Zach Bogosians family is all in on his pursuit of the Stanley Cup with Tampa

Sunday morning not far from the shores of Lake Minnetonka, a short drive southwest of Minneapolis, 2-year-old Hunter Bogosian is at a medical facility being tested for pink eye.

He’s also in the throes of potty training and whether the two are connected or not he has also developed a very strong attachment to his hockey helmet.

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“He’s obsessed with his helmet. He doesn’t want to take it off,” Hunter’s mother Bianca Bogosian admitted.

On the subject of potty training — never a process to be taken lightly — one recent breakthrough has been the successful introduction of lollipops as a welcome reward for trips to the potty.

All in a day’s work for Bianca, a former professional soccer player who is, for the foreseeable future, manning the tiller on the family vessel that includes Hunter and Hunter’s sisters Mila, 4, and Harper, who is eight months old.

Bianca, who grew up in the Boston area, actually heard about her future husband, NHL defenseman Zach Bogosian, before she met him, having gone to prep school in the Northeast where she played soccer with one of Zach’s cousins.

It was years later that the two actually met, set up by one of her college friends who was engaged to a hockey player. Before the meeting, and the world being as small as it is sometimes, Bianca reached out to her old pal to make sure Zach was on the up and up.

Turns out he was. The couple celebrated their fifth anniversary remotely late last week via video chat from the NHL’s Toronto bubble where Zach and the rest of the Tampa Bay Lightning are making their home for the foreseeable future.

Just another moment in the life of a young family that has to be navigated in these most unusual of times in these most unusual of circumstances.

Celebrating an anniversary via screen and saying goodnight to three young children, two of whom are too young to really understand why dad isn’t tucking them in in person, aren’t experiences unique to the Bogosians. But they are a reminder that no two families that are part of the NHL’s return to play playoffs are the same, that each relationship is different, each set of circumstances that guide to this point are different and truly personal.

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To assume that the literally hundreds of people connected to this endeavor are approaching it in the same manner is to be colossally misguided.

All of this was brought into sharp focus early Saturday morning when the Boston Bruins learned that Vezina Trophy finalist goaltender Tuukka Rask had decided that he could no longer tolerate life in the bubble away from his family, which included three children including a newborn, and was going to opt out of the remainder of the playoffs.

It was a decision that illustrated that everyone — and we mean everyone — involved in this remarkable plan to play out the 2020 playoffs and award a Stanley Cup has had to drill down and ask themselves what the cost was going to be and whether it was going to be worth it.

The Bogosians had those kinds of conversations. But the nature of those conversations were different than the conversations that other NHL families were having because their lives are different just as Rask’s life is different from those of his teammates and so on.

In conversations with other NHL wives and family members, Bianca gleaned that there were some who were Zen about whether the NHL returned after the pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Some of the other wives, they were, ‘If this season doesn’t happen, that’s fine,’” Bianca said.

Not the Bogosians.

“I was like praying this season was going to resume for Zach’s sake, after all he’s been through and what he’s put himself through to get out of Buffalo,” Bianca said. “I was praying that he had the opportunity to play in the playoffs this season.”

So part of the discussion the couple had about moving forward with training camp and the move into the Toronto bubble wasn’t so much “should you go?” as “how is this all going to work?”

Bianca called her parents, who agreed to come and help out with the kids. There are friends and other family members who are committed to lending a hand during this time however long it takes.

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It wasn’t just about making Bianca’s life as a temporary single mom to three youngsters more agreeable but how the dynamic at home in Minnesota was going to impact Zach and the reality that he is on many levels isolated from all that was happening with his family while living in the bubble with the rest of the Eastern Conference teams.

“I don’t want him to worry about anything but hockey, right?” Bianca explained. “I’m trying to make it as stress-free as possible for both of us while he’s there.”

Making sure things are as comfortable at home and making sure that things go as smoothly as possible — notwithstanding the odd pink eye scare — by extension makes Zach’s job as a defenseman for the Lightning easier.

“That’s one less thing for him to worry about,” Bianca said.

Already there have been moments that have reinforced that this decision was the right one for their family, forever moments that are and will remain indelibly etched on all of their memories. Like Zach walking into Scotiabank Arena a week ago and standing next to his teammates on the Lightning bench as the national anthems were sung before Game 1 of their opening-round series against Columbus.

“So, this is what it’s like,” Zach thought as he looked up at the flags fluttering slowly in the empty arena.

