Fathers’ trip extra special for Schmidts as Nate’s role on Capitals has grown
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Version 0 of 1. TAMPA — When Nate Schmidt missed the Washington Capitals’ annual fathers’ trip last season with a shoulder injury, the pain was felt across two generations. Tom Schmidt had already bought a plane ticket to Washington to join his son. “I felt worse for him than I did for myself,” said Nate, who warned his father even before his injury that, as a fringe NHL player, his roster spot was tenuous with the big club. There was no doubt father and son would make the trip this season. Nate is playing top-pair minutes on Washington’s defense with Brooks Orpik out with an injury. The son has finally arrived as an NHL regular, which wasn’t the case last season even before Schmidt injured his shoulder. And that’s what makes this trip even more rewarding for Tom, who takes greater pride in Nate’s occasionally bumpy journey than in the result. [Capitals come out flat, fall at Florida, 4-1] “His thing for me was that he really never cared how well I did,” Nate said this week. “He really just cared if I worked hard and put in good efforts. That’s kind of how we measure my game.” At the Capitals’ morning skate in Sunrise, Fla., the first stop of the fathers’ trip, Tom echoed that sentiment while watching Nate at work. Like his other siblings, Nate’s first job was at his parents’ business, Schmidty’s gas and convenience, a multi-town chain of family-run stores around St. Cloud, Minn. Back then, he saw his father as strict, so Nate would usually turn to his mother, JoAnn, if he wanted something. Now, Nate calls Tom after every game (unless he’s in Canada), occasionally quizzing him about how Washington’s breakouts looked. Tom said he “can’t skate a lick,” though he has tried to learn the sport for the sake of those postgame conversations with his son. “I get to watch it on the NHL Network, and you can see where he makes a mistake,” Tom said. “I know that he’ll bring it up before I do. ‘Do you remember this?’ I go, ‘Yeah, what should you have done?’ He goes, ‘I should have done this.’ You eventually get it.” Tom played basketball, football and ran track, so he was seemingly involved in every sport except the one Nate gravitated to in hockey-frenzied Minnesota. If Nate’s hockey bag wasn’t at the door when it was time to leave, he wasn’t going to practice that day. Even when roller-bags became popular, Tom told Nate, “If you can’t carry your bag, you can’t play this game.” [Capitals mired in even-strength scoring slump] It hit Tom that his son had talent when he saw three University of Minnesota players at one of Nate’s Peewee practices. Another player’s father went over to the Gophers to inquire why they were there. They wanted to see a 12-year-old Nate Schmidt skate. “Up until then, honest to gosh, I thought he was going to be a baseball player,” Tom said. Major League Baseball scouts would come out to see Nate, trying to gauge the speedster’s interest. One scout asked Tom, “Is he really that good at hockey? We’d like to draft him.” Tom told the scout not to waste the draft pick — there was no chance Nate would abandon his skates. “I’m tickled pink just to be here and just the fact that he’s here and he’s got the opportunity to play,” Tom said. “I’ll have people back home ask me, ‘What did you do? How did you get Nate to where he is?’ I’ll go, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ “I got him up in the morning, and I got him to practice. He’s done all of this on his own. He’s just such a good kid, and I’m just so proud of him.” |