Homegrown hockey stars Nick and Nathan Spaling will be offering a hockey school at the local arena this summer.
Nick, a veteran National Hockey League winger, coming off his first season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, said the school will be held at the PMD arena from Aug. 24 to 28.
The experience will be open to Novice to Pee Wee age players and focus on skills training.
“Just a lot of fundamentals,” Nick told the Wellington Advertiser in a telephone interview. “Individual skills, at that age, are what we’re going to focus on.”
While the focus will be on-ice, the school will also include an off-ice educational component.
“A few talks, a few seminars after each skate, introducing different aspects of playing hockey and things you’ve got to focus on, such as nutrition, training, maybe some sessions for parents … about having a plan, or the best route for going as far as you can in hockey.”
While Nick has forged a seven-year career as a professional and has been a full-time NHLer for the past five years, including four with the Nashville Predators before last summer’s trade to Pittsburgh, Nathan has also played plenty of high level hockey.
Both played minor hockey locally before moving on to play at the AAA level in Waterloo and with the Huron-Perth Lakers. Nathan played a year with the OHL’s Guelph Storm, getting into 19 games in the 2003-04 season, before joining Nick on the Cherrey Cup-winning Listowel Cyclones Junior B squad the following season.
“That was a pretty fun year, to be able to play with him and then to win it was pretty exciting,” Nick recalls.
The brothers travelled separate hockey paths from that point, as Nick moved on to the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers and was drafted by the Predators in the second round of the 2007 draft.
Nathan continued to play Junior B in Thorold for two more years before enrolling in a criminology course at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. At UOIT he captained the school’s hockey team for several years and was named male athlete of the year in 2009-10, when he recorded eight goals and 20 assists in a 28-game season.
More recently, while Nick was plying his trade at the NHL level, Nathan skated in intramural games at the University of Windsor, where he graduated with a law degree this spring.
Nick is back at his off-season home in Waterloo after the Penguins’ frustrating first-round playoff elimination at the hands of the New York Rangers.
“The year was a little disappointing with how it finished. We had a lot of injuries. We had a lot of different things that didn’t seem to stack up in our favour. When it came down to it, we just didn’t get it done,” said Nick, who had a goal and an assist in the five-game series after recording nine goals and 18 assists in 82 regular season games.
While they didn’t hoist the cup this year, Nick is still relishing the move to a hockey hotbed with the chance to play alongside some of the league’s biggest stars, including Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
“The big change is going into one of the bigger hockey markets in the league and playing with some of the best players in the world. It’s pretty cool to be a part of that, to be able to experience that and have that opportunity.”
Nick also notes he likes the idea of playing for a team that is a perennial cup contender with a string of nine consecutive playoff appearances.
“They’ve got a core group of guys there that, every year, they’ve got a chance. They’ve got a good group returning and its an exciting thing to be a part of,” he said.
“It’s fun to know that they invested in big pieces of their team and it’s great for the other pieces they put together because you always know that you have a chance.”
The hockey school is something the brothers have talked about for years and finally got a chance to go ahead with this summer. They will be joined on the ice by their father Charles Spaling, whom Nick says provided he and Nathan with some good coaching growing up.
“I know he’s excited to be getting back into helping kids out,” said Nick.
Mapleton-Minto 81’s forward Zach Graham, a Palmerston native and another former Listowel Cyclone, who played four years of NCAA hockey with Adrian College in Michigan, will also be on the ice at the hockey school.
“I think it will be a good mix of people there for kids to take lessons from, and take whatever they can from the week,” Nick stated.
The Spalings are setting up a not-for-profit corporation to run the school on a charitable basis.
More information on registration will be released as things are finalized.
“We are very fortunate that Drayton has been supportive of the idea and we are looking to deliver a special experience for young players in the area,” states Nick.