In that moment he thought of his grandparents, all of whom have passed, and the many times they would pack him up and take him to hockey practices or games or to soccer or lacrosse.

With two older brothers sometimes there simply weren’t enough cars in the Bogosian driveway to get everyone to where they needed to go so his grandparents were an integral part of all that.

And of course Zach thought of his parents, Ike and Vicky, who had made all this possible back in the early days in Massena, New York and who would be watching this game from afar. And of course he thought of Bianca and the kids watching him step onto the ice. Why did he think of all these loved ones in this moment? At age 30 and after 644 regular-season games, this was Zach’s first real NHL playoff game.

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More than six hours later, when Zach’s first postseason contest ended with Brayden Point slapping home the winner to give the Tampa Bay Lightning the win in an epic tilt, Bianca would admit in a video chat that she began watching the first of what would be five overtime periods wishing and hoping that Zach would score the winner but by the end just hoping and wishing someone, anyone wearing a Tampa jersey, would end it.

Someone sent Bianca a video clip of her husband, who logged an astounding 44:28 in ice time, tottering into the dressing room exclaiming, “Thank God.”

“I definitely shed a tear,” Bianca acknowledged of the night of so many firsts. “It’s been a long, emotional road for him and us. Seeing what he has gone through. The adversity he’s overcome just purely from a mental strength aspect.”

“To see him play that first game,” she added, “It’s hard to even put into words.”

Would things have been different had Bogosian and the Atlanta Thrashers made the playoffs in his first couple of years in the NHL? Would the moment have resonated as soundly as it did a week ago?

Probably not. But it’s a mug’s game to ponder woulda, coulda, shoulda at this point.

And Zach said he’s tried, as a matter of course, not to think of what has been as opposed to what will be.

“Whenever I’ve had to deal with adversity, whether it’s been injury-wise or just having a successful season, it’s been to take a step forward, take it off the chin and step forward,” he said.

Zach was the third overall pick in the 2008 draft, selected by the Atlanta Thrashers.

1. Steven Stamkos.

2. Drew Doughty.

3. Zach Bogosian.

Rare company indeed.

The Thrashers weren’t very good in the time that Zach was with the ill-fated franchise, which managed to qualify for the playoffs just once in their existence — 2007 to be exact — before they relocated to Winnipeg in the summer of 2011. One year the Thrashers called up Hall of Famer Chris Chelios from the American Hockey League as Atlanta made a push to make qualify for the playoffs late in the 2010 season.

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They fell short. The next season would be their last in Atlanta.

Zach made the trip to Winnipeg when they relocated and loved the buzz that surrounded the Jets in Winnipeg. But just as they were creeping toward playoff-worthiness, he was part of a blockbuster trade in February of 2015 with the Buffalo Sabres that also saw star forward Evander Kane depart the Jets.

That spring Winnipeg made the playoffs for the first time since the move west while Zach was just starting what would be a lamentable time in Buffalo.

The 30-year-old spent parts of six seasons as a Sabre. There were injuries and periods of disappointing play and upheaval throughout the organization, which owns the NHL’s longest current playoff drought at nine years and counting.

This season was especially miserable for Zach personally and for the wildly dysfunctional Sabres.

Offseason surgery kept him out of the lineup until November. Then, a month later, he was a healthy scratch for the first time in his career. He asked for a trade but none was forthcoming.

He was scratched for eight of nine games after the All-Star break and then was put on waivers and went unclaimed. Zach declined to report to the team’s American Hockey League affiliate in Rochester and the Sabres suspended him and then terminated his contract making Zach, who forfeited the remainder of his $6 million contract, an unrestricted free agent.

Then, with time ticking down before the Feb. 24 trade deadline and the cutoff point for players to be eligible to play in this season’s playoffs, it looked like this would be yet another campaign without hope of breaking his personal playoff drought. But Tampa Bay, beset by injuries to the blue line, stepped up and signed Zach to a low-risk, pro-rated $1.3 million deal on the eve of the deadline.

He moved his family to a condo on the 10th floor of a downtown building walking distance to Amalie Arena. A few days later the NHL went into pause mode.

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A few days of self-quarantining in the condo trying to get a sense of the nature of the virus was enough. After a  stop in Massena, where his family still resides, the five of them headed to a lake home they established a few years ago outside Minneapolis not far from a large group of other NHLers and their families.

