Alumni Corner: Richard Park

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Korean kid moves to Southern California and from there, not only makes it to the NHL, but plays for 14 seasons - arguably his best four for the New York islanders. He then gets a job as the Assistant Director of the Korean National Hockey Development program and winds up leading that team back to his birthplace in Seoul as the assistant coach in the 2018 Winter Olympics. Not your ordinary, run of the mill hockey story, eh?

Park's story begins at three, when his family moved from Seoul to Rancho Palos Verdes - the land of sun and surf. That doesn't exactly sound like the obvious breeding ground for hockey players and figure skaters, but the Parks were drawn to the ice. Park's older brother Michael had done a bit of speed skating in Korea, and so his older sisters, Christina and Clara started figure skating. At the rink one day when Park was seven, he saw someone playing hockey and decided to give it a try. He took to it immediately, but remember, this was the late 70's, so youth hockey wasn't what it is today, especially in SoCal. In fact, professional hockey was still in its nascent stages. Butch Goring was playing for the LA Kings, but the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks were still two decades way. Roller blades had yet to be invented, so even roller hockey hadn't hit its stride. Park didn't play year round. He didn't have his own specialty coaches. He just played because it was fun.

It wasn't long before people around him realized he was good. Really good. TV crews from the US and Canada came to his local rink in Torrance do a story on him at age 11, and eventually, his coaches spoke to him and his parents about the possibility of moving to Canada to play more seriously. So Park left home (again) at 13 - this time to play hockey in Ontario. His older sister Christina agreed to go to college there, and Park lived with her. He played at De La Salle college with his brother, Horton, and from there moved onto the Belleville Bulls in the Ontario Hockey League.
Three years, 229 points, and countless bus rides later, Park was drafted 50th overall by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1994 NHL draft. He played for Pittsburgh, Anaheim, Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Vancouver, but Islanders fans remember him from his four seasons on Long Island from 2006 - 2010. Loved and admired for the effort he displayed every night, Park served as the Isles' alternate captain in 2008-09 and won the Bob Nystrom Award for leadership and dedication. Looking back, Park says, "I loved my time in New York - the coaches, my teammates, but especially the fans. People don't understand how passionate they are." And he says, the Islanders-Rangers rivalry is "still the best rivalry in hockey."

When the NHL lockout came in 2012, Park left to play in Switzerland for two years - his young family in tow. They loved living there, and Park said he is incredibly thankful for all that hockey has given him; but more than once he mentioned his appreciation for his family and what they've sacrificed to help him achieve his hockey dreams - both his parents and siblings as well as his wife and kids.
When Park returned to the States in 2014, he took a job the Wild offered him a job in player development, but before he could even begin in the land of 10,000 lakes, he got another job offer - one you might say he couldn't refuse - from overseas. Park is the second Korean-born player to play in the NHL. The first, Jim Paek, had just been asked to run the Korean National Hockey program, and his first call was to Park, who served as both assistant director and assistant coach. Together, they spent the next four years building a team for the 2018 Olympics. It's been a busy four years - between his family in California, the young players he was working with in Des Moines for the Wild, as well as trips to South Korea.

Park says two moments stand out the most for him from the Olympics. The first was not even specifically hockey related, but rather the pure celebration of the human spirit that is the opening ceremonies: "It was amazing to see athletes from all different parts of this world come together an be unified," he said. Walking around the stadium with them is something he'll remember for the rest of his life.
The second was after his team's last game. They hadn't won a game, but Park said when their last game was over, the team carried the flag around the rink and skated over to the bench, and, as one, they bowed to the coaches. That might not seem like much in American culture, but Park says in Korea it was a real sign of respect. He stood there watching them and thought about all the hard work - four years of sacrificing time with his family, crazy hours and crazier travel, tough decisions, etc. There were highlights mixed in with the sweat and the growth, of course, but he felt "teary eyed and really emotional" because they'd accomplished something. "I think we won the respect of the hockey world and made the people of Korea proud," he said. And a long trip from Seoul to SoCal and back, through the NHL and beyond, seemed to come full circle as he stood there in the stadium with three generations of his family cheering him on.
Not that Park's hockey story is done - far from it. He's already started a new job for the Wild, this time as a professional scout. But he remembers his time on the Island fondly and was very excited when he read that the team will be playing games in Nassau this year and is planning a big move back to the area. "The fans deserve it," he said.