BOSTON — To understand Devon Levi, you have to understand why he plays goalie. The happy-go-lucky Montreal native spent the first few years of his skating career as a forward, before pursuing his passions in net.

“I chose to become a goalie. Not because I thought I was going to play in the NHL, but because I loved it. I just really wanted to go goalie,” Levi said. “I’d hope every day that our goalie wouldn't show up to practice or the game so I could get my gear and then put it on and play. So eventually I got a real shot there so that I could actually go out and play.”

His father, Laurent, would shoot pucks on his son while he took the crease in street hockey.

“Obviously it's always been my dream to play in the NHL, growing up in Montreal and watching Carey Price,” Levi said. “I was just playing because I loved it, and to this day, I still do the same.”

Levi has always been a meticulous student of the game, so his former goalie coach Marco Raimondo taught him to approach the rink like the classroom — a perspective that he still carries with him today. Levi’s dorm room has two ginormous whiteboards where the Northeastern junior plans his weekly sleep schedule next to habit tracking.

“When hockey became serious, we were just sitting down and he said, like, ‘you’ve got to look at these games coming up as like a math test,’ right? When you go into a math test, you do all your studying during the week, you learn the content, you work at it. And then when you go in to test, all you’ve got to do is just write the test,” Levi explained. “The easiest part is going to write it. So that's kind of the approach that he gave me from a young age, where during practice I'll go get my work in all week, I'll work hard so that I have the answers going into the weekend. All I’ve got to do is just play.”

With a heavy course load, the computer science major has found a way to blend his studies on and off the ice by using virtual reality program Sense Arena on an Oculus headset.

“If I need extra puck touches, if I feel like I wanted to skate more and I hadn't, or I needed to let my body rest a little, it’s just an opportunity to feel pucks without physical exhaustion or getting my gear on or maybe not having the ice available,” Levi said. “Everything is very precise. Just like making glove saves. Like I feel when I'm going to make the save, I feel like when I'm not going to make it too, just like on the ice.”

When it’s time to turn the screens and volume down, Levi turns to meditation, a practice he started in quarantine for the 2020 World Juniors. Exposures forced Team Canada to spend four weeks in isolation, and Levi was motivated to flex his mental muscles to get an edge on competition while stuck in his room.

“In-game play is the same thing. Like, we have a TV timeout, instead of trying to figure out like how I'm going to stop the puck, next player, I think about like what I'm going to do or just get too far ahead of myself, I just take a second and breathe and relax and come back to the moment,” Levi said. “There's nothing for me in that moment that I can do to be able to stop the puck, or to stop the pucks that will be thrown at me in the next play or in the next two plays, so I'm just going to sit there and control what I control at that moment. The only thing I can control is my breath, so that's my focus. And then once the puck drops, my focus changes from my breath to a play.”

Mike Condon, former NHL goaltender and Levi’s goalie coach at Northeastern University, emphasizes the importance of mental stamina and control in net, and is impressed with how Levi has pushed himself in that arena.

“It's very much a muscle, and he worked on that a lot this year and it's still work,” Condon said. “You know, it's hard for anyone just to sit there and learn to be calm. It's very easy for someone to come in here and lift weights, because there's two different types of training — and the latter sometimes in this aspect is that a lot of guys don't always see that as work, but it takes effort and it takes time and patience and it's a different part of your brain. So he's been really accepting of that, and I think it's awesome just being thoughtless when the game plays so that your reaction can take over.”

Levi could have gone pro last year, after winning the Mike Richter Award, National Rookie of the Year, Hockey East Goaltender and Rookie of the Year, as well as being named a Hobey Baker finalist.

“I think the decision to go to Buffalo or to go to Northeastern was a decision where I don't think I could have made a wrong choice,” Levi said in reflection.

Condon wanted him to return.

“I look at his career, he's done so well at every single level and he hasn't really faced any crazy adversity," said Condon. And the thing about that is adversity doesn't really spare any hockey players over their career, and to be able to go through that — and we did have that a little bit this year, in the middle of the season where we were kind of on a losing streak, his game, he was struggling with and as a coach, I really wanted him to go through so that he could come up with his own solutions to those problems in an environment where it's a little bit safer as opposed to pro hockey.”

In his return to the NCAA for a second season, Levi lifted the Huskies to the coveted Beanpot title, while capturing MVP of the tournament himself. But the individual accolades mean nothing to him.

“You know, it's really the winning and those trophies that you get when you do. And that is the reason why I play,” Levi said. “And it's so much more meaningful when you can hold the trophy with a bunch of guys. Winning the Beanpot was the most amazing thing ever. I threw my gloves for the first time. It was unbelievable. It was a great experience. And so I got Goalie of the Tournament or whatever, Player of the Tournament, whatever it was — but I got the trophy and I honestly haven't seen it since they handed it to me. I don't know what happened to it. I was just so happy to win and have to the Beanpot in my hands. So that's really why I do it. And it's the best part of hockey.”

Now, Buffalo awaits him. Levi is expected to join the Sabres as soon as immigration paperwork goes through, burning the first year of his three-year, entry-level deal.

“There's a lot of goaltending history in Buffalo and it's really cool,” Levi said of the organization awaiting his arrival. “It's cool to see that there are a lot of franchise guys that go through the organization and it's cool to see also that, you know, they're looking for one and my name is on the plate. It’s just a big honor to be, you know, given the opportunity to potentially be a Ryan Miller.”

Fans will surely give Levi a warm welcome, but he has plenty of friendly faces ready for him in the blue and gold locker room.

“I got pretty close to OP in China, you know. Coz, Krebsy, Quinner, they're great,” Levi said of his Team Canada teammates. “I talk to them once in a while. They reach out. I reach out. Also, if they score a big goal or, you know, tell them that I'm watching and they're excited for me to come in and it's just they're great guys. So it's just great, great talks with them every time, every time we reach out and I'm excited to hopefully play with them.”