The hockey worlds biggest names tell us lessons learned, advice given and favorite memories from |

For many in hockey, the notion of Father’s Day isn’t a day on the calendar but rather a way of life.

Whether you’re a Stanley Cup-winning GM, an Olympic medalist and groundbreaking scout, a rising young NHL star or some combination of all of the above, the bond between father and daughter or father and son is something that evolves and deepens over time and that even in death never truly ends.

So, on a Father’s Day that feels like we should be doing something more to mark the occasion given the lives we have all endured here are some thoughts on advice given, lessons learned and favorite memories from some noteworthy hockey figures.

Doug Armstrong, GM St. Louis Blues, GM Canada’s Men’s Olympic Team, 2022 Olympics Beijing

More than five decades later the memory resonates for Doug Armstrong, running unfettered in the old Olympia Arena in Detroit while his father, Hall of Fame linesman Neil Armstrong, prepared to officiate a game. A playground of dreams. One year, for Doug’s birthday, Neil took the family to a Red Wings-Bruins game in Boston. The family shared a commercial flight with the Red Wings. Neil even took Doug to meet Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito at the old Boston Garden. Neil had a summer job as a golf pro near the family home in Sarnia, Ontario, and there were charity golf tournaments and BBQs and sometimes Eddie Shack or Gordie Howe would drop by.

“I would think nothing of it,” Doug said. “The memories are just so positive about my dad and watching him work.”

Neil was considered the iron man of officials and rarely missed a game. When he retired, he logged almost 2,000 regular season and playoff games. He also worked 18 consecutive Stanley Cup Finals.

When he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1991 he asked Doug to prepare the acceptance remarks.

“He didn’t just work in the league he was a standout professional in the league,” Doug said.

After his on-ice career ended Neil went into scouting and to this day Doug will run into veteran scouts who met his father when they were just starting out in the business. Invariably they will share stories of Neil’s generosity and support. One of Doug’s first NHL jobs was working with Hall of Famers Bob Clarke and Bob Gainey. Clarke told Doug that he was giving him an opportunity because he had so much respect for Doug’s father.

“But he said your dad’s not going to keep this job for you,” Doug recalled. “He didn’t push me into hockey whatsoever,” Doug added. “I just got into it and I really found out how much I enjoyed it.”

As he began moving up the ranks Doug and his father would talk prospects and aspects of the game and strategies for team building. “I’d get his advice, I’d pick his brain,” Doug said. “All the things I’d watched him do they just sank in and I refer to that now.”

Neil died in late 2020 after a long bout with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Still, in spite of that slow, difficult decline, one day stands out for Doug and that was during the summer of 2019 a few weeks after Armstrong’s Blues won their first-ever Stanley Cup. Doug took the Cup back to Sarnia and, for a few hours, Neil was aware and engaged sharing in his son’s greatest hockey triumph.

“He sort of was rejuvenated for four or five hours then,” Doug said.

This will mark the first Father’s Day without his dad and it reinforces a thought Doug comes back to often and that is the meaning the game has brought to the entire Armstrong family’s life.

“I never forget that the NHL has been putting food on our table since 1957 between my dad and myself,” Doug said. “He was a people person. He loved his job and he understood how lucky he was to have his job in the NHL. He never took that for granted. You couldn’t ask for a better life than my dad provided me.”

Cammi Granato, U.S. Olympian, Pro Scout Seattle Kraken

A field was across the street from the Granato house in Downers Grove, Ill. In the winter, Don Granato Sr. would flood a depressed area in the ground and create a winter playground for his six children. One night, the pond was unavailable. So, Don Sr. went out and flooded the family’s driveway and turned on the car headlights so the Granato kids wouldn’t miss out on an evening skate.

“It was just so cool,” said Cammi, the fifth of six Granato children including former NHLer and coach Tony and NHL coach Don. Long before Cammi became, along with Angela James of Canada, the first woman inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and the first female pro scout, there is this indelible hockey memory; Cammi still groggy from sleep standing in the living room with Saturday cartoons on the television, arm up for elbow pads and shoulder pads, leg up for shin guards before the two went out in the early morning chill to the rink.

“That’s a really special memory for me,” Cammi said. “Because it was just me and my dad and you don’t get that often in a family of six.” Don Granato Sr. worked in the family beverage business. There were season tickets to the Blackhawks. And he bought his kids hockey and other sporting gear at the local sporting goods store. When Cammi first indicated she wanted to play hockey she received a pair of figure skates.

