SwayBlog

Scott Pooley’s hockey career could have — and should have — ended before it began.

He was playing high school hockey in South Bend, Ind., and he couldn’t convince a junior hockey program to pick him up.

At Christmas of his junior year, he left his school team to join the Chicago Mission U18 program (where he was eventually named captain but was a “fourth-line guy”) and posted just three points in 37 games across parts of two seasons. By the time he was 18 years old, he was the lowest-scoring player on a Major Midget Triple-A team. One USHL team invited him to a camp. He was quickly cut.

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Seven years later, standing inside Brampton’s CAA Center after the Newfoundland Growlers’ 3-1 loss to the Brampton Beast, he’s in the midst of his first year of pro hockey. And he’s a standout rookie for one of the ECHL’s best teams. On Boxing Day, when the Marlies needed help, he was the player they called.

“It’s definitely not the textbook American hockey journey. Nobody in the USHL wanted me, nobody in the NAHL wanted me, I went to an EJHL Boston showcase at the time and they offered me a spot on their Junior B team,” Pooley said, shaking his head.

The following summer, with his career nearing an early end, he attended the USHL combine. That fall, a man named Gord Thibodeau called with an offer to try out for his AJHL team, the Fort McMurray Oil Barrons. Without any other options, he took the leap of faith.

“My first time away from home I was 30-plus hours away and I’d never heard of Fort McMurray, Alberta, but I was just looking for a chance and I got one there and I really developed,” Pooley said.

The following summer, on the back of 22 points in 53 games (10th on the Oil Barrons in scoring), Pooley gave two more USHL camps a go, thought he played well at both and was cut twice more.

And then suddenly he was back in Fort McMurray for training camp and a sophomore season. Then, one Thursday, after playing four more regular-season games, he got another call, this time from Muskegon. The Oil Barrons had games on that Friday and Saturday but the Lumberjacks were offering him a chance in the USHL, so he flew out Friday, met them in Green Bay on Saturday and played that night.

With Muskegon, as a 19- and 20-year-old, Pooley’s numbers remained unspectacular. His 27 points in 57 games were seventh on the team in scoring.

Only one college offered him a scholarship: Holy Cross, in the weakest division in NCAA hockey.

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He wanted a bigger school — a Big Ten or WCHA program, not an Atlantic Hockey school. But nobody came calling.

His story stands in contrast to his dad’s in that way.

Three and a half decades ago, his dad, Paul, solidified a legendary collegiate hockey career as a finalist for the 1984 Hobey Baker award. He was an NCAA rookie of the year, a first-team All-American and a Bauer National Player of the Year. In his first season of pro hockey, he won a Calder Cup championship with the Sherbrooke Canadiens.

Paul’s is the greatest career in Ohio State University history — the record holder in points, goals and assists. In four seasons, two of which were spent as captain, he posted 270 points in 149 games. In the worst season of his OSU career, he registered 45 points in 34 games. The others? Sixty in 38 as a freshman, 69 in 36 as a junior and an astonishing, OSU record-setting 96 points in 41 games as a senior (enough for the NCAA scoring title and 13 more than future Hall of Famer Adam Oates that season). That year, his twin brother, Perry, posted 79 points in 41 games too.

He went on to play parts of two seasons in the NHL with the Winnipeg Jets before an early retirement to pursue coaching.

Now 58, he has 30 years of collegiate coaching under his belt.

It’s a family affair, too. Pooley couldn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps but his cousin Austin currently plays for Ohio State. Austin and Pooley talk constantly throughout the year. They see each other over Christmas. Their families, due to their fathers being twins, are close. Every summer, Pooley will join Austin to train for a couple of weeks. Austin keeps tabs on Pooley. He admires him. When Pooley was called up to the Marlies, Austin watched.

“He just has to keep pushing. We have a pretty special relationship. It’s exciting to see how hard he has worked to put himself in the position that he’s in,” Austin said after a recent Buckeyes game.

