The boy whose kick saved his mother

It will go down as the greatest kick-save that Justin Pogge ever made, one he pulled off even before he was born.

His mother, Annet Pogge, figures she had been pregnant with Team Canada's star goalie at the world junior hockey tournament here for a little more than four months the night she walked to the centre of a bridge in Fort McMurray, Alta., thinking about ending it all.

She was 22. Earlier that evening, she'd told her boyfriend she was expecting. Actually, she told him at the couple's engagement party. But as soon as Ms. Pogge broke the news to her new fiancé, he wanted no part of parenthood.

"He walked out on me right then and there," remembers Ms. Pogge, sitting in a restaurant at the Pan Pacific Hotel. "Leaving me with 126 guests to explain things to."

Annet Pogge felt like hell. No, she felt worse than that. She was confused. Her head was spinning. Maybe a baby wasn't a good idea, she began thinking. Maybe she wasn't meant to be a mom. Later that night, she found herself walking toward her favourite bridge in town.

Maybe life wasn't such a good idea.

As she peered into the darkness and the water below, as she contemplated throwing herself over the edge to a certain death, a miracle happened. Well, she calls it a miracle and when you consider how this story ends up, the word is as appropriate as any.

"Just when I was thinking of doing it," Ms. Pogge recalls, "when I was thinking of terminating everything, not just the pregnancy, but me, I felt a kick. It was light but I felt it. It was the first real sign of life. And I remember thinking, 'Oh, my God. This is a sign. God wants me to live.' I couldn't end my life then. I couldn't."

And she didn't, of course. And as it turned out, there was much more for her to do on Earth. Most of the next 19 years would centre around the boy whose little kick saved his mother's life. The boy with whom Canada's gold-medal chances at the world junior hockey tournament will largely rest. But more about that later.

The story of how Justin Pogge ended up between the pipes for Canada is actually more compelling than any game at the tournament will be. Even a gold-medal game. So here we go.

After Ms. Pogge climbed down from the ledge of the bridge that night, she ended up staying in Alberta for another 12 years, doing an assortment of odd jobs, from being a cashier at a 7-Eleven to pumping gas. Needless to say there was never a lot of money in the house, certainly not enough to pay for a sport as expensive as hockey. Then one day, Ms. Pogge heard about a hockey bursary to help needy parents. She applied and received one. It allowed Justin to start hockey at age 10, years later than most Canadian kids begin the game.

When Justin was 12, he and his mother relocated to Penticton, in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. Of all things, Justin had decided to be a goalie, the most costly position in an already exceedingly costly sport. The first set of pads his mother bought him was, of course, second-hand and as heavy as a couple of torpedoes. That's what you got for $150.

He performed so poorly in them that his mother felt sick. So she scraped together enough money to buy him a new set the next year. They were $200, which buys a set of pads not much better than those used for street hockey, but hey, Justin wasn't complaining. At least they didn't feel like they'd been left out in the rain all year. At least when he went down to make a save, it didn't take him a half hour to get back up.

And up there in the stands, living and dying with every shot on her son, was Ms. Pogge. The ultimate hockey mom. Actually, the ultimate hockey mom and hockey dad, rolled into one. Yes, Justin didn't have a father in his life, and his mother felt badly for him. God, she still remembers one New Year's Eve in Calgary when Justin was four or five and they were on a bus heading downtown to watch the fireworks.

"And poor little Justin went up to three or four men on the bus and said, 'Would you be my daddy?' 'Would you be my daddy?' He used to say that to any man who talked to him for a while. It was heartbreaking."

After a while, however, Justin stopped doing that. He had a mother who was every bit as involved as any of the hockey dads who traditionally filled the stands at games and practices. Ms. Pogge volunteered to be the equipment manager on Justin's teams. She drove to every tournament, sometimes sleeping with five of Justin's teammates in her motel room. She put up with AC/DC, full blast, at 5:30 a.m. If that's what Justin needed to get up for a game or practice, that's what he needed.