“They thought that’s what I meant,” Cammi said. Soon the figure skates were replaced by hockey skates and gear. With a big family and a family business having dad at a game was a special treat. Cammi recalled getting a vicious cross-check from behind into the boards right in front of her father. She was in pain but she could see her dad watching intently. She bounced right up and continued playing.

“I didn’t want him to know I’m hurt,” she recalled. The family home remains a magnet no matter where the kids’ respective careers have taken them. Last winter, Tony’s University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team stopped by for burgers all happily prepared by Don Sr. at the grill. During the time of COVID-19 family gatherings including annual Easter egg painting have all been conducted by video call and everyone, from young to old, takes part. In normal times, a family gathering in Illinois will number in the mid-20s.

“It is like utter chaos, fun, crazy, messy, loud. There’s piles of shoes at door and bags everywhere and food,” Cammi said.

As a child, Cammi would sometimes sit with her father on the couch in these moments. She recalls the smile on her father’s face in the face of all the activity swirling around him and understood that he truly was in his glory.

“My dad is very quiet by nature. He’s a listener, he’s an observer. When he talks he means what he says,” Cammi said.

Cammi realizes she’s much like her father; calm, reflective and thoughtful. She is often reminded of her father in the best ways when she sees the quiet kindness in her own two boys.

“That’s where it really makes me smile,” she said, “because that’s my dad.”

Sidney Crosby, Forward, Pittsburgh Penguins

Sidney Crosby’s father, Troy, was selected 240th in the 1984 draft by the Montreal Canadiens as a goaltender. The first time Sidney saw real NHL players up close was when Troy’s former junior teammate Claude Lemieux came to Halifax for a neutral site game between Lemieux’s New Jersey Devils and the New York Rangers. Lemieux looked up the Crosbys in the local phone book and called to ask if they wanted to come to the game.

Before there were three Stanley Cups and two Olympic gold medals, Troy and Sidney would wear double-runner bob skates with the straps attached to boots or shoes at open skates at the local rink. At one end of the rink, there’d be a collection of sticks and balls and pucks and the two would play together.

“That’s kind of my first memory of playing,” Sidney said.

From there, to Sidney’s first organized hockey game on through the biggest moments in Sidney’s career, Troy has been a constant. Practices. Games. Street hockey outings. Basement shooting sessions. On-ice outings with Troy, Sidney and his sister, Taylor, a goaltender like her dad.

“He was there for everything. I remember how tight he used to tie my skates,” Sidney said. “He made them real tight. To this day I still have my skates probably crazy tight because that’s just the way he tied them.”

Troy coached older kids for a time and Sidney would follow his dad around the rink. Along the way, Troy would share lessons about the inner workings of the game. Like how important trainers and other staff were to a hockey team and how it was important to help and respect those people.

“All those little things that as a little kid you might just go to the rink and play and you might not really know,” Sidney said. “I think of all those little lessons and all those little things, just being a good person around the rink and helping out and teammate and all that sort of stuff.”

To this day Sidney is regularly among those players helping collect pucks at the end of a practice or morning skates. Sometimes Troy would build things that Sidney would use to improve his skills like a stickhandling maze to help with his hand-eye coordination. The two would watch games together talking about crafty plays and how they came about.

“Everyone sees something different in the game,” Sidney said. “And it would be fun to talk to him about the games.”

Often, their playtime illustrated the deep competitive fire in both father and son. Especially when Troy took shots on Sidney in goal. “He shot pretty hard. I don’t know if he was trying to deter me from being a goalie,” Sidney said.

Sidney left Cole Harbour at 15 to play hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota. All sorts of new experiences, classes, teammates, coaches and all of that had to be conveyed to his family by telephone.

“You just feel like you’re a million miles away,” Sidney said. “I think I relied on him not to be just my dad but when it comes to hockey he was always there for advice.”

After the Penguins made Sidney the first pick in the 2005 draft and he moved in with Hall of Fame owner Mario Lemieux, Troy was a frequent visitor to Pittsburgh. Often you would find Troy up in the corner of the rink watching practice or a morning skate and then he’d wait patiently for Sidney to go have lunch after.

“Looking back on it I probably didn’t appreciate it as much then as I do now,” Sidney said. Over time the relationships extended to other family members. To see his father hanging out with Evgeni Malkin’s father even if the two couldn’t communicate easily because of the language barrier remains a powerful, happy memory.

“But you could tell both of them loved it and liked being around each other,” Sidney said. “I remember the older guys,” he added, Bill Guerin, Hal Gill, Rob Scuderi, “just going out of their way to say hi to my dad and chat with him. And to make not only me but my family feel a part of the team.”

