Jets forward Dano follows in his father’s pro hockey footsteps

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This article was published 13/12/2016 (3268 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a youngster, Marko Dano’s hockey hero was his father, Jozef, whose long career in Europe included two appearances at the Winter Olympic Games.

But when the Winnipeg Jets winger slipped on his first pair of skates and started shuffling along the ice at the local rink, it turns out mother knew best.

While Jozef Dano was playing professional hockey in the Czech Republic, Marko’s mom, Andrea, assumed the task of teaching her little guy how to skate in their home town of Trencin, Slovakia.

The now-22-year-old, who has played parts of three NHL seasons with three different teams, recalls he wasn’t exactly a willing participant.

“I think I was like three years old. My mom and our babysitter brought me to the rink. They wanted to surprise my dad, so she wanted me to learn how to skate while he was away,” Marko said recently. “So, we’re going to the rink and I just remember sitting in the penalty box. I didn’t want to skate. I just wanted to have hot chocolate on the bench.

“My mom says I skated around a little bit. I’d do one lap and then I just wanted to sit there and not do it anymore. But she did a pretty good job teaching me.”

The Jets acquired the left-shooting forward in February from Chicago (along with a first-round draft selection) in the deal that sent Andrew Ladd to the Blackhawks. In 21 games with Winnipeg after the trade, Marko had four goals and four assists.

Marko didn’t crack the Jets’ opening-night roster this fall, but he was called up from the Manitoba Moose of the AHL at the beginning of November, scoring in his NHL season debut Nov. 13 in Washington. He now has three goals — the last coming Nov. 13 in a 3-2 shootout win over the Los Angeles Kings — and six assists in 22 games. 

While his parents are no longer together, both were instrumental in Marko’s hockey development and his quest to move to North America and carve out a career in the NHL, he said. 

Andrea was recently in Winnipeg to watch Marko play and help celebrate his birthday Nov. 30. Jozef is due to visit his son during the holiday season.

Jozef, just two weeks shy of his 48th birthday, played the majority (1995-2001) of his 10-year pro career with Trinec Ocelari HC of the Czech Republic’s elite league, while his family was about five hours away in Trencin. He was also a member of Slovakia’s national team and played in back-to-back Winter Olympics (1994 in Lillehammer, Norway, and 1998 in Nagano, Japan) with some notable NHLers such as Peter Stastny, Ziggy Palffy and Miroslav Satan.

Marko, who was born in 1994 while his mom was working and living for a short time in Eisenstadt, Austria, said he got to watch his dad play at the tail end of his pro career.

“Everyone remembers how he played. He was a centre and he always had his head up. He never looked down at the puck, ever. He just had a feel for the puck,” he said.

“I just remember how good he was: a two-way centre.”

Coach dad

Jozef retired while Marko was playing minor hockey in Trencin. When he was tearing it up as a teenager, his father was an assistant coach with his junior squad.

That wasn’t necessarily an ideal situation, recalled Marko, who is still sporting the remnants of a couple of war wounds to the face, courtesy of an inadvertent high stick by New Jersey Devils blue-liner Kyle Quincey last month.

“I was like 14 or 15. It was kind of weird. Sometimes, I was a little too comfortable, so he always put me back on the track, like dads do,” he said. “Then he stepped away from telling me what I should be doing when I moved on to the pros. He still doesn’t tell me much anymore, he just listens.”

Marko played two seasons (2010-12) with Dukla Trencin, the pro team in his hometown, when he was in his late teens and then spent a year with Bratislava Slovan of the KHL.

He also played for Slovakia’s national junior squad and was selected in the first round (27th overall) of the 2013 NHL Draft by the Columbus Blue Jackets, scoring eight goals in 35 games for the big club during the 2014-15 season before being traded to Chicago in the off-season.

He split much of the 2015-16 season between the Blackhawks and Rockford IceHogs of the AHL before being dealt to Winnipeg. 

His biggest thrill with the Hawks, he said, was getting a chance to play with Marian Hossa, one of his childhood idols. He’d been introduced to him years before when Hossa was Jozef’s teammate both in Trencin and on the Slovakian national squad.

“It was kind of funny. My dad played with him… so, it was kind of cool when I was in Chicago to play with Hossa. My dad played with him when (Hossa) was 18,” Marko said. “Definitely, he’s a great player and a great leader and he helped me a lot when I was in Chicago.

“They sent me down to Rockford during Christmas and he had me over for Christmas dinner, so it was nice of him. On the ice or off the ice, he is a great pro.”

Physical presence

At 5-11, 185 pounds, Marko is noticeably stocky, a fire hydrant on skates. 

While the Dano men have similar builds, Jozef wasn’t one to throw his weight around, said Marko, who still texts his father after every game.

“He’s same size as me. But I’m a little different. I like to run around and throw the body around, be more physical than he was. Those leagues weren’t that physical, just slashing and hooking,” Marko said with a grin.

He has thrown 49 hits this year, fifth-most on his NHL club behind rookie winger Brandon Tanev (81), centre Adam Lowry (80), defenceman Dustin Byfuglien (80) and defenceman Josh Morrissey (72), who’ve all played 10 more games.

Jets head coach Paul Maurice likes Marko’s skill set, the way he thinks the game, his compete level and his grit, but maintains the young player needs to continue working on his acceleration and quickness. 

“Marko gets out there and he hits hard for a guy that’s not moving at a high rate. He’s not running people. You just run into him and you feel it,” Maurice said. “And then he can get his stick on the puck and he can hang on to the puck down low, and those are hard things to do, especially if you can find a guy that can do that and then make a play on the end of it. 

‘We value this guy. We think there’s something there. The quickness is going to be, for me, the deciding factor in terms of how far up the food chain he climbs in the NHL.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell