It could have been a career keepsake for Matvei Gridin.
Instead, it is a wardrobe staple for four-year-old Bo Burgess, something he will be taking to show-and-tell for years to come.
Bo’s dad, Parker, coached Gridin for two seasons with the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks. They were there at the 2024 NHL Draft, when the Calgary Flames selected this Russian speedster toward the end of the first round.
On one of the biggest nights of his life, soon to be topped by his debut in Wednesday’s season-opening Battle of Alberta, Gridin smiled through the photo ops and later gifted his special-edition draft hat — the one he was handed mere moments after his name was called — to his biggest little fan.
“Matvei was one of the guys on the team who was always playing ball hockey with him, so he became like a big brother to my son,” said Parker Burgess, now bench boss for the WHL’s Vancouver Giants. “Even through this pre-season, we would tune in on the Flames app and he’d be like, ‘Matvei scored!’ and we’d FaceTime him and stuff like that.
“It’s just so cool that he made the team. And from what I’ve seen, he’s earned it too. For me too, him being in Calgary, my home city, it makes it even a little bit more special. And I know how excited he is.”
RelatedGridin’s impressive introduction
Gridin was, without a doubt, the breakout story of the fall for the Flames.
The 19-year-old not only stuck around beyond the final cuts, but he’ll be working on the second line — with Morgan Frost at centre and Matt Coronato on right wing — for Wednesday’s curtain-raiser against Connor McDavid and the arch-rival Oilers in Edmonton.
Gridin just switched from No. 51 to No. 92, a nod to his childhood idol Evgeny Kuznetsov.
“Has he done the flying eagle yet after he scored?” asked Pascal Dupuis, a longtime NHL forward and one of Gridin’s coaches last winter with the Shawinigan Cataractes of the QMJHL, referring to Kuznetsov’s preferred celly. “He’s done it in junior. And if he does, it’s because they’re going in and in and in and he’s in a really good mood and he might put it on, which would be a good thing for the team.”
During his days with the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL, Matvei Gridin was ‘like a big brother’ to Bo Burgess, right. Bo’s dad, Parker, was the head coach of the Lumberjacks when Gridin was a standout scorer at that level.
Gridin’s emergence is already a very good thing for a retooling organization.
It’s rare for a late first-rounder — the Flames picked this prospect at No. 28 overall — to land an opening-night job only 17 months later, but this 19-year-old lefty has some standout skills that have seemingly fast-tracked his ascent.
He is a gifted skater and has a knack for knowing when to turn on the jets. As Burgess described: “He can go from glide, glide, glide to top speed really quick, and not a lot of players can do that. And with his reads and his instincts, he’s always in the right spot at the right time to make the play.”
He has an elite shot, which Dupuis characterized as a “lethal wrister.” He proved that when he made Philipp Grubauer, who has been a full-time NHL netminder for the bulk of the past decade, look silly on a shootout goal during exhibition action in Seattle.
And, as both Dupuis and Flames director of player development Ray Edwards praised, he has a burning desire to make the most of his talents.
“Obviously, they all want to play in the NHL,” said Dupuis, who skated for 15 seasons in ‘The Show,’ has his name twice engraved on the Stanley Cup and is now an assistant coach and assistant director of hockey operations for the Cataractes. “But he’s done the little extras here and there to make sure he would get a good shot at it.”
“He’s been trying to get better since the day that I met him,” Edwards echoed. “Last season, every Sunday night, he would always text me — ‘Coach, can we watch my shifts tomorrow?’ ”
‘He is not overwhelmed by it’
Those video sessions, it should be noted, are not all pump-up and pat-on-the-back.
“A lot of those, we’d be pounding, pounding, pounding the work and the second effort,” Edwards said. “It was a lot of, ‘Keep going. Stay on the puck. Don’t give up there. Keep tracking. You should win that puck. How can you win that puck next time?’
“Yeah, we did do some offensive days, where we’d talk about attacking D and different ways to create offence. But a lot of it was the checking piece. Believe me, it’s not a finished product with him from a checking and defending perspective. But he had to understand how important that was. And on those calls, I’m sure he was like, ‘Holy cow Rayzor, can we do some other stuff?!? Enough of the checking!’ But the one thing that always stood out to me was that he was accountable for his game. If he wasn’t good, he would own up to it. He wasn’t one of those guys that would try to blow smoke.
“And I think it’s a big reason why he is where he is now. You have to be a good measure of your own game.”
It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Gridin has checked his way into the Flames’ opening-night mix but, besides an ugly giveaway that resulted in an opposition goal on split-squad night, he made his case for a roster spot with a well-rounded game for a rookie.
Matvei Gridin scores on Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck during pre-season action.
After he tallied three times this fall, tops on the team in that all-important category, Craig Conroy & Co. couldn’t possibly demote him to the AHL’s Wranglers, even if that must have been the initial plan.
“As the games ramped up and we got to more NHL-like teams and more NHL players, Matvei, he just continued to impress. He really did,” Conroy said during an appearance on Flames Talk on Sportsnet 960 The Fan. “I know the regular season is a whole other level, but it’s not too big for him. He is not overwhelmed by it. He just has a personality where he feels like, ‘I’m here. I’m gonna show you guys, and I’m gonna keep going.’ ”
Gridin’s marquee moment during pre-season was undoubtedly that shootout goal in Seattle.