Sidney is closer to the end of his Hall of Fame career than the start of it now. But the messages and the advice have always remained constant from Troy.

“It was just all about work. It’s just work ethic,” Sidney said. “It was always the same message and the great thing it wasn’t just about hockey.” Whether it was hockey or school or cutting the grass to have success meant putting in the work. “That hasn’t ever left me,” Sidney said. “It’s the greatest advice. And it’s one thing to give it but he represented it himself. When I think back and see the way he and my mom worked and the effort he put into everything. They were the hardest workers.”

These days, Sidney leans on his father’s guidance through the ups and downs of a season, injuries or “whatever’s going on.”

“I know I can count on him to hear me out and he knows me really well,” Sidney said.

It doesn’t mean Troy agrees unconditionally with what his son says. But the two are comfortable enough that if Troy has a different take on a subject he’s not afraid to share it.

“And that’s something I value so much and appreciate. He’s probably more a sounding board for me than when I was younger.”

Matthew and Keith Tkachuk (Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)

Matthew Tkachuk, Forward, Calgary Flames

Matthew Tkachuk grew up watching his father, Keith, play for the St. Louis Blues. He was used to seeing people wear his father’s jersey in the stands at what was then Savvis Center. He was used to seeing his father score goals and see people rise to their feet in celebration.

But for Matthew, the first time he began to understand how his father’s occupation was going to intersect dramatically with his own interests was during one of the many youth tournaments in which he and younger brother Brady, now an Ottawa Senators forward, took part. Teammates and opposing players would rush to Keith asking for autographs and pictures.

Sometimes it was the parents.

“It was always a zoo trying to get out of those rinks or trying to go anywhere with him,” Matthew recalled.

While hockey was Keith’s vocation it wasn’t until the boys made it clear they wanted it to be their vocation, too, that Keith began to provide advice or constructive criticism on their preparation and play.

“Maybe I started to listen to him a little bit more,” Matthew said. “He never forced hockey on us. He could care less whatever we’d have done. He’d have been happy if we’d done anything.”

The best advice delivered by Keith was as simple as it was important; compete every day and be a good teammate. As the boys got older they saw how players without those qualities were quickly weeded out.

“Now it makes total sense,” Matthew said. Despite the fact Matthew is an established NHL star with Calgary — or maybe because of that fact — Matthew and his father talk after every game either via text or phone. Sometimes Keith will point out elements that Matthew may have missed and sometimes it’s about helping Matthew sort through concerns he might have about his own performance.

“He’s probably the smartest hockey guy I know,” Matthew said.

As much as the game is central to the Tkachuk family dynamic it doesn’t define them. In fact, the hockey is just a byproduct of the real glue that binds the tightly knit Tkachuk family. It’s why the brothers are leading the cheering at their sister’s field hockey games. Or how the boys will dog each other on the golf course with Keith now playing the underdog card on a regular basis when falling behind. Or how Keith continues to quietly do charity work long after his playing career ended.

“We have way more interests in our life than hockey,” Matthew said. “He’s the best dad in the world. He’s a very, very, very great guy. Very caring. Super, super generous. That’s the one thing that Brady and I really, really have tried to take from him and carry it on.”

Does Matthew, 23, think about having his own kids someday? Maybe, in a vague kind of way.

“But if I could be like him someday that would be awesome and I’m sure my kids would feel the same way we do about him.”

Marc Staal, Defenseman, Detroit Red Wings

Marc figures that his father, Henry, has probably had as many conversations about hockey as, well, maybe anyone. That comes with the territory when you have four boys who graduate from the backyard rink in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the National Hockey League. But it still doesn’t stop Marc from picking up the phone or sending a text after games even though he’s closing in on 1,000 NHL games.

“If I’ve had a tough night or a tough stretch, yeah, he’s a guy I’ll call and we’ll just talk,” Marc said. “It’s not necessarily for advice but sometimes just venting. I’ll bet he’s had 3,000 conversations like that.”

But it doesn’t matter whether the conversations are a variation on a well-worn theme Henry is always happy to talk — or perhaps more accurately listen, a rite of passage that began years ago. Marc, 34, recalled a trip home from a youth game before he left home to play junior hockey in Sudbury.

“I knew I played bad and I was frustrated,” Marc said. “All he said to me was, ‘do you want some constructive criticism? It was never, oh you were horrible tonight.’”

Not to suggest that the four boys didn’t come by their competitive instincts by chance.

“He was crazy competitive,” Marc recalled. Men’s league hockey, golf, board games. “Whatever it is he’s grinding to win every time.”

