In the world of chocolate, there are few places as sweet as Hershey, Pennsylvania. The small industrial town, located around 150 kilometres west of Philadelphia, is the home of one of the United States’ oldest chocolate companies – and makers of the famous Hershey Kisses. Such is the town’s renown in the chocolate world that Homer Simpson once said, “I’ve never prayed to a city in my life, [but] if I did, it’d be Hershey, Pennsylvania.”
Sydney’s Nathan Walker doesn’t share the cartoon character’s physique, nor is he in Hershey to make chocolate. The 21-year-old is there to play ice hockey – and create history. Walker, who plays for the Hershey Bears, is attempting to become the first Australian to reach professional ice hockey’s highest plateau, the NHL.
The Bears, an affiliate of Walker’s parent club the Washington Capitals, play in the American Hockey League, just one step below the NHL. “It could arguably be the second best league in the world, next to the NHL,” Walker, a nuggety 5ft 10in centre-forward, tells Guardian Australia. “It’s definitely not an easy league to play in, or stay in, so you’ve got to come in every day with your working boots on.”
In terms of the “Big Four” of American professional sport, the NHL remains Australia’s final frontier. Dozens of Australians have played in basketball’s NBA, baseball’s MLB and American football’s NFL – most recently ex-Parramatta Eels star Jarryd Hayne for the San Francisco 49ers – but none have cracked the ranks of the NHL.
With only 4,264 registered players and less than 30 ice rinks in Australia, that hardly comes as a surprise. Being on the frontiers of his sport, as an Australian, is hardly foreign to the man they call “Stormy”. Walker was the first Australian drafted by an NHL team when the Capitals selected him last June, and was the first from down under to play professionally in Europe, in 2011.
Born in Cardiff, Walker emigrated to Australia with his proudly Welsh family when he was two years old, moving to Grays Point near Cronulla, New South Wales. “I don’t remember much of Wales, but I’ve been back a few times,” he says. “My parents went to Australia for a holiday and saw how nice and beautiful it was. I guess they saw a better lifestyle there, and they wanted that for my brother and I. It was a good move.”
Though he made several Cronulla Sharks rugby league youth teams while growing up, Walker followed his older brother – and his heroes from Disney’s Mighty Ducks films – into ice hockey when he was just six, playing at the Blacktown Flyers club.
“My brother Ryan was playing, and, as the younger brother, I just wanted to copy what he was doing,” he says. “Next thing you know, I was hooked. Obviously those Mighty Ducks movies, when they came out, they had a big part to play in it as well.”
By the time he was 13, in 2007, Walker’s passion for ice hockey matched an ability clearly beyond his own age group, and even on the verge of going past that of Australia’s own eight-team semi-professional league. Slovakian-born state coach Ivan Manco helped find Walker a place in the youth programme at Czech club HC Vitkovice, and the 13-year-old made the big move to Europe.
Walker wouldn’t make his professional debut for four years, and while his heart was set on an ice hockey career, it was a challenging time for the teenager, living in Ostrava. “I didn’t speak the language, and I didn’t know anyone,” he says. “The first two years, it was pretty tough on myself and my family. I’d be getting homesick every week, calling home and telling them that I wanted to come home and everything.
“But they wouldn’t let me, because they knew that as soon as I got off the plane to Australia, it would be something I would be regretting.”
By 2012, Walker’s progress in Europe captured the attention of NHL scouts, and the Australian was listed on that year’s Draft. He wasn’t selected, but the Capitals invited him to pre-season training camp anyway. Knowing that playing time in North America would help his future NHL chances, Walker took a contract with the Youngstown Phantoms, a youth league team in Ohio, in addition to continuing his game time for HC Vitkovice.
While he received another pre-season camp invite by the Capitals, Walker missed selection again in the 2013 NHL Draft. Players are only eligible for three drafts, meaning last year’s event was his final shot to get picked up. Fortunately Washington finally came through, selecting Walker in the third round – 89th overall – and offering him a three-year contract.
Though trailblazing, Walker is circumspect about finally being drafted. “It’s definitely a big accomplishment, but at the end of the day, there are another 209 kids that were drafted,” he says. “Every year, there’s another 210 guys drafted, and the year after too. So, I’m just another hockey player in the world trying to make the dream come true.”
The reality is that the hard work has just begun for Walker, who was sidelined for the majority of last season with a torn ACL. As well as competing against the other young prospects in the Capitals’ system, Walker’s slightly smaller size and general lack of offensive contribution – he has scored only twice in 16 games for the Bears this season – make it more difficult for him to get the call-up to play alongside the likes of Capitals superstar Alex Ovechkin.
“He’s got outstanding speed,” Bears coach Troy Mann says of Walker. “For a guy that’s coming off a major knee injury, I think he actually looks faster out there. His size deters him from potentially playing there [in the NHL], and the fact that he’s going to be, more or less, a bottom-six [bench] forward if he does get there. But if he keeps working on the areas we’ve outlined for him to be an NHLer, sure, he’s got a chance.”
While Walker remains focused on the tasks at hand – improving in every game for the Bears – he admits that a history-making call-up would be “the dream come true”.
“I want to get my first game, and then my first season,” the young Australian says. “I just want to stay in that league as long as I can. It would be an amazing feeling to get that call.”
Excuse the chocolate pun, but there’d be nothing sweeter.
