Jacob Biron is well acquainted with LECOM Harborcenter. The 21-year-old remembers watching Sabres players and prospects practice on one rink and playing for the Junior Sabres on the other.<\/p>\n
But the goaltender had never experienced the facility like this. The son of former Sabres goalie and current broadcaster Marty Biron, Jacob was invited to participate in this week\u2019s Development Camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t too long ago I was on the other side of the glass watching Development Camp, so to get the call saying, \u2018Hey, do you want to come play, put on the jersey for a week?,\u2019 it was a dream come true, an absolute pleasure,\u201d said Jacob, who\u2019s entering his junior year at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.<\/p>\n
Jacob was two-and-a-half years old when a February 2007 trade ended his dad\u2019s Sabres tenure, so his memories of Marty, the player, mostly involve the Flyers, Islanders and Rangers. But as he\u2019s grown up in East Aurora and progressed to college hockey, he\u2019s taken full advantage of having an NHL goalie at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a rare luxury that most people don\u2019t have, to have somebody like your dad have done what you\u2019re trying to do, and help you along the way,\u201d Jacob said. \u201cI talk to him every day, pretty much, about hockey. After a game, I\u2019ll call him and be like, \u2018Hey, what did you see?\u2019 And he\u2019ll give me little things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does Marty see similarities between his goaltending style and his son\u2019s, having offered so many pointers over the years?<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s so much better (now) than we were. You look at the technique. He\u2019s big, way bigger than I was,\u201d said the 48-year-old \u2013 he\u2019s 6-foot-2, Jacob 6-foot-4. \u201cWe had that old-school style with the two-pad stack and the diving and all of that. He has that to his game, but I think it\u2019s a lot better, so that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabres director of player development Tim Kennedy, who once coached a young Jacob, spoke this week about the challenge of working with prospects from afar. It takes frequent communication, he explained, to stay on the same page with a player\u2019s team coaches and avoid contradicting one another.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a similar dynamic with the coaching staff at Army, which respects Marty\u2019s expertise from 508 games in net across 16 NHL seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody picks his brain a little bit when it comes to hockey, because who better to pick the brain of than him?\u201d said Jacob, who has a .920 save percentage in seven college appearances.<\/p>\n
Added Marty: \u201cI\u2019m still a resource, but I\u2019m not the coach. I\u2019m not gonna go home today and be like, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s review the tape from this 3-on-3.\u2019 No, that\u2019s not what it\u2019s about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacob Biron is well acquainted with LECOM Harborcenter. The 21-year-old remembers watching Sabres players and prospects practice on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-740890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}