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From Wood and Water to Rock(ies) and Ice
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Jamal Nightingale is an unassuming figure, despite his large frame. Uncharacteristically quiet "for a Jamaican", he notes. There is an intensity to his calm, though. A sort of quiet storm, in a way. "You gotta be," he says, matter-of-factly. "Nobody ever made it in any sport without being intense. You don't make the Hall of Fame by being passive or meek."

Is that what he's aiming for?

"Absolutely. Nobody ever became a professional athlete without aiming for the top. What kind of drive is that? I'll settle for just being 'okay'? I wouldn't want teammates with that mentality. I'll never settle for just being happy to be there." He explains. "I have to come at them. If, when I retire, no forwards say 'yeah he was scary to play against' or 'man he really made it tough for you' or something like that, I have failed in my career. If my coaches and teammates don't say I'm a big loss, I failed. If I'm not in the discussion for post-career honours, I. Have. Failed." Each of those final three words is punctuated with a noticeable stop in his speech. Almost as if he's punching those words into my brain, to make sure I heard them and don't forget them. His voice raises ever-so-slightly, too. Almost imperceptibly. But the calm disappeared for a moment. So maybe not such a quiet storm after all.  There is something else there. A frustration maybe.

"You tell people in Jamaica that you wanna play ice hockey and they laugh. Tropical island climate, and you wanna go play on ice? People think you're crazy."

So why?

"It's fun." He shrugs.

* * * * *

Jamaica, is a far cry from the world of winter sport, generally speaking. The "Land of Wood and Water" -- or "Xaymaca", as it was known to the indigenous peoples -- is known for its apparent conveyer belt of track athletes, and both cricket and soccer are immensely popular. But ice hockey? Almost unheard of. Even the long-standing bobsled team, which made headlines some thirty-odd years ago, as a sort of oddity at the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, aren't often spoken of with pride in Jamaica. Ice hockey is on a whole different level of bafflement. So the story of how Jamal came to declare for the SMJHL draft is a curious one no matter how you slice it.

That said, unconventional (read: "winter") sports choices seem to run in his family. His aunt Lucy was in the Jamaican women's bobsled team, and his uncle (by marriage), Maurice [Picard], actually played in the SHL; making his debut for the Los Angeles Panthers over twenty years ago.

"Yeah, Uncle Mo was definitely an inspiration," Jamal concedes. "It's not quite the same for him because he grew up in Canada, right? But we kinda had the same background. Both sort of outsiders, you know?"

When he was a young child, Jamal played soccer and cricket, like most kids in Jamaica. But after a big family reunion -- at which point he first met Maurice, his aunt Evelyne's husband; and was regaled by tales of professional sport -- he developed an interest in other sports. "I just wanted to be different, I guess," Jamal says. "Everyone expects the Jamaican kid to run fast and that's about it. But I didn't want to be the next Usain Bolt or whatever. I didn't want to be the next Chris Gayle either. Not even the next Tappa [Theodore Whitmore, former captain and later, manager, of the national soccer team]. I wanted to be the first Jamal Nightingale, you know?"

Naturally, it proved difficult to find ice hockey clubs in Jamaica, since there are no ice rinks on the island, so Jamal practiced with rollerblades. Two years later, at the next family reunion, he mustered the courage to ask his Aunt Evelyne and Uncle Maurice if he could live with them. "Yeah, I already spoke to mom about it," Jamal reveals. "I said I wanted to play ice hockey and mom was all 'well where you gonna do that?' and 'tap yuh foolishness', you know?"

"But I really wanted to play. I'd seen videos and it looked great. Aunt Lucy had told me about how you just glide on ice, and it sounded so cool, almost like magic. So I just kept practicing, or as close to practicing as I could get without any skates, or actual ice to skate on. Whenever Auntie Eve called, I'd ask after Uncle Mo, and he'd tell me to keep working at it, and that one day I could go and stay with them in Santa Monica, in California, and try skating on an ice rink." He reminisces.

"I think Mom realised I wasn't gonna give up on it eventually, especially not with Auntie Eve, Uncle Mo, and Aunt Lucy all encouraging me, so she told me 'if this is what you want, you need to make it happen'. That was mom's thing. She always wanted us to be independent, do things ourselves, right? Never let me or either of my sisters rely on other people to do something for us. So I started thinking about how I could save up the money for a flight to California. If I had the money, then Auntie Eve and Uncle Mo would know I was serious, right?" Jamal laughs. "Real kid logic, but I was serious. I was like... eight years old but I'd decided. I was gonna do something nobody from my town had ever done before. I was gonna be the first to do it."

In the six months leading up to that next family reunion, Jamal did odd jobs wherever he could. Helping neighbours tend their gardens, rounding up goats after storms, carrying things back and forth for people, shoe shining, helping in the kitchen. Anything he could do that might get him a small payout. By the summer, he had saved around five thousand Jamaican dollars (roughly $35 USD) and proudly told Auntie Eve that he would "pay for his flight" and "earn his keep" once in California.

