The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Brind’Amour and Tugnutt bring NHL pedigree to CT Ice
The final of the 17 meetings between Rod Brind’Amour and Ron Tugnutt garnered a headline in the NHL roundup in the Mar. 8, 2001 edition of the New Haven Register.
The night before Brind’Amour slipped two shots past Tugnutt to lift the Carolina Hurricanes to a 2-1 win over Tugnutt’s Columbus Blue Jackets. That is about the only way to include Connecticut in any discussion between Brind’Amour, who scored more than 500 NHL goals including 51 in the playoffs, and Tugnutt, winner of 195 NHL games.
That will all change this weekend with the two hockey lifers who combined to play 37 NHL seasons will be among those in attendance to witness the inaugural Connecticut Ice college hockey tournament at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport.
There will be a myriad of reasons fans will watch the Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart, UConn and Yale men’s hockey teams square off on Saturday and Sunday. Brind’Amour and Tugnutt will be in the stands playing the role of proud fathers.
Brind’Amour’s son Skyler is third among freshmen forwards in the ECAC with three goals and nine assists heading into Quinnipiac’s Connecticut Ice opener against UConn on Saturday at 4 p.m.. Matt Tugnutt, a junior, is one of four Sacred Heart players with at least 12 goals as the Pioneers square off against Yale at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.
If Quinnipiac and Sacred Heart either both win or both lose on Saturday, the NHL offspring could see plenty of each other in Sunday’s final day of the Connecticut Ice.
“I think it is great,” Ron Tugnutt said. “I love this concept of bringing all the Connecticut teams together because they are so close, they might only play one of them and it is usually Connecticut. It is really nice to see them playing against Yale and Quinnipiac, there is a little bragging rights in this whole thing and us being in different divisions in the sport, it is going to be more like a playoff atmosphere I think where the players will really feed off of that.”
If anybody knows about playoff atmosphere it is Skyler Brind’Amour. Several weeks after his 7th birthday, he jumped onto the ice when his father was the captain of the Carolina Hurricanes team that won the 2006 Stanley Cup.
“When I was younger, I was always at the rink whenever I could be,” Skyler Brind’Amour said. “Obviously the first kind of big memory would be the Stanley Cup, going on the ice after the game and being able to touch the Cup was something that I obviously would never forget. Even that whole day, waking up and feeling that excitement, the family was there and that was probably the first moment when I could really look back on and it was pretty surreal and something I can always remember.”
Matt Tugnutt was 7 when his father played his final NHL game. Brind’Amour was 10 when his dad hung up his skates. He stayed with the Carolina Hurricanes franchise, spending seven seasons as an assistant coach and the last two as the Hurricanes’ head coach.
Much like his father, who twice won the Selke Award as the NHL’s top defensive forward, Skyler is a responsible 200-foot player who is often the first center over the boards when the Bobcats have a key penalty kill. It’s not unusual for him to be on the ice in the final minute with Quinnipiac holding the lead.
“It is nice to have the trust of the coaches, that is what you work for is to get some ice time,” Skyler Brind’Amour said. “I think it is important to do that and make the most of your opportunities because you don’t know when they next one is going to come.
“It is tough to play defense and stop guys, a lot of guys don’t necessarily want to do it. For me, I always want to be a two-way player and be a guy who can shut down the top lines but also contribute offensively. It is pretty cool the way he played and it is a style that I look to and I try to follow.”
Rod Brind’Amour was one of Skyler’s first coaches and knows what he is capable of. Despite a hectic schedule coaching a team currently holding the final wild card spot in the NHL’s Eastern Conference heading into the All-Star break, he checks out each of Skyler’s games and is quick to offer advice or a blunt synopsis that only a father could get away with.
“He started out OK and there was a six-game stretch where he was really good, really confident, playing a lot and it looked like he was definitely on his way,” Rod Brind’Amour said. “I think lately he has been a little tentative, playing a little safe and I think that is probably part of the learning curve as a freshman coming in.
“He is a good two-way player so he needs to have that be something the coach can trust him with but he has to develop his other game because he is actually a really good playmaking center.”
