I knew that it was going to take a lot of hard work, and it was going to be a long road just to get to the places I wanted to go.
Growing up in small-town northern Ontario, nothing is given to you. Especially when it comes to sports, and for me, that sport was hockey. I knew at a young age that I had the skill to be a good player, but I was never the greatest skater, and as I kept growing I started to see I needed to be stronger too. As I got older and began to understand how good I could really be, I started to see a future in hockey. I knew that it was going to take a lot of hard work, and it was going to be a long road just to get to the places I wanted to go. But for me, “just getting there” isn’t what I’m in it for. I’ve come so far to this point, let’s see where I can really go. Why stop now right? This has been one wild ride, but it’s been a good one too. Now, I’m one step from that ultimate goal, the National Hockey League. I can see my dream. I’m right there. Let me tell you how I got here.
The Early Years
I played a lot of different sports as a kid, as most of us did growing up in New Liskeard. There was a group of probably about ten of us that played every sport we could find together. Pretty much every year from the time we were 4 or 5, we were all on the same hockey team. And when we weren’t at the rink, we were getting our parents to drive us to a friend’s place to get the biggest road hockey game you’ve ever seen started. I remember some days there would be ten or twenty of us chasing a tennis ball up and down the street. Even the older kids would come out and play with us a lot of the time. We had goalies in full gear, and periods, and shootouts. It was our NHL. We’d be out there for hours. And when we had to go or it got dark, we’d head home for the night and be right back there the next day for our next game. We probably played an 82-game schedule three times over on those streets!
When it came to getting on the ice, we had a pretty good team. I remember one year in novice where we lost one game all year. That trend continued all the way through minor hockey, our group won a lot of games together. Pretty much from day 1, I was a pretty good player. Every second year until I was 10, I would play with the kids that were one and two years older then me. I wasn’t a great skater as I mentioned though, so I was a bit of a rover. I usually ended up playing as a defenceman when I was playing up, and then the next year, once I’d gotten better and older and adjusted, I’d go back to forward. As we got older, and everyone started getting better and faster and bigger, you could start to see that I wasn’t as fast as a lot of the people around me. I always knew I had a lot of skill, but my skating really started to show the older I got. Let me put it to you this way: my last year in Atom hockey I think I had 130-something goals, and the next year I don’t think I got anywhere close to that, or in the few seasons after that either. I was starting to see where I needed work and how much I needed to do if I wanted to have my dreams come true.
A Rude Awakening
Fast forward a couple years now to my minor midget season. This is a big year for any player my age for one reason. It’s my Ontario Hockey League Draft year and like any 15-year-old hockey player in Ontario, I wanted to be drafted. Now, I stand about 6’7″ and 230 pounds today. That summer at training camp for the New Liskeard Cubs, the Midget AAA team in my hometown, I weighed in at 5’10” and 140. My skating still wasn’t where I needed or wanted it to be, and at 140 pounds it was going to be tough for me to compete as a 15-year-old against the guys two years older than me in the league. I knew it also wouldn’t be a great look for the OHL teams that were watching to see me as a kid who didn’t skate that well, wasn’t very fast and wasn’t very strong either. I knew that I was going to have to find a way to play where I could still stand out to teams in a way where maybe they would overlook the parts of my game that weren’t my strongest.
Little did I know though that I was about to go through a massive growth spurt over the next few years.
By the end of that minor midget year, and about the time the draft was coming around, I had grown 4 inches and 40 pounds. Obviously this was great for me, but in some ways it wasn’t. Yeah I was bigger, but I wasn’t really any stronger and without work it wasn’t going to help my skating at all.
I finished the year with 29 points in 30 games, and Stan Butler and the North Bay Battalion called my name in the 13th round.
I did it. I got picked.
I knew all I needed was a chance.
Danny McDonald was my coach that year, and he had played for Stan when he was in the OHL. He went to bat for me and really helped me get my foot in the door and get my chance at the next level. I knew all I needed was a chance.
Until that point in my career, I had never really taken training that seriously. I don’t think I ever stepped foot in a weight room before I had been drafted. You could usually find me in the summertime up at the New Liskeard Golf Course, walking 18 or 36 holes in a day, or down at the Waterfront playing basketball with friends. My wakeup call that that needed to change if I was going to make the jump to the OHL, was my first camp with the Battalion the summer after the draft. I had already started working out at that point, but until this moment I hadn’t realized how crucial being strong was going to be for me. One of the fitness tests was to bench press 135 pounds for 10 reps. If you could get the 10 reps, you moved onto the next round, which was 175 pounds for as many as you could get. Don’t forget, just a couple months ago I barely weighed as much as that bar did. At both the summer development camp and Battalion main camp, I couldn’t even put up one rep at 135. Here I am at my first OHL camps, and the first impression I make is that I’ve never seen the inside of a gym. Not only that, but I’m a pretty big kid at 6’2″ and 180 pounds and I can’t bench what a lot of guys would probably warm up with.
I was really embarassed.
I was probably the only kid at that camp that didn’t get at least one rep. It was a rude awakening for me. I finally knew how much it was really going to take for me to get myself to the next level, and I was ready to put in the work.
Finding My Game
At the end of my first camp with the Battalion, I was sent back home to play another year for the Cubs. I don’t think I really expected to make the team that year, but it was still disappointing for me not to. Stan Butler told me what I kind of already knew, in that I needed to be stronger and work on my skating if I wanted to play in the O. I’d been hearing it for years now, I was too big and slow to make it to the next level, but it never really resonated with me until the guy who controlled whether I make it to that next level was the one telling me.
So I used it as motivation and started to work.
By the end of the summer and start of my second year with the Cubs, I had grown again. I was around 6’4″ and 190 pounds at 16 years old. I had worked out all summer and I knew that I could really be a force in Midget hockey, but I’d have to play to my strengths. I hadn’t made much improvement on my skating but I was finally starting to be more comfortable with my body and my size, and I was starting to figure out how I could really be effective. I’ve always had pretty good hands, but it was becoming harder and harder for me to use them because I wasn’t as fast as a lot of other people and that made it harder for me to beat someone 1-on-1. I was big, and getting stronger, and so I started to figure out how to use my size to my advantage, using my long reach and my body to protect the puck in tight areas and make plays. I knew I was going to have to be really good at playing this way to make the Battalion.
I finished that year with 67 points in 36 games and we lost in the league final. I felt I had gained a ton that year, confidence, skill, experience, I was way stronger. I felt confident in my chances of making the Battalion the next year. Obviously nothing is a sure bet, but I knew I’d given myself the best chance to earn a spot.
Making The Jump
At camp that fall, not only did I finish a rep on the bench press, but I finished all 10 at 135 pounds and then also put up 175 pounds one time. That was huge for me. To be able to show everybody that I’d put the work in and that I was ready felt great for me, and it added to the confidence I had heading into the season.
I ended up making the team and my OHL career was underway. Looking back, I don’t think I would have made the OHL if it was with any other team. Stan gave me a chance and put me in a great situation almost right away. I played on the 4th line with two other rookies, Kyle Potts and Max Kislinger. He played us a ton, more than a 4th line usually would play, and he put us in situations where we could find success. That was huge for me in finding my bearings and getting comfortable in the league. Stan saw things in me that I hadn’t been able to see in myself to that point in my career. He believed in me.
He also seemed to see some resemblances between my skating and a cartoon deer, because I can remember him calling me “Bambi” during that first year. At 6’4″, only 190, and falling over a lot, I guess I can see how that nickname would have made sense…
That was when I really realized, “I’m just as good if not better than these guys, I can play at that next level.”
My first year in the OHL was a blast. I finished with 6 goals and 7 assists and I learned so much about what it takes to have success, and I learned a lot about myself. That summer was when I knew it was time to be fully committed to getting stronger, faster, and better. I wanted to be the best player I could be and contribute to this team. It was always hard for me to find proper training back home though. There was one public gym in town and with only a handful of us who stayed in hockey that would skate together in the summer, it was difficult to find ways to stay up to speed. New Liskeard is just under two hours driving from North Bay. I decided that year to travel, 3-4 days a week, back and forth from North Bay to train with the Battalion trainer, James Borelli. It was really hard for me to decide to spend even more of the year away from home, but I knew it was going to be better for me, and everyone understood and supported that choice. It turned out to be a great decision. In my first season, I scored 6 goals. In my second year, I had that many in the first half alone. I went home for the Christmas break and came back to North Bay prepared to have a big second half. I ended up scoring 16 more times in that half of the year and finishing with 22 goals and 15 assists. I had finally really found my way and found my game and I now knew how to become an effective player.
