The Little Engine That Could

As Shawn and Meagan O'Connor were getting ready to watch their son Drew make his NHL debut for the Pittsburgh Penguins against the Boston Bruins at TD Garden on Jan. 26, the doorbell rang at their Morristown, New Jersey home at five minutes to 7 p.m.

It was Liv Carney, who runs a charcuterie board delivery service called 'That Charcuterie Chick' based out Morris County, New Jersey. She was there with a gift from the Penguins organization, who wanted to do something special for the family since they could not attend Drew's first game in person because of COVID-19 protocols.
"It was very well-done," Shawn said with a laugh. "The woman at the door did a great job. She's yelling, 'Congratulations on Drew's first game!'"
They took the delivery inside and opened it to discover two bottles of wine; a charcuterie plate and sunflowers that Carney added for a black-and-gold Penguins touch. But the icing on the cake was a personalized note to Shawn and Meagan that read:
Congratulations on Drew realizing his lifelong dream of playing in the National Hockey League. All those early-morning practices and weekends away at tournaments will pay off tonight. The Pittsburgh Penguins organization appreciates all of the sacrifices made by you and your family to help Drew achieve this incredible feat. Enjoy the game tonight and we look forward to seeing you in Pittsburgh in the near future.
It was overwhelming in the best way for Shawn and Meagan.
"It was very emotional," she said. "Tears were coming in."
They quickly took some photos of the items and texted them around before the puck dropped.
"I have five brothers and a sister and there's tons of cousins, and they're all into it like crazy," Shawn said. "So I sent it out to everybody, saying, 'What a class act the Penguins are to do this.'"
The setting wasn't quite what the O'Connors had envisioned for Drew's NHL debut, which happened quicker than any of them could have imagined after he signed with the Penguins as an undrafted college free agent out of Dartmouth in March.
Ideally, they would have loved to attend in person, of course - or, at the very least, had "about 40 O'Connors in the house to see it." But in order to stay safe in the midst of the pandemic, it was just Shawn, Meagan and their oldest son Jack, and they relied on text messages with family members and friends to share the excitement.
In addition to Shawn's group chat with his siblings, Meagan had one going with her college friends, who are some of Drew's biggest fans. And of course, they were constantly communicating with the O'Connor sisters, Erin and McKenna.
"Everyone had their phones, and just the amount of communication going on throughout the game, it was like everyone was with us," Meagan said.
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The O'Connors actually thought there was a chance that Drew's debut could have come about a week earlier on Sunday, Jan. 16 against Washington, as Jared McCann had a hearing with NHL Player Safety for elbowing Philadelphia's Travis Sandheim that Saturday. Drew texted his parents to be ready to make the trek to Pittsburgh just in case.
McCann ended up with a fine, and O'Connor ended up staying with the taxi squad for the next week until Evan Rodrigues was injured on Sunday, Jan. 24 against the New York Rangers. So the following day, Drew skated with the main group and was going to travel with the team to Boston.
Meagan checked in with him in the morning before the flight, because with Drew coming right out of college, where he mostly wore hockey warmups and sweatpants, she wanted to make sure he was dressed appropriately - joking that his idea of business casual and the Penguins' idea of business casual were not the same.
"I had texted him earlier in the day about other things, like do you have you have any nice clothes to wear on the plane?" she said with a laugh, saying that Drew was originally planning to wear his puffer jacket.
"Yeah, he was a little unprepared for how well the guys dressed," Shawn chuckled.
Fortunately, Drew got a little help from a fellow rookie in that department.
"He borrowed a coat from P.O (Joseph)," Shawn said. "P.O loaned him a pea coat. He has a couple nice suits to wear to games in college, so he had a suit, but I don't think his casual wear is up to speed (laughs). He got on the plane with his Dartmouth travel hockey bag."
After exchanging messages about that, it was time for Drew to take the ice for practice.
"Then he texted me back whenever it was over, around 12:30 or 1, and he said, 'Playing tomorrow. I guess I'm in.' So I told Shawn and Jack, and we were pretty thrilled, of course."
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The next day, after the delivery arrived, the three of them went into the den and turned on the TV to NHL Center Ice. Jack also had NHL.TV loaded on his phone so they could get the Pittsburgh feed, and McKenna, a student at Miami of Ohio, was the one who sent the video clip of Drew doing the traditional rookie lap at TD Garden.

