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***sve7en*** · 05-20-2020, 02:21 PM

[671 words x 2 (draft media) = 1342 words, ready for grading]

This is the seventh entry on The Player's Tribune in an ongoing series following hockey prospect Jimmy Wagner through his journey of playing professionally. You can read his first piece “Hey Dad” here, or view the index of his entries here.

Family was always a nebulous concept for Sara and I growing up, to say the least. Mom passed right after my second birthday, dad didn’t have any siblings, and we didn’t live close to our grandparents because of the work that he took on as a single dad. My family was both the two of them, but also my neighbor that would come over and bring us dinner when dad worked overtime, Sara’s best friend Allison and her mom who invited us over all the time in the summer, and Coach Müller who would go out of his way to pick me up and take me to practice sometimes. We never would have big family gatherings like my teammates would have, but they tried to include us as much as they could.

That’s a big part of why it’s always been so easy for me to consider my teams as family, if you’re good to me and we have each other’s backs then we’re basically there. Hockey demands those commitments to your teammates, and it only got more potent when I walked into the Carolina locker room two seasons ago. Guys like Weston, Fiddler, and Rykov all immediately welcomed me into their collective family despite not knowing me the week prior. That commitment to each other and love for their brothers permeates every facet of the Kraken organization, those guys have become some of the closest people in my life, especially of those who I’ve met since I’ve come over from Austria.

The incredible part of having a nebulous family is that it grows each season. Bringing new faces into the locker room and embracing them as a new part of the family is great, and I love seeing them embrace their new siblings like I did so recently. Dwight, Vitek, Stein, Panda, Bobby, Kwame, Adam, Linus, and Patty all went from strangers to brothers and sisters in a matter of hours, and I’m not gonna lie we definitely needed to form those bonds in hindsight.

I haven’t talked much about last season, especially while it was going on, and I’m sure you can understand why. Everyone knew it was going to be a rough season with so many rookies trying to fill shoes filled by a number of SHL rookie of the year candidates and the words “rebuilding season” filled the media when talking about us. The wild thing about last season though, is that it basically galvanized us. Every fresh face from last season is stronger, faster, and smarter. We went from a team of nine rookies, to a team that delivered nine prospects to the SHL, three of them first rounders. Every loss we shook off, we knew if we kept working things would change, and every win was signs of progress and tastes of the success we would see soon.

That time is now.

To Axel Folley, Conner Hutton, Zelma Zuntnere, Blunt Man, and Moritz Müller - my new brothers and sister:

I am truly blessed to be able to welcome you to the Carolina Kraken, both team and family. We work hard, play hard, love one another, and that combination is a potent recipe for success I learned directly from cup winners. Through every win and loss this season, I’ll be by your side with 15 of your brothers and sisters. This team is incredible and I am so glad we could grow it again this season. I know you all will be valuable to our performance on the ice and to the existence and strength of our family off the ice. You may have missed the growing pains, but I promise the rewards are equally yours this year.

We are the Carolina Kraken.

The rebuilding is over.

And we’ve reloaded.

Jimmy Wagner
Captain
Carolina Kraken