From UberEats driver to NHL goalie: Inside the unlikeliest start in hockey history

Three years ago, Brandon Halverson had all but given up on his hockey dream.

He was delivering UberEats and groceries and working on a farm. He sold his truck. He borrowed money from his parents. Whatever it took to scrape out enough money for rent.

Two weeks ago, he stepped into the net with the Tampa Bay Lightning for the first time as an NHL starter — nearly 11 years after being drafted as a highly touted prospect, and more than seven years after his only other appearance in the league.

From toiling away with a last-place team in Germany’s second division, a tiny club on the verge of relegation that played on an outdoor rink in below-freezing temperatures, to begging a coach in North America’s third-rung ECHL for a training camp tryout, a final Hail-Mary shot at his dream.

Through numerous injuries, several of which required surgery, and wondering multiple times whether he had reached the end of his career. Through tough talks, and tears, and mental health struggles.

His path to that start for the Lightning might be one of the most improbable in hockey history.

“It’s been a very long road,” said Halverson, who turned 29 last weekend. “I’m just happy that after all of everything that I’ve gone through that I was able to start a game (in the NHL). That was the goal in my mind this entire time, was to get that actual start.”

Halverson was 9 when he knew he wanted to be a goalie. He grew up in a working-class family in Traverse City, Mich., where his father, Paul, — a former boxer — put in hard early morning hours as a construction worker.

When the city landed an NAHL junior team in 2005, the Halversons decided to billet players. The first to stay with them was Jeremy Kaleniecki, a 19-year-old goalie who quickly became Halverson’s idol and surrogate big brother. They played countless games of mini sticks with balls of tape in the living room when they weren’t on the ice. Kaleniecki nicknamed Halverson “Fuzz Ball” after his mess of blonde hair.

While Kaleniecki’s playing career ended after that season, leading him to become a local goalie coach, Halverson’s took off. He rapidly grew into a gangly 6-foot-4 teenager and used the athletic aggressive moves he had picked up from his much smaller billet brother to attract the attention of professional scouts.

In June 2014 Halverson was drafted by the New York Rangers with the penultimate pick of the second round — higher than current starting NHL goalies Igor Shesterkin, Ilya Sorokin and Elvis Merzlikins — despite having only 19 games of experience at the major-junior level.

Halverson’s stock continued to rise over the next two seasons; in 2014-15, he won 40 games to help the Sault St. Marie Greyhounds to the OHL’s best regular-season record before they lost in the playoffs to Connor McDavid’s powerhouse Erie Otters. He also made the United States’ world junior team in consecutive years, winning a bronze medal in early 2016 alongside the next generation of American stars in Auston Matthews, Matthew Tkachuk and Zach Werenski.

Later that year, at age 19, Halverson signed an NHL entry-level contract to join the Rangers, an Original Six franchise, with a $92,500 signing bonus. He had made it. But he wasn’t prepared for what came next.

“It was so much so soon for him,” Kaleniecki says now.

The transition to minor-league hockey is often brutal, between the punishing bus rides, packed game schedule and low pay. It’s a meat grinder of a system that leaves many young players behind, whether through cuts or demotions to even lower levels.

When Halverson turned pro in 2016, the Rangers were a perennial contender team with future Hall of Fame goalie Henrik Lundqvist leading the way. They didn’t hesitate to bring in hardened veteran goalies to challenge their kids for minutes, making for a very competitive environment in the minors.

As one of the youngest goalies in his first pro season, Halverson had some tough games early with the Hartford Wolf Pack, to the point he ended up getting sent down to the Greenville Swamp Rabbits of the ECHL for most of the next two seasons.

He struggled with the adversity and conditions, to the point that his mental health took a turn for the worse. At one point, Kaleniecki was concerned enough to hop on a plane to South Carolina to help.

“You take somebody who’s a high prospect who needs just some fostering and development,” Kalenicki said, explaining that in the ECHL goalies often don’t have a dedicated coach to work with them. “Then you compound that with adding in multiple competitors all vying for the same thing. And it kind of becomes a toxic environment. You know, toxic mentally.”

In his third season, Halverson ended up hurting his knee. He tried to play through it, rather than miss time, but he lost his spot to older, more experienced goalies.

He now realizes how much he was struggling, but he explains that he didn’t reach out to the team or league for help, believing he could tough out the challenges as he had in junior.

“I knew there was some sort of thing you can call and reach out for (help),” Halverson said, referring to a players-only phone line operated by the Professional Hockey Players’ Association, the union that represents minor-league players. “But I was just like, ‘I know what I have to do.’ Even though I’m incredibly depressed.”

By the end of his three-year, entry-level contract, Halverson had played 50 games in the AHL, 63 in the ECHL, and only 13 minutes with the Rangers as a mid-game fill-in for Lundqvist in February 2017 after another goalie forgot his passport and missed the initial call-up.

Prior to his first career start, Halverson’s only NHL appearance came as a third-period replacement for the Rangers in February 2017. (Jana Chytilova / Freestyle Photography / Getty Images)

At age 23, New York cut him loose.

Halverson’s next few years are a blur for him now. There were more injuries, including a badly broken wrist that cost him a full season. More thrilling call-ups and heartbreaking cuts. More packing up his life and moving to a new city only to once again return home to an existence of odd jobs and unpaid bills.

