Archive: Seguin's Early NHL Career With Bruins Helped Set Him Up For Success With Stars

NHL star forward Tyler Seguin is currently in his 14th season in hockey’s top league – and in this cover story from THN’s special Fully Loaded magazine – March 1, 2013 edition – then-senior-writer Ken Campbell profiled Seguin’s early NHL days as a member of the Boston Bruins.

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Campbell’s feature on Seguin included a story about Seguin’s childhood friend, Derrek Moseychuk, whose life was changed in a car accident that paralyzed him from the chest down. Seguin was there for his buddy, but the accident clearly had a major impact on him.

“It’s a close friend going through a tough time,” Seguin told Campbell. “It’s pretty personal for me, so I don’t want to say too much about it. He’s just a really good kid.”

Seguin’s stint with Boston lasted three seasons before he was traded to Dallas in July of 2013. But his starring role with the Stars was helped by a slow but steady evolution that began when he was a Bruin.

“He wasn’t put into a situation where he was the guy,” then-Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference said of Seguin. “He had to earn his ice. He learned a lot about humility and being part of a team. He really switched his attitude around very quickly from just being that junior superstar guy to being part of a winning formula. The guys really respect that, because he was kind of a cocky little kid when he came in and he could have kept being that way. But he did really buy into our team.”

By Ken Campbell

March 1, 2013

The natural progression that is maturation is always a little different for hockey players. With people telling them how special they are from the time they first put skates on, the elite player lives basically from cradle to grave in a world completely foreign to 99.999 percent of the population.

Take Tyler Seguin for instance. After all, how many people reach the pinnacle of their craft at 18 and will cash in a trust fund that will pay them an average of $5.75 million a year by the time they turn 21? Almost zero, that’s how many.

But sometimes those with charmed lives get a bucket of cold water poured on their heads. The same way they put their pants on one leg at a time like everyone else, they also deal with the same life-altering events and tragedies everyone else does.

For Seguin, that came recently in the form of a young man by the name of Derrek Moseychuk. He’s one of a group of six kids Seguin grew up with in Brampton who he considers his best friends. There are pictures of Moseychuk dressed in a striped tank top and he looks like the picture of health and happiness, his biceps bulging at the weight of the world’s most beautiful trophy when Seguin brought the Stanley Cup home in the summer of 2012. That all changed one night in December when Derrek was a passenger in a car carrying four of Seguin’s six best friends. The car went careening off the road and flipped over. Derrek was the only one who was injured, but he suffered a serious fracture of the C-5 spinal cord.

On the way to the hospital one late-January morning, Derrek’s mother Alice Nykamp was hoping that would be the day he would be removed from the ventilator. Her hopes were dashed. Derrek is paralyzed from the chest down and the long-term prognosis for any significant improvement is not great. But he does have very limited function in his arms and fingers. When the accident first happened, Derrek’s mother was told there would be a good chance he’d never be able to feed himself and he’d be lucky if he ever got off the ventilator, but those prospects have improved. “Just the fact that he can flex his hands and use his index finger and his thumb is a big thing for us,” Alice Nykamp says. “The TV converter used to slip through his hands and now he can push the buttons with his thumb. It takes both hands, but that’s pressure for us. That’s huge.”

Seeing such a close friend just 20 years old, lying in a hospital bed, hooked to a ventilator and unable to speak or move did a number on Seguin. As soon as he learned the lockout was over, he left Switzerland where he was playing so he could spend a couple of days with Derrek and communicate with him by reading his lips and using an alphabet chart before going to Boston for training camp. He can’t do much to help his friend get better, but he hopes to use his star power to raise much needed funds. He’s working on a ball hockey tournament for this summer. “It’s a close friend going through a tough time,” Seguin says. “It’s pretty personal for me, so I don’t want to say too much about it. He’s just a really good kid.”

The same could be said for Seguin, though his days of being a kid are behind him. What the NHL and the Boston Bruins have is a man, a budding star. Already in his third year in the league, Seguin is developing into a force on the ice. That’s downright scary when you consider many elite players have a breakout season in the third year in the league. But Seguin is also learning there is a pecking order in a dressing room. According to teammate Andrew Ference, the most tangible evidence of Seguin’s development has been his realization that sometimes individual goals have to be compromised for the best of the team.

That learning curve is much less dramatic than it is for other players, simply because most second overall picks go to teams struggling and, in many cases, pretty young themselves. But Seguin joined a veteran club, with a lot of leadership, primed for a Stanley Cup run. And that’s what Boston did in his first year, with him having to learn to accept a diminished role. “He wasn’t put into a situation where he was the guy,” Ference says. “He had to earn his ice. He learned a lot about humility and being part of a team. He really switched his attitude around very quickly from just being that junior superstar guy to being part of a winning formula. The guys really respect that, because he was kind of a cocky little kid when he came in and he could have kept being that way. But he did really buy into our team.”

There is, of course, room to grow on and off the ice. But not much. Seguin has lived alone since he was a rookie and contrary to what some people in Switzerland think, he knows how to work a washing machine. When he left Biel once the lockout ended, a report in the local newspaper said Seguin left all manner of garbage behind and generally lived like the second coming of Oscar Madison. Not true, he says, but he also realizes that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a scandal up there with Lance Armstrong and Manti Te’o.

Generally speaking, it’s pretty darn great to be Tyler Seguin. He has always cherished those people close to him and has the body art to prove it. Seguin has been collecting tattoos since he and his father, Paul, went out and got matching ink when Tyler was just 16 years old. He now sports nearly a sleeve of body art down his left arm, with a family tree that contains words that describe the positive characteristics of his family members. On his bicep is a Greek word that reads “strength” when he turns his arm one way and “passion” when he turns it another. He also has the birthdates of all the members of his family – 61, 65, 90 and 95. “Actually, it’s the combination of my chastity belt,” he jokes.

And then, of course, there’s the tattoo on his wrist to commemorate the Bruins Stanley Cup in 2012. A little showy? Perhaps, but Seguin is a young man comfortable in his life and his place in the NHL. He still has that fairly cocky swagger he had when he first stepped into the Bruins lineup at 18, but he is becoming a more responsible two-way player under the tutelage of center Patrice Bergeron – who helps foster it – and coach Claude Julien – who demands it. But he’ll always be known as a wonderfully creative offensive player and that will continue to be his calling card.

In fact, Ference has pledged to fund the planting of 50 trees in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest for every goal Seguin scores this season. It all started as a social media initiative pitched to Ference, who is more environmentally and politically enlightened than, oh, almost every hockey player who has ever lived. For his part, Ference hopes to use Seguin to restore a huge swath of the rainforest. The idea has caught on with people picking up a number of different players and the NHL getting involved by donating 50 trees for every hat trick scored this season.

“Somebody reached out on Twitter and actually said he would do it for me,” Ference says. “For every goal that I scored, he wanted to plant 50 trees. I responded by saying, ‘If you’ve seen my career stats, I don’t think you’ll be planting too many trees.’ I said, ‘I’d love to be a part of it, but I’ll take up ‘Segs.’ He was our top scorer last year and he lit it up in Europe. As far as impact goes, he was probably a good guy to pick. If he has a good season, I could make a pretty good dent.”

The growing man Seguin has become doesn’t need the pressure of having the reforestation of Brazil resting on his soft scoring hands. But all indications are he is uniquely equipped to handle whatever stress and adversity comes his way – whether that’s in the form of playing in the best league in the world or dealing with the thought of one of his dearest friends being paralyzed hundreds of miles away. “There’s that old saying about living in the now, living in the moment,” he says. “That’s what I try to do. And it helps me.”

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