Wild's trip to South Florida means a homecoming for Duhaime

SUNRISE, Fla. -- While homecoming trips are common when the any hockey team travels to locales in Canada, it's not often South Florida offers a chance for a Wild player to reconnect with family and friends.
It's unprecedented, in fact.
But there's a first time for everything, and that will be the case on Saturday when Wild forward Brandon Duhaime returns to face his hometown Florida Panthers at FLA Live Arena.

That arena is a spot where Duhaime saw plenty of games as a kid and first got to see NHL hockey up close, sparking a passion for the game that carried him from Parkland, Fla. to all corners of the Sunshine State, then across the continent to British Columbia, to Providence, Rhode Island, to Des Moines and now to the Twin Cities, where he's off to a good start as an NHL rookie.
Duhaime is the first Florida native to ever suit up for the Wild, so when Minnesota takes the ice in Sunrise on Saturday, there will be a large Duhaime contingent sporting the Forest Green and Iron Range Red.
How many exactly is changing by the hour, it seems.

"I have no idea, probably between 50 and 100," Duhaime said. "My mom is all over Facebook telling everybody. We've got a lot of family down there too, so she's really taking advantage of it."
And while Duhaime's game check on that night will largely be spent before he even receives it, it's a small price to pay to have the opportunity to skate on home Florida ice, something that has become much easier to do in recent years.
While hockey practice in Minnesota is a normal part of many families' lives during the winter, hockey practice in Florida is much more tedious.
Every weekend, Duhaime and his parents would drive 90 minutes one way to practice with kids from around the state. There were barely enough players to ice a full team ... and that was taking kids from all corners of the state.
"It was kind of a team Florida, right in the middle, we found a neutral location right in the middle, and we had the best players from Florida all come to that location," Duhaime said. "So we'd practice on the weekends and the travel was crazy. The sacrifices my parents made to get me in that situation was unbelievable and I'm forever grateful for that."
Having teams like the Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning - specifically with the success the Lightning have had - has helped grow the game tremendously.

"It's pretty cool to see the growth down there, and the better teams the Panthers] have, the more kids are going to get into it and the more fans are going to get behind it," Duhaime said. "You've seen the progression over the years. When I was a kid, we were struggling to find kids for one team, and now they've got 10 or 12 teams down there, where they are full of players and they've got some really good players too. It's really fun to watch."
And while watching teams like the Panthers and Lightning certainly help raise interest in the sport, having locals like Duhaime reach the NHL and giving kids in the area something to shoot for will help that effort even more.
It's a mantle Duhaime takes with pride.
"It's going to be a pretty special moment for me and my family," Duhaime said.
Players to reach the NHL from Florida have been a rare breed. Just 16 games into his NHL career, Duhaime's six career points are already 12th all-time among Florida-born players.
But the more success the teams have here, and the more success players like Duhaime, and other Florida natives like Shayne Gostisbehere and Jakob Chychrun of the Arizona Coyotes have, it's a list that will grow quickly.
"When I was young, I used to really look up to those [Florida natives that were drafted]," Duhaime said. "So I put myself in their shoes a little bit because I went through it and I'm sure there are kids that are saying, 'well if he did it, I can do it.' It's pretty cool to be a part of that."
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