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“The biggest piece of advice he gave me is to just work every day. It’s not an overnight success. It takes years and years of hard work. He’s a prime example of that. He was playing high school hockey and then he went up to Fort McMurray, which is way up there, and took a shot. He’s a loose guy, he’s very driven, he’s pretty outgoing, he’s got a great personality, guys like being around him. He just kept going at every level and kept working.”

And after joining his alma mater as an assistant coach in 1988, Paul spent 11 years as a head coach at Providence and 13 years at Notre Dame, where he currently serves as the team’s associate head coach. He is the 2001 Bob Kullen Coach of the Year as the top coach in Hockey East. His No. 22 hangs retired in the rafters at Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center.

Pooley wanted that too. He was born while Paul was coaching at Lake Superior State University, shortly after his dad returned from winning the regional in overtime at Michigan State — and the Monday before he left for St. Paul on a Tuesday charter to win the national championship. Paul laughs about how he has a story for every moment in Pooley’s life that is catalogued side by side his coaching career. Pooley’s earliest memories are at Providence when he started skating and spending time around the room and on the ice with the players he looked up to. The rink was his home.

In the early days, Pooley was a pretty good hockey player, according to his dad. He played on one of the top peewee teams in the Northeast. But then they moved to Indiana for Paul’s job at Notre Dame and his game leveled out in a place where the minor hockey programs weren’t strong. And he was small. After he hit a growth spurt in Grade 9 and quickly became 6-foot-2, Pooley became a “kid in a candy store” and “would go out there and just skate through everybody” in Indiana, according to Paul.

But without that call from Thibodeau, Pooley’s career never would have progressed beyond the Mission.

“He was a young kid who had his size but he had great skill level, too. He still needed to improve his skating and we were a little unsure where he would slot in in junior hockey because he just wasn’t a very confident kid at that time, I think largely because he hadn’t had a lot of interest but he came up, he was a great kid, he was very coachable, and he was very intelligent about the game,” said Thibodeau, now the head coach and general manager of the AJHL’s Whitecourt Wolverines.

“The biggest thing was you could tell that there was a confidence issue. Once he started to score a little and got some confidence, you could see some signs that he had big-league skill. There wasn’t a lot of 6-foot-2 wingers that could handle the puck like him but more importantly release it. You kind of knew that OK, there’s a ceiling that’s a little higher for this kid than just junior hockey.”

The transition to Fort McMurray wasn’t an easy one, though.

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“There’s no question he was homesick. There were a lot of conversations between him and myself 30 minutes after practice because he was a long ways from home and it was difficult for him to kind of fight through that. There were times in the first month where I wasn’t sure if he would stay,” Thibodeau said.

Thibodeau had five American kids that year, which helped. So too did the tightknit community of Fort McMurray, which he refers to as the “Montreal Canadiens of the West for junior hockey but a very different town than anything he was used to.” Thibodeau had to do his best to make sure Pooley felt like he was wanted, like he was contributing, because he recognized early on that he “was a very sensitive kid.”

But Pooley stuck with it. And come playoffs, when the Oil Barrons needed a forward to play defence, he volunteered — and followed it up with a night Thibodeau won’t ever forget.

“He ended up getting a natural hat trick that won us the game. I was just thrilled that he was willing to sacrifice for his team to go play D and then he had an absolutely brilliant game,” Thibodeau said.

“It tells you the type of kid he is. Anytime I would try to give him heck or correct him I’d say, ‘Hey, you know the game better than anybody, you’re a coach’s son, I know you know.’ And he was good that way. You can tell that his dad had a big impact on him in terms of learning the game.”

That season in Fort McMurray was just the beginning, too. A depth role at Muskegon and a lone offer from a middling NCAA program are also a long way from pro hockey.

“Nobody has really given Scott an awful lot of credit for being a real good player. Everybody thought he was like a fourth-line grinder. They didn’t see that he had vision, the upside. His skating needed to improve but I give him credit for sticking in there because he had a lot of hardships trying to find places,” Paul said.

