Nic Dowd and the path from Alabama to the LA Kings

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – Los Angeles Kings forward Nic Dowd doesn’t see himself as any sort of novelty.

The 26-year-old Dowd, who was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, has received numerous questions throughout his hockey playing life about where he grew up and the oddness of coming from the ‘Deep South’ to reach the sport’s highest levels.

“It gets a little old. I think there has been so many articles written about it, nothing has changed. I still get the reaction of ‘oh you’re from Alabama, how did you play hockey?’” Dowd said. “It’s the same thing every time.”

But really, Dowd’s success isn’t a major surprise to those who are from the Huntsville area. The region that has four sheets of ice, a Division-I team, a minor league team and a highly developed youth hockey program. He used these advantages to develop into a slick playmaker who has become a regular NHLer with the Kings.

“Huntsville is such a melting pot of people from all over with he world and a lot of people who do come from traditional hockey markets,” said Nathan Bowen, the managing partner of Total Package Hockey, a Huntsville headquartered organization that tries to help train players around the United States. “It doesn’t matter where you live or where you’re from – and this kind of brings it full circle with Nic. It’s athletic ability and it’s the passion and commitment and compete level in a player in any athlete. Those are the keys and he has that.”

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Dowd said his two brothers introduced him to hockey as a youngster, but can’t figure out how they got into it. Though Dowd also played baseball growing up, really he started to notice that he had some special hockey skills, as did those around him.

“He was a smaller player when he was 14 years old, but he had the ‘compete’ and he had the skill,” Bowen said. “There’s no doubt he has made it to where he is today because of his work ethic and his compete level and his passion for playing the game.”

Dowd said he didn’t consider football – the most popular sport in that state – and indicated that the Huntsville youth program and its cadre of dedicated coaches helped keep him involved in hockey.

“I tell people that all the time is that they have a really good youth organization and the college team has a lot of input in the youth organization,” Dowd said. “I think they do a good job of promoting it and do a good job of getting children into the program.”

Hockey has been an important part of Huntsville’s sporting landscape since the 1980s, starting with University of Alabama-Huntsville club team that eventually turned into a Division-I program. The area also has a Southern Professional Hockey League team – the Huntsville Havoc.

Huntsville is a major engineering hub in the United States and has many transplants of people from hockey markets along with other areas. Dowd’s own parents are both from England – his father a doctor and his mother a nurse.

A lot of UAH players such as Bowen, an Ontario native who is now a United States citizen, remain in the area and find themselves trying to grow the game.

The most recent USA Hockey registration lists 1,564 players in the state of Alabama. For comparison’s sake, Tennessee has 3,662 registered players.

“I think having a college team here for over 30 years and a pro team for 20-plus years, I think the hockey here per capita probably rivals a lot of traditional markets,” said Michigan native and Total Package Hockey director Keith Rowe, another former UAH player. “It’s just a matter of people not associating Alabama with hockey. When I came down here I was very surprised at the number of people who were committed to hockey.”

As a youngster, Dowd had the opportunity to be coached by Danny Geoffrion and Jay More – both former NHL players who had settled in Nashville – with TPH’s regional travel team. Not only did the group go to far away places to go against some of the top youth programs in the country, he got to play with some high-end players on his own team.

Dowd was on a line with Vinny Sapponari – who was drafted to the NHL in 2008 – and Bryce Geoffrion – who eventually played Division-I hockey at UAH.

“At the end of the day it’s either you got it or you don’t. It’s a God-given ability,” Danny Geoffrion said. “The whole time we coached Nic, we said ‘he’s got it all.’”

Dowd also had a player he could look up to as someone who made it to the NHL out of the region in Jared Ross, who played 13 games with the Philadelphia Flyers between 2008-09 and 2009-10. Ross, whose father was the UAH coach, gave Dowd a template for how to get to the pros from Huntsville. He started out in area youth programs, before eventually moving away to boarding school to further his development. Dowd ended up doing the same, enrolling in Culver Military Academy before moving onto the NAHL and USHL.

“I think from growing up down there it’s not – I don’t think you had an idea of how challenging it is to get to the NHL because you’re not surrounded by I guess … you’re not surrounded by kids that are trying to get to that level. You’re not in a big hockey culture,” Dowd said. “I don’t think I really had much of an idea of how challenging it was. I think throughout the years I was lucky to play on good teams and good organizations.”

According to Geoffrion, the biggest hindrance in Dowd’s development as a youth was his size, which eventually was rectified by a growth spurt in high school.

“He used to get demolished sometimes, people taking runs at him, getting crushed on the boards, coming back to the bench limping in pain and all that and never missed a shift. He was right back out there and right back in their faces,” Danny said. “That’s what Jay and I always admired about him. We were like ‘hey Nic want to skip a couple of shifts and all that and recuperate?’ That would make him mad more than anything.”

Dowd was picked by the Kings in the seventh-round of the 2009 NHL Draft, and the organization saw him quickly blossom to where he was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award in 2014.

In 2015-16, he had his best pro season with 38 points in 58 games with the Ontario Reign, and then won a spot with Los Angeles in 2016-17, where he has picked up 15 points in 37 games.

Dowd received a special welcome at a Dec. 22 game in Nashville from family and friends who made the 115-mile trek from Huntsville. In that contest, a 4-0 Kings win, Dowd scored a goal.

“It was the first time I had played there I think, first time being that close to home and good to see people I had grown up playing hockey with and their support,” Dowd said.

According to Rowe, the infrastructure to see more players like Dowd continues to increase. A recent ‘learn-to-play’ and ‘Lil Preds’ program received 130 entries, which is an indication of the strong support at the grassroots level.

“I think basically the city sells itself and the people and the community and nobody really ever wants to leave when they’re down here,” Rowe said. “A huge thing is having that alumni base, people that know hockey. Now you’re having second-generation hockey players – second and third generation hockey players even. Not just the guys who made it to play college hockey, but there’s a lot of second-generation Northern Alabama Hockey Association families, their dads grew up playing and now have had children and now their kids are playing within NAHA.”

The impact Dowd has made on local kids has boosted the appetite of them to make it to the NHL. Just like how Dowd viewed Ross as a template, others now see Dowd as the standard.

“He’s a huge role model. It can be done, that’s the best way to put it. No matter where you’re from if you’re good enough, you’ll get spotted and he’s a prime example of that,” said UAH forward and Huntsville native Josh Kestner. “He’s one special player.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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