March 19, 2008

How I Became a Hockey Player
By TJ Miller

Being from California I get made fun of a lot for playing hockey. No one even thinks about California as having a hockey rink, let alone a player that can play Division I hockey. While playing in Canada or here at Northern Michigan, people always ask me questions about why I play hockey and not baseball or football, or another common question, "did you bring your surf board?" People don't want to believe California is becoming a hot bed for young hockey players. As for me, playing hockey started at a young age skating on roller skates while using a wood stick from Wal-Mart and trying to keep up with my older brother and older neighbor.

We would play endlessly in front of our house everyday for years on roller skates and then onto rollerblades. When I was eight years old, my parents finally asked me if I wanted to play in a roller hockey league near our house. For three years, my dad and I would go to numerous tournaments in countless cities. When I was 11 years old, my longtime roller hockey coach and his son asked my dad if I could try out for an ice hockey team in a few months. At the time I really never skated on ice, I had always played on roller skates. After my parents talked about it they finally decided to let me try out. So I was off to the rink as many times as I could a week to figure out how to skate on ice. After all I didn't know how to stop, let alone get dressed in all that gear.

The decision to play hockey was a big deal for my family and me because it meant giving up the other sport I loved which was soccer. I played soccer for as long as I could remember and I was already going to play on the varsity team at the high school I was going to attend. But hockey was the sport I loved most and wanted to play. The whole time that I played minor league hockey in California, I never played AAA. I tried out a few times but no one seemed to think that I was good enough so I stuck with playing tier II and ended up placing 7th and 3rd at nationals the last two years of playing Midget AA for the Long Beach Ice Dogs.

I still had one year left of midgets and I was planning on playing for the Junior Kings Midget AAA team in Los Angeles. Tryouts went well and I was going to be named one of the captains on the team, but then I met Sean Patterson and he had just come back from playing in the British Columbia Hockey League for the South Surrey Eagles. He worked with my brother at a local hockey rink and we started skating a lot together. He thought I had potential to play in the BCHL so he called the owner of the Eagles, who just happened to live in Newport Beach about 20 minutes from my house. The owner and his son, who was still on the team, came and watched me play in a scrimmage. I knew he was coming to watch me so I tried to play as well as I could and after the skate he decided that I should play for the Eagles and he signed me on the spot. All of the sudden I was 17 and leaving home and everything I knew and I was off to Canada.

My second year in Canada I was traded to the Penticton Vees. I was nervous at first but as the year went on, I made some great friends. I was selected to play in the inaugural Canadian Junior A Hockey League Top-40 Prospects Game in Yorktown, Saskatchewan. I was named a starter in the BCHL All-Star game. I was voted the top defensemen in the interior division. I signed a scholarship to play for Northern Michigan University and was drafted to the NHL by the New Jersey Devils in 2006 ... not too bad from a kid from California.