Christmas is a time for family and friends and that message rings even more true for major junior hockey players who are away from home from September to April or May, depending on team successes.
The Victoria Royals branched off in their separate ways this week, following an overtime loss to the Vancouver Giants on Saturday night.
Ethan Price had one of the longest journeys home — more than 2,900 kilometres to Lincoln, Nebraska, along with veteran Jack Walker, who was just under that mark to Edina, Minnesota. Jeremy Masella had a 2,500-km flight plan to Phoenix and backup goalie Dylan Myskiw was to venture 2,400 kilometres to slightly cooler temps in Winnipeg, while Blake Burger had a 1,900-km trek to Torrance, California.
Russians Vladimir Bobylev, of Lipetsk, and Marsel Ibragimov, of Kazan, both remain on the Island with billet Kim Oldham and family.
“We don’t celebrate Christmas in Russia; we celebrate the New Year, which is a big celebration. It would be a lot of travel and the time change would be too hard,” said Ibragimov, who was looking forward to plans with his billet family.
“It’s always fun with presents and we [he and Bobylev] might skate a bit here. Our billet-brother likes to get up early to see the presents, but we still sleep a lot and make him wait for us,” Ibragimov said with a chuckle, referencing the delay of 14-year-old Jack Oldham’s anxious Christmas morning plans.
Royals head coach Dave Lowry might be the most excited of the bunch, however, as he gets to share Christmas with family for the first time in three years as he won a gold medal as an assistant coach with the Canadian team at world junior tournament two years ago and last season was head coach with Team Canada.
“I’m really looking forward to the break and the opportunity to spend some quality family time,” he added, getting a chance to see sons Adam and Joel, who both play hockey professionally.
Adam is in his third year with the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets and Joel, a former Victoria Grizzly, is in the AHL with Los Angeles’s farm team, the Ontario Reign.
“That’s the profession that we’re in and the careers that my kids have chosen as well. They go their own separate ways and when you have the opportunity to get together as a family you cherish that time,” said Lowry, who gets to see the boys for five days.
Daughters Sarah and Tessa and wife Elaine also get equal quality time. Sarah recently welcomed baby boy Lawson in August so grandpa Dave will have his hands full with the first Christmas with his grandson, and Tessa is also playing hockey at College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota.
Lowry will also be watching the world juniors through exhibition play and the tournament which begins Boxing Day.
“Absolutely, I’ll be watching. I’ve had a vested interest in this. We had nine possible returning players,” he said of this year’s crew. “There are a lot of real good kids there who are going to have an opportunity to come back and they can use last year’s experience as a motivating tool so that we don’t make the same mistake that we made.
“I know that they are in extremely capable hands with Dom [Ducharme] coaching and his staff with Kris Knoblauch and Tim Hunter.”
During the holidays, the Lowry clan also used to throw on the skates and play some shinny.
“We don’t have the luxury of having the rink anymore in the backyard. We would have great games of hockey through the holidays,” he recalled.
Meanwhile, Walker had a four-hour trip slated to Minnesota through Seattle and the middle child of five kids was looking forward to his return home. He will not see older brother (and former Royal) Ben, who is playing with HC Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Second Division where he has two goals and 10 points in nine games.
He will get to participate in the annual white elephant family gift exchange where you get to open a gift and each subsequent person opens a present or attempts to steal the previous person’s gift.
“We roll dice for a couple minutes, everyone gets a present, then we start the clock, roll dice again and everyone starts trading, trying to end up with best present. It’s fun and I look forward to that,” said Walker, who also celebrated Christmas with his billets prior to leaving.
But he also looks forward to getting back to work.
“I think it gets easier every year,” he said. “Now that it’s my last year in junior it will be easier for me to come back. I’m sure some of the young guys will want to stay even longer, but I feel, personally, like after the break is over I’ll be antsy to get back into the swing of things, for sure.”
As long as he doesn’t delve into too much food.
“You don’t want to eat one too many pies,” he said with a chuckle.
