De Smet senior goaltender Alexander Rivolta doesn’t have any game day superstitions.
He doesn’t need a special meal, have to listen to a certain song or wear the same clothes. He just sticks to a basic routine.
“I'll show up to the rink about an hour and a half before and sometimes I'll like take a cold shower to wake myself up, do a lot of hand-eye drills, do some stick work,” Rivolta said.
That consistent approach mirrors the emotional consistency Rivolta uses for every game. He approaches every game the same, whether it is an early-season contest on a random Tuesday night or the Challenge Cup championship.
The even-keeled demeanor helped Rivolta, the Post-Dispatch All-Metro ice hockey player of the year, backstop the Spartans to their second consecutive Mid States Club Hockey Association Challenge Cup championship.
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“That's what makes him a successful goaltender,” De Smet coach Anthony Cappelletti said. “Goaltender out of the three positions is probably the most mental position that you have to be ready to go, and that's what made him succeed.”
Rivolta’s stats mirror his consistency. He went 10-0-1 with a .947 save percentage and five shutouts in 11 regular-season games, while he went 4-0-1 with a .943 save percentage with another shutout in five postseason games.
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But the stats don’t reflect Rivolta’s ability to be an absolute wall when the lights were their brightest. Two of his six shutouts came in the Spartans' two biggest games, the Challenge Cup championship and the J-Cup game Nov. 22 against SLUH.
Rivolta’s performance in the J-Cup, which was the team’s fifth game of the season, left an impression on Cappelletti, who was in his first year as De Smet’s coach. The Spartans beat SLUH 1-0.
“It was his third start of the year and I'm like, all right, I don't have to worry about this (our goaltending) for the rest of the year,” Cappelletti said. “That was probably our turning point of the year and it's like all right, you have a really good shot to defend this title.”
Rivolta said beating SLUH for the J-Cup was definitely a highlight of his season.
“It's just an unbelievable feeling,” Rivolta said. “It's probably the biggest game of the year for both schools unless we face each other in the state finals like last year. It's almost hard to explain just how much it means to all of us to be able to win that game and how big of a game that is for us each year.”
If posting a shutout in the J-Cup started Rivolta’s big game legacy, his shutout in a 3-0 win over Marquette in the Challenge Cup cemented it.
Rivolta was a rock during the game’s chaotic final minutes. Trailing 2-0 and on the power play, Marquette brought on an extra skater to try to launch a late comeback. De Smet took another penalty, giving the Mustangs a brief 6-on-3 advantage, but Rivolta didn't allow anything past him that would have given the comeback any life.
“Alex obviously made some really huge saves there, especially a couple backdoor plays,” Cappelletti said. “He had guys in front of him and he was blocking everything. There was really nothing there, really no rebounds. Anything that did come to him, he would eat it and you know, it's tough when you have a couple big bodies like they did in front of the net.”
Rivolta had the respect, and trust, of his teammates.
“He's been playing on his head like he really stepped up for us,” De Smet sophomore Jackson Fox said after the game. “We only won because of him.”
The state championship was the culmination of a journey that began when Rivolta started playing hockey at 4 years old. He started playing goalie part time at 6 and he's been between the pipes fulltime since he was 8.
Rivolta naturally was drawn to the position while cheering on the Blues.
“I was a dumb little kid,” Rivolta quipped. “I remember going to Blues games and watching guys like Brian Elliott and Chris Mason and Jaroslav Halák, and I thought they were like the coolest guys ever.”
Of the current NHL goalies, Rivolta likes the game of Juuse Saros of Nashville the best.
“I just learned everything he does and he moves just so well,” Rivolta said. “So that's what I really tried to model myself after.”
Rivolta uses good positioning and his 6-foot-2 frame to make tough saves look routine.
But he also has the agility to move quickly to make a highlight-reel sprawling save when needed and he plays the puck well.
“He's very relaxed in there, you know, doesn't unnecessarily move,” Cappelletti said. “He's always in possession, letting pucks hit him. And he's still athletic, like, he'll still make some huge saves, as he did throughout the year, like even in the championship game he made a couple there because we were shorthanded.”
Rivolta has taken his place among a growing list of top-notch goalies who have worn the De Smet sweater in recent years. He is the second successive De Smet goalie to earn player of the year honors, following Brady Govero last season.
“There's a lot of pride in it,” Rivolta said.
Rivolta expects that tradition to continue next year through William Harbaugh, who put up impressive numbers backing up Rivolta as a junior this season. It was a role Rivolta served last season with Govero.
He sees a lot of similarities with Harbaugh.
“Just trying to become more of a leader on the team and it's easier as a senior,” Rivolta said. “I just watched how Brady was last year, and how he kind of was a leader on the team, and I kind of started to try to put that in my own game.”
Rivolta will stay in town and has signed to play junior hockey with the Jr. Blues next season. He takes a lot of memories from his time at De Smet with him.
“My teammates and the coaching staff were great,” Rivolta said. “I couldn’t do it without them.”