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“And thank God that Fort McMurray and Gord Thibodeau saw him at the USHL combine and said they liked him and he went up for a tryout and made it. How about your first time away from home going from South Bend, Ind., to Fort McMurray, Alberta?”

That phone call from Thibodeau was the turning point for Pooley. His choice to pursue it showed his dad that he was truly committed to making hockey work one way or the other. Ever since, they’ve spent their summers working closely together. Paul works with Pooley on his skating and strength and believes that his son, now 24, is still developing because he didn’t grow up in a strong minor hockey system.

That Holy Cross was the only school that came calling probably proved to be a good thing, too. Pooley wouldn’t have got the same opportunity elsewhere.

“He loves the game, which is I think why he kept working and working. It’s important to him. It has been a nice ride for him but not conventional. It kind of makes it a nice story though,” Paul said.

Still, Thibodeau’s kindness wasn’t enough to turn Pooley into a pro prospect. It took the help of another coach, too.

Shortly after Pooley committed to Holy Cross, a familiar face took over: head coach David Berard. Berard worked for Paul for nine years. When he interviewed for the job back then, Pooley was still in a baby carriage.

“I have kind of a special relationship with him. I’ve really known him throughout his whole life and then when I got to coach him for four years and it’s funny how that happened,” Berard said.

“Paul’s a tremendous hockey coach and Scott starts with his dad. Knowing the way Paul thinks about the game and then having Scott exposed to a locker room since he was a little kid, I think he developed an affinity for the game. When you’re able to come home after you play and you have a dad who not only coaches the game at a high level but played it and is giving you pointers and working with you on your game during the summers, that’s a benefit that he has that other kids don’t. Paul is the biggest influence on his life as a hockey player, without question.”

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After posting low-20s point totals in 30-something games in each of his first three college seasons, Pooley exploded for 34 points in 36 games as a senior en route to winning the division’s most improved player award.

Berard wishes he could take credit but he points to a player who simply bloomed late and took advantage of just the right kind of opportunities, from pursuing hockey in Northern Alberta to that 20-point freshman season, which put him on course for a 100-point NCAA career, something Berard insists is the barometer for a star player in college.

In his last season, after opening the year with 18 goals in 20 games, Berard says Pooley was snakebitten down the stretch and could have broken 40 points to hit that 100-point plateau (he finished with 98 career points).

Pooley did it himself, though. He’s self-made. He was the kid who always wanted to pick up on little details in practice and skills sessions. He and Berard watched video together every week for four years. He was the player who volunteered to be the shooter for goalie sessions. In the offseason, he took advantage of his dad’s resources at Notre Dame and built an impressive training regimen, which helped him change his body from a skinny, gangly freshman to a solid, strong senior. His skating is no longer a concern. Instead of getting knocked off of the puck, he became a “possession monster.”

“The difference between guys that have success and don’t that have the same opportunities, usually the factor is in the player’s desire to take advantage of what’s in front of them,” Berard said.

“He had a chip on his shoulder to show people that maybe at 18 or 19 he wasn’t heavily recruited or a big prospect but by the time he graduated at Holy Cross he could have played at any program in the country. I give all the credit to him for doing that. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work.”

This summer, Pooley returned to Indiana to continue that work before living out of an Airbnb in Toronto so that he could use and get to know the Leafs and Marlies staff, as well as their systems.

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“He set himself up to have a good start in the Coast and then from there you put up numbers and there’s injuries up with the Marlies and they give him an opportunity to come in and play some games and then it’s all about creating opportunities and then taking advantage. He’s in a good spot to do that,” Berard said.

Back in that hallway at the CAA Centre, none of this is lost on him. Pooley knows players like him, who played where he did and scored like he scored, aren’t supposed to be where he is.

That’s something to be proud of.

