In his early days as an NHLer, Nazem Kadri had lessons to learn. And in this story from THN's archive, writer Ken Campbell profiled Kadri in his early days as a Toronto Maple Leaf.

Calgary Flames star center Nazem Kadri is having a solid season this year, with 11 goals and 20 points in 31 games. And in this cover story from THN's April 29, 2013 issue, writer Ken Campbell put together a deep-dive profile of Kadri in his early days with the Toronto Maple Leafs:

Leap Year

By Ken Campbell

Dallas Eakins Was Concerned. Really worried, actually, enough to keep him tossing and turning at night, punching his pillow and staring at the ceiling. The can’t-miss kid who was supposed to be an NHL star wasn’t even doing much in the American League and Eakins was running out of tricks and head games to motivate him. Eakins was almost resigned to the fact that the kid was going to be one of those players who was never going to change, that he’d move on to another organization and muddle along or go to Europe.

People would probably lose their jobs over it and everyone would always wonder where things went wrong, all because the kid never saw the light. And it was all happening on his watch. “It’s almost like somebody with a really bad drug addiction,” Eakins says. “They can just never come out of it. They just can’t change that habit.”

It was clearly time for an intervention for Nazem Samir Kadri. So Eakins asked Kadri’s father, Sam, to meet him after a Toronto Marlies game early this season. He’s never asked to speak to a player’s father before, but he did this time because he remembered something amazing that happened during a pee break at the 2009 draft at the Bell Centre. The Toronto Maple Leafs had just taken Kadri with the seventh overall pick and Eakins needed to use the boys’ room. On his way there, he saw 25 people locked arm-in-arm in the bowels of the Bell Centre chanting Kadri’s name. Parents, grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends were singing and dancing and carrying on because they were so proud of Kadri’s accomplishment.

So Eakins decided to use that to his advantage. He and Sam hatched a plan that would see Eakins tattle on Nazem any time he cut corners in hopes he would shame Nazem into seeing things his way.

And Eakins figured for the proud young Nazem Kadri, this might be enough to switch the light on. It would be one thing for Kadri to let his coach down. But to betray his father and his family would be tantamount to an act of blasphemy. “I told him, ‘Naz,’ I want you to know that every day you take off, every day you take the easy way out, every day you do something to stunt your growth, you’re letting all those people down,’” Eakins says. “‘This city deserves playoff hockey, this city needs you, Nazem. Not only are you letting your family down, you’re letting your city down and you have to dig in.’ And he did, the little f---er.”

In many ways, the Nazem Kadri story is not a terribly unique one. After all, guys like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos are still in a huge minority among players who come into the NHL at 18 looking as though they’ve been chiselled out of granite and have already played a thousand games. Those guys are still the freaks of nature.

Most of the kids who come out of junior, college and Europe are a lot like Kadri was, which was basically clueless. Most of them have never had to deal with disappointment in their lives and have no idea how to handle it the first time it happens. They think they’re working hard in the gym until they get in there with guys who really work hard in the gym. They reckon the talent that has carried them and their bad habits through all their levels of hockey will continue to propel them through the ranks of the best players in the world. Then reality hits them hard, usually when they start playing against men who use hockey to feed their families.

Back when Jason Spezza was a teenager, then Ottawa Senators coach Jacques Martin opined Spezza was a boy playing in a man’s league. It was harsh, but he was absolutely right. And only when Spezza learned for the first time in his life that his talent alone would not be enough did he begin to excel as a pro. That’s when the light went on for him, probably somewhere in a dingy apartment in Binghamton, N.Y. For some players, it happens. For many, it never does.

Perhaps the fact Kadri’s story played out so publicly makes it a bit different than the others, but not much. What does separate him, to an extent, is the way the Leafs handled him, at least from their perspective. After more than two decades of fumbling the careers of their top young players and casting them on the scrap heap (Cereda, Luca; Ware, Jeff; Fichaud, Eric; Convery, Brandon) or dealing them only for them to thrive elsewhere (Tlusty, Jiri; Rask, Tuukka; Steen, Alex; Boyes, Brad; Colaiacovo, Carlo; Jonsson, Kenny), the Leafs have actually handled this file properly. It’s been 21 years since a player drafted and developed by the Leafs has led them in scoring, but that will likely change this season with Kadri.

Yes, a lot of things have changed. As of early April, the Leafs were in a prime position to make the playoffs for the first time since Lockout, Part II. For the first time in years, there’s the palpable sense the Leafs are actually building toward something rather than making it up as they go along. And they’re being led by Kadri, a young player who has an off-the-charts level of confidence and is about as comfortable in his own skin as Bradley Cooper. “Hopefully that reputation of bad draft picks goes out the window,” Kadri says. “I want to be a Hart Trophy nominee or a Hart Trophy winner, win the Stanley Cup. I want to have a big impact in the playoffs, you know, win a Conn Smythe.”

