WINNIPEG — Damon Severson’s first steps in his hockey career were inauspicious. Evidence of the talent and drive that would propel him to the highest level of the sport came later.
Severson was born in Brandon, Manitoba. His first time on skates, he didn’t have to travel far from home. His mother, Donna, bought him a pair of used skates, and two-year-old Damon took to the ice at the local outdoor rink.
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It wasn’t pretty at first.
“He went out there with a little chair and was pushing it around,” said Severson’s father, Doug. “When he started skating, I said, ‘Oh my god, he’s never going to amount to much as a hockey player.’ His one leg was just awful.”
After the brief session was over, Severson’s father diagnosed the problem.
“When we went back inside, I looked at his skates and the one was completely bent,” Doug said. “He couldn’t push off with that one at all. So then I thought, maybe we’ll see if he can play some hockey. His stride that first time was all off. It was like, ‘Ay yi yi.’
Damon Severson eventually found his way on skates, all the way to the NHL. At 25, he’s become a key member of the Devils’ defense corps. New Jersey is trying to bounce back from a slow start to the 2019-20 season and return to the playoffs for the second time in three years. The Devils’ trip to Winnipeg to play the Jets, a 2-1 shootout victory Tuesday night, is a chance for Severson to reconnect with his roots.
When Severson first started skating as a toddler, his father, a teacher, accepted a job at Cormorant Lake School, almost 400 miles north of Brandon. Life in the small, isolated town took some getting used to. Cormorant had 400 residents in 2001, according to the census that year, and it dipped to 244 in the most recent count (2016). It’s even 50 miles northeast from where the Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) Blizzard, the northernmost junior team in the province, play.
Doug Severson quickly immersed himself in the community, coaching a variety of sports including cross country, volleyball, basketball and track and field.
“The kids were always looking to do all kinds of different things. I remember going in right off the bat coaching cross country,” Doug said. “The big meet was at this place called Snow Lake.”
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When they arrived in Snow Lake, Doug asked the kids on the team a simple question: Had any of them ever seen a golf course before? They shook their heads, so he took them to the local course.
“They just kept touching the green, like the putting green right by the clubhouse,” he said. “They were in awe. They were like, ‘Is this fake?’ They couldn’t believe it.”
Doug still has a photo at his desk of a 42-inch lake trout he reeled in during a successful day of fishing that school year. Those memories linger, even though the Seversons spent only one year in Cormorant. As Doug put it, his wife told him in April of that year that if he wanted to spend a second school year up there, it might be on his own.
“Oh, it’s cold. It was really cold,” Doug said. “One time we went out ice fishing and they had this auger that I think went down three feet and, like, we still had ice. It wasn’t big enough to get through to the water. That was pretty crazy. That’s how cold it was there.”
So he began searching for a new teaching position and, of the three openings Doug applied for, he liked the one in Melville, Saskatchewan best. The Seversons moved again, and Melville was where Damon’s hockey career began to take shape. It didn’t take long for people to recognize his talent.
“It was like a fish to water. He just loved it,” Doug said. “Starting even in initiation hockey, they moved him up to novice, and he would always play up a level with older players. I think it was a benefit because it wouldn’t always come easy to him. And he would play with kids his own age, too. It was funny, when I was coaching his Atom team, the Pee Wees asked, ‘When are you going to schedule your playoff games? Because we’ll schedule ours around that so Damon can come play for us, too.’ He was playing lots of times with two different teams and playing well.”
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Doug continued to coach multiple sports in Melville, and Damon excelled at others beyond hockey. Baseball was his favorite. He had a summer job at the local batting cages, and spent a lot of down time getting in some extra swings at the office. He played shortstop, pitcher and catcher, but hitting was his top tool on the baseball diamond.
It’s a sports family. Damon’s youngest sister, Kylie, won a gold medal at the Saskatchewan High School Badminton Championships in mixed doubles last year in Grade 11. She’s also on the volleyball team, and they’ll be competing in the regional tournament this coming weekend.
Normally, when the Devils are in town, the Seversons all make the drive from Melville to Winnipeg to watch him play. They’ve been fortunate in years’ past with Devils-Jets games being scheduled on weekends. The mid-week game this year conflicted with the family’s volleyball commitment — Kylie’s a player and Doug is a co-coach — and, with the season entering a critical stage, they couldn’t make Damon’s game.
“I had that exposure at a young age to just play every sport I could possibly play,” Damon said. “I was never turned down by my parents. I was never told, ‘you can’t play this’ or ‘you shouldn’t play this.’ My dad was big into coaching us and anything we ever needed help with, he helped us. We were lucky that way.
“He coached me at everything and it wasn’t like he was really ever the head coach. He was usually the assistant. He was always the positive guy, never had anything negative to say. Just always had a smile on his face, and he was kind of the guy that everyone loved to see when they came to the rink.”
Severson remains passionate about baseball. While other players kick around a soccer ball to get loose before games, he plays catch with assistant equipment manager Nate Belliveau. He still looks for baseball games to join during the summer and has been a regular in the HOMEBASE charity slow-pitch softball game in Kelowna, B.C.
But, in Melville, the NHL became his dream. Playing up a level and doubling up on games fed Severson’s thirst to play the sport he loved. Over the years, he became one of the top amateur players in the country, competing for Canada in the U-17 and U-18 world championships.
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Some of his best skill work growing up came right at home in the basement.