That second half of my second year was really a turning point for me in my OHL career. I hadn’t had a thought in those first two years of making a career in hockey. I was prepared to have a good 3 or 4 years in the league and then move on to play USports and get on with school. But I had such a great end to my second year that I showed myself what I could truly do. And if I could do that, couldn’t I be better? I was prepared to do the work to find out.
After that year, I chose to train out of Sudbury, an hour further from home than North Bay. I was there week-on/week-off, so I was staying in Sudbury for a week at a time. I was able to workout with Brock McGillis there, and train with a good group of other guys playing in the OHL. We also had scrimmages, and the NHL guys in Sudbury would come out. It was great for me because it gave me the offseason competition I needed to properly work on things and improve. I started to see strides I was making and I saw what I was able to do against those guys in those scrimmages. That was when I really realized, “I’m just as good if not better than some of these guys, I can play at that next level.”
Here We Go Again
By my third year, I’m a different player than when I came into the league. I’ve grown another 2-3 inches and I’m up over 200 pounds. I’ve learned how to use my size to my benefit and I’m getting better at it every day. I finished the season with 39 goals and 36 assists, which were massive numbers for me. If you asked me if I thought I was capable of that in my first year, I’d say I probably never dreamt of it. Now here I am, with another year to go and the chance to top it.
But before I got that chance, I had another big thing on my mind.
I had already been through the NHL Draft twice before this one, so I already knew that feeling of being passed on. My first draft was after my first year in the league and I think I knew I hadn’t produced at a level that would get me drafted. I was a little optimistic after the second half I had in my sophomore year, that maybe someone would see something in me and take a chance, but nothing came of it. After my third year, I thought that even though it would be a stretch for me to get picked on my third time through the draft, someone was going to like what they saw in me.
Nothing.
I wasn’t taken again, and it was the same old story that I kept seeing everywhere.
“too slow”, “doesn’t skate well enough”, “not fast enough”
Here we go again.
I had worked so hard on my skating over the past couple years, and it had gotten so much better through all of the ice time and everything I did to improve it. Still, the big league teams didn’t think my skating could carry me at the next level. I knew I was a longshot, but it was obviously still disappointing. But I wasn’t going to sit around and feel sorry for myself. I was going to prove to everybody that I belong at the next level. I built on it and used it as my motivation for my last year.
Make or Break
I wasn’t just going back to North Bay for my last year to finish my OHL career and be done with it. It was my fourth season in the league. My job was to go back and dominate. At the Christmas break I was second in the league in goals. At this point I was looking to sign an NHL contract. I knew there were teams interested in me, but I hadn’t heard of anything really solid. I was starting to get frustrated. I knew I still had lots of time, but I heard of other 20-year-olds in the league getting serious interest and it wore on me. Tye Felhaber was having a great year too in Ottawa and I remember he signed with the Dallas Stars at the beginning of March. That was tough for me because I was having a great year myself and felt like that deal could have been mine. I kept working and ended up finishing the regular season second in points and leading the league in goals. I felt like it was only a matter of time before I signed that NHL contract I had worked my whole career for.
We matched up with Niagara in the first round of the playoffs. Darren Dreger tweeted that there was going to be a pretty good list of teams in the building for Game 2 in Niagara. Of course I knew I was under the microscope and teams were watching, but it obviously made me nervous to see that in the middle of a playoff series. You try not to think about it, but of course it’s going to be on your mind and of course it’s probably going to affect you.
I didn’t play my best game ever, but I didn’t feel that it was a bad game for me either. I got a call from my agent after the game, and he told me right then and there that I wasn’t going to be getting an NHL contract.
I was crushed.
