COLUMBUS, Ohio — The text messages from mom arrive before every game that P.O Joseph plays, and they never fail to produce a smile. His brother, Mathieu, receives similar ones.
The family tradition doesn’t quite extend back to those idyllic nights when the boys and their friends would play on the backyard rink built by their father in Chambly, Quebec. But it’s the memory of those evenings — the sounds of laughter and skates digging into the ice and the taste of hot cocoa after hours of hockey — that lie at the heart of their mother’s texts:
“Have fun tonight.”
“Give it all you have and enjoy yourself.”
When it’s brought to the attention of P.O Joseph that his mom’s messages sound similar to the instructions of NBC analyst Pierre McGuire at the end of his pre-game, on-ice interviews, the 21-year-old Penguins defenseman chuckles.
“She’s Pierre 2.0,” he said.
Neither P.O nor Mathieu, a forward for the Lightning, want it any other way.
“I can remember when I was in junior (hockey),” the Penguins’ rookie said. “I’m 17-, 18-, 19-years-old and she’s asking me if I still love the game like I used to. It’s amazing she would be asking that, telling me, ‘It’s OK if you want to stop if you don’t like it anymore.’ I’m knocking at the pro level and she’s still worried about this. It’s always been like that around my family and I hope it’s always going to be that way.”
Twenty-five years ago, Steelers’ linebacker Greg Lloyd became a fan favorite in Pittsburgh for his menacing style of play. He wore T-shirts that read: “I Wasn’t Hired For My Disposition.”
The lanky Joseph is the opposite of the muscle-bound Lloyd. He plays with joy. He walks through life like a man with a winning lottery ticket in his pocket and the cell numbers of supermodels in his phone.
“Always happy on and off the ice,” said Wilkes-Barre/ Scranton defenseman Jon Lizotte, who partnered with Joseph last season and roomed with him on the road. “We’d be watching movies and he’d being coming up with one-liners, which were even funnier with his French accent.”
Joseph’s arrival on the Penguins’ blueline comes at a critical time for a club ravaged with injuries. The 6-foot-2, 185-pounder has contributed four assists in just five games, including three primary helpers Saturday night in Pittsburgh’s 5-4 overtime win against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
He’s been elevated to the team’s top pairing with boyhood hero Kris Letang thanks to his poise, positioning and hockey acumen. And once fans stop dwelling on his slight frame, they will realize Joseph embodies the new breed of NHL rearguards who use their stick, skating ability and brain to transition from defense to offense.
“The definition of ‘compete’ has changed over the years as our game has changed,” said Jim Hulton, coach of the Charlottetown Islanders of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, where Joseph remains a beloved figure. “P.O uses his assets to his advantage. His feet. His reach. He often gets to the puck first and at the end of the day, the puck is what counts. You can bang bodies all you want, but he’s so good at getting sticks on pucks. He can tip it away from a guy and get it to his outlet, sometimes without having a physical encounter.”
Joseph’s best attribute, however, might be his attitude. It’s the one intangible within our control at the start of each day.
His mother, France, and father, Frantzi, taught their two children the importance of respect and mental well being. No matter the task, do it the right way and in a positive manner.
The advice helped P.O evolve from a fifth-round draft pick in junior hockey to a first-round draft pick in the NHL. It’s enabled him to overcome a lack of size as a 15-year-old and a bout with mononucleosis in his first year as a pro. It’s allowed him to act with dignity in the face of ignorance and the occasional encounter with racial intolerance.
“There are always bad days here and there, but I tell myself we are pretty lucky to be where we are right now — to make a job, a living out of a passion we have for a game,” Joseph said Friday in a phone interview. “I tell myself there are so many other people who would love to be in our spot. It’s not going to last forever, so you might as well enjoy every second of it.”
