Pardy knows the score

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This article was published 29/09/2014 (4012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another training camp for Adam Pardy, another fight to stay in the big-league lights. It’s a battle as familiar to him now as the scrape of skates on ice.

It doesn’t get easier as you get older. The aches of practice last a little longer, something the Jets defenceman has noticed in this, his 10th season on the pro hockey grind.

“I was just saying this morning when I got off the ice, jeez, I feel 30 now,” Pardy said Sunday. “It’s just a part of getting older. You gotta put a little more time in off the ice to make sure you’re ready… After a long time being beaten around, I kind of know what my body can handle.”

At this, Pardy itemizes what he has already handled. He’s a sturdy player, 6-4 and oaken shouldered, his face inscribed by a career’s worth of battle scars. He’s played with broken bones, he recalled, he’s played with a blown-out shoulder. He’s played through all the thumps the game can bring — and every time he’s gotten back up and tried again to keep his tenuous place at the pinnacle of this hockey thing.

Back with the Jets after signing a workaday one-year, $700,000 deal early in the off-season, Pardy is back in that battling position. The top of the Jets defence is largely written in pen, led by locks Toby Enstrom, Jacob Trouba and Zach Bogosian. Mark Stuart will be sticking around too, no doubt. But as for who will fill the roster out — well, head coach Paul Maurice hasn’t made his mind up. Yet.

“Still a big question mark there, for me,” Maurice said, after leading two groups through practice Sunday. “A bit wide open. Grant Clitsome comes back, we’ve had him on his off-side, and I thought second game, real big improvement from the first. And if that progression keeps going, certainly he’s right in the mix. But that’s open.”

Assuming Clitsome too is a lock, that leaves two defence spots up for grabs, maybe three, depending on how many extra blue-line bodies the Jets decide to carry. For those spots, there are six players looking to make their mark. They include Keaton Ellerby, re-signed late in the off-season on a two-way deal, and big, dependable Pardy. There is whip-smart youngster Josh Morrissey and defensive-minded Ben Chiarot, power-play specialist Paul Postma and newcomer Julien Brouillette.

Those are six very different players, in both skill and type. That’s part of the puzzle, though, trying to see who fits just right.

“You take a look at your top four, see how they’re built, and decide whether you need more puck-movers, you need more physicality, whatever,” Maurice said. “I’m looking for two guys that first can play well together, that have some chemistry, that move the puck. And then, we’ve got Mark back there who’s a heavy hitter, Zach is a physical defenceman. So we’ve got room for a puck-mover, and room for a little more size.”

Size, that could be music to Pardy’s ears. He can bring that, and some stability too. He comported himself well in the role he was given in 60 games for the Jets last season: Although he didn’t face the opposition’s top players as often as most other Jets blue-liners, when he was on the ice the Jets outshot their opponents by a healthy margin. And hey, he played through getting a beer dumped on his head — that’s gotta count for something.

But Pardy hasn’t forgotten he started the season in St. John’s — home, for him — and that it took a neck injury to Trouba to open the door.

“I was so close to spending the whole year in the minors,” Pardy said. “You try and never look too far down the road because you never really know what’s going to happen. You just gotta keep working on your game to try and make yourself better.”

‘I think it’s just a perseverance, more than anything. You look at Newfoundland as a culture, we’ve gone through a hell of a lot of bad times’

There’s no real secret to getting through the battle, as Pardy explained, it’s just an attitude. Chin up, as Newfoundlanders have long learned how to do. Pardy learned that part growing up in the lean 1990s winters on the Rock, living off fish, and potatoes his family grew in their garden. The resilience of a place that’s pulled itself up by the bootstraps and kept singing, time and time again — yeah, that transfers to this game.

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“I think it’s just a perseverance, more than anything,” he mused. “You look at Newfoundland as a culture, we’ve gone through a hell of a lot of bad times… you think about those hard times, they’re not really that hard, but it comes down to persevering. You realize what you want in your life. Ultimately, you want to be happy. If you apply that to hockey, you can find ways to be positive.”

Plus, things change. If Pardy goes back down again, if he stays — well, he can remember starting out in the minors, slinging pucks in such glamourous spots as Illinois (Moline, not Chicago) and Omaha and Las Vegas.

“I never thought I would make it to the NHL,” he said. “It just kind of fell in my lap that a couple injuries happen, and then a salary cap came in, and Calgary had to move $4 million because they were over the cap, and at that time I was the top D-man in the minors. Things just kinda happen in hockey that way.”

And in the end? “You have to realize that you have to stay patient, and just trust your instincts,” he said. “What you are is, you’re a hockey player, or you’re not. And you have to stay patient within that. Opportunities are going to come… I’ve seen it my whole career.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.