Reporters — most of the good ones, anyway — have an ingrained sixth sense that alerts them when they’re being played.
Something sounds a little off, a little funny, a little too good to be true, and it triggers an investigative trait that oftentimes leads to time-consuming research, culling phone records or looking up long lost relatives to find the slightest bit of impropriety, or any reason to further doubt what they’ve heard.
Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin might trigger one of those too-good-to-be-true reactions, save for one slight problem: There is nary a hint of inauthenticity nor insincerity surrounding the crafty defenseman.
At 6-foot-3 and 207 pounds, Slavin physically fits the mold of a shutdown NHL defenseman. He’s tall, he’s strong, he can maneuver in tight spaces, his passing is on point and his stickwork is exemplary.
He played nearly 23 minutes a game during the regular season (22:59 to be exact), and logged more than 26 minutes of ice time in the team’s final game of the playoffs against Tampa Bay.
Here’s that “too-good-to-be-true” part: He didn’t take a single penalty in the eight playoff games.
Even scarier and more unbelievable? He took a single penalty — that’s one. Uno. Un. Ein. — in the regular season, during which he played 52 games out of a possible 56. And that one penalty? An automatic two minutes for accidentally floating the puck over the glass in the defensive zone. No poor stickwork. No flailing elbow. No errant glove hand. Nothing.
“The way I like to go about the game, obviously, is try to stay out of the box, I definitely don’t try to take penalties,” Slavin said Saturday during a league news conference.
No kidding.
His reputation for clean but aggressive play earned him a pretty nice stick-tao from the league Saturday, and a pretty nice piece of hardware to go with it. Slavin was awarded the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, indicative of the NHL player who best combines sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct with a high standard of playing ability.
“I’m not that physical of a guy, I like to use my stick a lot, and so in doing that, I need to make sure my position on the ice is solid ...” Slavin said. “It’s a combination of skating and stickwork and not playing too physical.”
FAITH AND FAMILY
Slavin’s approach to playing hard, clean hockey started early, instilled at a young age by one of his early coaches — his father, Robert.
“He’s been such a role model in my life, on and off the ice,” Slavin said of his father, appropriately honoring the man on Father’s Day weekend. “As a player, he always just told me to work hard, stay humble and leave the rest to God, and that’s how I try to go about every day in the rink and my life.”
As he grew, Slavin leaned heavily on a couple of foundational pillars: his faith and his family.
“Just being able to share the love of Christ to the world through the love of hockey, on and off the ice, that’s why I’ve been given this platform, and just being able to share the love with everybody,” Slavin said, not at all caring whether he sounded preachy. “It’s pretty special to me.”
He did not sound preachy. It’s all genuine. Refreshingly genuine, much like the change in the tone of his voice and the obvious smile that crosses his face when he has the chance to talk about his wife, Kylie.
“As I’ve grown up a little bit, my wife has been such a huge support in my life on and off the ice, making sure home life is home life and not bringing things from hockey back to the house,” Slavin said. “Honestly, I think if it was up to her, I’d be a little bit more aggressive on the ice and try to hit people a little bit more. She’s been such a huge support system to me.”
SUPPORT AND MOTIVATION
Drafted in the fourth round of the NHL Draft in 2012 out of the USHL while playing for the Chicago Steel, Slavin played another season on the junior circuit before playing for two seasons at Colorado College. In that second season at CC, he had a modest 17 points, but was a disappointing minus-28.
But he had just two penalty minutes in 34 games, a harbinger of things to come.
The following season, he turned pro. After just 14 games with the American Hockey League Charlotte Checkers, Slavin made his NHL debut for the franchise that drafted him, the Carolina Hurricanes, then guided by GM Ron Francis, in 2014. Just shy of seven years later, it was Francis, now with the upstart Seattle Kraken, who presented Slavin with his Lady Byng Award.
“When I found out (Francis) was presenting the award, it was super special,” Slavin said.
Francis himself won the Lady Byng in 2001-02, the only other Hurricanes skater to win the award. Francis won the award three times in all.
“Knowing the player that he was, and himself winning this award, it was super special,” Slavin said. “He had a big part in me coming into the league, and giving me the opportunity to have my rookie year and instilling some confidence in me.”
The quiet, humble-yet-hulking defenseman still feels like the best is yet to come for his Hurricanes brethren, and tried his best to deflect the praise he so richly deserved on the dais to others on his team — and on the bench, choosing also to point out Jack Adams Award-winning coach Rod Brind-Amour’s recent NHL trophy win instead of his own.
“We’ve been trending in the right direction the past couple years,” Slavin said. “Rod is so deserving of the award he got this year, the coach that he is, is awesome, but he’s just that much better of a person.”
Slavin truly believes the team is headed the right way, too, and that has little to do with the trophies the team has been collecting.
“It is nice to have that recognition, but we know as an organization we have a lot more to give, and obviously we all want to achieve that ultimate goal of lifting the Stanley Cup one day so we don’t want to stop until we get there.”
Slavin knows a bit about perseverance, about being a good teammate, and about being a good person.
And that’s the truth.
