Dallas Stars center Tyler Seguin recently suffered a major injury, but in this story from THN's archive, writer Ken Campbell profiled Seguin in his early days in Dallas.
The Dallas Stars dealt with a huge problem when star center Tyler Seguin was injured and forced to have hip surgery that will sideline him for the next four-to-six months. But in this story from THN's archive, writer Ken Campbell profiled Seguin in his early days as a key component of the Stars.
Big D's Big Gun
By Ken Campbell
Like a lot of factories, this one is tucked away in a nondescript cranny, all the better for those on the assembly line to do their work in anonymity and without distractions. This particular factory is located in midtown Toronto, set back from the busy street with a private school run by Basilian Fathers that traces its roots back more than 150 years on one side and a massive grocery store on the other. God is surely watching. And so is Matt Nichol, who runs his factory in a space no larger than a dressing room at the St. Michael’s College School Arena. It can be oppressively hot and a little stinky in the dog days of summer, when Nichol does his most important work, building NHL players and wannabe NHL players into bigger, stronger, faster and more efficient machines than they already are.
It is here where Tyler Seguin feels most at home. Even though on this morning there is a gaggle of figure skaters on the rink, this place smells and feels like hockey. Hundreds of NHL players have skated on this ice over the past 60 years, including Hall of Famers Dave Keon, Frank Mahovlich, Gerry Cheevers and Eric Lindros. Seguin went to school here for two years and even played for the high school varsity team. He dreamed of playing for the St. Mike’s Buzzers Jr. A team, then going off to play for Red Berenson at the University of Michigan, whose hockey schools Seguin began attending when he was 10 years old. If he had done that, Seguin’s name and picture would in the pantheon of great players who played at St. Mike’s, more than 200 of whom played at least one game in the NHL – from Ted Lindsay to Les Costello, who won a Stanley Cup with the Maple Leafs before leaving pro hockey to become a priest. But then came a growth spurt, followed closely by OHL scouts, and off Seguin went to Plymouth with his otherworldly talents. Less than a year after his senior prom, he was holding the Stanley Cup over his head.
Every summer, Seguin comes back here. He could stay in Dallas or go down to Santa Monica and train with a bunch of muscle heads and NHL players. But it’s here, at Nichols’ BioSteel facility in the St. Mike’s Arena that Seguin has been tethered to in the offseason since he was 18. “The big thing with Matty is I can’t leave him yet,” Seguin said. “Maybe it’s a maturity thing, but I can’t not work out here. I can push myself, but I don’t know if it would still be as hard as still knowing he’s there. He’d yell at me if he saw me leaning over like I am right now.”
It’s just before noon, and Seguin is about to embark on his third and final workout of the day. He has been here since 7 a.m. He’s already done an onice session, another in the gym, and he’s here now to work his upper body. At one point in the session, Seguin wears a 15-pound weight jacket and has two 45-pound plates strapped to him so they’re hanging between his legs. With 105 pounds added to his 200-pound frame, he does three pullups. He yells on the third one. It’s a pride thing for him. He’s always trying to stay one step ahead of Tom Wilson and Wayne Simmonds. “He’s the pace car around here,” Nichol said. “He’s a lot stronger than people think he is.”
It turns out that’s not the only misconception about Seguin. Early in his career, he was portrayed as an irresponsible party boy, largely because that’s what he was. Seguin even had an entourage. During the Boston Bruins’ playoff series against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2013, the team had a long talk with him about his partying and allegedly hired a guard to make him stay in his room. But even in those days, it was relatively minor. Seguin never saw the inside of a police station, never hurt anyone else and never shortchanged his team or his teammates on the ice. He never shortchanged himself, either.
There may have been some indiscretions in his Boston days, but he was always a beast in the gym and on the ice. Nichol recalls times when they’d have to call off a bench press workout because his hands would be ripped up from shooting pucks for two hours. Seguin is still as committed, and you can see it on the ice. He’s one of the elite players in the NHL. If he were still a party animal, he wouldn’t have been on Canada’s World Cup team. He wouldn’t have been sixth in the NHL in points per game last season. For three straight years, he’s been better than a point-per-game player. The league is just too good for him to be able to accomplish that and be a party boy at the same time. He has learned to channel his energy into the work more than the fun. The same kid who won the Stanley Cup at 19 and found himself driven out of Boston has grown into a guy who gets it. “I’ve turned the page,” Seguin said. “People who are close to me and are in my circle are constantly working to make sure that page doesn’t get turned back. I think they’re more anal about that than I am.”
