Jared McCann Kept The Trust En Route to 100 Goals 

Kraken forward Jared McCann has always kept things close with the people he most trusts, and this past summer of personal change was no exception.

Between helping his mother, Erin, living for decades with multiple sclerosis, walk him down the aisle at his wedding or paying an old friend and ex-NHL forward, Joey Hishon, for private coaching in their Stratford, Ontario hometown, McCann stayed surrounded by those most interested in his personal betterment and well-being. His schedule, including a Team Canada stint overseas at the IIHF World Hockey Championship and a honeymoon in Italy, grew far too busy to dwell on the Kraken’s disappointing season overall.

And perhaps that non-rumination was best as McCann again leads the team with nine points, scoring his 100th career Kraken goal Tuesday against Colorado. Then again, to say McCann, 28, wasn’t focused at all on improving over last season would ignore his demeanor since being old enough to lace on skates.

“I’m pretty hard on myself most of the time,” McCann said. “No matter what I’ve done, I always feel like there’s room for more. Like I could be doing it better.”

And that remained true after last season ended with McCann’s goal totals down to 29 from a career-high 40 the prior campaign. Sure, he still won his second Pete Muldoon Award as team MVP – named after the legendary Seattle Metropolitans coach, who, coincidentally, grew up a century prior in the Ontario town of St. Marys a few miles from McCann’s family home.

You could probably blame the scoring dip largely on McCann being saddled with additional defensive responsibilities. Or, on luck, regression from a career-high shooting percentage.

But with McCann, excuses are never an option.

“He can be really hard on himself,” his mother said. “That’s just the way he’s wired. He can be hard on himself when he gets disappointed in himself. And then he tries. He tries harder.”

Few are closer to McCann than a mother first diagnosed with MS at age 18; numbness in her limbs and a loss of balance gradually becoming more frequent. Erin McCann and her husband, Matt, adopted a son, Justin, from Guatemala because she’d worried about childbirth issues.

Later, discovering she could still have children, she gave birth to a daughter, Jamie. Matt had a son, Jordan, from a prior marriage, so when youngest Jared was born, his mother was caring for four children.

She left her job at a bank to work as a receptionist for her husband’s construction and gravel business, figuring it easier to take time off if the children got sick. Once Jared was six weeks old – his siblings in school or daycare -- his mother brought him daily to the company’s office.

“So, it was him and I for a lot of the time,” his mother said. “We spent a lot of time together without the other kids during the day. He’d come to work, and then I’d take him somewhere to keep him busy. That’s why I think it was easier for us later on.”

It helped that his mother didn’t care about hockey.

Sure, she’d introduced Jared to Learn To Skate lessons by age 4, watching him cry through classes until big brother Justin began going with them. She’d also driven Jared to practices and games when his dad couldn’t. And helped him count the 1,000 pucks a week he shot against cinder block walls of an old horse manure bunker his father had cleared for him on their farm.

But his mother also never critiqued McCann’s play or asked about games unless he brought it up.

“I don’t question him,” she said. “If you want my advice, then ask me. I don’t tell him what to do.”

McCann had several long talks with his mother earlier in his career, bouncing from the Vancouver Canucks team that drafted him 24th overall in 2014 on to the Florida Panthers and Pittsburgh Penguins before the Kraken selected him in the July 2021 expansion draft. The rest is Kraken lore, with McCann scoring 27 goals that inaugural expansion campaign and earning the team’s first contract extension – a five-year, $25 million additional payout.

“I’m proud of him,” his mother said. “As long as this is what he wants to do. I tell all my kids: ‘It doesn’t matter to me what you do. If you want to work at Tim Horton’s, or a grocery store, or get a career somewhere else, as long as you’re happy with yourself and what you’re doing, that’s the main thing.’”

But while happier here, McCann has always been uneasy about feeling comfortable. He decided last spring to hire Hishon, 33, a one-time Colorado Avalanche forward from his Stratford hometown, to tutor him in hockey’s finer details.

Hishon works for a company run by Hall of Famer Adam Oates that designs customized videos for players in isolated game situations. McCann pays for Oates Sports Group videos from his games while Hishon coaches him on improving what the footage shows.

“I think there were times I was making bad decisions with the puck,” McCann said. “It’s just about me learning patience. You don’t always have to force a shot.”

Hishon taught McCann to capitalize on his reputation as a lethal shooter. It's to get opposing defenders freezing up in anticipation of a shot that doesn’t always come.

“It can really create a lot of space for everyone else on the ice,” Hishon said. “Because when he winds up, everyone else kind of flinches or folds. It gives his teammates more time.”

