WINNIPEG – It has been an exciting summer for Neal Pionk, and if fans see him throwing his hip checks with even more force than in previous seasons, it could possibly be attributed to something he picked up in late August:
Dad strength.
Pionk and his wife, Kiera, welcomed Stevie Mae to the family on August 21.
“We couldn’t be more blessed to have a healthy baby and mom's healthy too,” said Pionk on Tuesday, following a one-hour skate at hockey for all centre. “You change your perspective. You know, before, you're thinking about yourself, or you think about you and your wife as a couple. Now it's basically surrounded around her for the most part - making decisions based on where to travel, what to do, what to eat, who's coming into town, who isn't coming into town. So it's all based around her right now.”
Just under a month before his daughter’s birth, Pionk was also a groomsman in Dylan Samberg’s wedding.
“It was great. We got to kick back and watch him take a million pictures,” Pionk laughed. “It was a good event and saw a bunch of the Jets guys there, a bunch of UMD alumni as well. So it was a great time.”
Pionk and Samberg’s friendship goes back to their hometown of Hermantown, MN, and the duo also spent time together as a defensive pair last season. They played 154:18 at five-on-five together, fifth most of any Jets combination on the blue line last season.
“We have the obvious chemistry. I see him all summer. I see him too much sometimes,” Pionk said, with his usual sarcastic tone whenever Samberg comes up. “We live at the same lake together, so we got that going for us.”
Like every summer in the National Hockey League, rosters all over the league change and evolve as free agency and trades send players to new locations. While Pionk is very familiar with Samberg, the partner he actually spent the most time last season was Brenden Dillon.
Of course, Dillon signed with the New Jersey Devils on July 1.
“I'm happy for him at the end of the day, happy for him, happy for his family,” said Pionk. “So I'm sure we'll run into him, and I’ll have something to say to him this winter.”
While Pionk finished last season with the same 33 points last year as he did in 2022-23, he’s always working on trying to find ways to improve his game.
A lot of the conversation following Winnipeg’s exit in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs was about the players on the squad not being satisfied and wanting to find ways to get a few percentage points better as a group and individually.
The one thing that he won’t let stand in the way of that is the fact he’s entering the final year of his contract.
“I've been through contract years before, been through two of them, so I didn't change anything,” he said. “I did what I always do in the summer, and trained hard, played a little bit of golf, but more hockey than golf. So yeah, just go into the year and play your game.”
This will be Pionk’s sixth season as a member of the Jets. It’s where he’s set career-highs in goals (10, in 2022-23), points (45, in 2019-20), and hit personal milestones – like his 200th career point on January 5, 2024 against Anaheim.
He looks forward to continuing to collect those personal milestones on the ice, while celebrating different milestones at home with his new daughter.
“Especially once she starts interacting a little bit, you know, a few months into the year, that'll be really fun,” he said. “Right now, she's just eating and sleeping a lot. I’ve gotten good at changing diapers, but, yeah, I think when they're able to interact and smile at you when you come through the door, I think that'll be huge.”
