Cullen centers a new line
Role allows him to be at home
Throughout his long, looooooong NHL career, Matt Cullen often shook his head at people who sat on a riding lawnmower for hours, obsessing over their yards.
Now that he has retired as a player, he gets it, albeit in a very Minnesotan way.
“You know, I always laugh. I never really understood that. And now that I have a backyard rink, I’m out there shoveling and flooding and manicuring all the time,” he said Thursday. “My wife will be dying laughing at me. She’s like, ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re like a lawn guy, except you’re out there doing your rink.’ ”
After 21 incredible years in the NHL that included three Stanley Cups, 266 goals, 1,500-plus games and countless memories, Cullen called it a career last summer. Whether he had anything left to give on the ice at 43 was mostly irrelevant.
With his three boys inching into their teens, the games he most wanted to skate in were being played in that backyard rink he built in Moorhead, Minn.
“People talk about the sacrifices you make playing the time and being in the game,” he said. “You miss out on a lot. You give up a lot. And that’s a big part of it. I think for a lot of guys, as you get near the end, it becomes something you’re not willing to sacrifice anymore. You only get to see them grow up one time.”
All last season, he figured it would be his final one. Not much soul-searching was required when he returned to Moorhead this time. He just kind of knew.
The day after Cullen announced his retirement, he still hit the gym that morning. Old habits die hard,
especially for a gym rat and health nut who had to take great care of his body to play as long as he did. But it was a quick workout. There was a baseball game to catch and then the lake was waiting. It was liberating.
But Cullen was never going to be one of those explayers who took off his skates after his final game and never put them on again. He loves the game. He believes it helped make him the man he is and gave him everything he has today.
Back in Moorhead, Cullen is being recruited by multiple adult league teams.
“I haven’t done that yet,” he said with an easy laugh. “I haven’t taken the bait. Usually it involves a certain amount of cases of beer. It’s not good beer, either.”
Cullen got a better offer from the Penguins, with whom he won two Cups.
General manager Jim Rutherford approached his old center last summer with an opportunity to join the hockey operations department. For this year, they settled on a player development role in which Cullen mostly works remotely. He flies into Pittsburgh once a month to give players hands-on teaching on the ice.
“Jim asked me to be a part of everything and just sort of feel out what works,” Cullen said after Thursday’s practice in Cranberry. “To allow me to be home and do the things I want to do with my family, this is perfect for me right now.”
The family lives yearround in Moorhead, a city of more than 40,000 people that is across the Red River from Fargo, N.D., and nearly four hours northeast of the Twin Cities. His three boys are happy there, though they loved Pittsburgh and were often spotted around UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex after school.
Cullen helps out with their youth hockey teams. Wyatt and Joey, now 11 and 9 respectively, skate on one squad. Brooks, 13, is on a different team. So Cullen will head to the local rink at 6 a.m. for a practice, head home to get in a workout and do some tasks, then head back for another practice later in the day.
“And if we’re not at that rink,” Cullen said, “we’re out on the backyard rink.”
He joked that the boys and his wife, Bridget, will get sick of him eventually.
“I’m sure that point’s coming. But we’re in the honeymoon phase now,” he said. “They’re happy to have me around. They want to tell me about every move that they made in their game and all that stuff. It’s kind of fun to go through all that and we watch a lot of hockey together. We watch all the Penguins games.”
When the boys head to bed, Cullen fires up his computer and starts dissecting the game, looking for insights to share with players and coaches. He may shoot a text message to an old teammate or check in with Mike Sullivan via phone.
Sullivan said that Cullen’s new role maintains “a really valuable relationship.”
“When he was playing for us, when we won Stanley Cups, we looked at him as an extension of the coaching staff,” Sullivan said. “He was a cerebral player. The players have a lot of respect for Cully for what he’s accomplished and the person that he is. He was a great teammate. And now he’s a good coach for us.”
Cullen sees himself as a middle man of sorts between the players, many of whom were his teammates last season, and the coaching staff. While he chatted with a reporter Thursday, Bryan Rust stopped to playfully stare down Cullen, trying to make him crack. He probably wouldn’t do that to, say, Jacques Martin.
Teddy Blueger, who became a regular once Cullen retired, finds it beneficial.
“He’s got that perspective from playing a long time and being a great player,” he said. “He’s been through it all — and pretty recently. Having played with him, he’s easy to approach. He’s a coach, but it’s a lot more comfortable that way.”
Cullen and the Penguins plan to chat after the season about how things went and discuss whether they want him to continue in this role or do something different. He said it has been “super interesting” to watch up close how Rutherford and the front office do business. But for now, Cullen says he is enjoying this gig.
It certainly helps that the Penguins are playing so well. Cullen loves seeing them “play as a team” and thinks it has been “awesome to see the guys work and battle through everything that’s happened.” Poking a little fun at himself once again, he added that it doesn’t hurt that they upgraded the fourth-line center spot.
That brings us to a question you may have asked yourself while reading this.
Has Cullen, clearly still in excellent shape, been getting the itch to return?
“Not to the extent that I was expecting. Coming into this year, I was thinking, ‘Gosh, I’m going to be so close to the team, it’s going to be hard,’” he said. “But I’ve actually really enjoyed just being away. It’s kind of reassured me that it was the right decision. I’m pretty content and pretty at peace with everything.”
So if you want to watch Cullen in action again, you better head up to Moorhead, where the boys and he chop up the backyard rink on many a subzero night.
“I love being out there. It’s quiet. I’ll just go out there and turn the floodlights on and just flood the rink,” Cullen said. “I’m out there at night with the boys a lot. That’s my favorite thing in the world, playing on that thing with them.”