40-Goal Scorer Recalls His Tough Transition To The NHL
40-Goal Scorer Recalls His Tough Transition To The NHL
Editor's note: The Hockey News asked me to publish an expanded, written version of my recent video story on Jared McCann. So here it is.
Pro prospects and rookies – like the ones we observed at NHL development camps – have just two choices for interacting with older teammates. Both carry unintended danger.
Option one is to display the confidence which got them selected to the big club in the first place. Speak up, get themselves noticed – and potentially reviled as a showboat who doesn't know his place.
Option two, which conforms to the unwritten rules and is chosen by most young pros, is to stay quiet. Don't lift your head above the proverbial weeds, let your play do your talking, walk two steps behind the veterans, speak only when spoken to.
Follow this path, and run the risk of being considered aloof, too good to mix in with the guys and their family members.
This is not a hypothetical. It happened to Seattle Kraken winger Jared McCann. In his 8th NHL season, McCann broke out last year with 40 goals and 70 points. First, though, he had to survive an unfairly rough off-ice rookie season as a teenager with the Vancouver Canucks.
McCann's problems started on the night he was drafted in the first round, 24th overall, by Vancouver in 2014. TSN’s James Duthie asked in a live interview, “What does this moment mean to you?” McCann’s answer: “It's amazing. I never thought of being a Vancouver Canuck, but it is what it is, and I'm very excited. I'm very honored to be a part of the organization.”
“It is what it is.” Within a week, the Canucks’ own official website was calling Jared, “Mysterious McCann.” It quoted him as saying, “That came off wrong. The fans had every right to be mad. It was more to do with where I was picked. I apologize.”
On Luke Gazdic’s “Mitts Off” podcast, McCann recently explained, “The way I meant it, ‘I still have so much work to do, so much time that I need to put into the game and to training, to be able even to play for the Canucks.’ I tried to explain myself afterwards, but it didn't really go too well. I just tried to eat that one and try to learn from it.”
Things got worse on a Canucks moms’ trip. Matt Bartkowski's mom Beth publicly criticized McCann in a TSN 1040 radio interview for being, well, young. “Every guy on the team is the nicest guy on the team. Oh, my God. Except for that little 19-year-old, what's his name?”
Fairly or not, the label “bad teammate” had been affixed. After just one season, the Canucks traded McCann to Florida. He was still six days shy of his 20th birthday.
“I think they did give up on me early. I really do,” McCann said on the Gazdic podcast. “Mentally, it affected me a lot. I was in a dark place. As a young player, you just want to get an opportunity to play in the NHL. So it was tough.”
A short-time Canucks teammate felt compelled to pile on. Andrey Pedan, who managed a grand total of 13 NHL games and now plays in the KHL, said to Russian media, “McCann was the only guy in Canucks I couldn't get along. He acted like a star.”
What Pedan, Ms. Bartkowski, Canucks veterans and management all apparently misjudged, McCann believes, is that he was merely a shy teenager trying to fit in.
“When I was in Vancouver, I was just scared,” McCann told Gazdic. “Didn't want to step on any toes. Didn't want to talk to anybody, because I was nervous. It's not that I'm trying to make myself better than anybody else. If you want to come up and talk to me, we could have a conversation for sure. But as a young player, I'm trying to get to know everybody and figure out where my place is.
“I've had to defend myself quite a few times, but I'm really just quiet when it comes to that stuff.”
McCann finally received the support he craved when he joined the Pittsburgh Penguins, as he explained on the podcast. “I had guys like Jeff Carter go out of their way to sit down with me, have a beer.
"(Carter) was one of the few guys I've played with, older guys, that would constantly just talk to you, and not even about hockey, just shoot the s**t and take your mind away from the game sometimes.”
Yes, it made a difference. The Athletic wrote in 2020, “An advanced degree in metrics is not needed to conclude McCann has been at his best since joining the Penguins in February 2019.” We will sneak in one metric from Evolving Hockey; in 2020-21, no one in the NHL besides Connor McDavid had a better goals-above-replacement than Jared McCann.
The Kraken, who prioritize a healthy work environment, took McCann in the 2021 expansion draft. It’s no coincidence he scored 27 goals for Seattle his first year, and exploded for 40 in the season just completed.
Now a veteran himself, McCann wants to pay Carter’s gift forward. “If I play with a young guy, I want to act exactly like Jeff Carter acted. Just try to go out there and help your teammates. Don't just make it about you. (Ask a teammate), ‘Is he okay?’”
There’s certainly no shortage of young Kraken stars-in-waiting to mentor. Calder Trophy winner Matty Beniers has spoken often about the benefits of Seattle’s nurturing culture. Among those in the pipeline are Kraken 2022 first round pick Shane Wright, and 2023 first-rounder Eduard Sale.
Both highly talented teenagers, Wright has already experienced bumps along the journey, and Sale, from Czechia, will have the burden of acclimating to North America. How much would it mean for each to get a periodic “How ya doin’?” from an established player?
Thinking back to his own younger self, McCann provides an example of the advice he can share. “If things weren't going my way, I would just kind of grip my stick and slam the bench.
"I still do that sometimes, but I catch myself a little bit more. Now, I just try to focus on what I can control, look around the stands for a bit. Just think of a song. Think of something else that kind of gets your mind off of it, and then bring yourself back.”