He skated casually in from centre, carving around the left dot outside the blue-line and then through the right circle before sizzling a shot. It was like Grubauer had barely blinked before it was by him on the glove-side.
The up-and-coming winger told reporters afterward that he calls that move the ‘Gridin Signature.’ He’s been getting an earful from his veteran teammates ever since, with workhorse rearguard and relentless chirper Rasmus Andersson leading that charge. As Gridin relayed with a wide smile: “Ras is trolling me every day right now.”
“I’ve seen that shootout move, like, four times,” Burgess said with a chuckle. “I had videos in my phone of that exact move — he takes that weird route where he’s kind of weaving in and out, and then he rips it with a snipe. I think he did it against Green Bay. He did it against Youngstown. Sometimes, he would shoot five-hole, sometimes low blocker, sometimes glove, but it was always the same route. So when I saw the shootout goal, I sent him those videos and he just said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been doing that since I was, like, 14.’
“The one thing I do remember with him, whether it’s a shootout or overtime or late in a game, he’s a clutch player,” Burgess continued. “Whether you’re a young player in the USHL or now a young player in the NHL, those moments can at times be overwhelming and can give them performance anxiety and they’re not able to execute what they want to do because of the crowd or whatever the energy is. But I think he thrives in those moments. There’s a handful that I can think of in Muskegon where it was game on the line, the puck is on Matvei’s stick, and more often than not he’s executing and finishing the game off.”
Gridin’s climb to prime time
Gridin, whose father Andrei played pro hockey in Russia, figured the best route to his NHL dreams was to move to North America as a junior. That’s how he wound up in Muskegon, Mich., in the fall of 2022.
There were certainly some growing pains for a kid living 7,000-and-some kilometres from home, but he emerged as a go-to guy during his second season with the Lumberjacks.
He had lofty goals that winter as he aimed to impress the NHL scouts. Among them, he had his sights set on the USHL’s scoring crown, and he figured it would be beneficial if he was spending more time on the ice.
So he asked his coach if he could be added to the penalty-kill and used in those tense moments at the end of tight games.
“But defensively, he was not responsible enough,” recalled Steve Lowe, president of hockey operations for the Lumberjacks. “And so Parker challenged him. He said, ‘I’ll do that for you, but you have to do these three things for me.’ ”
Lowe still remembers the hat-trick of insistences on that checklist — an emphasis on backchecking, better body language, and more dedication and determination in the defensive zone.
He now considers this a prime example of “how empowering a coach-and-player relationship can be.”
“I’ll be honest, that conversation probably changed that young man into a first-round pick,” Lowe said. “He listened. He became a beast on the P.K. He was a beast the rest of the year backchecking, hitting, finishing checks.”
Those details remain a work-in-progress for Gridin, like they do for almost every emerging prospect, and they will be crucial as he tries now to turn a breakout pre-season into a prolonged stay with the Flames.
Matvei Gridin is pictured with the Shawinigan Cataractes of the QMJHL.
It’s important to remember that fellow forward Sam Honzek, who was Calgary’s surprise opening-nighter a year ago, ultimately suited up for only five games before being returned to the minors for additional development. It’s important to remember, also, that it’s no big deal if a first-year pro requires a stint in the AHL.
Gridin will admit that he needed some time to settle in at previous levels — both the USHL and QMJHL — and this is by far his biggest challenge yet.
“Like I texted him (Monday), ‘Congratulations, but now the real work starts. Now you have to earn it every day and find a way to stay there every day,’ ” Edwards said. “To stay there is really hard. He’s going have to embrace the hard and embrace the tough. Because it’s only going to get way harder.”
That’s what Dupuis was driving at when he was asked about the biggest key to Gridin’s success at the top level.
He didn’t mention his speed, his shot, his strength or his second effort in one-on-one battles.
“Patience,” Dupuis replied. “If you asked him, he’s not going to say it, but he wants to produce. He wants to produce right away, and he wants to produce every game. Which is an unbelievable thing. You want driven kids. But if it doesn’t happen right away, at 19, in the NHL, this is where he needs patience in knowing it’s a process and it might not happen right away.
“We all wish the best for every player that is coming in, but we know sometimes, most of the time, it’s a really tough league to play in.”
First of many?
On Wednesday in Edmonton, Gridin will get his first real taste of that.
Parker Burgess, his old junior coach, will catch as much of his debut as possible from Prince Albert, Sask., where he continues a road trip with the WHL’s Giants.
“I know my family will be watching it and my wife is going to have the game on for our son and I think he’s going to be excited,” Burgess said. “And hopefully, when we go back to Calgary for Christmas, we can watch Matvei play in person.”
In that case, there will be the only one tyke in the C of Red in a special-edition hat from the 2024 NHL Draft.
“Coach (Burgess) called me yesterday on FaceTime and he said, ‘Yeah, Bo is wearing that hat every day,’ ” Gridin beamed after Tuesday’s practice at WinSport. “I had such a good relationship with that coach and his family and I just love Bo. He’s awesome.”