‘I’m sure he wanted to be a Cale Makar’: Inside the reinvention of T.J. Brodie

Credit: T.J. Brodie (© Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)

This article was written by Gary Mok, who is part of the Professional Hockey Writers Association x To Hockey With Love Mentorship Program. This program pairs aspiring writers with established members of the association across North America to create opportunities for marginalized people that do not traditionally get published on larger platforms covering hockey.

To Hockey With Love is a weekly newsletter covering a range of topics in hockey – from the scandals of the week to providing a critical analysis of the sport.

_____

On a March afternoon between games, T.J. Brodie chuckled when asked about his first year as a professional hockey player.

“The main thing was just how little I knew about playing defense,” he said. “All through junior, what I really focused on was moving the puck and the offensive side of the game.”

The offensive side of the game is the reason many people tune into the Toronto Maple Leafs these days, but the adrenaline rushes that come during those viewings are rarely thanks to Brodie.

William Nylander with the puck on his stick is Red Bull Energy Drink. Mitch Marner power-killing a penalty is downing three shots of espresso. And then there’s the reigning league MVP, and the 80-point captain, and the kid from Scarborough whose mouth is just as aggressive as his forechecking.

And behind the caffeinated Leafs forwards, Brodie is practically their exact opposite, someone who peddles in the lesser appreciated art of anti-fun: stick checks over stick handles, fine over flair. He’s reliable, efficient, pleasantly boring.

Less energy drink, more comfort food.

He’s your grandmother’s beef stroganoff, my mother’s fried rice.

It wasn’t too long ago that his play resembled his more high-octane teammates. Nowadays, the most radical thing about him is probably that he has not one, but two first names.

So how did Thomas James Brodie go from energy drink to comfort food?

***

“His base strength when we drafted him was his offensive play and his skating,” Tod Button, then the Director of Scouting for the Calgary Flames, said in 2010.

Button could have been describing present-day Cale Makar, the Norris Trophy-winning defender with inhuman skating ability. Instead, he was explaining why his team had drafted a young prospect named T.J. Brodie two years prior.

Brodie had broken out in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) as an offensive defenceman, tallying 50 points in 63 games in his post-draft season, followed by 56 points in 65 games (in addition to 15 points in 17 playoff games) the next year. All of Brodie’s focus on his offensive game had set him up as a player to watch when he graduated from the OHL to the American Hockey League (AHL) the following year.

“I remember him walking into the room, this skinny, fit guy,” said Steve O’Rourke, one of Brodie’s coaches when the defender first joined Calgary’s AHL affiliate in Abbotsford. “He had such high expectations that (we thought:) ‘Oh wow, this guy’s going to come in, he’s going to run the powerplay.’”

Brodie did more than just run the powerplay.

In his first professional season, Brodie led all Abbotsford defenders in points. Even more impressively, his 34 points put him only one behind the team’s leader, Matt Keith, a forward who had played nine more AHL games than Brodie that year.

As a 20-year-old, “he was probably our best offensive defenceman,” said O’Rourke.

His outsized impact for the AHL squad led to his first NHL games, which his former Calgary Flames captain remembered fondly.

“(Brodie) had a great camp when he came in,” said Mark Giordano, Brodie’s twice-teammate with the Flames and Leafs. “He had like four or five goals in his first training camp (and) got games on the team really young.”

Despite being asked to play predominantly on his off-side (if you haven’t heard, Brodie is a lefty defender who comfortably plays on the right), he eventually blossomed in Calgary playing next to Giordano.

“He was a lot of fun to play with,” said Giordano, who noted how he and Brodie thought the game in a similar way.

In his early years, he was more energy drink than comfort food.

“He has one elite skill, and that is his skating,” O’Rourke said. “His ability to skate, (to) get himself out of trouble, (to) get the puck to the next level… created offence for everyone else around him.”

His game also — believe it or not — came with a fair bit of risk.

In O’Rourke’s words, Brodie was “a free spirit” who “came out (of junior) with that great skating, but a lot of nights that could get him in trouble.”

Added Brodie: “The details and just the little things defensively, I had no idea about.”

***

Today, nobody would talk about Brodie as knowing little about defending, or the details of the game.

In a deep dive on his play published this past fall, Cam Charron of The Athletic described Brodie’s game as “incredibly simple,” “not very pretty,” and “without any trouble.”

“I think now, if you ask anybody, he’d be considered more of a defensive shutdown guy,” Giordano said.

Brodie was once a player with raw, riskier offensive ingredients who has turned out to be an “incredibly simple” meal. Much like comfort food.

