The Next Ones by Michael Traikos

Author:Michael Traikos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hockey, Hockey players, Biography, National Hockey League, NHL, Mark Scheifele, Johnny Gaudreau, Matt Murray, Aaron Ekblad, William Nylander, Jack Eichel, Connor McDavid, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine
ISBN: 9781771621991
Publisher: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
Published: 2018-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

As a child, Jack Eichel told everyone that he was going to play Division-1 in college and then play in the NHL. Photo courtesy of the Eichel family

* * *

Eichel comes from North Chelmsford—not Chelmsford. If you don’t know the difference between the two, there is apparently a local priest who will set you straight. That’s what happened to Bob Eichel when he first moved there. At the time, he and his soon-to-be-wife believed they were settling down in a cul-de-sac in the suburbs north of Boston, where the houses were bigger, the streets were quieter, and the people were more educated and affluent. The good life, he thought to himself. “I told the priest, ‘I made it. I got out of the city. I’m living in Chelmsford,’” said Bob Eichel. “And he goes, ‘Buddy, you live in North Chelmsford. That’s the working-class area.’ Chelmsford was the higher-end area.”

There are no train tracks separating Chelmsford from North Chelmsford. Both towns actually share a high school and are run by the same government. But there is a divide between the two towns that is apparent to anyone living in either area. It’s not exactly like the Greasers and Socs in The Outsiders, but it’s close. As Eichel’s best friend and Chelmsford native Dan Ferri explains, “North Chelmsford were always kind of the tougher kids.”

The working-class spirit of the city served Jack well. He was always a little rougher around the edges, a little hard-headed. He was the kid who climbed out of his crib at ten months old, who had so much energy that his parents took literally every knick-knack off the shelves because little Jack would break them. “We could have knick-knacks on the table with our daughter,” said Bob Eichel. “Once Jack came around, everything had to come off. He was a lunatic. He was a good kid, but he just had a lot of energy.”

When Jack was four, his parents signed him up for a learn-to-skate program. Except Jack didn’t want to learn how to skate. He wanted to learn how to play hockey with the older kids at the other end of the rink. “They told him he had to learn to skate because you had to do that first,” said Bob Eichel. “He was only four. He said no and went right down to the older kids to learn to play hockey. They didn’t kick him out. He was better than those kids anyway.”

It wasn’t that Eichel was always better than every other kid. He wasn’t. But he made himself better. Eichel once read a magazine story about how Tom Brady did one hundred push-ups and one hundred sit-ups every day. So Eichel did that every day too. He heard that Sidney Crosby took one hundred shots. Eichel did that too. “Before we’d drive to Andover to work out with Mike Boyle, he’d be at home riding the bike for like an hour,” said Ferri. “It was crazy. At a young age, he was just such a workhorse.

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