Kadri is a much wiser 22 years old now, four years removed from draft day. Back then, he wanted everything to come to him yesterday. He had little patience for waiting around for his career to develop and he made no secret he wanted into the NHL immediately. The problem was there was almost no accountability at all in his game.

He didn’t train hard enough and why would he? Like most young players, Kadri dominated by just going out and playing, so why would he ever hit the gym? He would cheat by starting to rush up the ice before the puck left the defensive zone. Knowing his passes probably wouldn’t be converted, he would try to beat four guys at the opposing blueline and turn the puck over. In reality, Kadri was miles away from being an NHL player, but he had no idea. “Naz is a confident kid who believes he can conquer the world on his terms,” Eakins says. “I had to break some of that thought process away because it wasn’t going to be on his terms. He wasn’t going to be able to make it doing the things he was doing.”

And probably for the first time in Kadri’s life, that confidence and swagger was his worst enemy. The more Eakins and the Leafs organization pushed, the more Kadri pushed back. You’d probably expect a kid who had been knocked down a couple of pegs to take more of an aw-shucks attitude. But not Kadri. He believed then he belonged in the NHL from the start and even after everything that has happened, he’s still not entirely willing to admit that he would have being set up for failure by being rushed into the NHL.

That competitive nature is what makes Kadri want to prove people wrong and it is what makes coaching a player like him so challenging. You tell some players to go out on the ice and turn left and they’ll do that to perfection every single time. Those guys are easy to coach. It’s the pains-in-the-ass like Kadri who make life interesting for coaches. Really interesting. Some of the exchanges between player and coach were so heated that Eakins would lose his composure. “Listen, I’m sure there aren’t many people more proud of him than me right now,” Eakins says, “and that’s the same kid I could have grabbed by the neck a few times, I swear. And I mean full-on screaming at him.”

That Kadri was able to engender that kind of frustration speaks to how much he was at odds with the organization. Kadri is a fighter and the Leafs were being uncharacteristically patient, something that created a bit of a toxic mix. It kind of makes you wonder about the origins of all that pride and confidence. After all, Kadri was not some rich kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a sense of entitlement to match. Far from it, actually.

It all started for Kadri in a modest home in London, Ont., once a bastion of Anglo-Saxons and a lot of old, white money. When he was four years old, Sam Kadri came to Canada with his family from Lebanon to chase a better life. For the his parents and their seven children, a better life came from working the graveyard shift as a custodian at a bowling alley. Sam helped his father at night and went to school during the day. He could never afford to play hockey, but he worked hard to become an auto mechanic, later opening his own repair shop. He and his wife, Sue, had four girls and a boy and Sam was intent on giving his son every opportunity to pursue the sport he could not as a child. Sam was envious that most of his friends could play hockey and he couldn’t. He swore when he became a father that his child would not have the same experience.

Even though Sam never played the game, he drove his son to be the best athlete he could be. One sport Sam could afford to play was basketball, but he found he always had trouble defending left-handed dribblers. So he made sure he taught his son to do everything in basketball left-handed. And even though Nazem is right-handed, he dribbles and drives to the hoop with his left and even shoots left-handed. The hoop at the end of the driveway in London still gets a good going over when Nazem is home in the summer. The games between father and son are intense, but not quite as close as they used to be. “He can’t come inside on me now because I’m just too big for him,” Nazem says of his father. “When I was smaller, he used to post up and just throw them over me, but now he’s getting rejected every single time. He’s a pretty good shooter, though. He gives me a run for my money.”

Back to the draft in 2009. Brian Burke is at the podium and before he can even get the words, “London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League,” out of his mouth, Nazem Kadri stands up. He hugs his father, who says, “I love you, buddy.” Then he goes down the line of his family and waiting at the end are both his grandmothers fully covered and wearing hijabs. Kadri’s mother and sisters do not wear them, but they are close followers of Islam and the Muslim faith. It is an interesting snapshot. On one hand, it shows how Muslim children have integrated into Canadian culture, and on the other it shows they’ve been able to do that without having to abandon their own culture. Kadri is not the first Muslim to play in the NHL, but he is certainly the most prominent. He’s a proud Muslim. He was president of the Student Muslim Society in his high school in London and speaks proudly of the fact the London Muslim Mosque recently had to expand to accommodate the growing Muslim population there.

