Guys Read: The Sports Pages (9 page)

Most of the guys playing on the Stars were older than me. Some of them had finished high school and were playing Juniors hoping for a scholarship from an NCAA Division I college team or maybe even to make it into the NHL draft—though that's kind of a big leap from a Tier III team.

My hockey really improved over that year. Our team won the national championship, and then right after that I made the Select 16s. Within a year, not only did I make the New York team, I was picked as one of the top twenty players in the nation as a sixteen-year-old. That was the first moment when I thought that maybe I could really do this for a living. And that's when I had a really big decision to make.

Canada? Or College?

In 2000, Dustin got the chance to try out for the Guelph Storm of the Ontario Hockey League. This was a big leap and would require him to live with a billet family himself—far from home. That wasn't the only thing that made the decision tough. Leaving the US to play hockey in Canada meant that Dustin would be forfeiting his chance to get a Division I college hockey scholarship. It meant that he was putting college aside—maybe for a while, maybe forever—in the hope of making it to the NHL. Even though about 20 percent of players on active rosters in the NHL come from the OHL, he was banking on some very long odds
.

When I got the chance to go to Canada, it was my parents who really helped me figure out what to do. I was only fifteen. My parents were worried about my schooling, because I was giving up my college eligibility going into the OHL.

My dad said, “If you want to do this, they'll give you a school package.” He figured the OHL would find a way to help me pay for college somehow. My mom was really worried about me going; she didn't want me to leave home. But at the end of the day, they both said, “If you want to do this, you should do it. You can always go to school after.” They were really supportive of my decision, just like they had always been. I had to grow up a bit quicker, but I chose to do it that way.

Though hockey was Dustin's focus during his three years in Ontario, he stuck to the books too. In fact, he was the Ontario Hockey League Scholastic Player of the Year every year he was there, winning their Bobby Smith Trophy three years in a row. He is the only player in that league ever to win the trophy in three consecutive years
.

According to the league, the trophy is awarded in honor of former Ottawa 67's star Bobby Smith, and is symbolic of the high standard of excellence that Smith displayed in the classroom as well as on the ice during his outstanding Junior career
.

In addition to his high academic average while in Guelph, Dustin also was the highest-scoring player in his last year of high school, scoring 34 goals with 42 assists, good for 76 points
.

As Dustin's hockey skills continued to improve, he kept his focus on his goal of making it to the NHL. It's not easy for every NHL hopeful to keep that fire burning
.

I was pretty motivated, as I'm sure a lot of other kids out there are. But the main thing was that my dad and my mom were really good about supporting me in my decisions all the time I was growing up. If I wanted to go to a hockey tournament every weekend when I was a kid, it was because I wanted to go—not because my dad pressured me into going.

I played hockey in the winter, and I would sometimes go on my own to the rink and skate during the summertime. But I didn't play on hockey teams all year long when I was a kid. I did other things.

I think I stuck with hockey the whole way through because I was self-motivated.

I wanted to be an NHL player my whole life. But my dad wasn't sitting there saying, “Okay, if I push this kid, he'll make it.” It was more like, “Go have fun. If it works out, it works out.” I realized that if I wanted to do this, I would have to do it for myself. I was going to have to work really hard at it, be disciplined. Lucky for me, I have always loved to play hockey. Because there are lots of other things that fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old kids want to do. But for me, it was all about going to the rink and playing hockey.

I developed a lot as a player and as a person in Ontario. I had to learn a lot of responsibility. I was living with a billet family, so I always had food on the table or a ride if I needed it, but it's a little different when it's not your own family. I was away from all my family and friends, and I kind of grew up a little bit quicker.

A Shot at the Big Time: The NHL Draft

Of the thirty thousand players in Junior Hockey each year, about two hundred are invited to the NHL draft at age eighteen. In 2003, Dustin was one of them. Thirty players in his year were selected in the first round of the draft. Dustin was one of them, too—number thirteen. He was drafted by the Los Angeles Kings
.

I went from being a little kid in Ithaca to being an NHL player within a matter of three and a half years. It happened very quickly and was a lot to get adjusted to. It was definitely a whirlwind. When I was eighteen, I think I was rated number two in the world. I was selected number thirteen overall in the 2003 draft. It was overwhelming, but at the same time it was something I'd wanted to do since I was five years old.

When I was thirteen, like every kid, I was saying, “Oh, yeah, I'm going to play in the NHL.” Suddenly, within five years, I was playing in my first NHL game.

Dustin played his first game in the NHL on October 9, 2003, a month before his nineteenth birthday. He got a penalty for high-sticking
.

So I was expecting, I was
wanting
to be in that situation. I remember being at the draft, and I had a lot of family and friends there with me, and it was a really exciting time. But the flip side of that was once I was drafted I realized, “Okay, I'm drafted. Now the real hard work starts.”

