NATE HAS THE DRIVE

Nate Schmidt became a member of the Winnipeg Jets by way of a midsummer night’s trade from the Vancouver Canucks in 2021. Born and raised in nearby St. Cloud, Minnesota, the 31-year-old defenceman can usually make it back to his old stomping grounds in a little over six hours of driving on the southbound I-94. But why would he want to leave snowy Manitoba? It’s not that the temperatures are that much warmer in the neighbouring state. Sure, the roads may be paved a bit smoother and the gas and beer are better priced, but the fishing is still the same north of the 49th parallel. Isn’t it? For the 10-year NHL veteran, finding a home base hasn’t been particularly easy as of late. Beginning his career in 2013 as an undrafted free agent alongside Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals, Schmidt was selected by Vegas to join the Golden Knights at the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. He stuck with Vegas for three years before being shipped to Vancouver for the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season. Schmidt has now played two years with the Jets and he has finally been able to transition into his own house and has made his fiancée Allie, his wife. Under contract with Winnipeg through the 2024-25 season, it appears as though it may be time to lay some roots. Schmidt sat down with Game On Magazine’s associate editor Carter Brooks and chatted all about his childhood in Minnesota, his small business endeavour and his homegrown passion for hot cars. I UNDERSTAND YOU HAVE QUITE THE FASCINATION WITH CARS. HOW DID THAT BEGIN? “My dad used to do amateur drag racing. He travelled around a bunch of places. How he got into running Schmidty’s gas stations was that he owned a vending machine business. He would fill up all the stuff during the week and then on weekends he’d be off to Indianapolis, or Des Moines or Sioux Falls and just race his car with one of his old high school teachers, the mechanic. It was cool. He always loved the old cars. My older brother and sister, they didn’t really get into it much but I was always willing to go with him to the car shows. It wasn’t until I actually started to recognize the cars and the years, that was when it really started to grow into what it is. It took me probably two or three years of car shows for me to be able to accurately tell my dad which car is which. We’d go to three or four a summer and now we bring one of the cars with us. It’s kind of just a fun ordeal we do for a day. When we were building the ’65 GTO, that’s how it kind of started. He’d get the pieces and I’d just sit there steel-brushing them and cleaning them all up. I thought it was boring at the time, but then when you see the final product come together, that’s when everything gets more magical.” SO, WHAT WAS IT THAT GOT YOU HOOKED ON HOCKEY AS A KID GROWING UP IN ST. CLOUD? “Truthfully, I played hockey because I was good at it. I liked the feel of skating, being out with my friends. I used to always want to do things just to be around people. I didn’t really know I wanted to be a hockey player until I got to high school or so; I loved baseball. I love being outside but what really kind of flipped it for me was when I was in fourth grade they flooded the sandlot outside our school. Every day after school all the kids would bring their skates and we’d play baseball in the fall and hockey all winter. Right after school that place kind of became home base for us where we’d go play pickup if we didn’t have practice or anything. That was probably the most fun I ever had as a kid.” HOW WAS THE EXPERIENCE PLAYING COLLEGE HOCKEY SOMEWHAT CLOSE TO HOME AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA? “My dad really wanted me to go to St. Cloud State. I wanted to go at least a little ways away though. Nothing against St. Cloud. But having a tonne of family around was great, and playing for the premier school in Minnesota was really cool to me. My mom just kept stressing to me that it’s more than just four years of playing hockey, but also figuring out the rest of your life too. Our D coach would always tell me that he had a list of every guy he had ever coached. He listed off guys who made it and guys who played in the minors. Guys who played overseas. And then he had a list of guys who were doing other things in their careers now. He always got us to look at this network of guys and their families that you’ll know just