When it comes to adhering to the tenets of the Muslim faith, Kadri straddles that line quite nicely. Sam allows his son to chart his journey on his own and come to his own realizations from a spiritual sense. For example, it’s pretty hard to be a professional hockey player and never drink alcohol. During the season, it’s often difficult to find time for daily prayer and worship, but Kadri does do it when he’s at home with his family. Aside from that, he simply tries his best to do the right thing and treat others with compassion and respect. “Any young Muslim brought up in the West faces those battles,” Sam says. “He’s not where I am at my age. Will he get there? I think so. I’d like to say I’m a pretty good Muslim. You have to have the fear of God in you, respect everybody, be good to everybody and set a good example. I think actions are the biggest things.”

It’s the day before the trade deadline and the Maple Leafs are in the midst of a rare four-day break between games. Coach Randy Carlyle puts them through a long, hard practice where no time is wasted. There is a sense of purpose to this practice, something that has been missing from team workouts late in the season in recent years. The Leafs are getting the best goaltending they’ve had since the days of Ed Belfour and they have three lines that can score. They don’t allow anyone to push them around anymore and they dictate the tone of games far more than they have in years.

At least some of that has to do with Kadri, who is making plays with authority in the offensive zone and gaining a chemistry with Joffrey Lupul that has seen them ramp up their productivity. The giveaways are far less frequent than they were in the AHL. That’s something Kadri attributes to playing with better players. One of the reasons, he opines, he struggled to put up points in the minors was because there weren’t the players there to finish his passes, or give them to him, that there are on the Leafs. “I need to play with players that have sort of the same caliber that I do, who see the game similar to how I do,” Kadri said. “Like ‘Lupes,’ he’s a former seventh overall pick, he understands what I’ve been through and he’s a talented guy. It’s nice to get a couple of back-door passes when you’re not expecting it and I’m sure I’ll have him for a few open nets as well. I don’t have to play that third-, fourth-line role and try to create energy. I can go out there and play how I want to play and how I’m best at playing.”

For Leafs coach Randy Carlyle, the change in Kadri came when he moved the young stud from the wing to center last season. As a center, far more is expected of Kadri from a responsibility standpoint, but he also has more freedom to be creative with the puck. Carlyle figures the best players in the league are the ones who have the puck on their stick the most. If Kadri is so talented with the puck, then why would you put him in a position where he’s not making the most of those talents? And Carlyle has never had a problem with Kadri’s down-low defensive game. Where Kadri was making his errors was in carrying the puck through the neutral zone and losing it, creating turnovers going back the other way. “Those are the things we’ve tried to control,” Carlyle says, “because our acceptance of that is not real high.”

Just as there are those who think Kadri should have and could have been playing for the Leafs two years ago, there are those who actually believe the Leafs hurt themselves and Kadri’s development by not giving him a prominent offensive role as soon as he began displaying glimpses of something special this season. But this is where Carlyle deserves a lot of credit. For the first half of the season, he used Kadri a lot less, giving him usually 13-15 minutes of ice time per game. What Carlyle was doing by giving Kadri third-line minutes was keeping him away from the top players on the other teams and putting him into a situation that would have more potential for success. That allowed Kadri to build his confidence and at about mid-season, Carlyle began giving Kadri more minutes and more responsibility.

And part of the reason why he doesn’t get more minutes now is he still has a lot of work to do on faceoffs. But the last time the Leafs moved an elite player from the wing to center, things worked out just fine with Mats Sundin.

And needless to say, there is a lot less pushback now than when Kadri was in the AHL or butting heads with former Leafs coach Ron Wilson. “You treat him like a human being,” Carlyle says. “If we don’t feel he’s working hard, we tell him. We’re matter of fact. We don’t beat around the bush with him. We don’t treat him with kid gloves.”

Kadri, meanwhile, is making the most of the opportunity, but everyone around him acknowledges there is still a lot of room to grow. He has been impressive, however. He went into the Leafs’ final 11 games of the season with two hat tricks already, an impressive feat in a truncated schedule. The last time a Maple Leaf had three three-goal games in the same season was in 1985-86, by Miroslav Frycer of all people.

But even if he doesn’t have any more hat tricks left in him, there is plenty of reasons to suggest the trajectory will continue in a northern direction. “He might be OK by Leaf standards right now,” Sam said, “but our standards are a lot higher. Nazem is not going to settle for being an average player. That’s not in his DNA.”

Suffice it to say Kadri won’t settle for being paid as an average player, either. He’s due to become a restricted free agent this summer and will likely come in line for an eight-year, big money contract. The Leafs have the cap space and the resources to do it or to match any huge offer sheet that might come his way if contract talks hit a snag. Because they’re not about to let this one get away.