Holy Goalie
When a game comes down to a shootout, a lot of goalies start saying their prayers. Thomas Paprocki doesn’t sweat it. He already knows he has God on his side.
The veteran netminder does more than just try to save goals, he’s also in the business of saving souls. When he’s on the ice he plays for a team called the
“Lawyers.” He’s also a member of another team – a big one, based out of
Rome. He is Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Opposing fans take note: that’s “Sieve, your Excellency.” Paprocki, a Chicago native, started playing hockey at a young age in the basement of his father’s drugstore.
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“I think sports in general are a good training ground for whatever you do in life,”
— Bishop Thomas Paprocki |
“I am the third oldest of nine,” he says. “I have six brothers. There was a long narrow hallway in the basement of the store, and we used it to play floor hockey.”
The bishop, now 53, caught the hockey bug as a child from his father who was a Blackhawks and Canadiens fanatic.
“Some of my earliest memories are of going to the old Chicago stadium with my dad to see the Blackhawks play. I remember when they won the Stanley Cup in 1961. I really didn’t think I’d have to wait this long to see them win it again,” he laughs. A true Blackhawks fan, he sites Tony Esposito and Glenn Hall as his idols growing up.
“I learned by watching them,” he says. “I always tried to imitate their style.”
Paprocki joined an organized team at the Boys’ Club as an eighth grader, and it was there that his post between the pipes began. He volunteered to mind the net, and he’s been doing it ever since.
Though he has played hockey his whole life, Paprocki stuck mostly to floor and inline until recently. Today he plays in an Over-30 no-check league. They meet twice a week for games and scrimmages at McFetridge Ice Center on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
“There weren’t any rinks on the South Side where I grew up,” he explains. “It wasn’t until about 1997 that I really started playing on ice. I had to go to free skates and just go around in circles until I got the hang of it.
“I guess I must be good enough to play now though,” he laughs. “We’ve won the championship three of the last five years.”
The last five years have been busy ones for him off the ice as well. He was ordained bishop in 2003, and is in charge of overseeing 59 parishes in the Chicago area. Add a hockey net to that list of responsibilities, and that’s a lot of pressure, even for someone with divine inspiration. Paprocki doesn’t mind. He takes lessons from both arenas.
“I think sports in general are a good training ground for whatever you do in life,” he says. “And I do think there are similarities between being in goal and being a bishop. In both situations you are at the center of the action and people are counting on you. Both are really intense games mentally.
“Being a goalie requires concentration and confidence, which are attributes I need as a bishop, and in everyday life.”
Physical conditioning is also important to the bishop. He runs marathons in the off-season “to stay in shape for hockey.” Pictures of him at finish lines from Chicago to Rome and Greece line the hallways near his office at the Archdiocese of Chicago vicariate. It is another part of the office that seems to excite him most, however. He beams proudly as he leads the way into a copy room where the décor is devoted to his hockey.
On one wall is a framed poster of the Chicago skyline with the image of Paprocki in full action stopping a shot, superimposed over Lake Michigan.
It’s the other wall that’s more telling though. Next to a framed shot of his league’s all-star team, with Paprocki front and center, is a cartoon drawing of Jesus playing hockey.
He is a thoughtful and highly respected man, but certainly not without a quirky sense of humor. He is, after all, a goalie at heart.