MOVING UP TO THE SHOW (2003)

Of all the hockey players who are selected in the first round of an NHL draft, about eight will make careers as professional hockey players, playing in more than two hundred NHL games. Dustin, who has played in more than five hundred NHL games since 2003, was part of an unusually strong draft year. Of the thirty players drafted with Dustin in the first round, five players went on to lead their teams in scoring in the 2007–2008 season. Ten players have been part of either an All-Star team, the Olympics (for the United States or Canada), or both, including Dustin, who was on both the 2009 All-Star team and the 2010 US Olympic team, for which he was an alternate captain
.

Getting drafted is one thing. But many players get drafted and never play a game. On top of that, my draft year was abnormal because we had pretty much an All-Star team out of the first round.

Going from the draft to actually getting a spot on the team takes a lot of hard work, and it depends on your abilities, obviously. But a lot of it is timing. There are a lot of players who got drafted around the same time as me who are still playing in the AHL (North American hockey's minor professional league system) and trying to make it into the NHL. Or else they've given it up. A lot has to do with where you fit on the team. The timing was good for me in Los Angeles.

I tried to establish myself early. I knew I was going to have to find a way to stand out. I wasn't going to score twenty goals a season like I did in the OHL or in Youth Hockey. I needed to find a way to stay in this league and stay with the Kings. So I started to develop the physical side of my game, becoming very aggressive. That filled a void on the team and gave me a spot. As an eighteen-year-old, all you're trying to do is stay on the team. And it kind of became the trademark of my game.

Some sportswriters say Dustin has a lot of “sandpaper” in his game
.

Once I was established, it was a matter of continuing to work hard to get better.

The more you play at this level, the more you learn. My first year, I ran out of position a lot just trying to hit someone. I would make the hit, but it took me out of position for the rest of the play. My game's come a long way since then. An interesting thing about hitting: it's not always size that makes the difference. I've known guys who are smaller than me who can knock me down. I've known guys bigger than me who try to hit me and can't even move me. A lot of it is timing. It's not an easy thing to judge. I make a lot of hits, but I also miss a lot of hits.

CAPTAIN BROWN (2007–PRESENT)

There are thirty teams in the NHL, with more than 750 active players. Each team has a captain. When Dustin was named captain of the Kings in 2007 at age twenty-three, he was both the youngest captain and the first US-born captain in team history
.

Becoming captain was an opportunity that developed naturally as my position here with the Kings did. It was something I thought I would be capable of doing, the way the team was being crafted. Everything just kind of lined up right for me. And when the opportunity came, I was excited.

I've been captain for four years now. I still learn a lot every day. In my first three years on the team, before I was captain, I hardly ever talked at team meetings. Even now that I'm in a leadership role, I still don't talk a lot in a room. I try to lead by example. If I come in and work my tail off, there's no excuse for any other player not to. If a leader leads the way in terms of work ethic, doing extra stuff after practice, stuff like that, it leaves little room for error, especially in a team environment. It's pretty simple: just go out there, do your work, get what you need to do done. It's the same way on the ice—I try to do all the little things right. It's a hockey game, and people make mistakes. But if the intent is there, I think everyone can kind of build on that.

A Dream Job?

It's definitely a job. I don't get paid to play hockey. I get paid to
prepare to be
a hockey player in the summertime, working out. Ask any professional athlete. Playing the game is the fun part. Working out three hours a day in the summer is
not
my favorite part of being a professional hockey player, that's for sure. Once my season is over, I take two, three, four weeks maybe to regenerate. And after that I go to the gym every day. It's not because I
want
to go to the gym. It's because I've
got
to go there. I'm not complaining. Being a professional hockey player is what I've always wanted to do. There's just a lot that goes into it that the average fan maybe doesn't know about.

Dynasty?

I've got three boys, all under the age of four. My oldest two have been out on the ice a little. My oldest one can kind of stand up and push the puck around. My middle one has been out there a couple of times. He's going to take a while to develop because … he's two and a half now, and when he runs around, he's like an accident waiting to happen.

But the problem is, I'm not really sure how to teach them. I learned by pushing a chair around, and that's what I'm trying to do with them. But it's really hard to explain hockey and skating. All that stuff came naturally to me, so I don't know how to teach it to my kids. It's actually a very weird dynamic. My dad didn't teach me how to skate. But he didn't know how to skate, so that's okay. I know how to skate, but I can't teach my own kids how to skate! I guess I had my own drive, my own passion. I don't know if there's any way to communicate that to someone else.

At the End of the Day …

People ask me what it's like to come home after a game, what I do to settle myself down. There are good days and bad days. The older I've gotten, the more tame I've become, especially now that I have a family. Before, I'd be working on my game all the time: in the gym and at the rink. If things weren't going well at the rink, they weren't going well in life, period. That was my life. Now that I have a family I've changed my perspective. Obviously, I'm still working hard and trying to do my best on the ice. But when I get home from the rink, I realize there are things that are more important than winning or losing a game. At the end of the day, my family is why I play the game.