Jamal laughs as he remembers the moment. "Yeah, I really didn't know how much the flight would cost. I didn't realise how far Santa Monica was, either. I knew you had to catch a plane, but I didn't know I would need about thirty times as much money as I'd saved. It was wild." Auntie Eve and Uncle Mo, however, were impressed. "They said that I must be really serious about it, and so they would pay for my flight, and I could go and live with them. The deal was that I had until middle school to prove myself, and along the way, I had to get good grades and stay out of trouble otherwise they would send me straight back to Jamaica. Mom made it clear I'd be living with my grandparents if that happened, too." He pauses for a moment. "That's not what any kid wants, man. Momma and Poppa were real strict. I wouldn't have lasted."

* * * * *

"So there I was, coming up to my ninth birthday and I've just moved to a new country to live with my aunt and uncle. And their kids." Jamal grins. "Everything was different, except the weather. The weather was nice. Not as nice as back a yaad, but nice."

It didn't take long for Uncle Mo to keep his end of the deal and take young Jamal to an ice rink, either. "I think it was the first weekend after we got to LA, he took me to an ice rink," Jamal says. "The main thing I remember is how cold it was in there. Oh my days. Probably the coldest I had ever been in my life." He shivers, just remembering it. "Aunt Lucy told me it would be cold, but you just don't get how cold until it hits you. Obviously, I knew what ice felt like, but it's different when you're sweating and put ice on your forehead to cool down; or when it's in your drink. This felt like being inside the ice."

Fortunately for Jamal, he took to the ice pretty quickly. His roller blade prep serving to aid his balance far more than expected, though that first trip to the rink was not without incident. "Oh yeah I fell... a few times," he laughs. "It's one thing balancing on four small wheels in a line, another thing balancing on razor blades, you know?" But he got up every time and persisted. What followed was skating boot camp with Uncle Maurice, twice a week at first, then three times, until they would spend an hour or two at the rink most nights after school. "Uncle Mo told me straight away that if I wanted to play hockey I had to learn to skate really well first, otherwise it wouldn't matter how good I was with the stick," Jamal remembers. "This was hard for me to take in because I thought I was gonna take years to catch up with other kids my age, and I'd spent a lot of my time back home practicing puck handling stuff with a makeshift stick and some rubber balls, right?"

The hours of practice paid off, though, and within a few months, Jamal was skating as well as -- or in some cases, better than -- many of the other kids his age he encountered at the rink. Not fantastic, but good enough to keep up for the most part. "So it's been a few months and Uncle Mo says to me 'okay, we can start training for real now', and I damn near died of shock, man," Jamal laughs. "We went down to the rink that weekend and I started training with a team."

"Jamal was determined," recalls Maurice. "But I was a bit wary of putting him off like I did with [my son] Gabe, so I made sure he had a skating foundation, and then I stepped back. Let his coaches coach." Jamal remembers it differently, though. "I'd come home from practice and ask Uncle Mo all sorts of questions. He'd show me little things, like hand placement on the stick for control, foot placement for stability, things that weren't obvious in practice because coach had to tend to so many of us, I guess." He says, noting that this was just one of a long list of things his uncle did to help him succeed.

Soon enough, it came time for Jamal to figure out his place within a hockey team. "Naturally I wanted to be a winger, scoring goals and trying to juke guys. The flashy stuff you see when you watch games on TV," he admits. "But in all honesty, I was never great at shooting. Uncle Mo says it's because I snatch my shots, like a beginner in golf, and that I'm too worried about being blindsided so I don't focus on the shot, and he's probably right." Instead Jamal's focus on not being "dropped on [his] ass" (his words) worked in his favour, and he developed that into a remarkable sense of balance that allows him to leverage his sizeable frame pretty effectively. "I remember the first time I body-checked Uncle Mo at the rink," he grins mischievously. "I was about twelve or thirteen, and still pretty small, and I know he was going easy on me, but I don't think he expected me to hit him as hard as I did."

Noticing that his teenage nephew had something in his arsenal that he never really did -- Picard wasn't known for being a particularly physical defender; while he was a capable hitter, he left most of the dirty work on the Panthers' blue line to guys like Danny Foster -- Uncle Maurice quietly cultivated Jamal's physicality on the ice. "I still didn't want to push too hard, so I'd do it while we watched games instead. Just make little comments I knew would get his attention, and make him think about the physical side of the game as a complement to being focused and aware." Picard explains. "It sounds strange, I know, but most of the stuff I taught him, in the beginning, was about spatial awareness, reading the play, being smarter than the other team, not quicker or stronger because Jamal was coming at them from a disadvantaged position when it came to actual skating ability. He wasn't a bad skater, but most of these kids had a lot more familiarity, they were ahead of him, definitely."

And so, Picard would do physical drills with his teenage nephew. "Yeah I think to anybody watching at the start, especially since some people probably recognised me, it looked like I was just beating up on a kid," Maurice laughs. "But that changed quick. Jamal was as tall as me by the time he was fourteen and quickly bulked up. His coaches noticed, too."