If you need any evidence of whether Seguin has turned the page, taking in his workout this day would be all the proof you’d need.
EXERCISE NO. 1 ANKLE MOBILITY AND SCAPULA STABILITY WORK
Ankle mobility is important for every hockey player but even more so for Seguin, who missed 10 games and all but one playoff game last season after he had his right Achilles tendon cut. It involves putting the ankle in different positions while standing on a vibrating power plate. “It’s like a party trick,” Nichol said. “If you do it yesterday and you don’t do anything about it today, tomorrow you’re going to be right back. But even if you improve a tenth of a percent, you get a little more range.”
Tyler Seguin is proud of himself these days. Just this summer, he fulfilled a childhood dream of owning a cottage. Then he bought a bass boat with a trolling motor on the back, not a speedboat or a hulking possiblyovercompensating-for-something behemoth. He talks about looking forward to that weekend when his father, Paul, is due to come with him to do some fishing. “When I was a kid, we’d always rent cottages and I’d go fishing with my dad,” he said. “I always had a goal to own a cottage. To have my dad up for the first time…those things are special to me.”
When Seguin is on the road, he’s likely to have a fishing magazine in his hand. Usually when he’s able to get away for an entire weekend, he’ll catch as many fish as he can, “obviously keeping them in the legal limit,” and fry them on Saturday. Aside from that, it’s catch and release. Sometimes he’ll catch seven pike on a Friday night then not see another one for three weeks, especially when it gets hot. The pickerel usually hit early in the morning and late at night. Aside from that, Seguin spends most of his time with his two dogs, a chocolate lab named Marshall and a black lab named Cash. Marshall gets bouts of anxiety occasionally because he’s lived in so many different places.
This is Seguin’s life now. Buying that cottage and a simple bass boat almost represent a passage into manhood for him. He is building a gym in one of the garages – one of them – and some day may decide to break away from Nichol full-time and stay at his cottage and work out there all summer. But for now, he trusts Nichol more than he trusts himself.
Things are coming together for Seguin on and off the ice. He’s on a team that made an enormous leap last season and is poised to continue its upward trajectory. The Stars scored themselves out of trouble too often last season, and there are concerns about their goaltending. As a centerman, Seguin was taxed more than most of the others because coach Lindy Ruff demanded his forwards play with vigor in all three zones to make up for the Stars’ deficiencies on the blueline and in goal. But there are good things happening in Dallas. Seguin’s running mate, Jamie Benn, signed an eight-year extension over the summer, and there’s a sense the Stars are primed to be a serious contender for the next couple seasons. “Every team has a three-to-five-year window, and ours just opened,” Seguin said. “I don’t want to call it a Chicago dynasty, I know that’s a strong word, but our window just opened, and it’s exciting.”
The goals and dreams Seguin had as a child are falling into place. He’s already made the NHL and won a Stanley Cup. He’s represented Canada at the 2009 Ivan Hlinka Memorial tournament and led all goal scorers with nine to help Canada to the World Championship in 2015, but the World Cup is his first opportunity to play in a best-on-best tournament. “So many good things are happening right now in my career and my life,” he said. “Just everything. My new cottage. I have a couple of mortgages. You always have dreams and goals. Mine were to own a house, have a few dogs, own a cottage, start a family at some point.”
EXERCISE NO. 2 PULL-UPS
One set with his body weight, then one set with a 15-pound weight jacket, a set with a 45-pound plate strapped to his waist and another with two of them strapped to his waist for a total of 105 pounds. One set with one plate removed, another with the second plate removed, a third with just the weight jacket. Then one set of seven pull-ups with body weight, with him coming down on a 10-second count on the seventh. “I’m sure there are a couple of guys who can do more than that,” Nichol said, “but I don’t know who they are or what they can do. That’s pretty legit, any sport, any gym.”
Seguin is asked what is going through his mind when he’s straining to do that third pull-up with 105 pounds strapped to his body. “My thing the past few years that I’ve always thought about, especially in max sets, is ‘What is the next guy doing right now?’ ” Seguin said. “I’m trying to get better, but so is everyone else, so what is the next guy doing right now? I don’t even know who that guy is, but somebody out there is doing something. It sounds cheesy, but everybody has their thing, and that’s my thing. I can’t tell you all my secrets, but that’s one of them.”