And turning raw ingredients into actual comfort food is no easy feat. Legit comfort food has to hit both nostalgia and certainty, a happy memory that can be unlocked with taste buds reliably and repeatedly. My comfort food is my mother’s fried rice.

It consists of diced onion, minced garlic, scrambled egg, and her choice of protein (usually BBQ pork or Spam). The secret ingredient is not the green onion from her garden, or a particular brand of oyster sauce, or the sesame oil she sprinkles in only at the end.

Her key is that she must use day-old white rice from the fridge (“The fridge sucks out the rice’s moisture,” she says).

But this means that, if I want to make her fried rice myself, I always have to cook rice at least one day in advance. I can’t make my comfort food on a whim; it takes intention.

Becoming an NHL team’s comfort food, like Brodie has, took similar intentionality.

“I think you learn who you are and what you’re capable of,” Brodie said, describing how he came to grips with the kind of defender he needed to become. “Everyone has to know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and you’ve got to play to your strengths.”

Not every player is capable of such self-reflection. Not every player can admit that their strength went so quickly from having the puck on their stick to playing without needing it at all (Brodie now considers his defensive stick to be his most valuable skill). Not every player is capable of adaptation, let alone reinvention.

But Brodie is not every player.

***

O’Rourke, now the associate coach for the OHL’s Oshawa Generals, has worked with a number of defenders who started out like Brodie, all flash and dash. A lot of them don’t have quite the same career path though.

“When he came in, I’m sure he wanted to be a Cale Makar,” O’Rourke said, “but when those moments don’t open up and people say to you, ‘Hey, you can maybe be more successful as this piece beside Giordano. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to change your identity?’ T.J., with his personality, his coachability, he saw that, he recognized that, he embraced that.”

“We had a lot of good years,” Giordano recalled. “I had a lot of success offensively because of him. (I) could jump into the play and know he’s reliable back there.”

Jumping into the play with his skating used to be Brodie’s bread and butter, but now he was the reliable one, the one preventing all the potential trouble. It took a lot of time for him to realize this is who he wanted to be.

“You learn that you don’t need to jump up every single shift and join the rush,” Brodie explained. “You need to pick your spots and make sure, regardless of what happens, you’re on the defensive side of the puck (and) able to recover.”

Brodie’s desire to succeed superseded the crutches to remain what he was. And so he made sacrifices to transform his on-ice self into a closer facsimile to one of his hockey idols growing up: Red Wings legend Steve Yzerman

“I think I was 7 when (Detroit) won their first Cup (in the 90’s),” Brodie recalled, “I got to watch (Yzerman), got to see him in person. And I just admired the type of player he was. He was skilled, but he was willing to do whatever it took to make the team successful. And if that meant not putting up as many goals or points, then that’s what he was willing to do.”

Yzerman’s career and Brodie’s own personality have driven the defender’s on-ice reinvention, but age and experience played a part as well.

Giordano has seen that in Brodie and in himself.

“When you get older, I think you’ve got to throw your ego about getting points and stuff like that out the door,” Giordano said. “If you can play really well defensively, you last a long time in the league.”

Brodie’s play was once all charisma, bravado, adrenaline. Trouble sometimes, but that was part of the package. Now he’s calm, unassuming, arguably dull. For a Maple Leafs blueline that has seen its fair share of mishaps and catastrophes over the years, perhaps dull is perfection.

***

Brodie does not have a favourite food.

“I’ll eat pretty much anything, don’t really have a favourite,” he said.

Pressed to reveal a specific food that brings him comfort and joy, he speaks of something else intentional.

“I’m not a picky eater,” he said. “(But) I try to keep a balanced diet.”

Those final words ring through to me. Because they’re exactly what my mother used to say whenever I would overindulge on foods, like her fried rice, that I so often craved.

Trying to keep a balanced diet is good advice for living a healthy life. It might also be good advice for a team full of energy drinks and espresso shots — a team that may need some balance in their lineup to achieve their ultimate goal.

“We have enough guys on forward and on D who are going to put the puck in the net,” Giordano said. “We gotta keep it out.”

For these Leafs to win a Cup, or even a playoff round, they might need more of the player who has learned the value of responsible, reliable hockey.

The player who has learned to pick his spots. The player who knows his strengths and plays to them.

The player trying to keep a balanced diet, in hockey and in life.

_____

‘I’m sure he wanted to be a Cale Makar’: Inside the reinvention of T.J. Brodie

More from the PHWA x To Hockey With Love Mentorship Program