For Greenway, billet dads count as fathers too

EDMONTON -- Virgil Mingas grew up in Detroit playing football and basketball. A now-retired firefighter, Mingas remembers his days back in the firehouse when others would find the nicest TV in the building and flip the Red Wings game on.
Mingas had no interest, so he'd find something else to do.
"I'd be like, 'I'm not watching that,'" Mingas said. "I had no idea what was going on."

In those days, there's no way he could have imagined that he would one day house the Wild's towering forward, Jordan Greenway, a hockey player so talented that he would represent his country at the Olympics and live out his dream as an NHLer.
The fact that Mingas and Greenway even connected was completely by chance. Mingas owns and operates M&M Music, a DJ service in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a short drive away from the U.S. National Team Development Program's one-time headquarters in Ann Arbor.
Mingas worked with the USNTDP on a couple of events, and at one of them, someone from the program asked him if he and his wife, Laverne, were interested in being billet parents.
"I said, 'what the hell is a billet,'" Mingas said. "From there, I told her I needed to talk to my wife.
"The next thing I know, they're sending me this giant."
Mingas, now 63, had two adult children of his own already well out of the house, in addition to three stepchildren, also out of the house.
"I don't think he knew exactly what he was getting himself into," Greenway said. "But it ended up working out really well. We became pretty close."

Nothing could have prepared him for the 6-foot-6 Greenway, who was the definition of "growing boy." The Mingases also housed Jack Roslovic, a USNTDP alum who currently skates for the Winnipeg Jets.
"First thing I told my wife when he showed up was, 'we're gonna need to get him a bigger bed,'" Mingas said. "But after that, those guys, they were great, but they ate up everything."
Still just 16 years old, Greenway was coming off three years at Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Faribault, so being away from home was nothing new to him.
Raised primarily by a single white mom in Upstate New York, spending what ended up being two years with Mingas, an African-American man himself, was exactly what Greenway needed at that time.
"He was probably the first black guy that I was actually really close with," Greenway said. "He fit into my life every day those two years I was living with him, he really filled in -- not even hockey wise, but in life -- as a father figure. He was always there for me and supported me with whatever I needed."
A man of deep religious faith, Mingas believes he was chosen to enter Greenway's life for a reason.
"It wasn't just on a whim that we came together," Mingas said. "God put us together."
"He's always said that to me, and I think so too," Greenway said. "I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, probably not, but if we were meant to be together, he fulfilled everything and more that he could have been asked to do in terms of helping me out and getting me to where I am now. He was a part of it for only two years, but he had such a big impact on me."
Mingas understood from the time Greenway entered his life that he needed someone that looked like he did to look up to, not on the ice, but off of it.
"He needed a role model of the African-American persuasion to kind of talk to him and have those quiet moments with him," Mingas said. "I wouldn't call it so much being a dad, but being a friend. I guess something must have stuck with him because now, sometimes, I feel like a dad."
It's a dad that Greenway wanted and needed but never really had. His biological father has never really been in the picture, and when Greenway left his hometown of Canton, New York, for the first time, he was only 13 years old.
"I left home pretty early," Greenway said. "And I've got uncles and family that I was pretty close with. But I was with him every single day for two years and a bond really starts to form. He really looked out for me, like I said, even more than just hockey because he didn't really know much about hockey. Just life-wise, it was really good to lean on him.
"I always got my information from my mom, from a female's point-of-view. So to be able to talk to him, a male's point-of-view, somebody who had been through it, it was great."

Mingas said he still remembers the first time he went to go to one of Greenway's games.
"I'm sitting there and I'm watching, and all of the sudden, the guys are jumping over the boards and getting off the ice, there's other guys jumping on and I'm just thinking, 'what's going on?'" Mingas said with a big laugh. "Why do they keep jumping in and out? I thought it was going to be like basketball where they sub guys and they play for a long time.
"That's when I started learning a little bit more about the game."
And boy has he ever. After Greenway and Roslovic, the Mingases also billeted defenseman Christian Evers, currently a senior at the University of Vermont.
"I was kind of surprised actually, after we left, how much he still followed," Greenway said. "Even now, he'll hit me with these crazy stats about our team that even I didn't know. I think it's great that he follows it now that we've kind of helped him get into it and he enjoys being part of it with us."
While the two share no blood relation, it's incredible to see how similar Greenway and Mingas are from a personality standpoint. Each is laid back and quiet, yet super engaging.
It's almost hard to believe they aren't kin.
"He is always big on loving what you do and loving every day, like, 'are you loving life right now,'" Greenway said. "He's always, no matter what I'm doing, he's always cared and he's always asking me if I'm good and making sure I'm loving life. That's what I think about when I think about him and what he's taught me."
Greenway's involvement in hockey has spurred a new fan of the sport in Mingas. He's not Greenway's dad, but he sounds like a proud father when talking about him playing in the NHL and reaching the Olympics, where in 2018, Greenway became the first-ever African-American to wear the Red, White and Blue in men's hockey.
"When they introduced him, how many people looked at that and said, 'wow?' I'm not gonna say he's a pioneer, but he's right up there," Mingas said. "For other little black kids to see this guy? He's an inspiration."
More from the Wild's dads trip:
- With Foligno, apple doesn't fall far from the tree - With his kids looking on, Evason secures emotional first NHL win - Video: Dad's trip starts with a morning at Tria Rink