The Youngster's View: A Few More Minutes

[Bonzaijoe 74]

We sat down once again with Vegas Aces Goalie Joe Nixon, fresh out the VHLM draft coming from Pittsburgh to do our weekly segment in which we've been dubbing "The Youngster's View"!

 

This week's edition (like last week's) is a special edition, featured on VSN rather than VHL.com! Venture over to VHL.com to read the rest of our saga with Joe Nixon if you enjoy what you've read here today!

 

This week, as Nixon has now started 5 games in his early VHLM career, we sat down to ask him a few questions about his first two wins, as well as how he feels about his performance in all 5 games, including the 2 other losses which he also suffered.

 

"The wins feel great and the losses feel bad," Nixon simply stated, "it's as easy as that. I felt really good in those two wins, maybe they were closer than I wanted, maybe I could've stopped way more shots, but at the end of the day  we got the win which is what I really wanted." So far this season, Nixon is at the bottom of the VHLM with only a .841 save percentage, although his GAA sits middle-of-the-road at 2.80, which probably says more about his defense's ability to stop players before they shoot rather than Nixon's ability so far this season. "I feel confident that I'm bettering my game and I can go out there and be better with the more time I get on the ice throughout the season," Nixon said, "I'm blessed that I've got the amount of game time that I have, but simply I haven't really been putting up the numbers that I want. That will change in the future and I guarantee that to my coach and team."

 

I wanted to see how Nixon felt about how his defense has helped him and what the difference is in the game between his college career and VHLM game time. Nixon said the skill difference is the obvious difference, noting "My defense is better, their offense is better, I have to be at the top of my game and I need to stay sharp because the ones that actually get to me, unless my defense screws up, are the really good shots that are saves that I need to make." When I asked about any other differences, Nixon quickly noted "and the locker room. It's a huge difference between some college guys that are on a small stage and not really known and now I'm here in the room with professional players. We're getting paid to be here and live our dream. You can tell that these guys wanna go out and put on a show for those fans and they wanna put up the numbers to give us the best chance of winning. Not saying my college guys didn't want the wins, but it was just more laid back when it was less of a job and more of a game that all of us love more than anything. Also not trying to say my locker room now is too uptight or too hostile. We have fun. There's just.... a difference. It's hard to explain."

 

Lastly, I asked Joe what he thinks he did right in his two wins. Joe answered with "I stopped the easy ones, and kept them to as few goals as possible. I know that's a cliche answer and not really what you're probably looking for but that's as simple as my job is. I thought my positioning in those two games were solid and I've allowed myself to get to the puck and stop it well. The wins feel great, I'm glad to know I could help my team, and I'm looking forward to stealing some more for my team in the future. Right now our guys are playing extremely well out there and our record shows it for sure."

 

Thanks to Joe Nixon for sitting down with us again this week! We look forward to talking to him again soon, on next week's edition of "The Youngster's View"!