NHL.com tells story of forwards’ dads, who were teammates on junior team in 1981
© Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images / Leila Devlin/Getty Images
The two men stand close by in the 44-year-old picture, with Perry Kane second from the left in the back row, Kevin Marchand second from the left in the middle row. Their jerseys bear the logo of the Dartmouth Arrows, the Metro Valley Junior Hockey League team they each played for in 1981, long before either one thought about the turns their lives would take, including their future children.
Seven years later, Brad Marchand was born.
Three years after that, Evander Kane.
Perry and Kevin’s lives wouldn’t intersect much after that single year they shared the ice. Marchand raised his kids in Halifax, while Kane headed across the country to Vancouver. But they have this week, as Brad Marchand and Evander Kane’s teams, the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers, battle for the Stanley Cup, which began with a 4-3 win in overtime for the Oilers in Game 1 of the best-of-7 series on Wednesday at Rogers Place in Edmonton.
“It was a good team, a tough team,” said Kevin, who was 17 or 18 at the time. “We had to work for every point and win. But Perry was a very skilled individual on that team. Very fast, like a speedy-fast kind of thing. Good hands. Much like the way his son plays now.”
Both players were wingers, often competing for the same spot on the team.
“They were good players — I find they’re very similar in a lot of ways,” said Blair Ross, who often centered Kevin on that team. “They were great teammates obviously. They were very smart, both on and off the ice. They were very serious and thoughtful, well respected by everybody throughout the league. They were patient — but, to a point, they were patient because they were tough and they could both handle themselves.”
Similar to each other — and to their sons.
“When I watch Evander, what I see from him that I saw in Perry were his smarts and his dynamic skating and he had a really good shot. Perry could just kind of fly down the wing and let that snap shot go with those old Titan sticks,” Ross said. “And I also see obviously Perry’s fighting abilities. I think Evander comes by his name honestly.”
He recalled the patience Perry showed, even when he was constantly targeted by opponents, checked and hacked, and then when it was enough, it was time.
Feet planted and, as Ross said, “rapid-fire about 10 rights.”
As for Kevin, “When I watch Brad, I see Kevin’s heart and his drive in Brad. His passion. They’re both very smart players obviously and they’re not scared to go to the tough areas.”
Kevin agreed.
“We’re very similar,” he said. “I’d rather go through a guy than go around him.”
Standing next to Marchand in the photo is Rick Spriggs, a defenseman who would often drive Perry back and forth to practices and games.
He called Perry “just a really, really gifted athlete. Just incredibly fit. He could skate like the wind. I don’t know where Evander got his height from because it wasn’t from his dad, unless his grandfather was tall — Perry will read that and laugh.”
But, he said, when he thinks back to that team, to the players who were on it and the sons who would come much later, “Really, the memory is all about what quality people these two dads were. The work ethic, the athleticism, all of the components that come together with respect to having somebody be able to play at such a high level in the best League in the world really is a testimony to their upbringing and the character of the dads that I knew when I played.”
Ross noted that Kevin would ascend to the captaincy of the team, much like Brad did two seasons ago with the Boston Bruins.
And that’s where that team photo holds another — perhaps far more consequential — hockey small-world moment. In the front row, second from the right, is assistant coach Donnie Matheson, who would go on to be the coach the following season.
Matheson, who died in 2008, became an amateur scout with the Boston Bruins for 15 years, tasked with scouting the Maritimes. He was vocal about his belief in Brad, pushing for the organization to take the undersized forward in the 2006 NHL Draft.
The Bruins had targeted him as a third-round pick, but the Ottawa Senators held that pick because of the Bruins decision to hire general manager Peter Chiarelli. So, the Bruins traded a fourth-round and a fifth-round pick to move up to No. 71 in the draft.
Where they took Brad Marchand.
“Donnie was instrumental in that,” Kevin said. “He was my coach that year that Perry and I were on the team, as well as the following year. It’s kind of a fun fact.”
So maybe if he hadn’t played on that team, his son would never have been a member of the Bruins?
“You never know,” Kevin said.
With most of Evander’s career coming in the Western Conference and all of Brad’s in the East, the two haven’t spent that much time competing, especially not with these stakes. That was why it took so long to put it all together.
“It was quite something when I learned that Evander was [Perry’s] son and playing in the NHL,” Kevin said. “He plays such a strong game, very much like his dad. I think he might be taller and a little bit larger. But Perry was a very, very strong athlete.”
Perry wasn’t the only Kane that Marchand shared the ice with. He also played with Leonard Kane, Perry’s brother, who was later inducted into the Canadian Ball Hockey Hall of Fame.
Both made an impression.
“Every time I see Evander play, I always think back about Perry, actually, believe it or not,” Kevin said.
It was a small community where they were from, and an even smaller hockey one.
Which is why this is so amazing to those who shared the ice with them.
“It’s not a big world out there and to have two dads with two kids — and they’re not kids anymore — but two sons playing in the Stanley Cup Final, it is really just kind of neat. We’re not from an overly populated part of the planet, I can assure you of that. … For that much success to come with roots out of here? There’s a couple pretty darn good hockey players right now that are playing in the Final that aren’t from Cole Harbour,” Spriggs said, with the slightest of chirps to nearby Cole Harbour’s famous sons, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon.
It’s been quite a few years since Kevin and Perry last saw each other. Long enough that Kevin, in Edmonton for the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final, asked if Perry might be attending the games in Edmonton.
“I’d love to run into him,” Kevin said. “We’ll meet up at the rink.”
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