Lightning’s Journey from Underdogs to Icons

Like any number of talented kids from Western Canada, Hagel viewed the WHL bantam draft as a rite of passage. In some ways, even, the draft had its way of feeling less like one step toward achieving the NHL dream than it did the dream itself. The major-junior circuit has been the breeding ground for a great many big-league stars, and whether you’re growing up in a Prairie town or west of the Rockies, if you’re among the best players in your age group, it’s seen as the most-direct route to The Show.

That’s why it was just about all Hagel could think about as his draft year drew near. There was chatter about peers starting to find advisors and agents. There was a personal desire to follow in the footsteps of friends and competitors who had made the leap to ‘The Dub.’ And there was a foreboding sense that everything – his entire future – hinged on taking that next step. It made the 2013 WHL draft feel not just important but monumental.

So, when it came and went without Hagel’s name getting called, he felt as though the ground beneath his feet had suddenly disappeared. He was 15, sitting in class and starting to question his NHL dream. “It has the feeling that it’s slipping away,” he said.

He had the weight of 20,000 people in that Bell Centre on his shoulders, and he fought like it-JON COOPER

There was nothing for Hagel to do, really, other than get back to work. For him, that took the form of another two seasons in the same Fort Saskatchewan Rangers system in which he’d been playing during his WHL draft year and then a brief turn with the AJHL’s Whitecourt Wolverines. And it was in Whitecourt, only a few games into 2015-16, where he caught the eye of Red Deer Rebels scouts. That opened the door for him to practice with the Rebels, where he turned coach-GM-owner Brent Sutter’s head and earned a spot on the roster.

While Hagel was not a standout, his first season in Red Deer saw him assert himself as a possible NHL-caliber talent. He finished with 47 points in 72 games, and his performance gave him enough cachet that the Buffalo Sabres decided to take a flyer. He was scooped up with the 159th overall pick in the 2016 NHL draft.

Now, if this were about almost any other top NHL scorer, you could chart the pathway from there: he would’ve headed off to Sabres camp, landed on the radar of Buffalo’s higher-ups, eventually earned an AHL spot, turned that into an NHL opportunity and gone on to cement himself as a lineup regular. But that wasn’t the case. Over the next two off-seasons, Hagel spent time in upstate New York in hopes he would ingratiate himself to the organization and earn an entry-level contract. Instead, after Hagel wrapped up his third season with the Rebels, the Sabres relinquished his rights.

The first phone call Hagel remembers receiving after Buffalo gave him the news was from Sutter. “He basically said, ‘I am going to do everything I can to try and get you to that next level. You just have to continue putting your head down and try to get better and try to get yourself there,’” Hagel said.

That didn’t stop him from feeling, though, that he was reliving the WHL draft nightmare all over again. As a 20-year-old entering his fourth WHL campaign, there was a cold, creeping feeling of doubt. He felt like an unfortunate reality was beginning to set in – that a life in hockey wasn’t going be in the cards. So, Hagel gave himself an ultimatum. “If this isn’t going to work, I need to go to school,” he said. “That was my assumption, that I’d give it to Christmas.”

With that in his mind, Hagel started to think about his future. While putting in some serious off-season work, he made time to sign up to head back to school. If hockey wasn’t going to work out, he wanted to improve his grades so he could go to college. But when he got back to Red Deer to start 2018-19, he looked like a different player. The season prior, before Buffalo had let him walk, his offense was inconsistent. Now, seemingly out of nowhere, he was uncontainable. He had 10 points through his first five games and was pushing 20 by his 10th. And by his 15th game, he was tied for third in WHL scoring, with 28 points. Hagel’s hard work was shining through.

More importantly, NHL clubs were circling. Now, his self-imposed deadline didn’t seem so worrisome. And by the end of October 2018, days after his fifth three-point game of the WHL season, Hagel put pen to paper on a three-year, entry-level deal with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Sutter had encouraged him, pressed him to work even harder and told Hagel he could still make his NHL dream come true. “I couldn’t give more credit, and I give a lot of credit, to Brent Sutter,” Hagel said. “He was the best thing that’s probably ever happened to me in hockey.”

