James DeMarco grew up in the leafy suburbs of Watertown, Massachusetts, where the sound of a hockey puck striking a glove was as familiar as the neighborhood chatter.
Early Roots on the Ice
He first laced up skates at the age of five, quickly discovering that his happiest moments came when he stood between the pipes, eyes fixed on the incoming puck, ready to make a save.
That same youthful energy spilled into sketchbooks, where he began to translate the rhythm of the game into drawings, giving life to a character he named Small Saves.
The Birth of Small Saves
First sketched in 1991, Small Saves started as a simple doodle but soon grew into a full‑blown alter ego that embodied DeMarco’s ideal day: a morning spent guarding the net, followed by an evening of ink and imagination.
Over the decades the cartoon has taken on a personality of its own, becoming a visual diary of saves, missed shots and the quiet triumphs that only a goaltender can appreciate.
An Ideal Day
For DeMarco, a perfect day is measured by the crisp snap of a glove catching a puck and the smooth glide of a pencil across paper, each activity reinforcing the other in a feedback loop of focus and creativity.
Friends and teammates often find him at the rink before sunrise, then later at his kitchen table, where the character Small Saves watches over a fresh batch of sketches, reminding him that the game and the art are two sides of the same passion.