Guys Read: The Sports Pages

by Jon Scieszka

  AGAINST ALL ODDS

  BY DUSTIN BROWN

  Dustin Brown plays right wing for the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League. He is also the Kings’ captain. Dustin was named captain at the age of twenty-three, becoming the youngest captain—and the only American-born captain—in the history of the Kings’ franchise. Dustin has also played for Team USA in the World Championships four times. He was a 2009 NHL All-Star and served as an alternate captain of the silver medal–winning United States Olympic Team for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

  Drafted thirteenth in the first round of the 2003 NHL draft, Dustin grew up in Ithaca, New York, where he started playing hockey at age three. From the moment he started playing, it was clear he had skill on the ice—but so did lots of other kids. What made him so great that he was able to become the All-Star captain of an NHL team? Talent plays a huge part in his story. So does determination and commitment, by him and by his parents, who backed him up every step of the way.

  Here is his story … so far.

  YOUTH HOCKEY (1987–1999)

  ITHACA YOUTH HOCKEY ASSOCIATION

  More than 350,000 kids (boys and girls) play hockey each year as part of USA Hockey, the system in charge of amateur hockey in the United States. From 1987–1999, Dustin was among them.

  When I Was Really Little …

  I started playing hockey when I was three years old because my big brother Brendan was playing, and I wanted to do everything he did. I learned by pushing a chair around on the ice. Funny enough, my dad can’t even skate. It was just a result of the fact that my brother played hockey, and I wanted to do everything that he got to do.

  My early years as a hockey player were probably a lot like everyone else’s. Though I guess I was maybe a little bit crazier about the game than the other kids. Once I got into it, it became my favorite thing to do in the world. That’s been true from the time I started playing, even to this day.

  I believe I started playing organized hockey around age five or six, which is the Tykes level. The one thing I remember—and it’s a vivid memory; I have a photo—is my very first hockey jersey. It was green and white, and I had all red equipment, so I basically looked like a Christmas decoration. I remember the jersey because my father’s restaurant sponsored my team, which was Bryan’s Landing; the logo was an open-cockpit two-seater plane. I also remember it so well because my grandfather was there to watch me, which I believe was the last time he saw me skate. The other thing I remember was how thin the jersey was. It was a meshlike material. Pretty cheap stuff. The reason I remember that is because I played on an outdoor rink and the jersey wasn’t like the ones I wear now, which are nice and thick. This jersey was thin … very thin … which means I was freezing.

  As cold as I was, though, it didn’t matter to me. I always had a ball on the ice.

  Squirt and Peewee (Ages 9–12)

  When I was between nine and ten, I was a Squirt. Then I was a Peewee when I was eleven and twelve. I’ve got some great memories of those years. The Squirts and Peewees were each divided into two levels in my town. One level was called Travel, which was the more or less “elite” team. The other was called Snowbelt. Both teams got to travel, but the Travel team was on the road a lot more, going a lot farther away and playing against tougher competition.

  You had to try out for the Travel team. I did, and I made it. My dad and I began to hit the road, and it seemed like that was what we did every weekend for years.

  Once I got to be on a Travel team, things got a little more serious. I couldn’t skip practices or games. If I wanted to play any other sports, I had to fit them in around my hockey schedule. I worked hard on my schoolwork, and I never needed to be told to do it. Ever since I was a little kid going to tournaments on the weekends, I could get most of my work done in the car or on the way to the hockey game. So once I was there, I could kind of have fun.

  The trips were fantastic. Since I was always with the same group of kids, it was like we were hanging out in our fort. I loved the hockey, but I think my best memories were off the ice, playing minihockey in the hallways and then running from the security guards.

  We really traveled a lot. We usually left Thursday night or Friday morning, depending on how far away the games were. We would have two games on Friday, two games on Saturday. If you were on one of the better teams and playing in the semifinals and finals, you’d have two games on Sunday too, so it was pretty busy. But at that age, we could play six games in three days and be fine. We’d play minihockey, we’d go out to dinner, and we’d just hang around with one another. I played with the same group of seven or eight kids from the time I was eight until the time I was about fifteen. I really created a bond with those guys.

  When I wasn’t playing hockey, I played baseball and lacrosse. I always loved hockey, but it was great to have time to play other sports too. Sometimes, today, I think parents push their kids to specialize in one sport. You’ve got kids that are, like, eight, nine years old who are one-sport athletes, which I don’t think is in anyone’s best interest. I also liked to read … sort of. My favorite books were the Goosebumps books by R. L. Stine. Each book was numbered. I liked collecting them, trying to get every single one.

  Support System

  My dad owned a restaurant in my hometown. It was right by the airport. He worked hard, but now that I look back at it, his main job was just carting me around. He worked Monday through Thursday, and then we would go on our hockey trips.

  Even though hockey was expensive, my dad always found a way for me to be able to play. It’s not only the cost of the Youth Hockey Association fees, it’s also the travel and renting motel rooms.

  I remember coming back with him from a game one time. We had an Isuzu Trooper, and I took a picture on the way home because we had just passed two hundred thousand miles on the vehicle. That was pretty cool. A whole lot of those were Travel team miles.