Skyler said the phone calls are more of a dad-son chat than one of a coachplayer relationship.
“I talk to him all the time, after every game for sure and periodically throughout the week,” Skyler said. “He is always calling me, giving me advice, telling me to keep my head up and keep working and if you do that, eventually you will be successful. It is not all hockey. It is a lot about how’s school and how is everything going. I am usually the one who gets it back to hockey because that it what I like to talk about a little more.
“When I was younger and whenever your dad says something, it is like, ‘Oh man, he is harping on me and I don’t want to listen to him.’ I am sure he feels that way that sometimes I don’t listen to him but as you get older you understand that what he is talking about and he knows what he is doing.”
The situation is a little different with the Tugnutts. Ron was a goalie and Matt’s older brother Jacob was a goalie at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota and King’s College in Wilkes Barre, Pa.
“I would have liked both of my children to be forwards so I am glad that he listened more than the other one did,” Ron Tugnutt said with a laugh.
Matt said he took a couple of turns at stopping pucks in the early stages of his hockey career but found he liked shooting the puck much more than having shots fired at him. Even though he plays a different position than his dad, Matt took lessons from Ron’s days in professional hockey.
“I would say we see the way he prepares before every game, what my dad did before he knew he was going to play he was going to get what he needed to be his best on the ice,” Matt Tugnutt said. “I think that rubbed off on me where preparation is a huge thing and it helped a lot.”
Tugnutt never got to celebrate a Stanley Cup title with his dad but did have some special memories hanging around NHL teams.
“I remember toward the end of his career with Dallas and Columbus, I was always going on the ice after practice when the coaching staff let me,” Tugnutt said. “Marc Denis, his goalie partner in Columbus, he was always on the ice with me and my brother letting me shoot pucks on him and he let us score. The other one I was lucky to meet was Mike Modano. I was always bugging him a little bit. Sometimes I would get on his nerves because I wouldn’t let him go but it was awesome meeting some hockey players.”
Tugnutt and his wife have been regulars at Matt’s Sacred Heart games. He has been thrilled to see the Pioneers ascension to the top of the Atlantic Hockey Association standings.
“What I am most proud of is that his love for the game has never changed,” Ron Tugnutt said. “He approaches every game with excitement to get on the ice so to see him go out there, continue to play and move up ranks play Division I hockey at Sacred Heart was an accomplishment he wanted, it was something that I think he deserved and both my wife and I enjoy watching him play.”
Ron Tugnutt and Rod Brind’Amour were never teammates. They met 17 times over 10 different seasons, with Brind’Amour scoring four times on Tugnutt while twice Tugnutt made four saves on Brind’Amour in an NHL game. It won’t be a surprise if the two former NHL stars run into each other in Bridgeport.
The duo share something else, playing the role of supportive father without pushing their children into a sport just to they can live vicariously through their accomplishments on the ice.
“He wanted to be a player his whole life,” Rod Brind’Amour said. “He was fortunate that I had him in the locker room since he’s been 5 years old getting to see what it takes by watching all these guys, how they work, after games how they are working out. I think he has been fortunate to be in that environment which not many kids have that opportunity to be around NHL guys. It certainly fueled the fire for him to be a hockey player.”
Skyler Brind’Amour was selected by Edmonton in the sixth round of the 2017 NHL Draft so perhaps a professional career is in his future. Despite having set a career high with 12 goals this season, the undrafted Tugnutt could face a more uncertain future in the sport after his college career comes to an end. That isn’t lost on his parents.
“I reflect on just the years of going to the rinks, sometimes my wife and I might get emotional saying one day this might not happen again,” Ron Tugnutt said. “Our whole life of going to hockey tournaments, spending time as a family ... What hockey has done for us, it has kept us all together and been a major focus in our lives. Those are the things that we worry more about than anything.”
In the meantime, Skyler Brind’Amour and Matt Tugnutt want nothing more than to celebrate winning the inaugural Connecticut Ice title.
“You will see some teams across the state especially with UConn and it is a little bit of a rivalry,” Skyler Brind’Amour said. “We feel good, our team is preparing well and we are going to be ready to go.”