It felt like my entire game and the player I am was judged by just one showing. How many 61-goal scorers get zero contract offers in the NHL? Was it all for nothing? Does that not mean SOMETHING?
I didn’t know what to do. In that moment, I thought maybe I wasn’t going to have a shot at my dream and that I was going to be headed to school in the fall.
I decided that I’ve come this far, and I’m so close, that I couldn’t stop there.
Niagara knocked us out of the playoffs that year and my junior career was over. I now knew I wasn’t getting the NHL contract I wanted, but I had a decision to make. I had American League offers to consider to play for an NHL affiliate, or I could have chosen to go and play at a university and likely end my chances of making the NHL. I decided that I’ve come this far, and I’m so close, that I couldn’t stop there.
The Toronto Marlies were one of the teams who offered me a contract.
The Maple Leafs’ farm team want me.
I had good interest from a couple of other teams too, and I narrowed my choice down to three teams. The first two told me I would be playing for the AHL team, one step below the NHL. Everyone knows the pedigree of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and looking at the names on their prospect list was a little intimidating. My dad is a huge Leafs fan, and I think it would be any kid from Ontario’s dream to play for that team, myself included. The Marlies told me pretty much right away that they wanted me to go down and play in the East Coast Hockey League for the Growlers in Newfoundland. Once again, I’m being told something I did not want to hear and being thrown another curveball. On the surface it looked like I was maybe going to get buried in down there.
I ended up getting a call from the Leafs’ GM, Kyle Dubas. He spoke to me about how much he’d seen me play and develop and improve over the years, and basically laid out a plan for me for if I signed with Toronto. It showed me how interested the entire organization really was in me and how invested they were in seeing me succeed. It made the pill of being sent to the East Coast a lot easier to swallow, and it gave me more motivation not to quit.
The Real Work Is Just Getting Started
I chose to sign with the Toronto Marlies.
I bet on myself and took maybe the toughest road I had because I believed in myself and I knew I can do it. See that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter how many people think you can do it if you don’t believe in yourself. To this point, I’ve worked as hard as I could for everything in my hockey career. I worked hard in midget to be drafted, I worked my way onto an OHL team as a 13th round pick, I worked my way up the lineup to lead the league in goals, and now I have to work my way from the ECHL to the AHL to the NHL. I’ve been here before. I know what I need to do.
I spent last season, the first of my 2-year deal, with the Growlers in St. John’s. I knew when I signed that I was probably going to be headed there, and it was difficult at first because it wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be. But I knew in going there I was going to have opportunities to play that were going to help make me better. I had the chance there to work on my game even more. I have been training with the power skating coach for the Leafs, Barb Underhill, for two years now and I feel like the biggest knock on my game is finally turning into a strength for me. I had a great year in Newfoundland, finishing on the league All-Rookie Team, and I’m now set to play my first full year with the Marlies, just one step away from that NHL dream. But it really isn’t so much a dream anymore is it? It’s my goal. I know that it won’t be easy, nothing worth having is. I’ve worked everyday for so many years to be here. I’ve given myself the chance. I was fortunate enough to be invited to main camp for the Leafs this past December in a year where only 35 players were invited, something I wasn’t expecting to come so soon.
More motivation.
I’m so close.
Now it’s up to me to push myself even harder to go earn it. The real work is just getting started.
Written By: David Elford
Contributions By: Justin Brazeau
SPAD Players Tribune 
SO SO PROUD OF OUR HOMETOWN BOY “JUSTIN BRAZEAU ” KEEP US POSTED LOOKING FORWARD TO WATCHING YOU PLAY IN THE NHL ……DON”T EVER STOP BELIEVING IN YOURSELF ……YOU CAN AMD WILL ACCOMPLISH YOUR GOAL ….STAY POSITIVE ….KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK ….WE ARE ALL SO PROUD OF YOU ! KAREN DODDS NORTH BAY ( MY HOMETOWN NEW LISKEARD ) GOOD LUCK TAKE CARE AND STAY SAFE !
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….sometimes a scout/coach finds a diamond in the rough….best player to play all OHL career in NB…thx Dan MacDonald..
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