Check the Journal Tribune Web site this weekend for more information and updates on the 2009 NHL Draft in Montreal.
BIDDEFORD — Brian Dumoulin doesn’t care which of the National Hockey League’s 30 teams takes him during the annual Entry Draft, which gets underway tonight in Montreal.
His mother Deb has other thoughts.
“Someplace warm,” she said, before Dumoulin, Deb, and his father Pete, all hit the road for a weekend trip that could well alter each of their lives forever. “Like Florida. I’ve had enough cold in Maine.”
Whichever dot on the sprawling NHL map the former Biddeford High star defenseman ultimately ends up at is expected to be known by the time the seven-round meet ends late Saturday afternoon.
Wherever he ultimately lands, Dumoulin’s parents will be there in spirit, and probably in person, too.
Since Brian was a 3-year-old toddler, Pete and Deb have spent countless hours hauling their second-born son to practices, games, and tryouts. Through snowstorms, through bone-chilling cold, through all those elements that make Northern New England winters so “delightful.”
And even when Brian was old enough to drive himself, just about the time he was turning heads of college recruiters and professional scouts, Pete and Deb kept driving to the rinks.
All over Maine when the Tigers were winning back-to-back state titles, and last year, all over New England, when Brian was helping the New Hampshire Junior Monarchs win its third straight Tier III national championship.
Every parent believes their kids are special.
Now they were hearing it from other kids’ parents, too.
“Every dad does when they go to these things,“ said Pete, a burly ex-football player at Maine Maritime, now an engineer at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. “And I stood next to so many dads. Everybody wants the best for their kid, and every kid wants to be a pro athlete. Or a fireman. I feel so lucky when I look back at all the dads who stood next to me. They’re still calling me and are excited for Brian.”
Deb has not merely played taxi driver all these years for Brian, as well as older brother John and younger sister Katherine.
A registered dietician who runs the diabetes program through the SMMC Visiting Nurses, Deb rode herd on Brian’s nutritional program.
The benefits have been astounding.
He registered the lowest body fat percentage, 6 percent, out of all 104 top draft prospects measured during last month’s NHL Scouting Combine.
“I was pretty proud of that,” she said. “I was so psyched that my nutrition degree paid off for my family. Not just for my patients.”
Patience will be hard to maintain for the Dumoulins this weekend, as they wait for that one club to make that one all-important selection.
Still it will be a moment that has been some 18 years in the making.
“It just feels so surreal,” Deb said. “When we talk to people, we feel like we’re talking about someone else’s kid. It hasn’t really sunk in. It will be exciting when they call Brian’s name.
“Where ever it is.”
— Contact Dan Hickling at 282-1535 ext. 318 or dhickling@journaltribune.com.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