JOSEPH FAMILY
The Josephs, Mathieu, Frantzi, France and P.O have spent plenty of days together in rinks
‘DON”T THINK TOO MUCH’
France Taillon, a speech pathologist, and Frantzi Joseph, a mortgage broker and travel agent, did not get into the business of parenting to raise two professional hockey players. The couple has been together for 28 years, and the next time they pressure one of the boys to raise their level of play will be the first.
Frantzi, who's of Haitian descent, played the game in his youth and coached his kids when they were young. But the idea of sending them to power-skating and skills-development camps during the summer months seemed ludicrous to him. Frantzi and France did everything short of hiding their sticks and skates in the offseason.
There’s more to life than hockey— even in a French-speaking suburb of Montreal. The Joseph brothers dabbled in soccer, baseball, basketball and tennis.
“The boys were mad at us because other players (were) doing some hockey during the summertime and they were saying, ‘We won’t be able to progress enough,’” said France, a former multi-sport athlete who excelled in volleyball. “We were saying, ‘enjoy other sports. Be an athlete before being a hockey player. You will certainly learn from other the sports.’”
The backyard rink was converted into a sand volleyball court in the summer. Mom and dad didn’t want their kids burning out on hockey. They wanted them to look forward to each season and the promise it held.
France saw Mathieu lift the Stanley Cup last year in the Edmonton bubble and watched P.O walk across the stage in Chicago as the No. 23 overall pick of the Coyotes in 2017. (He was dealt to the Penguins in 2019 as part of the Phil Kessel trade.)
She admits, however, many of her fondest memories are of the boys throwing off their backpacks after school and lacing up their skates to play on the backyard rink.
“We would play until we couldn’t feel our fingers and toes,” P.O said.
The youngest Joseph — Mathieu is two years older — switched from forward to defense at a young age. His heroes were blueliners such as P.K. Subban and Letang. He watched the Penguins almost every chance he got.
Before you ask, the answer is a hard “no.” Joseph has not breathed a word of adulation to the three-time Stanley Cup winner.
“He’s so talented, but I don’t do that at this age,” Joseph said laughing. “I don’t want to give him any credit.”
Even as Mathieu and P.O began to show promise, the parents never prodded the boys to focus on reaching the NHL. They drove 11 hours to watch their sons play in Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island) and Saint John (New Brunswick), but kept their opinions within the family.
Hulton cannot recall having a hockey conversation with P.O’s parents. It was all about making sure their youngest son was going to school and staying out of trouble.
“You know what, the NHL is not my dream, it’s not my husband’s dream,” France said. “That’s Mathieu’s dream. That’s P.O’s dream. We are just there to support them along the road, along the journey. We’re there to give them structure.”
In a world filled with division and riven by a pandemic, France champions a simple philosophy: Happiness is contagious. Her youngest son is a strong advocate.
“It’s always better when you go to the rink with a smile and tell yourself, ‘I’m going to have some fun instead of putting pressure on (myself),” P.O said. “It comes from my parents, as well. When we grew up, it was always, ‘have fun out there. Don’t think too much.’”
LEADERSHIP EMERGES
Hulton joined the Charlottetown Islanders in 2015, the same season as Joseph. More than 20 years of coaching experience told him the skinny lad from Quebec was his best defenseman — and that there was no way he’d risk putting him on the ice at 6-foot-1, 150 pounds.
“We actually sent him home to his midget team his first year because we looked at his body type and said, ‘This kid can’t survive. He’s not big enough. It would not be fair to him, he’s going to get hurt.’” Hulton recalled. “Well, by November I was basically begging our general manager that we needed this kid back. We needed his mobility, his compete level.”
The coach had Joseph move into the home of the team’s nutritionist, Nancy Fong, who got him eating meals every few hours to compensate for the calories he burned in practice and games.
By the end of his rookie year, the coaching staff was matching Joseph against future New York Islanders’ forward Anthony Beauvillier in a playoff series. In three-plus seasons, the defenseman registered 27 goals and 91 assists.