If the pandemic didn’t nearly shutter one NHL campaign and change the landscape of another, it’s worth wondering how enamored the Lightning would have become with Hagel. The 2020-21 season brought with it a temporary divisional realignment that made Chicago and Tampa – normally in opposite conferences – regular foes. Eight times the Blackhawks squared off with the Lightning that season, and it was during the third of those meetings, the first for which a rookie Hagel was in the lineup, that Cooper couldn’t shake him. “I just remember I was like, ‘Who is this kid, whose name I don’t know, who is flying all over the place and being a pest?’” Cooper said. “It’s like, ‘Oh my God, this kid is always involved.’”

Cooper was all too familiar with Hagel by season’s end, as was the Lightning front office. What they had seen was soon apparent to the rest of the NHL, too. During his sophomore season, Hagel worked his way up Chicago’s lineup, and as the trade deadline approached, with the Blackhawks in full rebuild mode, there were rumblings he was a sought-after trade chip. Hagel, though, didn’t think anything of it. “A couple days before, the (Blackhawks) coach at the time (Derek King) came out and said something along the lines of, ‘If we trade Hagel, I don’t know what type of rebuild we’re doing here,’” Hagel said. “Rumors were going around, questions were being asked, and in my mind, I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

Then came the news. On a road trip to Minnesota, Hagel was pulled aside by a Chicago staff member and sent to meet with the Hawks’ brass. He was told he’d been traded, learning soon thereafter his destination was Tampa Bay. Initially, he couldn’t believe it. His head was “in a blender.” But disbelief soon became a realization: he was going to get an opportunity to compete for a Stanley Cup with the back-to-back champions.

It wasn’t long, however, before his elation dissipated. On the bottom-feeding Blackhawks, Hagel was seeing big minutes. He was proving himself a capable top-six player. But a similar role with the Lightning was blocked by Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos and a cadre of veteran talent on a Cup-contending club. “I’m coming over from Chicago, I have 21 goals already, and there’s still however many games,” Hagel said. “I’ve been playing 18 minutes a game when I was in Chicago, and now I’m playing 12 or 13.”

Frustration was setting in. Hagel had been used to working his way up the lineup, not slipping helplessly down it. But Cooper preached patience.

So, Hagel did as he’d done prior: he put his head down and went to work. The result, as always, was a breakthrough. Against the New York Rangers in the third round of the 2022 post-season, Hagel landed on a line with Alex Killorn and Anthony Cirelli. It was a defensive role, and he bought in. Ultimately, Hagel played an important part in helping the Lightning to a third-straight Cup final, and while the Bolts left empty-handed, Hagel’s commitment to doing the little things well wasn’t lost on Cooper.

Indeed, Hagel’s work ethic and attitude were the very things that landed him on the wing alongside Kucherov and Point just two games into the following season. It wasn’t some dalliance with the Lightning top six, either. Hagel became a fixture of the unit, authoring a breakout 30-goal, 64-point campaign. “Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, just throw me on the line, and I’ll get points and be able to do this.’ But that’s not how it works,” Cooper said. “These guys, they think the game at such a high level, they play the game at such an incredibly fast pace. That it’s why it’s hard to play with really, really good players. Good players also want guys who are going to do some of the work that they’re not going to do.”

That, Cooper said, is Hagel. But it’s not just what he brings to the attack or his ability to thrive alongside elite talents that have led Hagel from being an overlooked 15-year-old to a role player for Team Canada in best-on-best play. From where Cooper is standing, it’s because everything that has been thrown at Hagel, whether an off-ice obstacle, grind-line minutes or the chance to skate in the top six, has been an opportunity he’s accepted, learned from and used to build a bigger, stronger, better foundation for the rest of his game. In his earliest moments with the Lightning, Cooper said, Hagel kept taking bites of the apple. And once he was ready, bit by bit, as with his entire career, the bites just kept getting bigger.

“The cycle just continues,” Cooper said. “Late draft pick. Sixth-rounder. And it’s just never being given a chance. It’s always that a door keeps shutting in his face, and he keeps opening it. It shuts in his face again, and he walks through again, everywhere he’s gone. When you have that much fight in a player, and you watch what he’s done in his career, probably not that surprised at what he’s doing now.”