Sharks player makes his dad’s dream come true
NEW YORK — Milan Labanc’s long-held American dream came to fruition Saturday night when his son suited up for an NHL game in Brooklyn, the city he immigrated to 23 years ago.
Labanc traded his own professional hockey career in Slovakia for an opportunity to give his kids a better life and seeing his son, Sharks forward Kevin Labanc, on the ice against the New York Islanders at the Barclays Center validated the difficult choice he made in 1994.
“I have tremendous happiness to see Kevin reach the level of NHL hockey and play in his home town,” Milan Labanc said before the Sharks’ 5-3 loss. “Whatever I started in hockey, when you see your kid continue it and you see your kid go further, that’s what every parent wants.
“It’s worked out for all of us.”
Kevin Labanc’s unlikely rise from sixth-round draft pick (2014) to Ontario Hockey League scoring champion (2015-16) to impact player on the Sharks top line has its roots in Spisska Nova Ves, a small city in south-eastern Slovakia where his father played professional hockey in the early 1990s.
After playing one season
in the Slovak Extraliga, the top hockey league in Slovakia, Labanc, and his wife, Anika, decided to pack up and emigrate to America.
Milan was struggling to make ends meet because he wasn’t getting regular pay from his team, and the couple was planning to start a family. They believed that a life in the U.S. would offer more opportunity for their unborn children.
“Me and my wife talked about it and we said, whatever we do, it has to be for our children,” Milan Labanc said. “It was more important
than playing hockey.”
Less than a year after the Labancs arrived in Brooklyn, they welcomed their first child, Diane, into the world. Kevin was born the following year.
Labanc, who later moved his family to Staten Island, didn’t hesitate to share his love of hockey with Kevin. He taught him how to skate, how to shoot a puck and coached coaching several of his youth teams when he wasn’t working long hours at his construction.
“We forgot about our friends, and going out for parties. We spent all of our time with our kids and got them prepared as much as we could,” Labanc said. “Obviously, it was hard for us, but for them, it’s going to be a better chance to live a good life.”