‘My whole immediate family should be dead’: How Austin Czarnik overcame the odds to become an NHLer

Griping about ice time is nothing new. Hockey parents being hockey parents, there are often concerns.

When Jabar Askerov, coach of the Belle Tire Minor Midget AAA squad in Detroit, is asked to explain his deployment choices, he is not lost for words.

Nor is he empty-handed.

Bearing statistics to support his stance, Askerov encourages the assembled moms and dads to try to understand one thing — that no matter how many shifts their boys get, all of them are long shots to play junior, to play college, to play pro. Sorting the probabilities by position, he outlines the modest likelihood of reaching each level.

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Audience rapt, Askerov concludes with this dash of reality: “So, parents, please enjoy your kids’ hockey. Enjoy them while they’re young. I want to tell you one thing — this is a marathon. Your kids are 15 right now and you all think they’re going to be pro players, but this is a marathon. Even when you get to the pros, it’s a constant battle, a constant fight.”

The coach’s spiel resonates.

Especially for Mike and Rhonda Czarnik, whose son Austin, by that stage, is no stranger to challenges, on-ice and otherwise.

“So that kind of stuck with us — it’s a marathon,” Mike said the other day after a shift at the General Motors Technical Center. “Don’t give in. Keep on fighting till it’s done. I just thought that was some good advice he gave us. It stuck with me.”

Certainly, the Czarniks are in it for the long haul.

Mom and dad have watched as their son — defying doubters and dodging defenders — covers ground on the hockey landscape. As a little kid, as a teenager, as a young man and as a grownup.

For everyone, though, the marathon’s course differs. Race pace is personal.

Suiting up for his 100th NHL contest the other night, Austin Czarnik was 26 years old. That same game — March 10 — Calgary Flames teammate Noah Hanifin, 22, appeared in his 308th; Derek Ryan, 32, played his 221st.

Long list or not — more than 4,000 players hit that NHL benchmark before Czarnik — it is meaningful.

“It’s an achievement, a life-long achievement — everyone wants to get to 100,” he said. “Even one game, it’s such a feat to be able to do that. You don’t take it for granted. Every single game is an honour.”

Reaching the century mark did not pop corks — even if he did supply an assist on the game-winning goal against the Vegas Golden Knights. Instead, Czarnik celebrated the occasion by eating cupcakes with his fiancée Rachael — red velvet for him, vanilla for her, and crumbs for Beau, their miniature goldendoodle puppy.

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“It’s just been a crazy, crazy career, I guess you could say,” Czarnik said, with a smile. “From how I grew up, the battles I went through, being cut from teams, for me to be able to say I hit a hundred games, it’s very exciting, very humbling.”

Are you able to step back and be proud of yourself?

No hesitation. “Yeah, 100 percent.”

During a wide-ranging interview in the Saddledome hallway outside the Flames’ dressing room, Czarnik is relaxed and upbeat. But when discussing loved ones, emotion rises to the surface.

For good reason.

“Honestly, my whole immediate family should be dead,” he said. “It’s crazy. (Mom and dad) have been through a lot.”

Czarnik’s older brother Michael, born with a rare blood disease, was given a 10 percent chance of survival. He lived.

And his mom, because she volunteered at his elementary school, was exposed to black mold. Rhonda suffered seizures for nearly three years. (When the building was eventually closed for significant upgrades, students relocated to a high school.)

“She got deathly sick,” said Mike. “We thought we were going to lose her.”

(Czarnik, like some of his classmates at Washington Elementary, 60 kilometres north of downtown Detroit, developed asthma, which his parents believe was linked to the school’s then-toxic conditions. It meant daily doses of medicine and frequent inhaler use — and, sometimes on the bench during minor-hockey games, emergency cups of hot chocolate to warm his windpipe. Asthma, even now, affects him.)

When Czarnik was in Grade 9, his father was in a car crash, breaking his neck, back and six ribs. He was in a body cast for a year and a half.

“It was a lot to handle at the time. I still get emotional about it,” Czarnik said while choking up. “For him it was tough. He still feels the pain. He’s got a rod in his back. He needs his muscle relaxers to help get him through the day. I’m very fortunate to still have him. It changed everything for him.

