Hockey Confidential (24 page)

“Hockey is a big part of my life, and I wanted to bring it to the kids there,” Subban said. “P.K.'s status in hockey gave me a lot of credibility with the kids. A lot of them wanted to be P.K. So I announced, ‘If you want to play hockey, come see Mr. Subban in the office.' Seventy kids showed up.”

And the Brookview HEROS program was off and running. Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the NHL, dropped by to support the cause. It became a thriving community project, with volunteer help from the Toronto Police, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and countless other organizations. Every Tuesday was Hockey Day at Brookview, and the kids would go to the nearby multi-pad facility at York University, where the donated new equipment was stored. Subban fondly remembered a huge hockey jamboree, not just for the Brookview students on the ice, but the entire school and surrounding community, where more than 700 people showed up in the stands to cheer the kids on. It was an excellent tool to keep the kids' GPS loaded.

“The hockey was fun, it was great, but it was all about imparting the values, about using hockey to reinforce expectations,” Subban said. “If you come to school on time, if you do your work, you could leave school early on Tuesday to go to the rink. But if you don't show up to school on time, if you don't do your work, you can't leave early. Hockey—sports, for that matter—are such a wonderful tool to reinforce listening and cooperation and helping another person. We had more kids who wanted to play than we had equipment. It was wonderful to see how all these children of diverse backgrounds wanted to play Canada's game, just like I wanted to play when I came to Canada.”

While Karl Subban's time at Brookview came and went, and official retirement from the educational system ultimately beckoned, it's clear to anyone who knows him that this work to “save lives” and “loading the GPS” didn't end with his retirement party in June 2013.

“There's something about poverty and achievement,” Subban said. “If you look at income level, the higher the income, the higher the achievement. The lower the income, the lower the achievement. It doesn't mean those lower-income children can't learn. It just means the schools need to do things differently, and that's what my book is going to be about. I love my children, I share in their passion for what they do, but
this
, that's
my
passion.”

From the moment Sylvester Subban's family arrived in
Sudbury from Jamaica in that summer of 1970, it was almost as if they were destined to connect with the game of hockey—and the Montreal Canadiens. Sylvester, a diesel mechanic, had a good job in Jamaica but wanted to give his family more opportunities, and a job with mining company Falconbridge in Sudbury in faraway Canada seemed a good start. It was almost impossible to not come into contact with hockey once the Subbans arrived in the Big Nickel.

Sylvester's wife, Fay, got a job doing laundry at Memorial Hospital and worked alongside former NHL player Eddie Shack's mother. Living on Peter Street (now known as Mountain Street), the Subban boys met the anglophone and francophone kids who also lived on the street, where they were introduced to Canada's game. They'd play road hockey there. Karl got his first hockey stick from their landlord's son, he got his first pair of skates from the Salvation Army, and he'd try skating and playing hockey at the outdoor neighbourhood rinks, though he knew, at age 12, he wasn't going to be able to catch up to the Canadian boys who had been skating almost as long as they were walking.

The Subbans had their choice of only two TV stations—one English, one French. Karl immediately became infatuated with the Montreal Canadiens. He'd watch their games in English on
Hockey Night in Canada
every Saturday night, and on weeknights,
les Canadiens
were
en fran
ç
ais
on the French channel.

“We would have big fights in our home,” Subban said, laughing heartily at the memory. “I was the only one in the family who wanted to watch games in French. My poor parents; here they move to a new country, the snow, the cold, all of that, and now they're watching a foreign game they don't understand in another language.”

Karl loved the Canadiens, especially netminder Ken Dryden, and Dryden's number, 29, became his favourite number, especially after his daughter Natasha was born on October 29. Karl loved hockey, and it was seemingly all around him. He attended the same high school as members of the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League—guys like Dave Hunter, Alex McKendry, Hector Marini and Ron Duguay. When Karl wasn't watching his beloved Canadiens, he would go to the Sudbury Arena to watch the Wolves.