It wasn’t just Joseph’s puck skills and increased strength that impressed Hulton. The youngster demonstrated natural leadership qualities. His attitude was infectious.
“He took over the room,” Hulton said. “We talked to our veterans and we told the guys, ‘There is your future captain.’ Emotion doesn’t rule him the way it does with some kids.
“We have Quebec French-speaking players and Maritime-based English speaking players. Sometimes, it ends up being cliques and groups. But P.O was bilingual, he could converse with everybody and served as a conduit.”
At the junior-hockey level, players spend endless hours together, often hundreds of miles from their homes. Relationships become vitally important, and they manifest in little ways.
Islanders’ radio broadcaster George Matthews recalls how Joseph could raise the spirits of teammates on long bus trips with a well-timed gag or funny line.
“In the six years I’ve been with the team, there’s not been a player more well-liked than P.O Joseph, I can tell you that,” Matthews said.
WHAT AN INTRODUCTION
COVID-19 restrictions have ensured the first NHL game between the Joseph brothers will need to wait until next season, unless the Penguins and Lightning meet in the playoffs.
The sibling rivalry has seen plenty of ice time, however, at the junior and minor-league levels. Charlottetown and the Saint John Sea Dogs play often in the QMJHL.
France has one family rule: compete like crazy, but no fighting. Not that boundaries haven’t been tested.
In their first junior-hockey matchup, big brother clocked little brother with a gloved punch during a post-whistle scrum. A season ago, the siblings exchanged words from the penalty boxes in an AHL game.
“He’s a competitor, he wants to win,” Mathieu said Wednesday in a phone interview. “He wants everyone around to do well. It’s not hard for him to go to the rink and work his butt off. I’m proud of what he’s been able to accomplish.”
The Joseph brothers have lived together in a Montreal apartment during recent offseasons and trained at Axxeleration Inc., a suburban facility run by Lightning strength coach Mark Lambert.
No gym workout could have prepared P.O for a first pro season that included a trade, a bout with mono and a once-in-a-century pandemic.
When Joseph learned of the June 29, 2019 deal that sent him and veteran forward Alex Galchenyuk to Pittsburgh in exchange for Kessel, minor-league defenseman Dane Birks and a 2021 fourth-round pick, his initial thought was: “What did I do wrong?”
Within a few minutes, however, his irrepressible optimism took hold. He began welcoming the opportunity to one day play with Sidney Crosby and Letang, and skate for a franchise he watched so often in his parents’ home.
Between Joseph’s illness to start the AHL season and the coronavirus that ended it prematurely, the defenseman registered three goals and 14 assists in 52 games for Wilkes-Barre. Once the NHL season resumed, Penguins’ management chose to include him on their extended postseason roster for the tournament in Toronto even though he didn’t appear in a game.
“What jumps out at you immediately is his size and reach and his skating ability for a player that size,” said Scott Young, the club’s director of player development. “I got excited about that right away. He can make it tough on opponents.
“As for his weight, it’s not all about putting pounds on. Some guys play lighter. As long as they play strong, that’s what matters. P.O might be wiry, but he’s strong.”
Young said part of the job is monitoring the emotional swings prospects endure in the early stages of their pro development. It never became an issue with Joseph as he quickly bounced back from mono to form a solid partnership with Lizotte.
With each week, Joseph’s confidence grew as did his willingness to supply more offense.
“You could tell he had great hockey sense right away,” Lizotte said. “Throughout the year, as he played more games and right up until we ended in March, his play with the puck got better. He was making things happen instead of just making the simple play.”
GETTY
P.O Joseph joins the attack Saturday night in New York.
‘INSATIABLE APPETITE’
The Penguins won an offensive-zone draw near the end of Saturday night’s first period and Joseph cradled the puck on his stick at the left point. He quickly moved it to Teddy Blueger along the wall before accepting a return feed.