When Justin failed to make the top rep team in peewee and bantam, it was Ms. Pogge who was there when he got home. At one point, Justin was so discouraged he wasn't sure if he wanted to continue playing hockey.

"I love you," she told him. "And I will support any decision you make." He decided to keep playing.

The Plymouth Voyageur van that Ms. Pogge bought 10 years ago with 70,000 kilometres on it recently died with 290,000 kilometres on the odometer.

"We went everywhere in that thing," she remembers. "We travelled to every rink in B.C., down into the States. And we'd always have a bunch of kids and often our two dogs. Every trip was an adventure. But God, we had fun. And we always had the best parents and just had the best teammates. We became this big extended family."

Eventually, Justin Pogge got on to the bantam Triple A team in Penticton. Pretty soon, he was playing for the Prince George Cougars of the Western Hockey League before being traded to the Calgary Hitmen. He ended up being a surprise pick for the world junior team, beating out bigger-name goalies like Carey Price of Williams Lake, a fifth overall pick of the Montreal Canadiens in the last NHL draft.

When Justin made the world junior team, Ms. Pogge cried. She thought of all those games she'd sat through when things weren't going so great for her son. Games after which he cried too. Now he was going to be on the greatest stage in junior hockey, the No. 1 guy.

Nothing is like being the parent of a goalie. No one really understands the pain that goes with that position for both the player and the parent. Your kid lets a goal in, maybe a goal that costs your team the game, and you feel as sick as he does. And maybe if Justin Pogge had had a father, Ms. Pogge might have begged off the odd game, or left when the pressure got too intense and she felt like throwing up. But because she was the only one, mother and father, she couldn't.

She couldn't be seen to be deserting her son, no matter how sick and nervous she sometimes felt.

One day recently, Ms. Pogge was in the office of the Jr. A Penticton Vees, where she works in community relations, when she received a phone call from a friend who happened to be watching an NHL game on television. A bulletin appeared at the bottom of the screen mentioning that the Toronto Maple Leafs had come to terms with their third-round draft pick, Justin Pogge of Penticton.

Oh, my God, Ms. Pogge thought. Justin has signed a pro contract.

Not much later, her son caught up with her. She tried to act surprised. Ms. Pogge knew this was a big moment for her boy, and she didn't want to wreck it by letting on she already knew.

"Mom," her now-not-so-little boy said. "I've got some incredible news."

"More incredible news?" she asked.

"I signed with the Leafs," he said. "And Mom, it's for a nice signing bonus. Mom, it's more than we expected."

Annet Pogge cried. She cried for her son, for the pure happiness in his voice. She cried for all those early morning practices.

She cried for the games when her son didn't play so well, for those tournaments when his team didn't win but when he had a wonderful experience anyway.

"Mom," Justin said. "I'm going to get you a new car."

Today, you can hear something change in Justin Pogge's voice when his mother's name is mentioned. It softens a little and a smile crosses his face.

"I owe everything to her, no question," he said after practice this week. "She was at every game, every practice. She's such a strong woman, making it on her own the way she did. She's a real inspiration, because I know how hard it was for her. We didn't have any money and yet she didn't let it bother her or bother me.

"Love and support are all you need. That's what she taught me above all else. She's an amazing woman."

As a young hockey player, Justin Pogge never yearned for the father he didn't know. He was never embarrassed that his hockey dad was his hockey mom. In fact, he'll tell you, his teammates ended up turning to his mom when they needed something more often than they turned to any dad.

So he is looking forward to the day, in the near future he expects, when he can begin repaying her for all that love and support. When he can dip into that signing bonus he received from the Leafs, widely reported at $525,000, and hand his mother the keys to a new car.

"I've been thinking about it a lot," Justin said. "I want to put a nice big bow on it too. I always wanted to do that. After everything we've been through, it's the least I can do."

No matter what happens at the world junior tournament, or the rest of his career for that matter, Justin Pogge will never make a bigger save than the one he pulled off 19 years ago.

Some people would even call it miraculous.

gmason@globeandmail.ca