As the youngest of the kids who sneaked water from the well to create a hockey rink on the Vachon family’s dairy farm in tiny Palmarolle, Canada, Rogatien Vachon was destined to become a goaltender.
Using homemade sticks, with a couple of lights illuminating the ice and cows as their audience, they’d play from morning until night. It was glorious: just them and the elements, no coaches to criticize them. He didn’t mind the times his mother scolded them for taking so much water that they’d left the well nearly dry.
“They said, ‘If you want to play with us, then you’ve got to be in goal,’” Vachon recalled.