As Canadians everywhere have either rejoiced at the return of hockey, or continue to hold out and grumble about whiny rich players and owners, I decided to look back at my own artistic hockey dryspell. As a young artist, my sketchbooks were filled with pencil sketches of various sports stars...mostly hockey players really. And always goalies. From a development standpoint, it's actually a very useful tool since I can look back over a span of years worth of goalie drawings at different ages, and see how my skills progressed (Pictured here are ages 8, 12 and 14).

I literally learned to draw, drawing goalies. I drew them so much I had the grooves of the pads and brand logos memorized. I found the last goalie drawing I ever produced, done at the age of 14...so while for many the half year without hockey felt like forever, I guess I wouldn't start to miss it for at least another 15 or 20 years.