  Early Mornings

  I love to play hockey. But I don’t always love to work out. When I was a kid, I sometimes had to get up at 4:30 in the morning for practice. I can’t say I was overly excited about it. I’d be half asleep, but I’d get dressed—everything but my skates—and my dad would put me in the car and we would go. When I was a Peewee, I had two practices a week. One would be Monday morning at 5:30, and the other would be Wednesday afternoon at 5:30. I got used to it over time. I got into a rhythm. Once I was in the rink I was fine and ready to go.

  Bantam (Ages 13–14)

  Things started to change by the time I got to be a Bantam. For one thing, some of the kids who started out really great found they weren’t so great anymore. I played against a kid from a nearby town when we were ten years old. He was like Wayne Gretzky back then. By the time we were fourteen, he wasn’t any good at all. What happened? If he was so much better than me when we were ten, how come I’m playing professional hockey and he’s not?

  Did everyone just catch up to him? Or did he not put in the work? I don’t know; but I do know that at age twelve or thirteen, some kids will grow a foot in a year, and others won’t grow until they’re eighteen. Even at my level, I see guys who, for their first couple of years, don’t seem as if they’re going to be players and then all of a sudden they figure it out. They get stronger physically, they get bigger, they refine parts of their game they weren’t focused on before, and they become great players. It’s hard work, and it takes a lot of drive. For most of us, we’ve been at it our whole lives.

  When you’re twelve years old, there is a big gap between the really good players and the other players. There’s still a gap at the NHL level, but it’s a much smaller gap from the worst player to the best player on the ice.

  When I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I’d be going to the rink and skating when most kids were probably going and hanging out with their friends. It was something I enjoyed. I played other sports too—I kept on playing baseball until I was thirteen. I played lacrosse most of the way through high school. But it was
at this point where I kind of needed to pick one sport if I was going to be serious about it. And hockey was my passion, so I stuck with hockey.

  The last year I played in Ithaca, I had my first big disappointment. I tried out for the New York State Select 15—a team of the best fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds in the state. I made the central New York team. But I got cut from the twenty-man statewide team.

  It was a surprise. But I learned from it. It’s one thing to be the best player in a small town like Ithaca. But then I got dumped into a bigger pond, and there were more fish. I started to realize that there’re a lot of really good players out there. At fourteen, I wasn’t even in the top twenty players my age in New York. That opened my eyes a bit.

  JUNIORS (1999–2003)

  Of the 350,000 kids who play Youth Hockey, only 30,000 make the cut to play on an official amateur basis by the time they get to the Junior Hockey level (ages 17–20). Junior Hockey is the step between Youth Hockey and NCAA College Hockey or, in some cases, the NHL. From 1999–2003, Dustin was one of those players, starting with the Syracuse Stars in 1999 and moving up to the Guelph Storm of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) in 2000.

  I was upset when I got cut from the Select 15 when I was fourteen. But things got better the next year when I joined the Syracuse Stars. They are a Tier III Junior team—Tier I being the most competitive in the country—but the play was still plenty competitive. It was a big jump up for me from Ithaca Youth Hockey.

  Some of the guys on the team were far from home and still in high school. So they lived with “billet families”—families who were paid to house and feed Junior Hockey players. I lived close enough to Syracuse that I didn’t have to billet out there. I was pretty busy with hockey by then, but I still kept up with stuff at home.

  Most of the guys playing on the Stars were older than me. Some of them had finished high school and were playing Juniors hoping for a scholarship from an NCAA Division I college team or maybe even to make it into the NHL draft—though that’s kind of a big leap from a Tier III team.

  My hockey really improved over that year. Our team won the national championship, and then right after that I made the Select 16s. Within a year, not only did I make the New York team, I was picked as one of the top twenty players in the nation as a sixteen-year-old. That was the first moment when I thought that maybe I could really do this for a living. And that’s when I had a really big decision to make.

  Canada? Or College?

  In 2000, Dustin got the chance to try out for the Guelph Storm of the Ontario Hockey League. This was a big leap and would require him to live with a billet family himself—far from home. That wasn’t the only thing that made the decision tough. Leaving the US to play hockey in Canada meant that Dustin would be forfeiting his chance to get a Division I college hockey scholarship. It meant that he was putting college aside—maybe for a while, maybe forever—in the hope of making it to the NHL. Even though about 20 percent of players on active rosters in the NHL come from the OHL, he was banking on some very long odds.

  When I got the chance to go to Canada, it was my parents who really helped me figure out what to do. I was only fifteen. My parents were worried about my schooling, because I was giving up my college eligibility going into the OHL.

  My dad said, “If you want to do this, they’ll give you a school package.” He figured the OHL would find a way to help me pay for college somehow. My mom was really worried about me going; she didn’t want me to leave home. But at the end of the day, they both said, “If you want to do this, you should do it. You can always go to school after.” They were really supportive of my decision, just like they had always been. I had to grow up a bit quicker, but I chose to do it that way.

  Though hockey was Dustin’s focus during his three years in Ontario, he stuck to the books too. In fact, he was the Ontario Hockey League Scholastic Player of the Year every year he was there, winning their Bobby Smith Trophy three years in a row. He is the only player in that league ever to win the trophy in three consecutive years.

