COLUMBUS, Ohio — To this day, Bob McGinn has no clue where his youngest son, Brock, found a jersey that was so offensive to family tradition that he turned to his wife and said, "Get him out of the house right now.”
The McGinn clan of Fergus, Ontario, used to worship the Maple Leafs. Signs of loyalty to the Original Six franchise hung on the walls. It didn’t matter that the Leafs were the Cleveland Browns of the NHL, an organization whose last visions of glory were viewed on rabbit-eared, black-and-white televisions in the 1960s.
Bob was a passionate Toronto fan and he passed down that love to his oldest two sons, Jamie and Tye. So you can imagine the reaction when Brock — he was about 7 years old at the time —walked through the front door wearing the fabled bleu, blanc et rouge of Toronto’s archnemesis.
“I’m a Montreal Canadiens fan now,” the youngster announced.
It's clear that McGinn, who the Penguins signed as a free agent over the summer, has a bit of a devilish streak. Or, as his father puts it: “He likes to poke the bear.” Just ask his former Hurricanes teammates.
Two years ago, McGinn orchestrated a Halloween prank that was caught on video and distributed through social media. He donned a scary mask and hid under a lunchroom table with a hole in it. As players approached the first foil pan, expecting to find scrumptious morsels, they were shocked to see McGinn’s masked melon peering back at them.
The expressions of horror were better than anything Brandon Tanev could conjure for his famous team headshots.
.@BrockMcGinn21 is serving up some SCARES for lunch 😱 pic.twitter.com/B9teHxZux9
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) October 29, 2019
“Brock is flat-out hilarious,” longtime Hurricanes television analyst Tripp Tracy said. “He may not show that side to the public, but his teammates in Carolina and Guelph (McGinn’s junior hockey league team) loved that about him. He’s a throwback player, one of those guys who will do anything for the team, one of those guys with a dry sense of humor. He’s full of surprises.”
His biggest surprise in Pittsburgh has nothing to do with punking anyone — except for maybe the critics who panned his signing as a replacement for Tanev on the Penguins’ energy line with Teddy Blueger and Zach Aston-Reese.
The 27-year-old McGinn doesn’t play with the same speed and manic ferocity of Tanev, whose legs and mouth never stopped running in his two seasons with the Penguins. McGinn doesn’t possess the same mudflap of hair or hellbent desire to hit anything that moves in opposing jerseys, traits that endeared Tanev to fans at PPG Paints Arena.
“I’m not coming in to replace him,” McGinn said of Tanev, who was left exposed in the expansion draft and poached by the Kraken. “I’ve got to show my own game and make it respected here, as well. You can’t be a player that you're not. They signed me for the player I am, and I have to show that it was a good choice on their part to sign me.”
Through 30 games, McGinn has validated the decision of Ron Hextall and Brian Burke to sign him to a four-year, $11 million contract. He’s fit seamlessly on a line with Blueger and Aston-Reese, he’s played a pivotal role on the NHL's No. 1 penalty-killing unit, and he’s contributed eight goals to a team desperately in need of secondary scoring with so many stars in and out of the lineup.
As for those who doubted him? So far, the joke is on them.
“He’s come as advertised and then some,” Mike Sullivan said of McGinn. “We knew he was a very good player. We knew he had a good hockey IQ. We knew he was going to make us harder to play against. He’s added a certain offensive dimension that’s been a little bit better than anticipated and that’s been welcoming from our standpoint.”
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BOB McGINN
Brock McGinn flanked by his brothers, Jamie (left) and Tye (right).
Even as a kid, McGinn understood the importance of developing his own style, his own approach to the game. He always wore his mop of red hair, which he inherits from his Irish grandmother, a bit longer than his two older brothers.
The three boys were typical Canadian siblings battling it out on a backyard rink built by their father. They would play so long into the night that their mother, Cori, a former figure skater, grew tired of summoning them to the dinner table. She would just bring their food out to the ice surface.
Their father loved hockey, but never advanced beyond the Junior B level. Bob McGinn was an outstanding lacrosse player in an age before you could make money in the sport. The former Carrier salesman was willing to let his offspring pursue their hockey dreams as long as they demonstrated a desire to improve.
“They kept on going and going and nobody cut them,” Bob McGinn recalled. “We told them once we saw their interests going elsewhere, our interests and money would go elsewhere. That day never came.”
The McGinns aren't mentioned in the lineage of great Canadian hockey families with the Richards, Espositos, Sutters and Howes, but having three kids reach the NHL level is a remarkable achievement. Jamie, 33, was drafted in the second round by the Sharks in 2006 and played 11 seasons with six franchises. Tye, 31, was selected in the fourth round by the Flyers in 2010 and played parts of four seasons with four franchises. He’s still playing professionally in Germany.
“We were always competing, never wanting to lose,” McGinn said of the family’s backyard games. “Sometimes, (our parents) would have to step in and separate us, but it was always fun. We pushed each other. Being the youngster brother, I got to see their two styles of play, and I guess I’m a little bit of both of them.”
At 6-foot, 187-pounds, he’s the smallest and most slender of the McGinn boys. He had to play the game a bit differently, while still showcasing the “tough skin” of his older brothers.