“It was an interesting year for the Bogosian household that’s for sure,” Zach said.

There is a certain constancy to how hockey players imagine themselves or their lives. Zach is no different.

“When you’re thinking about playing and you want, obviously as a kid you want to win the Stanley Cup,” he explained.

And not just win the Stanley Cup, but compete for it.

“To be part of a group trying to accomplish something big,” Zach added.

Because that’s the journey, no? To win the Stanley Cup as part of a group that comes together, that accomplishes the most difficult of challenges in pro sports together.

Watch any Stanley Cup-winning team celebrate and it’s a moveable feast with the Cup at the center of all that humanity. “We not I,” as the saying goes.

Zach has had no direct experience with that. Until now. When the train wreck of a season spit him out in Tampa, for the first time in his career he was part of a team that wasn’t just guaranteed of a playoff berth (more or less) but where the pursuit of the Cup was everything.

Some might call it magical.

“To be blunt there’s no bullshit. No bullshit. No politics,” Zach said. “Just walking into Tampa they’re going for it. As a player that’s what you want.”

It’s not unusual for teammates or coaches to make note of a special moment before a big game. Maybe it’s a player’s birthday. Or facing an old team. Or a first-ever playoff game after a dozen-year wait. And so it was a week ago as Zach suited up for Game 1 versus Columbus.

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“Definitely a few guys that said a few things before the game,” Zach noted.

He’s not the first player to wait a long time for this kind of opportunity, this kind of experience that helps define a player’s worth not just to himself but to teammates, coaches, GMs. He won’t be the last. Zach has played with some of them himself.

He skated alongside Ron Hainsey in Atlanta and then Olli Jokinen in Winnipeg.

Hainsey’s first full NHL season was 2005-06 and his first postseason game was in 2017 with the Pittsburgh Penguins with whom he would win a Stanley Cup. Jokinen played 1,231 regular-season games in the NHL and ended up playing in six playoff games, his one lone experience ended up being with Calgary in 2009.

While it may not have come up in everyday conversation, “Hey, that sucks that you’ve never been to the playoffs,” it becomes a part of a player’s identity.

“You’re definitely cognizant of it,” Zach said.

That he had become the kind of player about whom others would take note of for never having been to the tournament, well, that makes getting there now, in this most curious of seasons, even sweeter.

“For me, every day it’s a fun experience for me and you savor it, you appreciate it,” he said.

Even the grind of the playoff bubble life is something to be embraced because that has never been his experience.

“You learn to love the grind because personally I haven’t done that,” he said. “Just as an athlete, as a competitive person, you don’t feel more alive than in that moment.”

And of course to step into playoff action and be part of the fourth-longest overtime game in NHL history? Well, if you ask whether this is all worth it, there is the answer.

“Every time you’re on the ice the game is in your hands,” Zach said. “You feel alive, you feel focused, you feel present.”

On the day we chatted, the Lightning had been given the day off. Zach had just come from lunch and a bit of bocce with his teammates at nearby BMO Field.

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There would be more video calls with the family and then 24 hours later he would once again partner with perennial Norris Trophy finalist Victor Hedman in a strong performance for the Lightning with Bogosian collecting his first-ever Stanley Cup playoff point, an assist, as the Lightning won to move ahead in their series 2-1.

At home along the shores of Lake Minnetonka, the Bogosian family’s own bubble will continue to exist in his absence. But make no mistake, the two bubbles are not distinct entities. They are connected on many levels in spite of the physical separation.

Each day the family remains apart is a day that brings all of them closer to the goal of winning a Stanley Cup. And there are other considerations, too, like the future for Zach, who will become an unrestricted free agent when all is said and done this season.

Even when the path was at its rockiest sometimes Zach would tell Bianca that he felt he was made for the playoffs, that if he ever got the opportunity he would shine. He has proven thus far too prescient in that manner given his strong play and the obvious trust that head coach Jon Cooper has in the veteran defender.

“It’s been really nice for him to get that opportunity for him to showcase himself and his ability,” Bianca said. “It is a different game and that’s how players get recognized and that’s how players gain confidence. I couldn’t be happier for him to be in this position.”

In short, Bianca isn’t in any hurry for the bubble spell to be broken and has suggested that while he’s at it he might as well just stay as long as he can.

“He misses home and we miss him but I’m happy for him to be in this situation,” she said.

(Photo of Zach Bogosian and family: Courtesy of Bianca Bogosian) 

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