Point’s clutch goal is nothing new
Tampa Bay’s overtime hero has been coming through his whole hockey career
Grant Point spent Tuesday afternoon like so many hockey fans.
For five-and-a-half hours, Point dutifully sat and watched every second of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s quintuple-overtime win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
When his son, Brayden Point, finally potted the OT winner, though, Grant wasn’t actually watching. He was out on the ice working with a group of local Calgary kids at a skills development camp.
He knew something had happened, though.
“I watched from one o’clock until 6:30 but I’m running a skills development camp with some kids and had to leave and run the ice time,” Point said from his Calgary home. “I could feel my phone buzzing in my pocket, though, and I had 157 texts, so I knew something either really good or really bad had happened. The first one I looked at said ‘What a shot,’ so then I knew it was a good thing.”
For the people who knew Brayden Point before he was in the NHL, it was completely unsurprising that he was the one who came up big and gave the Lightning a 1-0 series lead in their first-round series against the Blue Jackets (Columbus has since tied the series).
It’s what Brayden has been doing since he was just a little kid.
From his time with the Calgary Bisons midget AAA team to a brief stint with the AJHL’S Canmore Eagles right up through his stint with the WHL’S Moose Jaw Warriors, there are stories of Point’s heroics.
He’s always had a knack for scoring huge goals in huge moments.
“The X factor that a guy like him has that others don’t is he just seems more determined,” said Tim Hunter, Brayden’s head coach with the Moose Jaw Warriors. “Why does he score big goals? Because he’s got that mental makeup. It doesn’t matter; every shift, he’s going to be a difference-maker. It’s not, ‘Well, this is a big moment and I’m going to take advantage of it.’ He goes out every shift to try to take advantage.
“He doesn’t wait for the big moment to be a hero. He does his part within a team framework every time he goes out on the ice.”
That X factor is something that was apparent right off the bat to Eagles coach Andrew Milne, as well. Brayden’s older brother, Riley, played four seasons for the Eagles and was the team’s captain in 2012-13.
The Eagles called Brayden up to the AJHL a year earlier for a four-game cameo, and when he arrived in Canmore he was so small that Milne thought he was a local kid helping with the team’s sticks. When Milne realized it was Brayden, the coach actually called Grant to make sure it was OK to play him.
“He probably weighed 119 pounds, and we had guys on that team who were 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds,” Milne said. “But he was coming around our team when he was 11 or 12 because his brother Riley was with us and you got to know the family and kind of went, ‘Oh, this kid’s destined to be a player with the family he’s got, with his background, with the way he works.’”
Some people just find a way and he’s always been one of those guys where in the big moments, he makes a big play.
It didn’t take Brayden long to prove he could play in the AJHL. He collected two assists in his first game and would go on to produce four points in four games.
There are countless similar stories from his time playing hockey in Calgary and across Western Canada.
There was the overtime winner Brayden scored against the Calgary Royals during his first season in bantam.
There’s the double-overtime winner he scored as a 15-year-old, in his first year in the WHL.
Grant even got a text saying that Brayden had seemed more excited after scoring a goal years ago in the Trails West Tournament than after his big game-ender against the Blue Jackets.
“Every time he’d be in tournaments as a kid, he’d always get the overtime goal,” Grant said. “I think it’s innate. Some guys just have that way to rise, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s somebody’s character or what it is, but some people just find a way and he’s always been one of those guys where in the big moments, he makes a big play.”