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***sköldpaddor*** · 03-28-2024, 05:04 PM

by Ellie Olliver

I’ve done a lot of prospect interviews in my career - I’ve been in the business for well over a decade at this point, but it’s amazing how often I still manage to check new items of on the list of first times. My conversation with Nevada Battleborn forward Chopper Donquixote today has given me the chance to make multiple marks on that list.

It’s the first time I’ve ever been to Drum Island, a place I didn’t know existed before this (no, not the one in South Carolina, this one is an absolutely frigid polar island kingdom, and to be perfectly honest with you, I’m genuinely not sure how I got there. I followed some incredibly whimsical instructions given to me by Chopper’s agent, and before I knew it, I was stepping out of the port, wrapping my parka around me, and setting off to the address I’d been provided.

So here I am, walking down onto a dock overseeing the water, which I can only assume must be salt water given that it isn’t frozen at all. The waves lap gently at the wooden posts of the dock, and for a moment I wonder if this interview is going to take place on a boat I wasn’t made aware of, but then I catch sight of Chopper himself, sitting near the end of the dock, holding a fishing pole.

I am going, at this point, to assume that the scene I’m witnessing is as novel to anyone reading this as it is to me myself, so allow me to paint a picture. Chopper is sitting, swinging his legs slightly where they dangle over the side of the dock. On one side of him is a plate of fish, and on the other side of the plate of fish is a very large bucket of cotton candy. Behind him, likely where he shrugged it off, is a blue and white bag, which looks to be a medical kit of some sort.

Chopper is wearing suspenders with his pants, and a very large hat, on either side of which his antlers can be seen. Yes, I did say antlers - as it happens, Chopper is a reindeer. This, I will note, is not a first for me - Nevada has a long history of animal players, going back to early legends like Melvin Majestik-Moose and Adelie de Pengu. So really, even the antlers aren’t a first.

However, having a fishing pole handed to me as I’m sitting down to get settled for an interview, that’s definitely a first. I take the fishing pole, though, and set up my phone between us to record as I somewhat clumsily cast out the line. I’ve been fishing maybe three times in my life including this, so at this point I’m just trying not to impale either of us on the hook.

I get the line into the water without incurring or causing any injuries, and with that accomplished, I turn to Chopper.

“Hi Chopper,” I say, “Is it alright if I call you Chopper, or is there another nickname you prefer?”

“Chopper works great!” he says, “I’m very excited for this!”

I relax a little, even as I reassess the background research I did for this interview. Chopper’s official record has his home town listed as somewhere in Washington state, but he seemed to indicate that this was his real home away from home.

“This is quite the place you have here,” I say, gesturing around with my free hand. “If this is what you’re used to, it must have been quite the transition going from here to Las Vegas. How was that?”

“The heat was unbearable at first to be honest,” Chopper tells me. “I spent most of my time indoors, which took a toll on me as I do love my time outside, especially during the day. After time I became more acclimated to the weather and ventured outside on some afternoon trips with JFK.”

He’s talking about his teammate, Jim “JFK” Wieners, who was also a rookie in Nevada this season, and this is a perfect transition into the next thing I was hoping to talk about - his experiences in his first season in the SMJHL.

“Always great to have those connections early on,” I nod. “Was there anything else you learned this past season in the J that surprised you? Anything that didn’t?”

“The physicality of the J is much higher than I expected. Maybe I was brash thinking that I could dominate from the start, but I’m glad I bounced back. I knew that I was the best at fighting and that sure showed in the stat line.”

He’s not wrong there. The SMJHL, as a whole, has seen fighting almost entirely phased out in recent years - there were only thirteen fights won in the entirety of S75. Three of those wins were Chopper’s, and no one beat him in a fight. Alongside Jordan Bamford, Nevada’s other enforcer type, it’s easy to wonder if that level of physicality helped with what many have called an over-performance from the team this season, especially in the playoffs.

“You definitely have a rougher, more physical playing style than we see in either the SMJHL or the SHL in recent years,” I say, “Is there anyone in this or any other league that you’ve modeled your play after?”

“Ryan Reaves. Man, in his prime Reaves was the scariest player in the league. While not technically skilled he used his physicality to significantly hamper the other teams abilities. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention his fighting skills. Man can he throw some hooks. I love the idea that his chirping can also affect the other team’s play. Getting inside the head of your opponent is important and I may need to level up my chirp game in order to follow in his footsteps. My goal is to model my play like his and be someone who occasionally can bury the puck in the net but most importantly imposes my physicality on the other team significantly wearing them down deep into the series when we make the playoffs.”