It was particularly special for Shawn to watch, because when Jack was just 2 years old, he loved to sit and watch a video of Bobby Orr highlight clips that Shawn had. He jokes that they unintentionally brainwashed Jack into playing hockey, Drew eventually tagged along after his older brother, and years later, here he was.
And while Drew grew up a Devils fan, as a kid he had Evgeni Malkin's blue Winter Classic jersey that made one of the family Christmas cards one year. Now they were on the same team.
"The rookie lap was cool, being in the Boston Garden," Shawn said. "I was always a Bobby Orr fan when I was a kid, and to see Drew out there with all the history there in the Garden, and just to be on the Penguins with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and the names and everything, it's just something you can't imagine."
All three of them were nervous wrecks leading into Drew's first shift, especially after listening to the members of the broadcast discuss his debut.
"I was just holding my breath," Meagan said. "I could not believe he was really going to get on the ice and play with all these NHL stars. I think maybe Mike Rupp and a couple others were talking about the first shift, and they were funny because they said you just want to get in and get out and not make any mistakes. And then we thought Drew seemed to do well. Obviously it's overwhelming, that moment. You want to remember it forever."
After about 30 seconds, the O'Connors watched as the camera followed the puck going into the Bruins zone. Meagan and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. And then, out of nowhere, Drew came flying back into the frame, doggedly pursuing the puck on the forecheck.
"I was jumping up and down, like, he came to play," Shawn said. "He is not intimidated. He's really there. He was ready, and he was very confident going into the game. It was nice to see that. It was more like he just couldn't wait to get in rather than have any worries about how he'd do."
At the 9:47 mark of the third, Drew earned his first NHL point, a secondary assist, on Jason Zucker's goal. It wasn't awarded to him right away, as the play was a scrambly one around the net-front. But Jack had seen on his phone before it was even up on the TV that they had credited it to him online.
"I started texting everybody that he got his first point because they gave him an assist on that," Shawn said. "But we didn't want to replay it because we didn't want to miss anything," Meagan said.

Drew finished with that assist and a faceoff win in 10:51 minutes, including 4:38 on the power play and one shift on the penalty kill. He texted his parents on the bus ride back to the hotel, and called them once he got to his room.
"He was ecstatic, we were ecstatic," Shawn said. "It was amazing for him to be out there for first game, and I was just so proud of him."
With all of that adrenaline going, it was nearly impossible for any of the O'Connors to get to sleep. Drew ended up responding back to the huge volume of texts that he had received from extended family, friends, and his teammates at Dartmouth.
"The whole Dartmouth team canceled their evening practice so they could watch it together," Shawn said. "There's just so many people that reached out, and everyone I've talked to said Drew got right back to them. Which is kind of crazy. But I guess he was up for a while."
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The other day, Shawn was on the phone with a friend of his, whose 14-year-old son was taking a lesson with a golf pro at the local country club. He's got talent, but is smaller than the rest of the kids on his golf team and doesn't hit the ball that far yet.
"So the golf pro says to him, listen, I want to tell you a story about this local Chatham kid who was undersized," Shawn said. "She starts telling Drew's story. It's a big story around here. It's like the little engine that could."
It truly is a pretty amazing story, one that starts out like many others - with Drew following Jack, older by two years, into the sport. He was a ball of energy, to the point where his parents signed him up for hockey as well when he was 4, "to keep him from driving us nuts running around the rink," Shawn said with a laugh.
Eventually, a group of parents in their community put together a travel team called the New Jersey Colonials, made up of players who were 1998 birth years. Drew played for them all the way through his freshman year of high school before joining the team at Delbarton School, a private prep school.
It wasn't a great experience for Drew. As an undersized kid who was just 5-foot-1 entering high school, he recorded just one goal in two seasons in limited ice time with Delbarton. Discouraged and starting to lose hope that he would ever have a real future in hockey, Drew decided to quit his high school team after his sophomore season and play for the North Jersey Avalanche, an 18U AAA club. His senior year went particularly well.
"They had a really good team, they went to Nationals, Drew played well," Meagan said. "But I mean, honestly, it's not like anyone was saying, we need this guy. No one said that."
Drew sent letters and emails to NCAA D3 schools, just hoping they would extend offers. And because he is a gifted student who scored extremely high in the math section of the ACT, he actually received an academic scholarship at one of those colleges.
