Rudyard Kipling's Favorite Goalie: Kraken Joey Daccord

English novelist Rudyard Kipling would have loved Joey Daccord.

We know this because Kipling wrote about the Seattle Kraken goaltender in his famous poem, "If."

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too...

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same..."

...Then you'd be Joey Daccord. After three college seasons and six years spent mostly in the minors, the 27 year old native of North Andover, MA is finally getting the chance to shine on the NHL stage.

Whether toiling in obscurity or winning a Winter Classic before a North American audience, he remains centered. "Just go out there, try my best, leave it all out on the ice," Daccord said this week. "When it does go your way, I feel it's just hard work being rewarded."

Playing twice as many NHL games this season (37) than in the entirety of his career up to this point (19), Daccord has risen to the occasion. His save percentage (.923) and goals-against average (2.33) both rank in the league's top five.

Granted, the poem "If" excerpted here was written in 1910, 86 years before Joey Daccord was born. But the connection came through loud and clear from the visitors dressing room Thursday at TD Garden, after Daccord led a 4-1 upset of the Eastern Conference leading Boston Bruins.

"Good game, bad game, doesn't matter. I still feel like the same goalie, the same person," Daccord told reporters after his 36-save effort. "Hockey doesn't define who I am as a person. I try to work hard, keep my head down, treat people with respect.

"I consider myself a hockey player and a person who wears my heart on my sleeve. Even when I don't have my best games, I promise I'll leave my best effort out there. I'll leave it all on the ice."

Apologies for slight tweaks to Kipling's concluding lines:

If you can fill the unforgiving (hockey game)
With sixty (minutes) worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a (goalie), my son!