Oh you’re right he never made the NHL. I know about him because he was a Toronto Marlie for a little bit, very interesting character.
Ah I should have figured!
Yeah, he was something else. When he was coming through Djurgården’s system, he auditioned for Swedish Idol calling himself “Mark in the Park”, rapping for the hosts, then softly wheezed an r’n’b song for the judges, one of whom recognized him as a hockey goalie and told him to stick to hockey. It’s a rather famous clip in hockey circles.
For us Luleå fans, Owuya’s remembered for the 2011 playoff quarterfinals, where we were on the brink of a historical embarrassment, largely due to this young goalie who posted two shutouts as Djurgården rallied from 0-3 to tie the series. Luleå was looking likely to become the first Swedish team to suffer a 7-game reverse sweep, but thankfully defensive defenseman Robin Jonsson became our unlikely overtime hero.
Years later, we let go of one of the least SHL ready goalies I’ve seen (Italian national team netminder Daniel Bellissimo) and welcomed Mark Owuya to Luleå, after he’d been bouncing between the AHL and ECHL since his time with Djurgården. And once again, he was unreal, although this time for our side. I don’t remember the exact details, but I think he was close to getting three consecutive shutouts from his debut onward, with what I guess I’d call a weird technique, simply put. Was super exciting for a while, and I hoped he’d get to continue and I think he had a contract for the next season, but the club broke it for whatever reason.
I think the official reason was he’d been blocked for smoking pot, but there were also rumored that there had been something else to it than that.
Very interesting character at any rate.
