Meet Hunter Drew: The most unlikely NHL player ever

At the age of 23, Drew got his first NHL game Tuesday night. It represented the culmination of a journey that started in Jr. C and had stops everywhere in between

Hunter Drew had 17 goals in the American Hockey League at the time of his call-up.

The temptation is to refer to him as Drew Hunter because, let’s face it, that flows a lot better and sounds a lot more natural than Hunter Drew. But the name is definitely Hunter Drew and maybe, just maybe, we’ll all get to know it better someday.

So how often does he get called Drew Hunter? “About every time,” joked Drew. “Especially when you get a penalty on the road. When I was in junior, people wouldn’t have a single clue.”

Neither, apparently did a lot of people who assess NHL talent. But that all changed Tuesday night when the 23-year-old Drew, an emergency call-up by the Anaheim Ducks, played in his first NHL game. And in doing so, he became one of the more unlikely NHL players you’ll ever meet. There is no linear path to the NHL, but there are few that are as circuitous as the one Drew took to his 9:23 of ice time and fight with Jonah Gadjovich of the San Jose Sharks, a player against whom Drew played a lot of minor hockey and lacrosse growing up.

Seven years ago, Drew was playing for something called the Gananoque Islanders in a rather confusing-sounding league known as the Empire B Jr. C Hockey League. He played Jr. C as a 16- and 17-year-old after going undrafted in the Ontario Hockey League. And according to people who follow these things, Drew is the first such player to ever play in an NHL game. A total of 602 players were taken in the 2014 and  ’15 OHL drafts and none of them was named Hunter Drew. Drew points out that his journey to the NHL has taken him through Jr. C, Jr. B, Jr. A,

major junior, the ECHL and the American Hockey League, with a half season in Slovakia thrown in for good measure. (And a position change. More on that later.) Not many players can say that.

It all really started in the summer of 2016. Drew had just finished high school and his second season of Jr. C hockey and had enrolled in the marketing program at St. Lawrence College in Kingston. At that point, he figured his competitive hockey career was over, but he had already paid to train for the summer so he figured he would do that, then hang up his gear. That’s when he got a call from Laurie Barron of the Yarmouth Mariners of the Maritime Jr. Hockey League asking him if he was interested in playing there the following season, but he had already put down his deposit for college. With his parents’ approval, he decided to give it a shot.

That same summer, Charlottetown Islanders coach Jim Hulton was holding a summer camp in Kingston and Drew attended. Hulton asked Drew if, on his way to Yarmouth, he might be interested in stopping in Charlottetown as a walk-on tryout with the Quebec Major Jr. Hockey League team. It took Hulton one pre-season game to see that a big, right-shot defenseman who played a physical game could find a place on his team.

“It’s a hell of a story,” Hulton said. “Yes he had the size, but he earned it. He worked his ass off and he just blossomed. I think that deep-down, he always had a belief in himself. It reminded me when I coached junior in Kingston and I had Chris Stewart, a guy who had quit hockey, then came back and made it to the NHL.”

Drew’s stat line read 0-0-0 with an even plus-minus and five penalty minutes, courtesy of this fight with Jonah Gadjovich.

In his first year in major junior, Drew was in and out of the lineup as a defenseman and was told in no uncertain terms that he needed to have a big summer of training to keep his spot. He did that and had a major breakout season in 2017-18 and a call from his agent the afternoon of June 23, 2018, that changed everything. “I was having a nap and my phone rang and it was my agent,” Drew said. “He said, ‘You’re not going to believe me, but you just got drafted to the Anaheim Ducks.’ I just ran downstairs and I said, ‘Mom, guess what?’ Next thing you know, my buddies are all showing up at my place.”

Drew played one more year in Charlottetown, then signed an American Hockey League contract with the Ducks’ San Diego Gulls affiliate, which led to a two-way NHL deal that kicked in last season. Toward last summer, Gulls coach Joel Bouchard and Ducks director of player development Todd Marchant asked him if he would be interested in moving to forward. Well, to say he was asked might be gilding the lily just a wee bit. “They just said, ‘We don’t have any room on the back end and you played some forward last year and you were all right, so essentially, if you want a chance, we want you to play up front,’ ” Drew said. “I didn’t have a choice, so I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ I just went to San Diego and said to myself, ‘I have absolutely nothing to lose.’ To be totally honest, I 90 percent thought I was going to be sent to the coast (ECHL) and maybe come back in the middle of the year.”

Instead, he instantly found his groove as a right winger in San Diego. When he was called up to Anaheim, he had 17 goals and was third in scoring on the team, but first in penalty minutes with 134. When he first got the text from Ducks assistant GM Jeff Solomon asking Drew to call him, he was afraid he had done something wrong. A couple of nights later, he found himself in the lineup against the Sharks, then found himself dropping the gloves with Gadjovich after hitting Noah Gregor of the Sharks from behind. “They had hit the post twice and I was saying, ‘Please don’t give me a minus in my first game,’ ” Drew said. “I was feeling pretty lucky and then Gregor wheeled behind the net and I hit him from behind. (Gadjovich) came over and said, ‘Let’s go.’ If somebody hit my teammate from behind and I said, ‘Let’s go,’ I would hope they’d say yes.”

Drew expects to be in the lineup Friday night for the Ducks’ last game of the season, then will go back to San Diego to play in the AHL playoffs. What was a dead dream a few years ago is now very real and very attainable. In fact, there’s a chance Drew could replace the traded Nicolas Deslauriers in the Ducks’ lineup as a bottom-nine energy guy. So what would Drew say now to that 17-year-old who was playing Jr. C hockey? “That’s a good question,” Drew said. “I guess I’d tell him not to give up on his dreams and not to give up on himself.”