"I called them up and I said listen, my son's been playing hockey his whole life. He's been on a national championship team, and he's really good," Shawn said. "He got into your school academically, and he just wants to play. He would love to play D3 with your school. He's already been accepted. They were like well, we wouldn't look at your son unless he played a year or two of juniors."
After a while, Drew went to Shawn and Meagan and said that he wanted to play college hockey so badly that he wanted to defer school for year to give himself a better chance.
"We knew that it was something he really, really wanted, and he was finally starting to grow at 17," Meagan said. "So we said, what can it hurt to give him another year? He can see how it goes for now, and if it doesn't work out, then you pack it up and you go to college and try to walk on or play club or whatever it is. He wanted to play at a high level, but he also just really, really wanted to play. He just loves the game."
After Drew graduated high school in May, he took part in a summer showcase in July and performed well. That's when calls finally started to come in, both from D3 schools and Dartmouth. The O'Connors got Drew an advisor to help field the offers, and he ultimately committed to the Big Green.
Drew played one more year with the North Jersey Avalanche, and as he continued to get taller, Meagan said her son took it upon himself to learn about proper nutrition and what he needed to eat in order to add weight to his frame.
"He ate about 10 meals a day and would make protein shakes with peanut butter," she said. "I do a lot of cooking, but he learned how to cook for himself. I will say he's pretty good in the kitchen."
They said it was actually nice to have Drew home in the months after he signed with Pittsburgh, because he would cook for the entire family.
"But he's really healthy, he does not mess around with the food," Meagan said. "Lots of roasted vegetables that Jack and I won't even look at," Shawn said.
So when the Penguins loaned Drew to Manglerud in Norway back in the fall so that he could get some professional game action, the rest of the family was slightly relieved.
"As soon as he left, Jack was like, thank God we don't have to eat any more roasted potatoes or brussels sprouts!" Meagan joked. "But he took a lot of responsibility for his own meals. And he had to eat a lot to gain that much weight and fill out as much as he did over those five years."
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Drew then spent the 2017-18 season with the Boston Jr. Bruins of the National Collegiate Development Conference (NCDC) in the U.S. Premier Hockey League.
That season, when Drew was 19, he got hit in the shoulder and had to go for an X-ray. The doctor saw a gap, and thought it might be a separation. But he called and said that he wanted to X-ray the other shoulder as well to check on the arch, and discovered that Drew's growth plates still hadn't closed.
At that point, Drew had already shot up to 6-foot-1. And when he arrived on campus in New Hampshire ahead of the 2019-20 season, he was 6-foot-3.
"The Dartmouth guys were in shock," Shawn said with a laugh.
Drew went from being the kid who had no interest from any college teams, to the kid all pro teams were coming to watch - especially after rumors started to swirl that he was considering leaving school following his sophomore year.
Penguins amateur scout Frank Golden, who had already been watching Drew a lot up to that point, informed Penguins director of player development Scott Young about his situation. So Young started making trips to watch the forward play.
"One game, we were actually sitting in front of (Young) and didn't even realize it," Shawn said. "But you could tell he was a scout, because they all wear black and have their lineup sheets. After the first period ended, and we were talking about the band. I was just about to walk away and I said, by the way, who are you with? He said, I'm with the Penguins."
The conversation turned to a mutual acquaintance, with Young asking Shawn how he knew the person.
"I said well, my son plays on Dartmouth," Shawn said. "Scott said, who's your son? I said, Drew O'Connor. He said, I'm here to watch him, and I'm going to meet him after the game. It was really like it was meant to be."
The O'Connors said Drew's interactions with Young were what ultimately swayed him into turning pro and signing with Pittsburgh after piling up 38 goals in 65 career games, including 21 in 31 his sophomore year.
"Drew just kept playing. We didn't want him to get distracted, he didn't want to get distracted," Meagan said. "But he talked to a lot of guys, and he didn't really honestly plan on leaving school last year. It really was his conversations with Scott that (convinced him)."
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After making his debut, Drew played in three more games for the Penguins before getting re-assigned to the taxi squad the morning of Feb. 2, so it's unclear when his next game with Pittsburgh will be. But what is clear is that Drew is a big part of the Penguins' future, as the entire organization is absolutely thrilled about the 22-year-old forward and his potential.
And in the meantime, the O'Connors are on standby for the chance to see their son play an NHL game in person.
"We've got the car filled with gas, and we'll be there as soon as we know he's playing in Pittsburgh and we can get in the rink," Shawn said.
"We have our bags packed," Meagan said with a laugh.