Labanc’s NHL rise is realization of American dream
His parents moved to U.S. to give their kids a better life
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 (201516) to impact player on the Sharks’ top line has its roots in Spišská Nová Ves, a small city in southeastern 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 several of his youth teams when he wasn’t working long hours at his construction job.
“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.”
Bob Thornton, who coached Kevin as a teenager with the New Jersey Rockets junior hockey program, saw the impact of his blue-collar upbringing when he first saw the scrawny 14-year-old in a game.
Labanc wasn’t a standout player, but he impressed Thornton with his tenacity and nose for the puck.
“He was wiry, but he just worked, his legs never stopped moving,” Thornton said. “He was kind of uncoordinated, too, but he always had the puck on his stick. It was weird.”
Thornton met Labanc’s parents after the game and the conversation convinced him that the underdeveloped teenager needed to be part of his major bantom league squad.
“After I talked with his parents, I could see how he was brought up. I look at everything when I recruit and parents are huge,” Thornton said. “They came here to find a better life, and Kevin and his sister, they’re both good-character kids.
“His parents gave him everything he needed to succeed and sacrificed their time. I saw that when I first met them, that these were genuinely good people.”
Thornton’s assistant coach, Tony Samms, trained with Labanc every summer until he joined the Sharks last year. What Labanc’s parents passed down was clear to him too.
“We see a lot of kids who come from white-collar families and the work ethic just isn’t there,” he said. “But when you talk about a family that’s trying to make their way in this country, his dad puts in a ton of hours, doesn’t get to see him a lot, I’m sure Kevin knows it and it translates into his game.”
After a year with Thornton, Labanc’s stock started to rise. He spent two seasons with the U.S. National Team Development Program before moving onto the OHL’s Barrie Colts during his draft year.
But Labanc flew under the radar during his first season of Canadian junior hockey. Buried on the depth chart of a deep squad, Labanc managed to score just 35 points in 65 games.
Nevertheless, he impressed the Colts coaching staff with his work ethic.
When the rest of the team left the ice after practice, Labanc stuck around to shoot an extra 300 to 400 pucks a day, which is probably why he has what Barracuda coach Roy Sommer says is the “hardest, most accurate shot” of anyone he’s ever coached in his two decades behind the bench of the Sharks’ AHL franchise.
When the Sharks started calling prior to the 2014 NHL draft, the Colts told scouts about Labanc’s relentless drive. It helped the Sharks decide what they should do with the 171st pick.
“That work ethic was something that really left an impression on (the Sharks),” Colts assistant coach Todd Miller said. “If you’re going to take a flyer on a guy in the sixth round, you might as well take a chance on someone who has those intangibles.”
All the extra work paid off during Labanc’s final season of junior hockey. He had 127 points in 65 games, joining Marcel Dionne, Eric Lindros and Patrick Kane as players who’ve won OHL scoring titles.
Last year, after making a big splash during the first two months of his rookie season in the NHL, Labanc fizzled out, scoring just one goal over his last 31 games.
The humbling experience motivated him to overhaul his training regimen over the summer. He stayed in San Jose to work out with the Sharks training staff for two sessions a day. He also restructured his diet, cutting out red meat in favor of leaner proteins, such as chicken and fish. He also quit eating dairy, sugar and carbs.
As a result, he came into training camp with seven additional pounds of muscle while cutting his body fat from 14 percent to 10 percent.
The work is paying off in the opening month of the season. Labanc earned a spot on the Sharks’ top line out of camp and has five points (three goals) in seven games.
Attending his son’s first NHL game in the city he immigrated to in 1994, Milan Labanc couldn’t help feeling rewarded. He wasn’t the only one. “They sacrificed a lot for me,” Kevin said. “They gave up their lives in Slovakia and left their families to come here and start anew so that my sister and I could have a better life and a better future.
“It motivates me to just work hard and give it everything I’ve got and leave nothing behind. I don’t think I could repay them back in a better way than playing in the NHL.”
“That work ethic was something that really left an impression on (the Sharks). If you’re going to take a flyer on a guy in the sixth round, you might as well take a chance on someone who has those intangibles.” — Todd Miller, assistant coach on Barrie Colts, where Labanc played junior hockey