Lisa Steinmetz

Cole Caufield’s first moments in the @NHL: “When I got called up at the end of the 2021 regular season, I didn’t even think I was going to play. We were on a road trip out west, and I was just along for the ride. Healthy scratch. Get acclimated. Practice with the guys. And man, those were some guys. Shea Weber. Carey Price. Eric Staal. Corey Perry. Tyler Toffoli. I was coming into that room probably looking like the water boy. I couldn’t have been more starstruck. We’re at a morning skate in Calgary, and it was a bag skate, of course. I’m thinking I’m going back to the hotel for a nice nap, throw on the suit, sit up in the press box and have a Gatorade. We’re on the bus and somebody tells me, ‘Hey, you’re playing tonight.’ I thought they were joking. I said, ‘Oh my God, we just bag skated. I’m toast.’ I called my parents and my brother, and that was an awesome moment, just them getting choked up and saying, ‘We’ll be watching you on TV.’ That was the hardest nap of my life. I couldn’t even sit still. I mean…. I’m somebody who started skating in diapers. Me and my brother used to watch the NHL and be playing carpet hockey in full gear in the living room, pretending that we were those guys. I demanded to wear my hockey socks and everything. So yeah, that night in Calgary was pretty much the greatest 15 minutes and even plus-minus of my life. I thought that was probably going to be it — a couple games at the end of the season. But we had a few injuries, and somehow I ended up in the playoff lineup. Everything went so fast that I don’t even think I had time to be nervous. I’ll never forget, I was just so happy to be there and so amped up that we were at a morning practice at the start of Round 2 against Winnipeg, and we’re just supposed to be warming up the goalies, right? Nice and easy. We’re in the shootout line, and I get up to the front, and I had this goosebumps moment where I guess it finally sunk in like, ‘You’re a Montréal Canadien. You’re coming down on Carey Price right now. This is unbelievable.’ I came flying down like a bat out of hell at a freaking morning practice after Game 2 of a playoff series — guys are literally still yawning, stretching — and I absolutely rip one on net. As soon as I let it go, I thought, Oh s***. I smoked Carey right in the face. The sound was insane. Everybody stopped. You could have heard a pin drop in there. All I could think was, Is Shea looking at me? Is he going to kill me? I wanted to dig a hole in the ice and hide. Thank God, it was Carey Price. He shook it off like it was nothing, and he’s the chillest guy ever, so he wasn’t even mad at me. But then I skated back to the line and one of our vets just looked at me and said…. ‘Hey kid?’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Don’t ever f****** do that again.’ Noted. Noted. I think I went five-hole on Carey for the next two months. The puck never left the ice.” playerstribu.ne/Caufield @colecaufield | @CanadiensMTL

Cole Caufield’s dad? He’s the ultimate hockey dad: “We grew up in Wisconsin, and if you don’t know much about American hockey, then you probably think, ‘OK, so that’s like Minnesota and Michigan, right? Powerhouse.’ But in terms of hockey culture, at least at that time, if you were a Wisconsin kid, everybody kind of looked at you like, ‘Ehhh. I dunno.’ The competition just wasn’t the same. If you wanted to make a name for yourself, you had to go to play in tournaments in Chicago or Minnesota or Detroit. So that’s what we did. We drove. Or I should say, that’s what my parents did. I didn’t do jack s***! Hahahah. They did all the work. I sat in the back and watched movies and tried to hold my pee like a hero. As I got older — around 12 or 13 — I got a chance to go play for Team Illinois. Without blinking an eye, my dad was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ An easy weekend was a 4-hour drive. But sometimes we’d have games in Detroit, and it was 8 hours each way. We’d hit the road after school on Thursday and be gone til Sunday. My mom was a third grade teacher, so she couldn’t leave her class. It would just be me and my dad, and my dad…. Well, he’s a wildman. He coached and ran our local rink. Kind of like the ultimate Hockey Dad. I could talk for hours about him, but this is him in one image….. You know those old-school hand gripper things that are supposed to make your forearms huge? He had one from like 1982. He would be cruising down the highway gripping the wheel with one hand and crushing sets with the gripper in the other hand. Maniac. And the funniest part was that he loved listening to 80s on 8 on Sirius. So he’s blasting Phil Collins with the windows rolled down, just crushing sets with the gripper. Then he’d hand it over to me. ‘Your turn.’ ‘Come on, guy. I’m 12.’ (He flips into coach mode.) ‘Shooting is all about the forearms. That’s what people don’t understand....’ ‘Dad, I can’t feel my thumbs.’ (Ultimate coach mode) ‘Alright, go ahead and take it easy. But there’s another kid out there somewhere working twice as hard as you.’ ‘There’s a kid out there with … two grippers?’ (This whole conversation takes place while ‘I Can Feel It Coming In the Air Tonight’ is blasting). Brutal. But hey, I guess it worked. I was an undersized kid, so we were always looking for any kind of edge. My dad had this saying, and it still sticks with me now…. He said, ‘Once you’re satisfied, it’s time to quit.’ He never made me do anything, but he was always there on Thursday afternoon, behind the wheel, just ready to roll. It’s crazy to me that he never complained about having to drive 60 hours a month so I could have a chance to play against better competition. If it wasn’t for my dad, I never would have made it to the NHL. At my size, coming from a football town in Wisconsin, there’s no way. To be honest, the NHL wasn’t really even my dream at first. It didn’t seem realistic. My dream was to get a free college education and play for the Badgers.” playerstribu.ne/Caufield @colecaufield | @CanadiensMTL