“It’s always an interesting mix between getting under the other team’s skin, protecting your own team, and keeping things clean enough to avoid too many major penalties,” I agree. “Speaking of your team, it sounds like you’ve already been doing plenty of bonding with the squad - which I imagine is likely to happen with as big of a rookie class coming in at the same time as Nevada had this year. Is there anybody you’re looking forward to getting back out there on the ice with?”

“Well, as the current undefeated fighting champion in the J, I’m looking forward to watching out for my rookies,” he begins, and I can’t help but smile at how quickly that transition has happened. Chopper, himself once a fresh rookie who many imagined might end up being the steal of the draft (selected by Nevada in the fourth round, when many teams had already bowed out of the draft), has already grown into someone ready to take on leadership responsibilities himself. “But,” he adds, “Gotta love working alongside JFK. A top ten draft pick and truly a leader of not just this team but a nation. Clearly he is such a positive influence in the locker room and really keeps the team going. While I know we did not have an ideal regular season last year, without his leadership it could have been significantly worse.”

It is high praise for a fellow rookie, and it’s clear that, with this being the second time he’s mentioned Jim Wieners, the two of them have especially formed some solid bonds on and off the ice. They were also both drafted to the Montreal Patriotes in this past SHL draft, which might lead one to believe that there’s a bit of a pipeline going there.

“Was it exciting, both being drafted by Montreal?” I ask, wiggling my fishing pole as something nibbles at it. Go away, fish, I’m thinking, because I honestly don’t know if I know how to retrieve the fish once I’ve caught it.

“I’m very excited to be a part of Montreal. While they had one of the worst seasons in league history last season, I’m excited to be a part of the wave that brings Montreal back to the top of the league. JFK went there alongside me and I’ve already spoken many words of praise on his character.”

“You definitely have. Was Montreal a team you expected to be interested in you once you saw JFK picked there so early?”

“Montreal was not a team I expected to go to once scouting wrapped up. I was not scouted by many teams and I think it was a spark of luck that I fell to MTL and the leadership had caught wind of my talents.”

One has to wonder if this might be due to some mutual connections - while Montreal does not historically have an established pipeline of any sorts with Nevada, there are some underlying connections that aren’t immediately apparent. Nevada’s GM, Gunnar Söderberg, is reportedly fairly well-acquainted with Carolina’s GM, Chris Conner. When I’ve spoken with Gunnar before, he’s mentioned that he and Chris have made a habit of sniping one another in the SMJHL draft, that they tend to target similar types of players. Montreal’s first overall pick in the SHL draft was Carolina’s Jamie Fraser. Certainly nothing concrete, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more players from those two teams headed to Montreal in the future.

“You’ve been pretty underrated from the start,” I go on. “Nevada was able to grab you pretty late in the draft, and you’ve certainly done your part to prove what a steal that was. As a reindeer, have you always felt like you had to prove yourself in hockey, or did you have people who believed in you from the start? Does anybody in your family play?”

“Just me! Doc taught me how to skate and I learned to fight on my own so the physical aspects weren’t too difficult to pick up! I wish I had siblings or someone else to join me on the ice but alas it’s just me and the polar bears out here.”

The polar bears comment certainly causes me to raise an eyebrow, and I have to explore that a little further.

“Polar bears? You train with polar bears?”

“Well,” Chopper says, having set his fishing pole aside for the moment and producing a small yellow sphere from a pocket somewhere, “Admittedly I don’t participate in skills very often, but I fight the local fauna atop the icy ponds.”

Well, that certainly explains some of the fighting prowess. Everyone else in the SMJHL has been doing what little fighting practice they do against other human beings, and Chopper, a reindeer, has been out here fighting against other animals. No wonder no one stood a chance against him this season.

“That’s definitely impressive,” I say, because what else can you possibly say to that? “So if you weren’t playing hockey, do you think you’d just be here still fighting polar bears instead?”

“If I wasn’t playing hockey I would have gone the MMA route and moved down South to master my skills and prepare myself for the octagon,” Chopper says, matter-of-factly, and while the thought is beyond amusing, it also speaks to how thoroughly prepared this young…deer…has been for anything life throws at him. Many people I ask that question give me the same it was always hockey or I never had time to consider anything else type answers, but Chopper seems to know exactly what he’d be doing. Fighting. Fighting one way or another.

So in the end, I think, as I’m putting away my (thankfully unsuccessful) fishing pole and preparing to wrap up the interview, maybe fighting is what Chopper was born to do. Fighting the other animals on the tundra. Fighting to make his way to the SMJHL. Fighting to be drafted. Fighting to prove what a steal he was. Fighting to impress SHL GMs. And this next season, as he’s already told me, fighting to protect the next generation of Battleborn rookies. It’s going to be a good time, and something unlike much we’ve seen in either league lately.

And I, for one, am pretty excited to see it.