“I never really let them feel like it was their fault,” he says. “If it gets to you, it already got through so many people that it’s not on you completely. Imagine how it feels when you’re the one who saves the day. That’s the angle I wanted to take.”

Brian, who grew up in Wilmington, played in the local youth hockey system and on the ponds before playing high school hockey and making a run at walking on at Northeastern in the late 1980s, took to the position immediately.

“It was almost inevitable that I would play net,” he says, owing to his older brother’s interest. ”I don’t know how he got into it, but I loved it from the get-go. I guess it was just the challenge of being the last man standing before the puck goes in the net. And you’re in an almost every play.”

It may have been just as inevitable for his kids.

“It was kind of my dad when I was younger, and I saw his goalie helmet, and that kind a got me stuck on it,” says Dan, who also stuck with the helmet theme as a catcher in baseball.

Was it even a choice for Eva?

“A little bit,” she says. “I kind of wanted to follow my dad and Dan in being a goalie.”

Eva also plays field hockey and softball in Braintree, but hockey is her favorite sport at this point.

Her favorite thing about being a goalie?

“When you make a big save and everybody comes over to you,” she says.

For Dan, the thrill is similar.

“Honestly, just hearing my teammates after a save,” he says.

Playing for his hometown teams has helped, too.

“Playing with all my friends that I’ve been with in school, just seeing them on the ice, it’s just so fun,” Dan says.

Brian, who wasn’t comfortable with either Dan or Eva playing exclusively in net until squirts, understands he’s in a unique spot – both because of his own passion for goaltending and also because so many parents aren’t sure they’d want their kids in net.

For Brian, he doesn’t quite see it that way.

“I never really let them feel like it was their fault,” he says. “If it gets to you, it already got through so many people that it’s not on you completely. Imagine how it feels when you’re the one who saves the day. That’s the angle I wanted to take.”

Brian isn’t typically thinking about the worst when shooters are staring down his kids. In fact, he’s not thinking about much more than he would be if he were in goal himself.

“If the shot goes off, I kind of react like I’m making the same save,” he says. “Like, ‘OK, I would be making my shift over,’ but I don’t think, ‘It’s my kid out there and I’m worried.’ I think of how I would react and I just assume they’re doing the same thing.”

He also knows that his own experience can come in handy.

“I know there are other parents who are, like, ‘I don’t know how you could be a goalie parent,’ and then I have two of them,” Brian says. “I’m a goalie, and everything that’s going to happen to them has probably already happened to me. [I’m able] to give them nuggets of information on things that took me 49 years to learn, and they get it at an age where it makes a tremendous difference – to have that metal part of the game.”

So far, so good.

“At the younger ages, it was more of, ‘Hey, these are the things that you might’ve considered doing,’ but now it’s to the stage where I try to ask them what they think,” Brian says. “It’s confirmation that they are learning and making those decisions on their own now. When I ask them those questions, the answers I get are thoughtful and usually pretty close to or 100% accurate.”