injury he received and how it happened will impact his mental part of the game. No way! At least not in my opinion. Tynan was unflappable in his net. Whether it was a bad goal he had given up or his d-men making a bad play in front of him, it was his let’s move on and forget about it attitude that says this kid has a good mental makeup.

Tynan isn’t the big bodied netminder NHL teams drool over. He is an extremely athletic netminder and a superb skater. His post-to-post movement is at an already elite level. His ability to move out to the top of the paint and challenge shooters is top level, however he doesn’t take up as much of the net as the bigger goalies so he is going to require improvement on that to succeed at the next level.

Tynan is very adept in tracking the puck and remaining focused. But the size is once again coming into question here as it impacts him on his ability to see through traffic and to take up as much of the net as possible when players are scrambling in front of him. But he plays the butterfly technique almost to perfection and he stays as big as he can while down so if you’re going to beat him, it has to be down low.

We here at OHLW have a lot of admiration for Tynan, one of the youngest goalies available for the draft. Sure, the injury hurt his draft stock and there will be concerns about his mental makeup going forward. But we believe in him, and think someone should take a late round flier at the draft. But we also believe his potential is better than a late round flier.