Milliman consultant Doug Norris has a second life on ice

When you’re an actuary, there’s a lot to like about playing the position of goaltender in ice hockey.

There’s the mathematics of the sport in the form of the trajectory of the puck as it flies off the blade of a stick toward the net. Or the way you have to position yourself early and cut off angles to get your body in front of that hurtling projectile.

And don’t forget the risk management involved in calculating how much time it takes you to leave the goalmouth, try to flick away a loose puck, and then hurry back to the crease before someone on the other team can beat you.?

Doug Norris knows all of this and loves all of this. When he’s not in our Denver office doing his job as a principal and consulting actuary for our Health discipline, he can be found in a mask and pads holding a stick in front of a hockey goal in a recreational league game.

And despite a list of injuries that he says includes “multiple concussions, broken bones, sprained things and torn things,” he’s still doing it.?

“Up until the pandemic, I was skating three or four times a week, always with the same crew,” Doug says. “Now I skate a time or two per month. I’m trying to find a regular role again, but it’s a challenge getting back into a rotation.”?

Doug played roller hockey while in college at Western Washington University, but he didn’t take his game to the ice until grad school at the University of Colorado Boulder. There, he joined his dorm hockey team and “figured out the game” by renting his gear from the campus recreation center.

Learning to skate well was one thing. Learning to play hockey at a relatively high level was another entirely.?

“I needed something to hold myself up with, and the biggest one was a goalie stick,” Doug says. “Next thing you know, I’m a goalie.”?

Fast-forward three years, and Doug had made the CU ACHA club team.?

“Nobody told me to leave, and I got better and better because I had to,” Doug says.

These days, Doug still takes the occasional knee to the head in adult league games, he’ll sometimes get to skate at Ball Arena, the home of his city’s National Hockey League team, the Colorado Avalanche, and he runs a website, The Goaltender Homepage, and a Twitter feed, @goaliehistory, that have chronicled hockey goalie history since 1994.

Doug is passionate about his sport and passionate about Milliman, where he’s been since 2004. He has three of his old goalie masks on the wall of his office, and the practice even made him his very own hockey goalie bobblehead doll.?

Through it all, he keeps strapping on the gear and minding that net – all with a larger, more metaphorical perspective.?

“The nice thing about hockey is that I have to remember how much I have to struggle to be mediocre,” Doug says with a laugh. “Things can go bad quickly, so you have to work hard.??

“It’s a good life lesson.”