McCann put that to use against Calgary last Saturday during a 5-on-3 power play. He took a pass as if about to shoot but, as the Flames tensed up, immediately sent the puck back across to Chandler Stephenson for a one-timed goal.

“At times, he’s scored with that shot from that position, and he does an incredible job,” Hishon said of McCann. “I just try to talk to him and work on things that are going to freeze everybody and help find layers underneath and give guys a little more time and space.”

McCann and Hishon have also worked on more quickly controlling pucks to buy additional time to make plays.

It helps that they’ve known each other since McCann was 12. Hishon had just been drafted into the Ontario Hockey League and – despite their five-year age difference -- they began training together in Stratford under onetime ECHL player Cory Campbell.

“I’d heard of him before then,” Hishon said. “Stratford’s a pretty small town and so when there’s a young kid having a ton of success, you see his name all over the place. So, I’ve known him forever.”

And Hishon said McCann hasn’t much changed.

“He’s very hard on himself,” Hishon said. “Always expected a lot out of himself, but also a very hard worker.”

And trusting of people he’s gotten to know.

McCann, as a teenager, closely followed Hishon’s career, including OHL stardom with the league champion Owen Sound Attack. Hishon later became the first Stratford minor hockey player since Craig Hartsburg in 1979 to be drafted in the first round, taken 17th overall by Colorado in 2010 before concussions halted his NHL career after just 13 games.

McCann now receives next-day footage of all his puck “touches” during games. And he’ll get video clips of other Oates Sports Group clients, such as Nikita Kucherov or Connor McDavid to show McCann how they’re finding success.

“I just love getting his thought process on things because he was such a good player,” McCann said. “To have an extra set of eyes there from someone who’s been through it, I feel was just good for me.”

McCann spent his early off-season making the 40-minute drive to Stratford from his farm home in the town of Ingersoll to skate with Hishon. Then, after a few weeks in the Czech Republic playing for Team Canada, he resumed skating by June with Hishon and his NHL clients Nick Suzuki, Nathan Bastian, Johnathan Kovacevic, Sean Durzi, and Ryan O’Reilly.

Then came his July 11 wedding to his girlfriend of six years, Valerie Vanderkuylen. The reception was outdoors at Graydon Hall Manor in Toronto, an 88-year-old wedding venue made of fieldstone and surrounded by lush terraces and garden walls.

The outdoor setting was tricky for his mother, who’s lost most feelings on her right side and struggles to navigate unfamiliar terrain. Last January, while riding in Florida on an electric “Trike” bike she uses for longer distances, she inadvertently hit a curb, flipped, and broke her elbow.

It required surgery. But she and Matt kept the news from McCann, then vacationing in Costa Rica.

“I knew Jared would be worried sick,” his mother said.

When McCann was 16 and about to go play major junior hockey for the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds, he got a back tattoo honoring his mother – featuring the MS symbols of an orange ribbon and a butterfly, with her “E” and “M” initials on opposite sides. McCann often lauds his mother for keeping him grounded by enduring her condition without complaint.

So, his parents waited weeks until her elbow healed slightly before telling him.

“She doesn’t like to bother me with stuff like that,” McCann said. “It can be kind of upsetting at times because I want to know what’s going on. But she’s a warrior.”

The three-month recovery ended shortly before McCann’s wedding. At the reception, two steel plates in her elbow, she and Matt accompanied McCann up the aisle on opposite sides.

“He held on to me,” she said. “Jared knows I’ve got to hold on to him. I didn’t use my cane walking down with him, so he knows he’s got to hold on to me because I have to concentrate on lifting my foot.”

For McCann, it was a special moment.

“To have my mom there was special, obviously, with what she’s been through in her life,” McCann said. “I owe her a lot – almost everything. And so, to have her there and be able to share that moment – and obviously, the first dance – with her and everything like that, it was awesome.”

And a perfect end to his summer. Well, almost. While honeymooning in Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast, he randomly bumped into a player who, unlike his close-knit circle, hasn’t always had McCann’s well-being in mind -- Andrew Mangiapane of the Calgary Flames, who he’d played with for Team Canada weeks prior.

When Kraken fans last saw the pair together 11 months ago, Mangiapane was angrily slamming McCann’s head into the ice while straddled atop him in a Climate Pledge Arena game.

“Yeah, ironic, I know,” McCann said with a laugh. “I gave him a hard time about it. But he’s such a nice guy that it’s water under the bridge.”

As are any McCann doubts about last season or his pre-Kraken career. At 100 Kraken goals and counting, McCann, while still never completely comfortable, seems confident about whatever the future holds.