Coaches grew to appreciate his relentlessness, consistency and high threshold for pain. In his second year with the Guelph Storm, of the Ontario Hockey League, Brock suffered a serious wrist injury, but tried to play through it.
“This went on for three or four weeks,” said Canucks assistant coach Scott Walker, who coached him at Guelph. “He didn’t miss a practice and we kept playing him until finally the doctor stepped in and said he wasn’t getting enough blood flow through his wrist. I don’t know if it would have jeopardized his career, but we took him out of the lineup for his own good.”
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GETTY
Brock McGinn celebrates a double-overtime, winning goal against the Capitals in Washington in the 2019 playoffs.
In the spring of 2012, Jim Rutherford received a phone call from a former Hurricanes player, a winger who had scored one of the biggest goals in franchise history. On the other end of the line was Walker, whose Game 7 overtime tally against the Bruins sent Carolina into the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals against the Penguins.
With the zeal of a corporate lobbyist, Walker doggedly talked up McGinn’s attributes. He explained to Rutherford, a Carolina team executive at the time, why it made sense for the Hurricanes to draft the 18-year-old winger.
“It’s true,” Rutherford confirmed to DK Pittsburgh Sports.
Despite being limited to 33 games in Guelph due to the wrist injury, the Hurricanes selected McGinn in the second round. Four years later, he evolved into a regular in the Carolina lineup and eventually became a favorite of coach Rod Brind’Amour, who admired his grit and versatility.
McGinn sees similarities in the coaching styles of Brind’Amour and Sullivan.
“Both are passionate about the game,” he said. “They pay attention to details and know what it takes to win. They both respect the game and they want you to respect it.”
McGinn recorded 51 goals and 55 assists in 345 games with the Hurricanes. Along the way, he also met his future fiancé, Jamie, who he plans to marry next summer.
Meanwhile, Rutherford left for Pittsburgh and helped the Penguins win back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016-17. He was long gone before the Walker-McGinn saga came full circle on April 24, 2019.
That night marked another Game 7 for the Hurricanes and produced another unlikely overtime hero.
The only reason the first-round series between the Capitals and Carolina required extra time was because of McGinn’s diving clearance of a puck that was about to cross the goal line with less than three minutes left in regulation.
.As the game headed to a second overtime, Tracy thought about the story of how Walker, the 2009 overtime hero, had pushed Rutherford to draft McGinn. Wouldn’t it make for amazing Stanley Cup playoff lore, Tracy thought, if McGinn scored an OT winner 10 years later.
Here’s how it played out with McGinn redirecting a Justin Williams’ centering feed and Tracy telling the whole story to the television audience:
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In his first interview with Penguins beat writers, McGinn was asked about his penchant for playing pranks.
“I like to keep it light,” he said.
It might take awhile for McGinn to pull off a caper rivaling his Halloween hijinks in Carolina, but what he’s delivering on the ice in Pittsburgh is bringing plenty of smiles.
The Penguins are rolling into Christmas break, winners of seven consecutive games, despite all the adversity with players out of their lineup. McGinn has been a constant and a solid contributor at both ends of the rink.
He’s been a steadying influence on a penalty-kill unit that’s converting at a 92.1 percent clip. His eight goals rank fifth on the team and his 14.0 shooting percentage is third-best behind Danton Heinen and Jake Guentzel.
“He’s a low maintenance guy,” Walker said of McGinn. “When you have to put that little effort into what you get from him, you can’t quantify that ... I know (Hextall) and I know Burkie very well. He’s exactly their kind of player.”
JEANINE LEECH / GETTY
Brock McGinn blasts a one-timer by the Blackhawks’ Marc-Andre Fleury on Oct. 16 at PPG Paints Arena.
On Jan. 27, the Penguins will welcome the return of Tanev as the Kraken make their first appearance in Pittsburgh. There’s little doubt the feisty forward will draw a big ovation from the crowd, with some fans donning his familiar No.13 jersey.
McGinn won’t mind. He certainly will take it better than his father did seeing a 7-year-old Brock walk into the house with that Canadiens sweater.
You also won’t hear any complaints from his coach, who’s delighted the Hurricanes couldn’t afford to keep a forward who contributed to three postseason runs.
“I’m certainly really excited about potentially where his game might be able to go moving forward,” Sullivan said of McGinn. “When I say that, I really believe that’s he got an offensive dimension to his game along with all those other core (components) that he brings as far as his defensive game, physicality and his shot blocking. That glue stuff that makes us hard to play against.”
McGinn signed in Pittsburgh because he believes the Penguins have another Stanley Cup run in them. Some think those days are behind a franchise that’s suffered three consecutive first-round exits.
If the Penguins are fortunate enough to qualify for the postseason, McGinn might provide the additional offensive output that Sullivan seeks. He’s not Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin, but he’s scored six career playoff goals in 34 games and famously ended the Stanley Cup reign of Alex Ovechkin and Tom Wilson.
Oh, yeah, Brock McGinn likes to poke the bear.
DK Pittsburgh Sports writer Dave Molinari contributed to this report.