The game was tied 1-1 in the dying seconds of the period, and Rangers’ forward Phil Di Giuseppe had positioned himself in the shooting lane. Most rookies appearing in their fifth NHL game would look to make a safe play. Not France Taillon’s youngest son.
“Have fun tonight.”
And so Joseph hung onto the puck, faked like he was going toward the middle of the ice to draw Di Giuseppe out of position before wiring a wrist shot to the net that allowed Brandon Tanev to redirect it past Alexandar Georgiev for a 2-1 lead.
The game wasn’t 20 minutes old and Joseph had his second assist.
With Letang in the locker room nursing a lower-body injury, Joseph played a season-high 25:58 and also assisted on Crosby’s game-winner in OT.
“We believe this kid is going to get better and better,” coach Mike Sullivan said after the game. “He's a real good player. He's a great kid. He's got an insatiable appetite for the game. We can see him improving right in front of our eyes with every minute that he plays out there.”
The Penguins have been forced to dress a league-high 11 defensemen due to the spate of injuries. Joseph’s minutes and responsibilities — he saw time on both special teams’ units against the Rangers — figure to grow.
His junior coach Hulton does not expect him to shrink from the moment.
“He’s very special,” Hulton said. “A lot of times, you are calming young players down on the bench and offering them direction and assurance. It got to the point with P.O and I that he would give me a little look, a little smile, like ‘It’s OK coach, it’s under control. We’ve got this.’ I’ve never had an experience with a kid who was that comfortable in his own skin — that upbeat and optimistic.”
CONFRONTING INTOLERANCE
The Penguins will ask Joseph to accept another challenge in two weeks. He’s eager to assist and possesses enough real-life experience to address an important topic.
As part of Black History Month, the Penguins will launch weekly programming under the banner of “Black Families: Representation, Identity and Diversity.” Joseph will join a virtual panel on Feb. 10 aimed at helping minorities break through barriers to achieve goals.
His mother is white. His father is Black. Over the years, the parents of P.O and Mathieu have had ample discussions about race relations, a topic that dominated news cycles last summer.
“The biggest advice they gave us was there would always be people who try to bring you down because of your race, because of this, because of that,” Joseph said. “ . . . Those people are ignorant or lacking knowledge about all the diversity there is in this world. I don’t have time to lose over people who don’t like me because a lot of people do like me. If you don’t think I should be here because I’m a Black person, that’s your mentality. But I think everyone should have a chance to be what they want.”
Great initiative by great people!!! Looking forward to it🖤 https://t.co/NqQosCplQE
— P.O Joseph (@POJoseph15) January 29, 2021
Joseph has encountered racial intolerance on and off the ice, although he added the hockey-related incidents occurred when he was younger.
He know others haven’t been as fortunate. Rangers rookie defenseman K’Andre Miller was repeatedly subjected to a racial slur when a team-sponsored online video chat was hacked in August.
“It’s happened from time to time,” Joseph said of his own experiences. “I was getting into (midget hockey) and I heard a comment and I was more laughing about it than anything else. First of all, it shows the person doesn’t know me or know any of my family or where I come from. He didn’t know what he was saying cause it wasn’t true. I don’t have time to overthink these comments from people. I just want to show them what I’m really about.”
Joseph and Miller are young, slick-skating defensemen following a path paved by Subban and Seth Jones —Black players among the best at their position.
The humble Joseph was quick to pump the brakes on any likeness to Jones, who’s evolved into a perennial Norris Trophy candidate with the Blue Jackets.
“I’d be getting ahead of myself with that comparison,” he said. “I’m just getting started.”
His mother, who attended P.O’s first two games in Pittsburgh, said the family is simply living in the moment.
“If P.O goes back to the taxi squad, he will enjoy it because it’s part of the experience,” France said. “That’s just who he is. We don’t project too far in the future because we are enjoying the day-to-day situation for now. P.O is doing the same.”
As mom likes to say, happiness is contagious. P.O Joseph has been spreading it from the moment he set foot on his parents’ backyard rink.