Seguin was third in NHL scoring when, in his 72nd game last season, he became tangled up with Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Anton Stralman and sliced 15 percent of his Achilles tendon. Had he scored in the last 10 games at the pace he did in the first 72, Seguin would have finished the season with 83 points, good for fourth in the league. That would have given him two fourth-place and one seventh-place finish in the scoring race in his three years in Dallas. Seguin has put up 234 points the past three seasons, which trails only Sidney Crosby (273), Seguin’s linemate Benn (255) and Patrick Kane (239). Seguin’s 1.05 points per game is just a fraction higher than Benn’s, with only Crosby (1.15), Kane (1.13) and Evgeni Malkin (1.08) ahead of him. It’s no coincidence Benn had just 193 points in 255 games as a centerman before Seguin arrived but has 255 points in 245 games since he was moved to left wing alongside Seguin. Seguin makes his teammates better.
That doesn’t happen by accident. High levels of skill and vision have something to do with it, as does an ability to get around the ice pretty well for a big man. Much of what you’re seeing on the ice with Seguin now is a result of all the hard work he is putting in off the ice. The fact he’s wondering during his last rep what the other guy is doing and uses that to drive him has made him a better player. He hired his own chef to cook for him in Dallas and, aside from his mother’s egg salad sandwiches, which are his comfort food, his diet is strict. On this day, he leaves the rink with a boxed meal labeled “Tyler” that contains a few strips of chicken and some salad. That is his dinner.
But it’s in the small BioSteel workout room at the back of the rink where Seguin is most impressive. At Nichol’s workouts in the summer, everything is a competition, with the 24 players in camp separated into two teams. On this day, it’s right there on the board that Seguin’s team – which also includes Josh Ho-Sang, Lawson Crouse and Mike Cammalleri – is 0-2 against a squad featuring Simmonds, Michael Del Zotto, Dylan Strome and Devante Smith-Pelly. “Yeah, but I haven’t played yet,” Seguin said between sets.
It’s not just the games that are competitions, though. These guys measure themselves against each other in everything from squats to pull-ups to who gets to the workouts on time. “He works his ass off. What you’re seeing today is a normal performance,” Nichol said. “I still love you whether you come first or last in pull-ups, but I’m still going to let you know if you came last. Everything we do is a contest, and Tyler is in the mix in every single event, every test. And we test just about everything.”
One of the criticisms of Seguin, aside from his off-ice antics early in his career, was that he needed to add strength to win puck battles and with-stand the rigors of playing top-line minutes. Mission accomplished. “I don’t know if I don’t like it that people don’t know how hard I work off the ice or if I want to surprise them,” Seguin said. “Sometimes I have this image that I don’t take things seriously, but especially the past two summers, I’m taking it seriously. When it comes to strength, I’m not sure that I like people not knowing that I’m actually pretty strong.”
EXERCISE NO. 3 LAND MINES AND CABLE WOOD CHOP
Seguin stands in a staggered stance with a bar that has two 45-pound plates at one end and is secured in a rotating base at the other. Holding the end of the bar near his shoulder, he drives the weight up with one arm and rotates his body with the other. After a 30-second break, he goes to a machine with an air pressure resistance cable and pulls 35 pounds 10 times to strengthen his hips and core. After another 30-second break, he lies on the floor with his feet supported by an exercise ball and pulls up his body weight from a bar that is a few feet off the floor. Three sets.