But he was a good athlete himself. He played basketball and lacrosse in the summer, and though he remembers being cut from his school's Grade 7 basketball team—“a setback is a set up for a comeback,” he said, one of many motivational slogans he's liable to throw at you—he went on to be a very good player in high school, moving on to play varsity basketball at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

“Not bragging,” he said, “but I was pretty good.”

Indeed he was. He played for the Lakehead Thunderwolves, often a top-10 team in Canada, from 1979–84, amassing enough points (2,019) to be No. 5 on the school's all-time scoring list, twice leading the team in scoring. He was team MVP in 1981 and co-MVP in 1983. He played varsity hoops, but also intramural hockey at Lakehead. And he still loved his Canadiens, watching their games religiously on Saturday night before he would go out to parties.

But it was while working as an instructor at a Lakehead basketball camp for kids that he heard his calling to be a teacher. He got his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983 and a Bachelor of Education degree in 1984.

“I was in the business program and I switched to education after working that basketball camp,” he said. “I loved working with kids. I just knew teaching is what I would do, it would be my life's work.”

Once he had his degrees and was ready to embark on a career in teaching, he moved to the big city, Toronto. He coached the men's basketball team at George Brown College. He eventually was hired to teach at a Toronto elementary school. He also met the love of his life when they were introduced at a New Year's Eve party.

Like Karl, teenaged Maria St. Ellia Brand immigrated to Canada from the Caribbean, the island of Montserrat. Like Karl, Maria was a fine athlete, a track star at Bathurst Heights Secondary School in Toronto, a sprinter who ran against future Olympian Angella Issajenko (then Angella Taylor), amongst others. But unlike Karl, Maria was an unabashed supporter of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Oh, the horror. Could a diehard supporter of the
bleu, blanc et rouge
find love and happiness with a true blue Maple Leaf fan? Apparently so, and the result was Nastasia, Natasha, P.K., Malcolm and Jordan.

And as was the case in Sudbury when Karl arrived in Canada, the Subban family fully embraced the Canadian way of life in Toronto.

“We were living in Brampton, and the girls were on skates before they ever bounced a basketball,” Karl said. “We enjoyed skating as a family. We'd go to the outdoor rink at the Bramalea City Centre, it would be 30 below zero and we'd be the only ones out there, skating around the big Christmas tree. We must have been quite a sight, the only ones out there.”

Karl and Maria, with their athletic backgrounds, obviously allowed their kids to swim in the deep end of the gene pool. Nastasia went on to become a top basketball player on the York University women's varsity team before she became a teacher. Natasha also played basketball growing up, but showed great flair for art and went to the Ontario College of Art and Design before deciding to switch to teaching. And, of course, quite remarkably, not one, not two, but all three Subban boys were drafted into the NHL, and one of them was named the NHL's best defenceman a month after his 24th birthday.

Good athletic genes are one thing, and the Subban kids have them. But a work ethic? Advanced coaching and training techniques? They had all those, too. Karl Subban's passion may be teaching and working to help kids less privileged than his own to learn, but don't think for one moment he wasn't involved every step of the way in the hockey development of his kids, notably P.K. A voracious reader and seeker of knowledge, Karl was gobbling up information on training, conditioning and coaching techniques even back in his Lakehead days, and he has never stopped, reading everything from Malcolm Gladwell's
Outliers
to . . . you name it.

Make no mistake, Karl and Maria Subban didn't just raise their kids; they taught, trained and coached them, too. If Karl would push a little too hard, Maria was there to pull back and maintain some balance. “They were,” P.K. said of his parents, “a very good team. And when my dad thought it was time to move us on to someone who knew more than him, to go to another level with someone else, that's what he did. He knew when it was time [to let go].”

“I knew hard work, I knew a lot about training from my days at Lakehead,” Karl said. “I introduced the girls to basketball and I trained them. If the boys were going to play hockey, I knew the value of practice. Of being on the ice every day. Time skating is time well spent, but I would skate, too. I didn't sit in the car and read a book. A lot of parents don't go on the ice with their children. I think that's so important. The really young kids, they want you out there with them. Looking back on it now, it was a great strategy with P.K. We would do it every day. I'd get home from work—he was still in diapers, two and a half—I'd grab the baby wipes, and off we'd go in my old Corolla. He liked it. Some kids wouldn't. He did. He always wanted more. P.K. couldn't get enough.”

