Provorov learns you can go ‘home’ again
Moved back to Wilkes-Barre to spend time with billet family
Ticketed from boyhood as a potential star on the ice, Ivan Provorov arrived in the United States at the age of 13, playing in elite international youth hockey tournaments. He made enough of an impression that only one year later, he’d be part of a contingent of youthful Russian prospects brought over to play in the various levels of USA Hockey prep programs.
For Provorov, that meant prepping in Wilkes-Barre with the bantam-aged Knights, part of the Atlantic Youth Hockey
League. He was there from the fall of 2011 through the spring of 2013. It was a time in his life that could intimidate a young teen hailing from Yaroslavl, Russia, some 165 miles northeast of Moscow.
Not so for Provorov.
Now 23 and the leader of the Flyers defense, Provorov isn’t like a lot of his teammates, who have mostly moved back to their offseason homes to isolate with their spouses or families. Instead, he’s moved back in with the billet family he lived with in Wilkes-Barre from the ages of 14 to 16. The same family that supported him during what could
have been a scary time away from home, the same family he’ll usually spend the Christmas holiday with just a couple of hours north of Philadelphia.
“They’re lovely people,” Provorov said Thursday while wrapping a media conference call, “but I don’t want to bring them into this.”
In other words, Provorov would rather keep the names of his American family to himself to protect their privacy. But for reasons all his own, there was no other place he’d rather spend a pandemic shutdown of the NHL than right up there near the Wilkes-Barre town square.
“It’s just to be able to spend time with my billet family,” Provorov said. “I lived with them for 2½ years, and I have a really close relationship with them. So it’s just to be
able to spend time with them, and hang out. And yes there is an opportunity here to stay in shape. I’ve been working out most of the time.”
One of the billet families that are part of the fabric of the various youth programs under the USA Hockey banner, Provorov is enjoying their company as much as the benefits of being there.
He can work out with guys he calls his “billet family brothers,” one his age and one a year younger. The house has a fitness room of sorts for him to torture himself as he often does during the offseason. And unlike most of his teammates who are only riding their Pelotons in their Canadian basements, Provorov has been skating during this unexpected shutdown of the past seven weeks.
“It’s not like I’m skating at (an) actual rink,” Provorov said. “It’s more like a private, smaller rink. It’s not a full ice, I’m not doing full-on practices ... just a little opportunity to stay on ice. It’s not anywhere close to the game or team practices. And I think we’ll have plenty of time for everyone to get in shape and get on the same level then.”
Until then, he steps onto the ice in a town “just outside of Wilkes-Barre,” at what he describes as a “private rink ... about the size of a tennis court.” He skates by himself, does some stick-handling drills and tries to get his legs under him. But Provorov does have the chance to work out off the ice with his two billet brothers and his three billet sisters, whoever wants to try to stay with him.
Provorov is notorious for his ridiculous offseason workout sessions. Even he admits that.
“The offseason, there’s 10 weeks of hell, going through 10-11 hours a day,” he said. “Here I’m probably spending around, I don’t know, five or six hours a day trying to stay in shape, doing different stuff . ... Trying to get my mind off all the stuff of being locked down and not being able to play the game.”
Meanwhile, he has a family with which to spend all this downtime.
“It’s been helping,” Provorov said, “and it’s also been helping me to stay in shape. Hopefully when we come back I won’t need too much time to jump right back into it.”