Hey, everybody, remember me ...?
He kept all four pucks from the final game of the season. As he should. Few players ever have a four-goal game in the NHL. Fewer still have one in their first full year in the league.
He also kept his first goal puck. They’ll all find a spot somewhere in his family’s home in Dundas.
Just as big a deal was the “Hockey Night in Canada” towels Mark Jankowski received. You can’t buy them and you only get one if you’re asked to be interviewed on the air. Those things are gold. He got two this season.
“You’d better keep it,” said the text from Mom and Dad that he saw when he got to his phone moments after receiving the first one.
The truth is, the 23-year-old Dundas Minor Hockey grad had a ton of huge moments over the past seven months. Which is going to happen when you arrive on the big stage after many never expected you to play a single minute in the NHL and some thought you’d be one of the biggest draft whiffs in history.
It was in June 2012 when thenCalgary GM Jay Feaster caused a few heads to spin around and pop off when he used his first-round pick — No. 21 overall — on a gawky kid who’d been playing high school hockey in Quebec.
A young man basically nobody had heard of.
That selection set off an internet-flaming orgy of criticism, barbs and flat-out potshots.
“This is a legendary pick,” TSN’s Pierre McGuire said at that moment.
To be clear, by legendary he wasn’t meaning the Flames were drafting the next Wayne Gretzky or some other future legend. He meant this selection was out there.
Jankowski heard the barbs. He tried to ignore them but it’s pretty difficult to be unaware there are dark clouds around when you’re in the centre of the storm.
He’d get tagged on Twitter and see some of the most-egregious digs.
Friends would innocently mention stuff. Even his parents
would sometimes notice things and make a comment.
“When I was drafted, I knew there were some people who may not have agreed,” he says.
He’s being ironic. He knows that in the understatement department that’s right up there with saying the Kardashians get a little bit of press or a Carolina Reaper pepper is a tiny bit spicy. But he did his best to ignore it all.
He went to Providence College for four years and won a national championship, getting better each year. He went to the American Hockey League and kept getting better. And bigger.
And when he got his chance with the Flames this season — more than five years after being chosen — he made it count.
Now 40 pounds heavier than he was on draft day, he had a strong first half of the season and a strong finish, ending up with 17 goals and eight assists. Widely erasing the memory of those draft-day responses.
“Those comments are long gone,” says Calgary play-by-play voice Derek Wills, who used to hold the same job with the Hamilton Bulldogs.
Jankowski feels that way, too.