"I started most games," Jamal notes, "And I was encouraged to hit hard. That was my job, hit the forward, take the puck, pass to a forward. Over and over. We drilled it, I practiced it, it was my thing. I got pretty good at it." It's still his thing today. After completing his first season in the SMJHL, Jamal racked up over one hundred hits, along with seventeen points, only one of them a goal. "I remember Uncle Mo told me when I started playing regularly, you gotta have a 'thing'," Jamal recalls. "I was confused, like what does he mean by 'a thing'? But he explained it like, something about me that stands out. Something I do that nobody else does. As a kid, it was just defending. Most kids wanted to be forwards, and the few of us that wanted to play defense, even then, most of them wanted to attack when they could anyway."

It took a while before Jamal would fully commit to defending, though. "It's not a flashy position," he notes. "So as a kid, you're kind of thinking 'nobody realises the work I do back here'. It's not true, but as a kid you think so." Jamal himself never concerned himself with that, though, instead taking that advice from Uncle Mo about having a 'thing'. It probably didn't hurt that he stood out appearance-wise.

* * * * *

It's been a long journey so far, and the young Jamaican insists there is still plenty to come. With the prospect of IIHF hockey on the horizon in the not-too-distant future as well. "I've already had a few conversations," Jamal reveals. "But it's a big decision, so I'm taking my time with it. I want to put myself in the best position to succeed." This attitude extends to the SHL draft, too. "I still don't really know where I figure in teams' plans, I've not spoken to many team reps, and it's hard to tell what's coming. I just run everything by Uncle Mo and try to figure it out from there. He knows the game, he knows the league. I'm still learning."

Since our initial sit-down, Jamal has been drafted by the Seattle Argonauts, but will be staying in the SMJHL for the time being. I gave him a call to get his thoughts on that. "Yeah, this is normal," he told me. "Uncle Mo played two years in the J, and I'll probably end up playing three or four, looking at the Argos roster." Naturally, this could be a hindrance of sorts to his Hall of Fame ambition, and he acknowledged it.

"I've thought about that." He said. "But if I work right, take care of myself, and focus on my craft... I can still do it. It's common in the modern SHL for players to spend three or four years in the J, bit different to Uncle Mo's time, and he said as much himself. So I'm trying not to worry about that. Just focus on being the best player I can be."

To that end, there has already been a noticeable development in the offensive side of Jamal's game. In his rookie season, he scored precisely once, from just fifty-five shots on goal. There were sixteen assists to go along with that, but it's not a stretch to say that his offensive contribution was limited at best. "I spoke with the coaching staff about that over the offseason," he revealed. "We put some work in, and I went away to do some individual work, and it looks like it helped."

He's not kidding. Just twenty-five games into his sophomore season, he's already on sixteen points (four goals, twelve assists) with a dramatically improved plus/minus (+17 compared to last season's -5) and forty-seven shots on goal. Projecting out for the season, it's not unfeasible to expect a return in the region of forty points with potentially double-digit goals. "I linked up with some of the guys on the Raptors and they helped me with things like reading the play, making myself available in offensive moves. Little things." Jamal explained. "Then I went off and worked on my shooting by myself. Called in a specialist trainer and everything. I'm deadly serious when I say I want to be at the top of the game. I'll do whatever it takes."

That intensity is back. It should surprise nobody really, that this man, who tried to work odd jobs in Jamaica to save up money for a flight to California, is fiercely determined. Yet somehow it still catches me off guard. I'm even more shocked when Jamal stated that he's "not good enough".

"What?" I'm stunned.

"Yeah, I look at the stats and some aren't good reading." I couldn't see him, but somehow I just knew he was shaking his head. Something about his tone. "Too many giveaways, for example." He said. For reference, Jamal has sixteen giveaways so far this season, which is fewer than one per game, and one roughly every half an hour of on-ice time. I point out that while this is toward the higher end of the scale league-wide, he also has fourteen takeaways, which is similarly at the high-end of the scale and almost balances things out. "It's still a net negative though," he retorted.

Still reeling from his unreasonably harsh self-appraisal, I mention his Corsi and Fenwick numbers.

"I do look at those advanced metrics, Corsi and all that, but I'm still trying to understand a lot of it, though."

So I clarify. His Corsi For percentage and Fenwick For percentage are both very good so far this season, with each sitting around the 61% mark, and his relative ratings are both positive (around 2.5 to 3%). He's clearly having a positive impact for Colorado -- who are having a fantastic season, for that matter.

"Yeah, those are nice numbers, and I definitely feel like I'm doing well," he starts. "But..."

This is a common trend I've noticed when speaking to Jamal. He's doing well but there's always a "but", invariably because he's already comparing himself to the best in the league.

"But... guys like Kappa and Yankovic blow me out of the water." He finishes.

I'd feel odd trying to reassure this man, so I stay quiet. Perhaps it's that unrelenting pressure he puts on himself that helps him to succeed. Hard to say. It will be interesting to see how his career develops from here, though. Considering what he's already achieved -- coming from a tropical island of wood and water, to live in the mountains and make a living on ice -- it'd be hard to bet against him.



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