from going here. And most of them still live in the area so we just have an incredible network. That was why I was so intrigued by going there; it was so much more than just your four years. It’s a wild web.” TELL ME ABOUT YOUR STICK TAPE AND WAX BUSINESS. WHAT IS SHORTSIDE HOCKEY CO.? “Shortside, yeah, we’re trending. I think our net profits are up three times from last year. What’s so cool about it is, it’s a North American-made product and we want to go straight to teams. Straight to associations. I find that in hockey right now, everyone talks about it being so expensive. So, we thought, what’s a better way to save money? With tape being a necessity of the game, let’s just go straight to the associations and cut down prices and costs and allow more people to use our stuff at a wholesale price. We are currently in our R&D. This is as crude as it gets. We have our first two batches of wax. I’ve been letting the guys go around and try them. We have a local Minnesota company that is letting us do it our way; it’s amazing. I’ve had guys test it out, and now I’ve just let it sit here for about a month or two, just to see how it reacts and handles the daily lifestyle. It’s nice having a pretty sizeable guinea pig group. We’re working on laces now; the full experience.” SPEAKING OF EXPERIENCES, WHAT WAS IT LIKE SUITING UP ALONGSIDE ALEXANDER OVECHKIN FOR FOUR SEASONS WHEN YOU WERE IN WASHINGTON? “He is one of a kind, he really is. The way that he shoots the puck, the way he approaches the game, the way he gets himself in position to shoot. When he really gets going, he’s like 240 pounds and is a massive human being. He almost looks like a linebacker. He’s still a kid when he scores, and that’s something that’s really interesting. You see that scoring a goal for him is still the same when he was five as it is when he is 35. That passion is pretty cool, and to still have that throughout his career. You don’t quite realize what you had when you first break into the NHL, just having a guy who can score at will. You don’t realize how crazy it was until you leave. I was blessed with that for sure.” YOU WERE DEALT THREE TIMES OUT OF THE BLUE. DID THIS MOST RECENT TRADE TO WINNIPEG FROM VANCOUVER CATCH YOU OFF GUARD? “Yes and no. I didn’t know that Winnipeg was going to be a suitor. It was something that I sat down with my family and my agent about. We were like, ‘OK, this is something that we wouldn’t have thought of,’ but it was definitely a bit out of the blue, sure. It took a few days for us to talk it over and figure it all out, how it’s close to home and easy for my folks to come up and see me play. You know, it’s a lot like Minnesota so it’s pretty close to everything I was used to growing up. You find that there are not a lot of guys who can go to one place and just stay there forever. That’s almost like a fairy tale ending and that doesn’t happen much anymore.” WHAT WERE YOUR INITIAL THOUGHTS OF WINNIPEG WHEN YOU ARRIVED? “It was tough. Last year was cold. Last year was something else. I lived out in Headingley, so I was a little far away from everything. Dilly is out there, and I actually lived in Cody Eakin’s house. It’s beautiful. Lots of raw beauty. I was right on the river and could go for walks, you know, take Dilly’s dog out. It’s such a small city feel, such small pockets everywhere. Truthfully, you just have to look. That was the beauty of the city. From the outside you see one part of it and you’re like, ‘Oh wow, where’s the rest of this big city?’ But once you actually start seeing where the pockets are, it’s actually quite beautiful. We couldn’t come up and look at anything house-wise last year with quarantining and everything, so Eaks had a place there that I stayed in. There was a little mini basketball court in his basement, so I really worked on my jump shot.” HAVE YOU FOUND ANY GOOD, LOCAL HANGOUTS HERE IN TOWN? “So last year we had a really great crew of guys who would go out to The Thirsty Lion right on Dale, which is great. We’d throw some darts, which is awesome, play the Guinness game after one or two. That beer market just around the corner is pretty cool. I really enjoyed that too. I would say though, I love The Park Café now. Huge fan. When it was warmer out, we’d walk there. But now we drive there. I like to take my wife there. If Dilly’s wife and my wife go home, the two of us go for a little brunch date sometimes. I think it’s beautiful. I’m a big nature guy too.”