“Every night after supper he’d want to go down to the basement,” Doug said. “I’d tell him to give me a half hour to relax if I didn’t have to go back to the school to coach one of the sports. Then we’d go down there and he’d come back up just soaked. He’d shoot and shoot and he’d make me put pads on. It was a lot of fun.”
See you soon dad! pic.twitter.com/PD7EKRm2TJ
— Damon Severson (@dseves7) December 6, 2015
Severson’s exploits in Melville did not register with some Western Hockey League scouts, in part because his local team was not playing at the highest level of competition for his age group. He did get selected by Kelowna in the WHL bantam draft in 2009, but not until the ninth round (No. 192 overall).
Before the WHL beckoned, Severson spent a year with the Yorkton Harvest, a AAA Midget team about 25 minutes from Melville. He moved in with a billet family. Severson later told the Yorkton This Week that his year with the Harvest was critical for his development.
Kelowna has a rich history of developing NHL-caliber defensemen. Before Severson got there, and his junior career took off, he had another slight hurdle to clear.
“I remember his first training camp with Kelowna, and he had never flown. Not once,” Doug said. “We drove to Denver once to watch a couple NHL games and went skiing. We always drove. But when he had to go to Kelowna, it was either a 16 ½ hour drive or a two-and-a-half hour flight. That was a pretty easy decision.”
Severson’s success with the Rockets and his play for Canada at the international level raised his status as an NHL prospect. The Devils tabbed him in the second round (No. 60 overall) of the 2012 draft.
He matured into one of the best defensemen in the WHL, yet was the last defenseman cut from Canada’s 2014 world junior championship team in Sweden. The following season, Severson earned a spot on New Jersey’s roster during training camp and became an NHL regular at 20 years old.
The Devils were rebuilding and able to play Severson more than a contender might have. His skating ability, heavy shot and offensive acumen helped him reach the NHL, and his game has only improved during his time with the club.
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This past season was Severson’s best. He locked down a spot on New Jersey’s top pairing and set career highs in goals, points and time on ice per game. He also earned a spot on Canada’s roster for the world championships, his first opportunity to represent his country at the highest level.
His girlfriend, Drey Anna, and Donna went to Slovakia in May for the second half of the tournament. Hockey Canada pays for each player to invite a couple of family members or friends to join them after the team has settled in. Doug couldn’t be there, but the tournament still provided a lasting memory for him.
In the quarterfinals, Severson scored with 0.4 seconds left in regulation to tie the game against Nico Hischier’s Switzerland team. The Canadians won in overtime and went all the way to the championship game, earning runner-up to Finland.
“It was hilarious because I had a Grade 8 math class at the time and we were in the library,” Doug said. “I had the game on the computer and I think more kids were watching the game than there were doing the math they were supposed to be doing. When he scored, everyone yelled.”
During his first few seasons in the NHL, he returned home to Melville in the summers to skate and train. But he and Drey were already thinking about where they wanted to settle down together.
“Halfway through the summer (in 2017), when I was negotiating the (six-year, $25 million) contract, we bought the house in Kelowna,” he said. “That was always where my girlfriend and I wanted to be. She went to school in Calgary and worked in Calgary for a couple of years, but she was able to get a job that’s tough to get in Kelowna at the hospital. I just told her, ‘If you end up getting this job, then we’ll go on the house hunt right away.’ Her mom’s a realtor, so it worked out that she was showing us some places. Melville is my family’s home, but Kelowna is probably going to be my permanent home for the rest of my life. We’ve got a house there, it has everything that we want, so we’ll probably be posted up there for a long time.”
In Kelowna, Severson has access to better facilities and can train with a larger pool of NHL players who live nearby. It makes the pickup shinny games there in the summer among the best in the league.
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Severson does like to mix up his offseason training. Taking a cue from his sister, he enjoys the workout he gets from playing high-level badminton. Away from the gym and the rink, he likes to spend time on the water. He and Drey purchased a boat this past summer and enjoyed their latest passion, wake surfing.
Drey still works at a hospital in Kelowna, but is able to spend about 40-50 percent of the season in New Jersey. There is time to enjoy Kelowna, of course. Doug joined Damon in a charity golf tournament this summer, and reminded him that sometimes, the teacher can still be the master.
“I used to always outdrive him by 30, 40 yards, but the tables have changed and he hits the ball pretty consistently way further than me now,” Doug said. “But there was one hole with a longest drive contest. I went up there first and I hit it for everything I was worth. Then he goes up and hits it. We go see them, and both of our balls are probably 50, 60 yards past everyone else, but on that one hole I beat him by maybe three yards and I got the longest drive in the tournament. I laughed and laughed. I don’t get those bragging rights too often anymore.”
“Yeah, he got me by about five yards. He’s a good golfer, though,” Damon said. “We both just went up there and swung as hard as we could. I’m surprised he didn’t throw his back out, because this guy … I mean, he swung hard. Of course everyone in our group was razzing me, giving me a tough time, telling me, ‘Oh, your old man’s still got it on you.’ I said, ‘Well, he golfs quite a bit more than I do, but no excuses. Next year, I’ll be all over it.”
While his immediate family couldn’t make it to Winnipeg this time, Damon still had the opportunity to reconnect and reflect on how his family helped get him here. He met up with his aunt, who lives in Winnipeg, and his grandmother when the team arrived on Monday, and they stayed to see him play Tuesday night.
“I was still able to have a home-cooked meal,” Severson said. “It was a great night.”
(Top photo: Jamie Sabau / Getty Images)
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