Goaltending a Family Affair for Wild Alumnus Nieto
PLYMOUTH, Minn. – For Wenatchee Wild alumnus Garrett Nieto, hockey – goaltending in particular – is a family affair.
Two years after closing out his playing career, he and older brother Gavin remain involved in the sport, with Garrett guiding those who don the heavy equipment in the net and Gavin on the rise donning the stripes as a referee. Growing up in California, he and Gavin both found themselves in skates – and goalie pads – at a young age thanks to their dad, who played in an adult league near their Yorba Linda home. Though Gavin was two years older, the two often practiced together, and Garrett often got a chance to play a backup role for Gavin when he was the only goaltender available for his team. The two never got to play against each other, though, with their only potential meeting coming in college as Garrett was coming off of hip surgery and unavailable to play.
Garrett says the gear is what sold him on playing in the net – in fact, before moving into the net full-time, he says he would try to stop the puck before his goaltender ever had a chance to save it himself.
“That forced my dad’s hand a little bit,” said Nieto. “That was pretty much how I got into it, was a lot of the gear, and wanting to be the guy to make saves.”
He climbed steadily through the youth ranks in southern California, suiting up for the Anaheim Jr. Ducks and the California Wave, as well as the Los Angeles Jr. Kings, where he played two years of AAA hockey and helped guide his group to the USA Hockey national tournament in 2014. Nieto quickly found himself on the radar of top junior hockey teams as well, earning a selection from the United States Hockey League’s Dubuque Fighting Saints in the league’s 2014 Phase II Draft, and another from the Cedar Rapids Roughriders in the USHL Phase II Draft four years later.
His first stop in juniors, though, was a move to Wenatchee in 2015. Both he and Gavin tried out for the Wild, but Gavin opted to return to Dubuque after former Wenatchee star Chase Perry came back to the Wolves’ Den after a year at NCAA Division I Colorado College. The decision turned out well for both brothers, as Gavin moved to the Fairbanks Ice Dogs in the North American Hockey League, and ran up 33 wins and helped the Ice Dogs nab a Robertson Cup championship.
Garrett went 11-4 in his first season of juniors, and helped the Wild make a name for themselves in their debut season in the British Columbia Hockey League.
“I loved my time there. I didn’t want to leave,” said Nieto. “It was awesome. Everything from the facilities – the rink, the locker room, the workouts – to the guys up there, the teammates, they were incredible. The first year was my first year living away from home – obviously, at first I was skeptical, but they were awesome and made me feel comfortable right away. I knew that was the place I wanted to keep playing as long as I could.”
The following year wasn’t quite as smooth – Nieto committed to Lake Superior State University at the end of his 2015-16 season, but admits a concussion and some complacency on his part changed his path with the Wild. A midseason trade to the Springfield Jr. Blues in the North American Hockey League followed, but after being cut from the Jr. Blues shortly after the trade, he nearly hung up his pads entirely.
However, Vermont Lumberjacks head coach Doc DelCastillo quickly called in need of a goaltender, asking for Nieto to join the Eastern Hockey League club for the remainder of the season.
“I just went out there and played a month-and-a-half,” said Nieto. “That’s really where I fell back in love with the game, just because that was the lowest point in my career. At the same time, it helped me realize how hard it is, and what I needed to do in order to be better.”
With a fresh NAHL opportunity in Janesville with the Jets, Nieto decommitted from Lake Superior State, and put his nose back to the grindstone. A few changes to his training routine and his style of play quickly yielded results – he racked up 21 wins for the Jets during the 2017-18 season, and helped push the Jets to the NAHL’s Midwest Division Final. He won three of his last four decisions with the Jets the following year as well, but a hip injury early on derailed what was shaping up to be a promising final junior season.
Little did he know what was to come.
Nieto exited that game on October 5, 2018 and returned to action after a series of surgeries – and the COVID shutdowns to come – on October 22, 2021 at Lake Superior State. After missing all of the 2019-20 season with injuries, the 2020-21 campaign was eventually lost entirely, though the Dutchmen continued to practice at 6 a.m. three days a week after the cancellation, with workouts three additional days a week.
“Rumors were going back and forth all fall semester that we were going to cancel, or we were going to go ahead,” said Nieto. “We skated in three separate pods to start with, to limit the impact. We had to wear masks on the ice, obviously, which wasn’t fun. As the season progressed, we started getting into two pods and then we had full team practices, but we were still in two different locker rooms, our main locker room and our visiting locker room across the rink. Then there was a weekend where a couple of guys on our team got COVID, and that’s when they decided to cancel the entire season for us.”
With the desire to take some of the pressure off himself going into the 2022-23 season, and an influx of new young goaltending talent entering the program for the following year, the writing was on the wall for Nieto at Union. One more move allowed him one more opportunity to make an impact on the ice before calling it a career – he transferred to Wilkes University during the offseason, allowing him to stay close to his old Dutchmen teammates and join an NCAA Division III team going into just its sixth season of competition. By the end of the season he had won seven games, and reset the school record with 42 saves in a late-season tie at Stevenson.
“I loved my time there,” said Nieto. “It was really cool – it was a young program, but they were really good their first four years, and my year was kind of the changing of the guard. The freshman class from when they started the program had just graduated, so we had 10 or 11 freshmen and two transfers my year there. We knew they were going to be not as strong as they were the past couple of years. At the time, our locker room wasn’t big enough for the four goalies to be in there, so we got our own little goalie room separate from the locker room, which was a lot of fun to be in.”
With his playing career wrapped up, Nieto knew he wanted to return to the Midwest, where he had enjoyed the best season of his junior career. He landed his current opportunity with MEGA Goaltending as part of the Minnesota Advancement Program, as a full-time goaltending coach and director of the MEGA campus in Plymouth, a western Twin Cities suburb. The move also allowed him to take on a goaltender coach role with the nearby Granite City Lumberjacks, a program in the North American Tier 3 Hockey League, and South Dakota’s new Watertown Shamrocks organization in the NAHL. Even the hip injuries he fought throughout his career have become opportunities to share his expertise with up-and-coming goaltenders.
“Obviously, it’s a very unnatural position for our bodies to be in, just the natural flare of our butterfly,” said Nieto. “The biggest thing that really puts a lot of harm into it is what we call the ‘RVH,’ our post work where they go down on one knee with their skate and their body up against the post. That puts a lot of pressure and damage on the hip, so that’s a big thing that I’m trying to teach with all the kids out here that I work with, is staying out of that as much as possible. It’s a very high-pressure, high-damage position to be in. That way they don’t have to go through the two hip surgeries that I had to.”
Older brother Gavin remains busy in the sport as well, working both of the USHL’s recent conference finals. Their work in the sport has changed, but Garrett says they continue to find plenty of notes to compare.
“He’s awesome. We talk a lot,” said Garrett. “My dad and brother and I have a group chat, because my dad is an umpire for college baseball back in California. If my brother’s ever watching baseball, he’ll throw a situation at my dad and ask him his thoughts, and vice versa. There were a couple of calls when I was watching Watertown games, and I don’t know if it was the right call or if it was the correct call, so I would just ask his opinion. We have a lot of good conversations about that.”