“Holy Cross is a smaller program but I was able to excel there and got lots of opportunity and then my aspirations were to play pro and I knew the only way I could do that was playing. It took me a while to accept but Holy Cross was where I was meant to be,” Pooley said. “I’m truly just thankful for the opportunity that I’ve gotten. It was my goal in my senior year to sign a tryout contract in the AHL and I did everything I could and Toronto took a chance on me.”

He’s not alone, either. Alongside teammates Brady Ferguson and Derian Plouffe, Pooley wants to show the world that the Leafs have found an inefficiency. He knows that Atlantic Hockey has a bad reputation and that the other divisions look down on them and he wants to prove the naysayers wrong.

Last year, in a brief stint with the Marlies after graduating, he posted an impressive 20 shots in five games (four per game, more than Andreas Johnsson and Kasperi Kapanen’s team-leading 2.4). This season, despite playing a defensive role on the Growlers’ third line and penalty kill, Pooley has emerged as arguably the team’s most consistent player. And that shot generation has continued. His 34 points (32nd in the ECHL) and 18 goals (12th) are matched by a team-leading 139 shots.

That success is part of a larger trend in his unlikely journey. At Holy Cross, Berard actually had to teach him to be more selective with his shots.

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“He led our team in shots on goal last year, the year before, and he was always one of our top two. He has a really good shot and he’s a guy who can come down the wing and take a snapshot from the top of the circle to beat a goalie. He scored some goals where he just had the presence of mind to throw it on net from a bad angle when he’s climbing the wall and because it’s hard and accurate, it’s on the goalie quick and the goalie’s not paying attention or ready,” Berard said.

“He has always had that mentality that if he gets an open shot he’s going to take it and he was really effective with that in his NCAA career. We call it a three-point shooter because he’d be outside and take a shot just to get it on net when he could have delayed and hit a late guy. That’s something that developed over time. When he plays with other guys, the other guys benefit because you know pucks are getting to the net and it’s a matter of it going in or you getting a rebound.”

Now, Growlers head coach John Snowden likes Pooley’s size and the way he has learned to go to tougher areas before using his shot. He credits him for relishing his new role as a penalty killer and the job he does offensively and defensively at five-on-five.

“Our whole team’s coming into different roles as they get into the pro game and I’m sure they’ve all been top guys on their teams in college or in junior and you move them to the pro game and you’ve got to adapt to different roles and mould yourself into a complete player for a 200-foot game because that’s what will get you up to the pro level. That’s what Pooley has done,” Snowden said.

At Christmas, the Marlies rewarded Pooley with a three-game stint in the AHL and his season debut on Boxing Day. Pooley intends on it not being his last. He sees the depth of the North Division-leading Growlers as an advantage, not a roadblock, too. His dad taught him that much.

“I give the Marlies credit for looking for the good in players. Because they’ve got a lot of players on the Growlers who are good hockey players. They all have a little niche and a couple of them are from the Atlantic league that’s really not highly publicized,” Paul said. “You give those guys credit in looking at people that maybe have more room for growth and that’s why we signed with them. I said ‘Listen, Scott, they’ve got a lot to offer. They can help you develop. They’re good hockey people and if you pay attention you’ll learn a lot.'”

Plus, Pooley won’t let anyone take advantage of the Leafs’ resources more than he will.

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“The Leafs have done a wonderful job supporting us as a program. The way they’re treating us as an ECHL affiliate, it’s not the same as a lot of teams treat theirs. We have development days with the Leafs skills coaches and the way you see Lawrence Gilman, he has been down to Newfoundland, and Mike Dixon, and people in the front office as well as coaches on the road. They’re really in it to support us and not just have us down here and see what happens. I know there’s opportunity to move up and know they’re watching,” Pooley said.

“I’m just trying to find my game consistently and form an identity as a player that will enable me to be successful here and at the next level. I’ve really embraced my role and a PK role and I’ve really learned to enjoy it after it was something I didn’t really do in college. If I can add more, then that’s awesome, but if I can get that foundation down, that will help me in the long run.”

And Pooley’s not ever going to give up on that long run. It’s not in him.

(Top photo: David Kirouac / Getty Images)

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