Henry played university hockey at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and he was the captain of his recreational league team and the boys thought that was the coolest thing when they got to go and watch him play. There was a backyard rink and Henry and mom Linda were in charge of ice conditions and rink hours.

“We bugged him about (the ice) every single day. He was like our rink attendant,” Marc said. “He built us a rink not because he wanted us to make the NHL but probably to get us out of the house for four hours a day. We’d come in when mom turned out the lights.”

Henry continues to work on the farm, which predates all of the boys.

Marc recalled four months after he and his wife had their first child, a daughter, calling his parents to tell them how much he appreciated all they’d done for him and his brothers.

“I was just, thank you,” Marc recalled. “You don’t realize it when you’re a kid. The amount of love and commitment that goes into your kids.”

Even now, Henry watches all of the boys’ games. If he can’t watch them he records them.

“He was always more trying to be helpful and encouraging,” Marc said.

Every summer the boys return to their ‘camp’ homes on a lake outside Thunder Bay. And every Sunday they return to the family home for soup after church just as they used to go to Henry’s parents’ home for soup every Sunday when the boys were younger.

“It’s kind of a tradition since I was a baby,” Marc said.

Zach Parise, Forward, Minnesota Wild

Jean-Paul Parise played his final NHL game more than five years before his son Zach was born. By the time Zach was old enough to remember going to North Stars games at the Met Center in Minnesota his dad was selling insurance. But there were reminders everywhere of the place the game had played in J.P.’s life and those reminders would stand as kind of signposts as Zach and his older brother Jordan began their own hockey journeys. There were pictures of J.P. in his Team Canada jersey from the epic Summit Series in 1972 and in his Minnesota North Stars jersey.

“We had a lot of pictures growing up of him playing,” Zach said. When the family, including brother Jordan who is two years older and was a goaltender, would pull up to the Met Center Zach was amazed to see his dad talking to the guard in the parking lot shack and shaking hands with seemingly everyone he met along the way.

“He knew everyone there,” Zach said. A few hundred yards down the road from the Parise house was a pond where the neighborhood kids would congregate in the winter. J.P. would come down to the pond at the beginning of outdoor season with his axe and check to make sure that the ice was safe and then as soon as Zach and the other kids got home from practice or wherever they’d been they would head to the pond. When dusk fell some of the parents would point their cars at the pond with their lights on.

“It was just kind of what we did was hockey,” Parise said. Whether it was on the pond or on the street J.P. cherished those moments.

“He loved playing with us and playing one-on-one and street hockey,” Zach said. “I know he really enjoyed that part.”

J.P. helped create what would become a world-class hockey organization at Shattuck-St. Mary’s outside Minneapolis where Zach played for a couple of seasons before going to the University of North Dakota.

“With him, it was always about work,” Zach recalled especially when it became clear the boys were thinking that hockey wasn’t just a pastime but possibly a career. “It was ‘yeah, you can do it, but it’s a lot of work,’”

There were reminders from J.P. about his own path from Northern Ontario to the NHL and how he would stay on the ice to work on his shot or other parts of his game just so he could stay in pro hockey. When Zach became an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2012 he could have gone pretty much anywhere but signed a 13-year deal to return to Minnesota and play for the hometown Wild and to be closer to his family. During the 2014 Olympics in Sochi where Zach was captain of Team USA, J.P. was diagnosed with lung cancer. He passed away less than a year later in January 2015. Even now Zach finds himself missing the ritual of talking to his dad after games or when things aren’t going as he’d like them to go.

“That never changed all the way through my career,” Zach said. “That’s been the challenge these past few years not having that person to be able to chat with when things are a little tougher. He was always my go-to person for that.”

Sometimes there are unexpected reminders of his father’s presence in the hockey world. Like when Zach learned that the architect who is working on his new home had actually met J.P. during a goodwill trip during the Vietnam War. J.P. and some other players had gone overseas and a young serviceman approached Parise and told him that he was from Minnesota and he wondered if J.P. would be able to get a message to his mother that he was doing OK. J.P. didn’t hesitate and conveyed the message when he returned to the U.S.

Years later Zach would end up playing youth hockey against this man’s son and now that young man J.P. met in Vietnam is helping design Zach’s house. Parise is a father of three including 7-year-old twins. He often finds himself repeating words or ideas he first heard articulated by his father when he was younger.

“I think you remember what he did and how he raised us,” Zach said. “You remember those lessons. And there’s no doubt that you try and use those lessons that you learned and you put your own spin on them.”

(Top photo of Sidney Crosby and his father, Troy: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

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The hockey worlds biggest names tell us lessons learned, advice given and favorite memories from