Despite facing an unimaginable tragedy, Michael Hage has shot up the NHL draft boards to become a top-end prospect.
Despite facing an unimaginable tragedy, Michael Hage has shot up the NHL draft boards to become a top-end prospect.
When their children were playing youth hockey in Toronto, Rania and Alain Hage had a good-cop, bad-cop scenario that would play out after every game.
On the way home in the car, regardless of how well they played, Alain would be a little hard on them, pointing out things they could have done better. When they arrived home, Rania would hug them and accentuate nothing but the positives.
Their sons, Michael and Alexander, never knew whether their parents plotted it that way, but Michael thinks it was an extension of their natural personalities.
“My mom is just really caring, and she’s probably the nicest person in the world,” he said. “My dad was very, very hard on me, but it was how he showed how much he loved me and how much he cared about me. I think it’s helped me get to where I am today. Definitely a tough critic to satisfy. But when he said I played a good game, I really knew I played a good game.”
When GMs and talent evaluators conduct their deep-dive interviews with prospects prior to the draft, almost all of them ask a question about what kind of adversity the player has faced in his life and how he overcame it. Most kids fumble with the answer for a couple of reasons. First, many of them come from well-to-do backgrounds, have spent much of their lives being told how special they are and have been wildly successful in almost everything they’ve done. Second, because they’re also young, they haven’t had to endure an enormous amount of hardship.
Sadly, responding to that particular query was easy for Michael Hage.
For the first 16 years of his life, he lived a charmed existence. Then, when adversity hit, it did so with the power of a sledgehammer.
The worst blow was last summer, when Alain died in a swimming-pool accident. That came after Michael’s first season in the USHL with the Chicago Steel, one that was marred by a torn labrum in his shoulder in his first workout in training camp, an injury that required surgery and limited him to just 13 games in 2022-23.
Suddenly, both Michael and Alexander were heading into pivotal seasons of their hockey careers without their guiding light.
Michael, then 17, was preparing for his NHL draft season, while Alexander, then 15, was preparing for his OHL draft campaign.
Nobody would’ve blamed Michael if he had been distracted and underperformed this season. But after an understandably slow start, he was one of the top performers and one of the top scorers in the USHL, and he’s headed for the University of Michigan in 2024-25. He has also been one of the NHL draft’s most dramatic risers. Hage will definitely go in the first round on Day 1 of the proceedings, perhaps the top half of it.
“Michael has always had a lot of skill, and he’s always been a really gifted player,” said TSN head scout Craig Button. “I would describe him as a bigger Kyle Connor. He’s a dominant player, and he has so much growth ahead of him. I think Michael Hage might be a top-15 player.”
For Hage to have put together such a successful season while dealing with such a devastating loss has been impressive. The same goes for Alexander, who reached the OHL Cup final with the Vaughan Kings’ under-16 team.
“My dad was very, very hard on me, but it was how he showed how much he loved me and how much he cared about me.” - Michael Hage
As is the case with all elite players, the skill level and sublime skating ability did not just appear. It was the result of Michael Hage extracting the most he could out of the many opportunities his father gave him by working diligently at his craft.
In the basement of their home, Alain installed a shooting room with boards and glass and equipped his sons with a full gym, which was invaluable during the pandemic. There was also a 15-seat movie theater, which made Hage popular with teammates on off nights.
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Adam Proteau has more on which teams could be in the range to draft Hage:
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