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“I feel like it changed all of us in a way. To be grateful, to be more grateful, for what we have. I was very fortunate to be given the parents I was given because they were willing to do anything for me. It’s life lessons I’m carrying every single day and I hope I can instill in my kids as well.”

When Czarnik talks about the closeness of his family, he’s not talking in hyperboles.

His mom’s sister, Denise, happens to be married to his dad’s brother, Rob. (Their son Robbie was a 2008 third-round pick of the Los Angeles Kings.) In fact, it had been Aunt Denise who provided the initial nudge into hockey when Czarnik was five.

“We didn’t really think about it too much, to be honest, because we never really played it,” Mike said, a one-time Div. III college basketball player. “Austin took off really fast. He caught on.”

And quickly he became a commodity. One team, in an older bracket, wanted Czarnik. His dad was reluctant. “And the coach goes, ‘No, he’s going to be one of my studs.'”

But for every coach who encouraged him to skip an age group, there was another one who doubted Czarnik’s ability to handle to rigours of even his own level, towering offensive gifts notwithstanding.

Because his size, even then, was the issue.

Coaches, on the sly, would tell Mike and Rhonda that the boy was unlikely to crack their squads — perhaps there would be a better fit elsewhere. These were messages that needed softening. “We tried to shelter him from that,” Mike said. So they would gently steer their son toward tryouts for other clubs.

“And he’d go, ‘Why? I like my team,'” said Mike. “Later on, he found out what was happening.”

Now, years later, Czarnik describes it as ridiculous, that misplaced emphasis on brawn.

“It’s not the NHL,” he said. “We’re playing mites and squirts and peewees and bantams. There’s no need to set up your team like an NHL team. I think that’s one thing coaches were trying to do back then. I don’t know why.”

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Skepticism taking its toll, he contemplated quitting hockey and trying other sports.

In the end, though, naysaying served only to strengthen his resolve.

“It helped me realize that I wanted to prove people wrong,” Czarnik said. “I think I’ve been doing it my whole career. I feel that people have doubted me from the start. That’s been my mentality — don’t worry about what other people say.”

Mike convinced his son that he need not fret about all the coaches willing to write him off. Instead, focus on the ones who truly appreciate his talent.

“I told him, ‘There’s a team out there that’s going to like you. They won’t care about your size. Keep that in mind,'” his dad said. “That’s what I kept trying to put in his mind. It seemed to take the pressure off him — you don’t have to please everybody. Just do what you can do, someone will spot you. It’s kind of what happened.”

After his final three winters in Detroit — where he had hopped from Honeybaked to Compuware to Belle Tire — he was asked to join the U.S. development outfit. Local coaches, suddenly, were upset that players were being poached — to Mike’s disbelief. “I’m like, ‘You acted like you didn’t even want him. And now you want him?'”

Skating for the national under-17 and -18 sides for two years, Czarnik generated 56 points in 65 contests. Dozens of colleges took note. But when he informed his parents that he wanted to check out Miami (Ohio) University, Mike shuddered.

“Michiganders don’t like Ohio, you know what I mean?” he said, chuckling. “Football and all that stuff. Just a sports thing. Rivals.”

But the teenager had done his homework, noting the school’s reputation for small forwards — Andy Miele and Carter Camper thrived there — under a head coach, Enrico Blasi, who happened to be shorter than all of them.

“(Overcoming size is) dear to my heart, so you knew he was going to get every opportunity,” Blasi said of Czarnik. “So we got along really well.”

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Before enrolling at Miami, Czarnik skated for the 2010-11 Green Bay Gamblers, sneaking onto the fringes of the NHL map. Central Scouting, listing him at five-foot-eight and 140 pounds, ranked him 115th — nearly 80 slots ahead of USHL peer Johnny Gaudreau. On draft weekend, however, nothing.

Czarnik was “devastated,” according to his dad.

One year later, this time after a fantastic freshman showing at Miami — 37 points in 40 games, on a line with Reilly Smith — he was again snubbed by big-league clubs. He remembers thinking, “Oh my gosh. How come no one wanted me?”

He pauses in the retelling and pivots.

“Looking back? I wouldn’t change it for anything. It worked out.”

Because, despite being untethered to an NHL outfit, college turned out to be a wonderful experience. Czarnik shouldered the RedHawks captaincy as a junior — as Andy Greene and Tommy Wingels had before him.

