Erik Gustafsson’s Long Drive: Balancing Hockey and Fatherhood in Grand Rapids
Ending up in Grand Rapids was never part of the plan, but the veteran defender has found a way to try and make the most of it.
Erik Gustafsson was on the road before sunrise on Wednesday.
Getting in his car in the metro Detroit area, making the roughly 150-mile and two-hour drive to Grand Rapids, to be ready in time for an 11 am puck drop against the Toronto Marlies.
He drove back Wednesday afternoon, and was planning on doing the same thing Thursday morning, albeit slightly later, to make it to Grand Rapids in time for the Griffins noon practice today.
That’s the current reality for Gustafsson, who has regularly been spending more than four hours on the road each day to best balance his hockey career and being a present dad to his three young kids, doing his best to attend after-school activities after shuttling back-and-forth to Grand Rapids for practice.
Now 33, this has been one of the more difficult on-ice seasons of Gustafsson’s career. After winning a full-time NHL job during the 2017-18 season with the Chicago Blackhawks, he established himself as an NHL regular for seven seasons, signing a two-year contract with the Detroit Red Wings before last season.
That first season in Detroit was a struggle and he failed to deliver as the power play specialist that Steve Yzerman wanted, something that was amplified by the fact Detroit chose to sign him at a cheaper rate instead of Shayne Gostisbehere, who has continued to his career renaissance with the Carolina Hurricanes.
Gustafsson was then passed up in training camp this fall by Red Wings teenager Axel Sandin-Pellikka and dropped even further on the depth chart because of the additions of Travis Hamonic and Jacob Bernard-Docker, leading to his first AHL assignment in seven years.
We can have a larger discussion one way or the other about whether the Red Wings made the tough, but right hockey decisions or not in this regard. But too often this story gets told without the human element, without bringing up the fact that there are larger families impacted by roster decisions, not just the men on the ice.
And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to Gustaffson after the Griffins beat the Marlies 3-2 in overtime on Wednesday. By all accounts he could have sulked and been a negative force in Grand Rapids, he could have let it impact others and there have been many stories of a salty veteran spoiling an AHL locker room.
Instead Gustafsson, and Justin Holl for that matter, have made the most of a personally disappointing situation. In both formal and informal talks I’ve had with Griffins players and staffers, everyone has raved about how much the two veteran defenders have embraced being leaders in a place where, at it’s core, they don’t want to be.
“It can be tough,” Gustaffson told me. “The kids will sometimes ask me where I’m going every day, or when we have a road trip and I drive out here to get on the bus, that can feel like a long way from them. But I think it’s something that I don’t take for granted, I’m still playing, still proving I can play.”
Gustafsson also admits that the geography of the NHL-AHL affiliation for Detroit makes it a bit easier, a two-hour drive is doable, while there are several other places in the NHL-AHL landscape where he’d be doing weeks without seeing his kids.
“It could be much worse,” Gustafsson said. “And that’s not why you have a good attitude, but it certainly helps you have a better one.”
The Griffins are also really good. No, like really, really good, and one of the early Calder Cup contenders.
Through 10 games the Griffins are 9-0-1, they are the only team in the league without a regulation loss and they’ve outscored teams 40-22 during this start. Part of the reason has been the foundation provided by Gustafsson and Holl on the top pair, while both struggled in the NHL last season, they’ve been controlling minutes and AHL chaos, while also adding offensive spark for the Griffins.
I’ve covered the AHL for a long time, to me it’s one of the most fascinating leagues in the world, it’s also a league where wins and losses aren’t determined by how strong or weak a prospect pool is. Teams win or lose in the AHL, because of their veteran players and organizational depth, the players that are insulators and facilitators so prospects can have extreme ups-and-downs.
Grand Rapids has one of the best group of insulators I’ve seen when it comes to AHL veterans, in addition to Gustafsson and Holl, the group is very much driven and held together by Sheldon Dries, Austin Watson, and captain Dominik Shine, something Amadeus Lombardi said has been invaluable to his growth as a prospect within the past year.
But it’s one thing for Dries, Waston, and Shine to embrace that role. They, frankly speaking, were signed to do that. Knowing full well that their duty to the franchise is to push development through mentorship. Gustafsson was signed to play in Detroit, he was signed to work on the power play with Patrick Kane, he wasn’t signed to play school-day games in Grand Rapids.
This is where Griffins coach Dan Watson has the most appreciation for what Gustafsson, and Holl, have done. He’s seen and heard AHL horror stories of a frustrated player pulling apart the group, how it can be hard to manage the mix of ego and frustration.
Gustafsson also admits he’s had some of those internal frustrations with this situation, he’s human after all, but he’s made it a point to not let it impact anyone else, nor let it impact his play on the ice. Those two-hour drives, he said, can be a nice time for self reflection, and at the end of the day, he’s playing hockey for a living and finding a way to make sure he’s still being the best dad he can be.
“That’s still more important,” Gustafsson said. “I’m still there for the kids, for my family.”