Even halfway around the world, Dustin Brown couldn’t get away from Drew Doughty.
When the former Los Angeles Kings captain and former NHL player Darcy Hordichuk conducted a hockey clinic at O’Brien Icehouse in Melbourne, Australia, back in April, a kid stood in front of them wearing a Doughty jersey. Nicole Brown, Dustin Brown’s wife, snapped a picture. She sent it to Doughty.
“She said, who would have ever thought, but you’ve got a fan all the way in Australia,” Hordichuk said.
It was just one way in which the world felt so, so small.
Brown and Hordichuk traveled to Australia to drum up interest and spread the word, getting a preview of what the rest of the hockey community will see next week, when the NHL shifts its focus from North America to Australia in advance of the 2023 NHL Global Series in Melbourne. The Kings and Arizona Coyotes will play two exhibition games at Rod Laver Arena, home of the Australian Open tennis tournament.
During their time in Australia, Brown and Hordichuk appeared on podcasts and radio shows, worked with kids at clinics and got a chance to see the passionate fan base Los Angeles and Arizona will soon encounter. It gave them a unique understanding of just how deeply Australians love their sports -- even ones that don’t traditionally have a strong foothold in the Southern Hemisphere.
But the NHL is looking to change that, with 21,000 tickets sold for the two games and the anticipation of a sellout.
“They seemed genuinely excited," Brown said. "By the time I had left there, it kind of dawned on me, they just love sports.”
The 38-year-old, who won the Stanley Cup with the Kings in 2012 and 2014, has gotten to see his fair share of hockey markets, too. The 18-year NHL veteran and Los Angeles' all-time games played leader with 1,296, appeared in games all over the world during his NHL, including for the Kings in England, Sweden and even China, participating in the 2017 NHL China Games.
But after getting to make the trip to Australia himself as an ambassador for the Kings, he has a whole new perspective on a country he’d never visited before.
“It’s a lot of work for a lot of people, especially the teams,” said Brown, who ranks seventh on Los Angeles' all-time scoring list with 712 points (325 goals, 387 assists). “I know being a part of these games as players, sometimes you want to just have a regular training camp and get ready for the season. That’s just how it’s always going to be. I was one of those players.
“But at the same time, from the NHL’s perspective, I think the easiest way to grow the game is to get it in front of people who have never seen it before.”
Because there’s no substitute for seeing the game live.
The two former NHL players were pumped for information, the whys and hows of the game, the terminology, the details spooling out about the top line and the fourth line, changing momentum and strategy. But Brown and Hordichuk were more than happy to share, to spread the word about a game they hold dear.
“Anyone you meet, they don’t even know what the sport’s about, but they’re ready to rally behind it,” said Hordichuk, who played for the Coyotes as a forward from 2001-03 in a career that spanned 12 years in the NHL. “I felt like a rock star.”
And, again, found connections all over the place. The clinics they taught at O’Brien’s Icehouse, one of 22 indoor rinks in Australia, happened to be at the former home rink of Hordichuk’s Phoenix neighbor, Doug Wilson, Jr., the son of the longtime NHL defenseman and San Jose Sharks general manager, who is now an amateur scout for the Seattle Kraken. Wilson, Jr. played the 2011-12 season with Melbourne of the Australian Ice Hockey League.
“Here [I am] doing clinics and going out on the ice and it’s all Dougie’s buddies that he played with way back in the day,” Hordichuk said. “Everybody’s like, how do you put the ice in? And how do you do hockey? But there’s actually hockey teams down there. It’s a beautiful rink.”
They played games with the kids, conducted drills and shared some “hockey war stories” with the AIHL players.
The kids loved it. So did the former NHL players.
At the same time Brown and Hordichuk were spreading the word of the games and the sport in Australia, they got to learn a little bit about the country and the people, too. And about their loves and passions -- and rivalries.
“Melbourne and Sydney, it’s like Boston-New York,” Brown said. “We were in Melbourne and we were on radio shows and they were just essentially [ragging] on Sydney and Sydney radio hosts were [ragging] on Melbourne. Me and Darcy were looking at each other at one point, like, 'We got in the middle of something here.' They’re like, 'It’s a big-city rivalry.' It just goes to their mentality about their sports and how serious they take it.”
Though, perhaps, there was one aspect that shouldn’t have been that surprising for a country in love with sports like rugby and Australian football. It seemed that every time Brown and Hordichuk walked into any radio or podcast or television studio in Melbourne, the videos playing were of rugby players getting lit up, of every fight Hordichuk ever had, of Brown’s best hits.
“Poor Dustin Brown. They’re interviewing him and they’re like, you’ve got a statue outside ... Stanley Cups and all they want to talk about is fighting,” Hordichuk said. “And Darcy, how can you compare rugby and cricket to hockey?
“Now they’re showing all these videos of guys tipping pucks in. So it’s kind of fun to see their perspective -- everybody come watch cricket and rugby put together. We had so much fun.”
And the fun should only increase once the Kings and Coyotes touch down in Melbourne.
Because while the NHL is there, the Australian Football League Semi-Final game between Melbourne and Carlton will take place at Melbourne Cricket Ground, a stadium that holds 100,000 fans, just after the Coyotes and Kings conduct an open practice Sept. 22.
The two stadiums are adjacent to each other. Hordichuk can just imagine it now.
“It could be one of the biggest parties all-time in Australia,” the 43-year-old said. “It’s going to be so fun. There’s so much excitement around it. Everybody is so pumped.”
And, they know, that party, those feelings, that introduction to hockey, could pay so many dividends down the road.
“This is what the NHL should be doing, just trying to grow the game and push the envelope,” Hordichuk said. “The fact that there’s a few kids already playing hockey, this is just something that can help continue to grow the game.
“It’s a lot of work for everybody. But after experiencing that, what I got to feel down there, I’m so excited to see how the game can continue to grow and to see how many more fans from Australia will become hooked on the game of hockey.”