“His work ethic, his care level for his teammates, his passion to play the game and to get better every day, was evident, so it was a no-brainer,” said Blasi, adding that the sweater’s C is more than decoration. “You’ve got the well-being of the entire program and the team. It’s quite extensive in terms of the pressure and sheer responsibility. It’s not just talking to refs … you’re the spokesman, you’ve got to do all the interviews, you’ve got to do all the talking between periods, you’ve got to make sure everyone’s on the same page.”

He laughs.

“And you’ve got to make sure the coach is in line as well at times,” Blasi continued. “It’s quite a responsibility.”

Upon graduation, Czarnik finally heard his phone ring. NHL suitors started to circle.

He signed with the Boston Bruins and, over three years, produced 17 points in 59 NHL games and 155 points in 157 AHL games. An unrestricted free agent this past summer, more than two dozen clubs expressed interest.

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“There’s going to be ups and downs, obviously, but when you have the confidence of believing in yourself, that carries you a long way,” Czarnik said. “With the support I’ve had, I’m able to overcome anything. My parents stuck by me — they’d say, ‘If they don’t want you, someone else will want you’ — and I stuck by my parents and believed what they said.”

However, this campaign — his first with the Flames, who inked him to a two-year (one-way) deal worth $1.25-million per season — also features its share of adversity.

Czarnik needs to find a way into coach Bill Peters’ good books.

In early-December, he scored against the Columbus Blue Jackets — on the annual fathers trip with Mike in the stands — but found himself in the press box for the next game. That is not the normal order of things.

More recently, Czarnik withstood a stretch of nine straight scratches, bring his season’s DNP total to 28. Returning to the lineup Feb. 16 at Pittsburgh — after a month of inactivity — the winger scored. Then scored some more.

Czarnik picked up four goals, three of them game-winners, in his first five games back. A wicked accomplishment for a regular. Stunning for someone who’d been marginalized.

No. 27 doesn’t deny the difficulty. Nor the nerves.

“You’re human,” Czarnik said. “I was a little scared at first.”

But he took advantage of extra practice time by working productively with assistant coach Martin Gelinas, particularly on shooting. And, as usual, he stayed in touch with his folks.

“He said, ‘dad, I’m trying to stay sharp.’ And we just talked about attitude and all that,” said Mike. “He said, ‘dad, I’m being a team player. Keeping a good attitude.’ I said, ‘No use getting depressed about it. No use fussing about it. You’ve just got to wait for your chance, like everyone else. Everyone’s been through the same thing you’re going through.’

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“Me and my wife are so proud. To be able to sit there and be a healthy scratch, then to come in and take off like he did? It looked like he didn’t miss a beat.”

Raves, too, arrived from Oxford, Ohio, home of the RedHawks.

Through good and bad, the skipper continues to follow Czarnik. He misses little.

“It’s not easy, right?” Blasi said of the scratches. “It’s like telling you that you can’t write for nine days in a row. What are you going to do? Then, all of a sudden, you get thrown into the fire and you have to produce this article … if you don’t knock it out of the park, you’re done. So it’s a tough situation to be put in.”

To this day, player and coach are tight.

Blasi describes it as family, as “something really special,” as a relationship forged in the heat of team sport. Mike agrees.

“Him and Austin … I know he probably had a lot of sons on those teams and he was probably close to a lot of those guys,” said Mike, “but I think he took Austin underneath his wing.”

Therefore, when times get tough, texts fly.

Make no mistake — this is no one-way street of well-wishing. If the RedHawks are struggling, it’s Czarnik who reaches out, ordering his old bench boss to stay calm, to remember that he’s guided the Miami program for 20 years.

At least till Tuesday, when Blasi was fired after Miami’s 11-23-4 season.

Czarnik’s support now will never mean more to the 47-year-old coach, his win total frozen at 398.

“He always gives me a pep talk,” Blasi said before being relieved of his duties. “It’s just one of those things — you’ve got to bide your time, control the controllables. There’s really no guarantee in all that, but sometimes it has a way of working itself out when you stay focused, when you stay positive, when you continue to work hard.”

Exhibit A: Czarnik, Austin.

“He’s a good lesson for all of us, really,” Blasi said. “To stick with it and never give up.”

(Top photo: Gerry Thomas/NHLI via Getty Images)