  According to the league, the trophy is awarded in honor of former Ottawa 67’s star Bobby Smith, and is symbolic of the high standard of excellence that Smith displayed in the classroom as well as on the ice during his outstanding Junior career.

  In addition to his high academic average while in Guelph, Dustin also was the highest-scoring player in his last year of high school, scoring 34 goals with 42 assists, good for 76 points.

  As Dustin’s hockey skills continued to improve, he kept his focus on his goal of making it to the NHL. It’s not easy for every NHL hopeful to keep that fire burning.

  I was pretty motivated, as I’m sure a lot of other kids out there are. But the main thing was that my dad and my mom were really good about supporting me in my decisions all the time I was growing up. If I wanted to go to a hockey tournament every weekend when I was a kid, it was because I wanted to go—not because my dad pressured me into going.

  I played hockey in the winter, and I would sometimes go on my own to the rink and skate during the summertime. But I didn’t play on hockey teams all year long when I was a kid. I did other things.

  I think I stuck with hockey the whole way through because I was self-motivated.

  I wanted to be an NHL player my whole life. But my dad wasn’t sitting there saying, “Okay, if I push this kid, he’ll make it.” It was more like, “Go have fun. If it works out, it works out.” I realized that if I wanted to do this, I would have to do it for myself. I was going to have to work really hard at it, be disciplined. Lucky for me, I have always loved to play hockey. Because there are lots of other things that fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old kids want to do. But for me, it was all about going to the rink and playing hockey.

  I developed a lot as a player and as a person in Ontario. I had to learn a lot of responsibility. I was living with a billet family, so I always had food on the table or a ride if I needed it, but it’s a little different when it’s not your own family. I was away from all my family and friends, and I kind of grew up a little bit quicker.

  A Shot at the Big Time: The NHL Draft

  Of the thirty thousand players in Junior Hockey each year, about two hundred are invited to the NHL draft at age eighteen. In 2003, Dustin was one of them. Thirty players in his year were selected in the first round of the draft. Dustin was one of them, too—number thirteen. He was drafted by the Los Angeles Kings.

  I went from being a little kid in Ithaca to being an NHL player within a matter of three and a half years. It happened very quickly and was a lot to get adjusted to. It was definitely a whirlwind. When I was eighteen, I think I was rated number two in the world. I was selected number thirteen overall in the 2003 draft. It was overwhelming, but at the same time it was something I’d wanted to do since I was five years old.

  When I was thirteen, like every kid, I was saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to play in the NHL.” Suddenly, within five years, I was playing in my first NHL game.

  Dustin played his first game in the NHL on October 9, 2003, a month before his nineteenth birthday. He got a penalty for high-sticking.

  So I was expecting, I was wanting to be in that situation. I remember being at the draft, and I had a lot of family and friends there with me, and it was a really exciting time. But the flip side of that was once I was drafted I realized, “Okay, I’m drafted. Now the real hard work starts.”

  MOVING UP TO THE SHOW (2003)

  Of all the hockey players who are selected in the first round of an NHL draft, about eight will make careers as professional hockey players, playing in more than two hundred NHL games. Dustin, who has played in more than five hundred NHL games since 2003, was part of an unusually strong draft year. Of the thirty players drafted with Dustin in the first round, five players went on to lead their teams in scoring in the 2007–2008 season. Ten players have been part of either an All-Star team, the Olympics (for the United States or Canada), or both, including Dustin, who was on both the 2009 All-Star team
and the 2010 US Olympic team, for which he was an alternate captain.

  Getting drafted is one thing. But many players get drafted and never play a game. On top of that, my draft year was abnormal because we had pretty much an All-Star team out of the first round.

  Going from the draft to actually getting a spot on the team takes a lot of hard work, and it depends on your abilities, obviously. But a lot of it is timing. There are a lot of players who got drafted around the same time as me who are still playing in the AHL (North American hockey’s minor professional league system) and trying to make it into the NHL. Or else they’ve given it up. A lot has to do with where you fit on the team. The timing was good for me in Los Angeles.

  I tried to establish myself early. I knew I was going to have to find a way to stand out. I wasn’t going to score twenty goals a season like I did in the OHL or in Youth Hockey. I needed to find a way to stay in this league and stay with the Kings. So I started to develop the physical side of my game, becoming very aggressive. That filled a void on the team and gave me a spot. As an eighteen-year-old, all you’re trying to do is stay on the team. And it kind of became the trademark of my game.

  Some sportswriters say Dustin has a lot of “sandpaper” in his game.

  Once I was established, it was a matter of continuing to work hard to get better.

  The more you play at this level, the more you learn. My first year, I ran out of position a lot just trying to hit someone. I would make the hit, but it took me out of position for the rest of the play. My game’s come a long way since then. An interesting thing about hitting: it’s not always size that makes the difference. I’ve known guys who are smaller than me who can knock me down. I’ve known guys bigger than me who try to hit me and can’t even move me. A lot of it is timing. It’s not an easy thing to judge. I make a lot of hits, but I also miss a lot of hits.