A year ago, People Magazine named Seguin the most attractive 23-yearold in the world, beating out the likes of Taylor Lautner, Nick Jonas and Josh Hutcherson, all pretty dreamy. Two years ago, he appeared naked on a Zamboni for the Body Issue of ESPN Magazine. Last summer, former Maple Leafs CEO Richard Peddie, Seguin’s neighbor in one of Toronto’s most posh downtown neighborhoods, complained about Seguin’s late-night parties and all the trash left behind in their wake. A Swiss newspaper reported Seguin trashed his apartment in Biel when he played there during the lockout. The internet is chock full of pictures of Seguin and former teammate Brad Marchand partying with their shirts off after winning the Cup. When Seguin was in Boston, most of the players were married and had families, so he and Marchand would hang out with guys who played for the New England Patriots, including the rather notorious Rob Gronkowski, until GM Peter Chiarelli, “kind of told me to stop hanging around with ‘Gronk.’ ”
His reputation ultimately resulted in him being run out of Boston in a trade that is looking more lopsided with every passing year. “It’s crazy there was this image of me being a bad boy in Boston, but I never did anything bad,” Seguin said. “When I think back about it, it was crazy. I mean, wild. I’m 19 years old, and I win the Stanley Cup and then I’m making a couple million bucks. I do sort of miss it a little bit because now in the last six months I really feel like I’m starting to get older now. I can’t go out three nights in a row. It just can’t happen. I can’t go out on a Saturday and not feel it still on Tuesday.”
Now, at the ripe old age of 24, it’s all about the work for Seguin. When he has a flight to catch out of Toronto, it’s not uncommon to see him show up for his workout at 5 a.m. NFL star J.J. Watt was also working out with Nichol, and one day Watt had a commercial shoot in Hamilton at 9:30. So he backed everything up and calculated that he needed to show up at the gym at 4 a.m. to get a 90-minute leg workout in. When Seguin was travelling one time for the ESPY Awards, Nichol told him about Watt’s workout and challenged him to do the same. “I think that was an ‘Aha moment’ for him,” Nichols said.
EXERCISE NO. 4 TORNADO BALL
Sitting on the floor with his legs spread, Seguin takes a 10-pound ball attached to a rope in both hands and swings it across his body, slamming it into the ground for 10 seconds each set. Three sets. “It’s an abdominal exercise,” Nichol said, “because he’s actually bracing and stabilizing with his core and rotation.”
The second Seguin’s foot hit the ice when he came out for the pre-game warmups for Game 2 of the Stars’ first-round playoff series against the Minnesota Wild last season, he felt something pop in his calf. He had worked so hard to get his Achilles tendon ready for the playoffs. He knew he shouldn’t have run out the runway onto the ice, but he heard the crowd at American Airlines Center in a frenzy and couldn’t help himself. He immediately went to the trainer and told him something was wrong but made him swear not to say anything to Ruff. “When I hopped on the ice, I had this firework go off in my calf – a firework,” Seguin said. “I ended up playing the game and didn’t tell Lindy, then in the third period he looked at me and said, ‘What’s going on?’ I said, ‘Just put me on the fourth line. I can’t skate.’ Then I leave after the game on crutches. It was heartbreaking. I was miserable.”
The Stars finished within one game of going to the Western Conference final without Seguin in the lineup. It’s tempting to wonder how far they’d be able to go with a healthy Seguin for the playoffs – plus perhaps the upgrade in goal that always seems to be an issue in Dallas. Under GM Jim Nill, one of the best in the league, anything is possible. Could it be Ben Bishop? Perhaps a trade deadline deal for Henrik Lundqvist? The Stars did consider trading for Martin Jones last summer and looking in retrospect at what Jones accomplished with the San Jose Sharks, it might have been a home run.
The Stars need to improve their goaltending and probably bolster their D-corps, but any effort to make a run at a championship will be led by Seguin and Benn. Seguin has won a Cup, lost a Stanley Cup final, been traded, played in the All-Star Game, been on a team that missed the playoffs and been a big part of a team that just might be building toward something special. In 2013, the year Boston lost the Cup final to Chicago, the Bruins were ahead by a goal late in Game 6 and Seguin hit the crossbar. Had he scored, the Bruins would have been ahead by two and likely headed for Game 7. Instead, the Blackhawks scored twice in the last two minutes in a span of 17 seconds, and the Bruins were left wondering what had just happened to them.
To be sure, to win a championship in Dallas would be even more special for Seguin because he knows he’d be a major component this time. He’s still young enough to be a top player in the league for a long time, and in his seventh year in the NHL he’s experienced enough to have seen it all. “I’m up there now, and I’m recognized as one of the elite players in the NHL,” Seguin said, “but I don’t think I’ve hit my ceiling yet. Not even close. And that’s what’s so exciting for me, knowing I haven’t touched where I want to be or where I want to go.”
With that, Seguin picks up his boxed dinner and leaves the rink. He jumps into his black sports car and heads off, knowing he’ll be back to do it all over again less than 24 hours from now.