Coburn shares Stanley Cup with hometown of Shaunavon
Braydon Coburn fulfilled another childhood dream on Sunday when he brought the Stanley Cup back to Shaunavon.
“It’s a dream come true. For me, I drive up and down these streets. My brothers still live here. You play for this Cup a thousand times. We lived just down the street from the rink and the outdoor rink and as a kid you’re thinking you want to bring the Cup back to your hometown,” said Coburn as he prepared to share the Cup with a rink full of fans at the Crescent Point Wickenheiser Center.
“For me it’s great. It’s family and lots of my friends have come back to Shaunavon. It’s really cool just to share it with this community.”
The Lightning won the Stanley Cup Playoffs in the bubble in Edmonton back on September 28, 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Coburn almost missed out on the fabled tradition of spending a day with the Cup in his hometown of Shaunavon.
“It didn’t really look good. When we got back from the bubble they told us the Cup wasn’t leaving Tampa. When we did get together with the Cup all the party sizes were 10 and under, 12 and under type of things. They told the guys that you can have your party in Tampa but there’s no guarantee that you will be able to take the Cup.”
Coburn was a member of the New York Islanders this season and his team was eliminated in the third round of the playoffs by the Lightning, who would go on to repeat as champions.
“But just the way it worked, the boys go back and repeat this year, so we kind of controlled a little bit of the schedule. Tampa was gracious enough to call me right away and say ‘Hey we want you to have a day.’ I am very thankful to them for that.”
Phil Pritchard, the ‘Keeper of the Cup,’ was thrilled to accompany the Cup to Shaunavon and help Coburn have his long awaited moment.
“First we look at that the Tampa Bay Lightning organization, they are such a class organization. The hardships that everyone went through last year, but the fortunate part was they won again this year, which made it great. What the Lightning as a team wanted to do was make sure that everybody got looked after, the guys from last year and even the guys that moved on, the scouts, and coaching staff that moved on.”
Until this year, Pritchard had never participated in such delayed experiences with the Cup.
“The last time we had kind of a break in the action was the NHL lockout/strike in the early 2000s. Coincidentally, Tampa won the Cup that year too, so then the next year they were off, but they managed to get all the guys in before the lockout actually happened. So we’ve never done anything like this.”
Pritchard said that the delay almost made the trips even more enjoyable.
“To me what I’ve noticed from it is the excitement that they are considered part of the Tampa Bay Stanley Cup family and so they should be. I think what the Lightning have done is firstclass, outstanding. As you can see from the look on everyone’s faces is they’re all grateful and thankful for it.”
Pritchard continued to praise the actions of the Lightning, now considered a model franchise in the National Hockey League.
“Dealing with the Tampa Bay Lightning organization, from Mr. [Jeff] Vinik down, he’s a first-class guy. He’s doing it right I think. The way the hockey gods worked out they won again and they were able to pull it off, which was amazing,” said Pritchard.
Coburn was drafted eighth overall by the Atlanta Thrashers in 2003. The 6’5’’ defenseman made his NHL debut in 2005-06 with Atlanta and then was traded to Philadelphia in 2006-07 where he played parts of nine seasons with the Flyers before being traded to the Lightning. The 201920 Stanley Cup campaign marked Coburn’s sixth season in Tampa Bay.
“We’d been able to stick together for awhile. We had a lot of guys that had been on the team for a long time. We were having a great year and Covid comes and you have this big reset and go into the bubble. For us I think it was really good. We were able to remove distractions and really come together and finally get over the hump. We had been to the finals in 2015, we had been to the Conference Finals twice since then, we had tied the best regular season in NHL history, we had all these accomplishments, but had never actually gotten over the hump. Why is it? Sometimes you just need to grind your way and figure out a way to win.”
Coburn is an integral part of a rich Shaunavon hockey tradition that includes Hayley Wickenheiser, the Hunter family, and the Lind family, from which Kole recently made his NHL debut with the
Vancouver Canucks and was selected by the Seattle Kraken in the Expansion Draft.
“I think it’s a community that first and foremost loves hockey. We have great programs and it’s one of those places that is a special community. People that come here they laugh and they talk about that and I just really believe that’s true,” said Coburn.
Coburn was poised to take pictures with every fan and sign autographs with everyone who stood in line on Sunday.
“To me I think it’s great because the player certainly knows that it’s more than him to make him who he was,” said Pritchard as the day got underway. “It’s the community. It’s the family and the friends. When the community is a small one like Shaunavon… the whole community is behind them. I think from Braydon’s viewpoint he needed people way back to tie the skates, to take him to practice, to get him to school, whatever it was, and it’s everybody. I think the plan he has today is he wants to thank everybody. If that’s the whole community so be it. I am looking forward to it.”