Karl was quite taken with the 10,000 Hour Rule Gladwell wrote about in
Outliers
—that it takes that much practice to become phenomenal at anything—and decided to try it with P.K. So the plan was to skate every day from the end of October to the end of the season. Keep in mind that P.K. was all of five years old at the time. That is, of course, what led to the well-documented story of P.K. skating at Nathan Phillips Square at Toronto City Hall late every weeknight with Karl. P.K. was in kindergarten at the time. Karl was working as a vice-principal of a night school to earn extra money, and when he finished work at 9 p.m., he'd go home and pick up five-year-old P.K. to take him downtown to City Hall. They'd skate for hours, into the wee hours, and once P.K. realized the older guys and rink attendants would play hockey with sticks and pucks after pleasure skating was over, Karl had no choice but to stay later. When they were done, Karl would grab P.K. a slice of pizza, take him home to Rexdale and put him to bed at 2 or 3 a.m. Karl would have to get up only hours later for his long two-job workday. But P.K. could sleep until it was time to catch the noon-hour school bus to afternoon kindergarten class. The next night, they would do it all over again.

“If I told P.K. I was too tired to go any night,” Karl said, “he'd say, ‘But I really want to go.' And we'd go.”

“I'll never forget Nathan Phillips Square,” P.K. said. “It always had that same smell, the smell of the air in downtown Toronto—you know, the hot dog vendors. I can still smell it now. We'd get a pizza slice every night. I loved that. I love the memory of it. That's what I'm going to do with my kids. I'm so lucky to have those experiences.”

Karl noted that what worked for P.K. might not have worked for Malcolm or Jordan, and that what he learned from seeing P.K. embrace the nightly skates at Nathan Phillips Square is that “once kids become good at something, the younger they are, the more it fuels them. . . . P.K. had the advantage of me knowing the importance of practice. When he was a little older in minor hockey, P.K. would have power skating classes on the same day as his games. He'd skate with [power skating instructor] Cam Brothers at 10:45 at Westwood Arena and we'd have to be at St. Mike's for a game at 1:15 p.m. It would bother me to think he was missing practice for a game, so he would do both. Games don't make you better; practices do. It was a lot, but P.K. ate it up.”

Karl would also flood the backyard rink each winter, and P.K. would spend hours on it. So, too, would Karl, who would ask Cam Brothers for some drills and come up with his own unique take on repetition, and building more skills and moves into each, increasing the speed and degree of difficulty.

“Oh yeah, the figure-8 drill,” P.K. said, breaking into a wide grin. “Do you know how many variations of a figure-8 skating drill my dad came up with? Do you know how many times I did that? Two cones, so many variations—forwards, backwards, pivot one way, pivot another way, pass him the puck, take a pass, skate with a puck, jump over sticks on the ice, pass the puck over sticks on the ice. Over and over and over again, increasing the speed, always adding a new wrinkle. I loved it.”

And it no doubt explains, in part, P.K.'s masterful ability to skate, wheel and pivot and do things with the puck at top speed that so many NHL defencemen can only dream about.

“What I've learned about training and athletic performance is, yes, biology obviously plays a big part,” Karl Subban said. “But a lot of it is circumstance and environment. I mean, they went looking for the running gene in Jamaica and they didn't find it. There is no running gene in Jamaica, just like there's no hockey gene in Canada. But there's a hard-working gene, and that's what I've tried to teach to all my children.”

The book on the three hockey-playing Subbans has yet to be
written, really. It's still very much a rough draft. There's no telling what they'll be when each is fully formed. But the amazing thing is that, as similar as they are in so many respects—as you would expect with three brothers born within six years of each other, they share many of the same physical features and personality traits—the Subban boys are unique individuals who have travelled on their very own personal, and divergent, roads to be drafted into the NHL.