In 2019-20, with his ECHL club toiling in last place and the AHL seeming further away than ever, Halverson decided to leave midseason for mental health reasons. At that point, his father met with him for a heart-to-heart to discuss whether the toll was worth it.

“Are you sure you want to keep doing this?” his father asked.

“He was only saying that because he’s being a good dad,” Halverson recalled later. “Just advising me what he thinks is best. I was like, ‘Dad, it just eats away at me. It’s on my mind all the time, every single day. I’ve gotten in my car at work, all I could think about was playing in an NHL game. I don’t think my body and my mind can rest until this happens. I’m gonna keep going forward.’”

That led to nearly two years away to heal his body and mind. After separate surgeries on both his knee and wrist, Halverson tried to make money however he could, delivering UberEats meals and groceries. He also took shifts at a friend’s farm where, with one arm in a cast, he helped build a barn and tended the greenhouse.

Meanwhile, to get ice time, he started training beer-league goalies at 11 p.m. on Wednesdays — including some who were still learning to skate.

Prior to the 2022-23 season, Halverson received a tryout offer from a team in Germany’s top division. He flew overseas and the team ran some tests on his battered body. They indicated they intended to give him a contract, Halverson recalled, to the point that he turned down a competing offer from a British Elite Ice Hockey League squad.

When the German team then cut him before he had played a game, he suddenly had nowhere to go. Five thousand miles from home, Halverson broke down sobbing.

“I’ve never done that before,” he said. “It’s just always been one thing after another in my career. I never could stick it with New York. I never could stick it anywhere else. And there was always something happening, something happening. And when they told me that, my whole body just fell apart and I just wasn’t doing good.”

That was how he ended up in Bayreuth, a German city of 74,000 an hour north of Nuremberg. The pay was paltry, he couldn’t even play some games due to league rules limiting the number of import players, and the second-division team was relegated due to financial issues at the end of the 2022-23 season.

Really, it was the end of the line in pro hockey. But hockey was all he had.

“That was quite a different world for me,” Halverson said. “In my head, I’m just like, ‘This is gonna make for a great story.’ So I just kept working hard and put my head down.”

When Halverson returned home to Traverse City in summer 2023, he was desperate to find ice wherever he could. Kaleniecki helped, bringing him out to skates in Michigan. So did Jon Elkin, a well-known NHL goalie coach who had worked with Halverson in junior.

Halverson also called the Orlando Solar Bears’ Matt Carkner, one of many minor-league coaches who had cut him in the past, and said he wanted a chance to attend camp and beat out their two incumbent goalies.

He told the Solar Bears staff this would be his last attempt to play pro. It was this or retirement.

“He was the hardest worker every single day. And with his ability, his size, his work ethic in preparation, he clearly earned his opportunity to sign with us,” Orlando goalie coach Nathan Craze said, recalling how intensely Halverson dug into video sessions of Solars Bears practices and their upcoming opponents. “But the biggest thing for me was he really found the love of playing again.”

And he started to win. After a successful first few months, Halverson was called up on a tryout deal to the Syracuse Crunch, the Lightning’s AHL affiliate. A late-November shutout — his first ever at that level — got the team’s attention, earning him an AHL contract. By the end of the 2023-24 season, Halverson had posted a 7-3-3 record with a .913 save percentage for Syracuse and, more incredibly, started for the team during the AHL playoffs.

Brandon Halverson and Jeremy Kaleniecki during an on-ice session. (via Jeremy Kaleniecki)

This season, he has continued to justify the Crunch’s faith in giving him their No. 1 job, going 18-10-8 with a .913 save percentage in 37 appearances. In January, he was named an AHL All-Star. A month later, the Lightning signed him to a two-year, two-way NHL contract that guarantees him $300,000 next season.

It’s a long way from where he was even two years ago, when he couldn’t secure a league minimum $575-a-week offer in the ECHL.

Halverson credits his parents, Paul and Jennifer, and a newfound close relationship with God for helping get him here. He also knows he couldn’t have done it without his big billet brother, who watched him get his first NHL start against Utah HC last week with a lump in his throat.

Little Fuzz Ball had done it.

“To be honest, I think that’s probably the most nervous and excited I’ve been for anything in hockey in my life,” Kaleniecki said. “It’s somebody that is truly family. And you’ve seen the struggles. You’ve been a part of it with them … you know what they’ve gone through. It was hard to hold (the emotions) in. It’s just one of the coolest moments in my life in hockey.”

The game didn’t go the way Halverson wanted, as he allowed five goals in a 6-4 loss in Salt Lake City. Despite the outcome, though, Halverson’s phone blew up with congratulatory messages throughout the night. One of the texts was from Craze, who told Halverson to be proud of where he had come from, and how far he had come. “That’s something no one can ever take away from you,” he wrote. “And this is only the start.”

Halverson knows nothing is guaranteed for him with the Lightning. His start last week was to cover for backup Jonas Johansson, who was away from the team for family reasons, so he knew his NHL stay wouldn’t be a long one.

But after everything he’s been through, he feels ready for what’s next.

“I try not to think about what’s gonna happen,” Halverson said over the phone last week. “I’m here another day. Great. If I’m leaving tomorrow, great. I get to go down and get back to work and play whatever game I’m gonna be in next. So I’m just happy and thankful.”

The very next day, Halverson was reassigned to Syracuse.

His first start back? A 1-0 shutout, his fifth of the season.

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic. Photos: Dave Reginek / NHLI via Getty Images, Peter Creveling / Imagn Images)