Black History Month was celebrated in February, and nine Black players have suited up for the Blue Jackets over a quarter-century of hockey, a list that includes Fred Brathwaite, Anson Carter, Anthony Duclair, Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre, Jet Greaves, Jordan Harris, Seth Jones, Greg Mauldin and Malcolm Subban. With the Blue Jackets in their 25th season, we’re featuring select journeys and stories from those who have donned the CBJ sweater.
Gerry Greaves didn’t start strapping on the pads and playing goalie until he was 35 years old.
He was hoping his son would get to age 10, at least, but Jet Greaves wasn’t going to wait.
Inspired by his father and netminders like Carey Price, Greaves loved the game of hockey but in particular the goaltending position growing up in Cambridge, Ontario. Wary of an early specialization, though, Gerry wanted Jet to keep playing all around the ice until he turned 10 just to give him a better understanding of the game.
“He wanted me to be a player for like three more years and learn how to skate and learn the whole game that way, and then become a goalie,” Jet said. “I was kind of like, ‘Come on, come on, let me play.’”
In the end, Jet won that argument, with a little bit of help from his friend Luke going into tryouts when he was 7 years old.
“He was a goalie, and he kind of didn’t want to play goalie anymore,” Jet remembers. “He wanted to be a defenseman. I was a defenseman and I wanted to play goalie, so right before the tryout, basically, he became a defenseman, I became a goalie.
“There were no other goalies at the tryouts. I was the only goalie, so I don’t know if I was very good, but there was nobody else there. I was fortunate to get on the team that way and learn from there.”
Of course, it’s pretty clear the Greaves family made the right move. Now in his fourth NHL season, Jet has found a home in Columbus, starting a team-high 39 games this year for the Blue Jackets, going 20-12-8 with a 2.69 GAA and .907 save percentage. In 62 career games, Greaves has posted a 2.67 GAA and .914 save percentage, cementing himself as one of the most promising young netminders in the game at age 24. He’s also just one of 12 Black goalies to make it to the NHL level and the third to play for the Blue Jackets.
It all started with a backyard rink, two brothers who pushed each other to the highest levels, and a dad who found yet another passion in life.
Learning From Dad
Gerry Greaves is a firefighter by trade, but he’s always had a lot of interests, from writing to photography to acting to Formula 1 racing.
One of them turned out to be goaltending.
Born in Trinidad, he started playing hockey growing up in the Toronto suburb of Markham, but he never got above house league. He also never put on a mask or the pads, as acquiring the gear to become a hockey goalie isn’t cheap.
Finally, halfway through his fourth decade, he decided it was time to make it happen. It helped that he was invited to play in a league by some coworkers who needed another netminder, and because it’s Canada after all, the group ended up playing with and against such former NHLers as Scott Walker, PK Subban and Bryan Little.
As he was pulling pucks out of the net in his early days at the position, Gerry came to a realization – if he wanted to play with the best, he’d have to learn quickly. And years later, those lessons came in handy when he had a son who wanted to dedicate himself to the position.
“The funny thing was obviously NHL guys compared to brand-new me, I was getting lit up,” Gerry said. “But I just said, if they’re asking me to keep coming out, I’m going to make it my point to try to get better. And all that stuff that I learned watching videos and everything, I used all that that was on the internet to help teach Jet to start off at first.”
Hockey was a constant part of Gerry’s life at that point, and his sons Jet and Kai quickly followed suit. That’s often how it goes north of the border, with the two boys watching their dad play at the local facility and getting tips from their father on a backyard rink Gerry built each winter.
Jet said he always thought it was cool to see his dad between the pipes, and then the goaltending dream really took off when he was watching the IIHF World Junior Championships at 5 years old.
“Kai and I would always play ministicks together,” Jet said. “We loved the World Juniors every year and played ministicks while they were going on. I remember, I think it was the 2007 World Juniors when Carey Price was the goalie for Canada, and they did a little segment on him before the gold medal game. Seeing his demeanor, I was drawn to it.
“He was amazing that game and they won. After that, I was always playing goalie in ministicks, and I was always having Kai shoot on me and begging my parents to let me play goalie.”
From there, goalies like Price, Henrik Lundqvist and Miikka Kiprusoff, to name a few, became Jet’s focal point when he was watching games. Still, his dad held out in making him a full-time goalie until those tryouts at age 7, and a little advice from a friend didn’t hurt.
“It was just because the position is so tough, I wanted to make sure that he was ready,” said Gerry, who eventually became a goalie coach for Jet’s youth teams. “I talked to a friend who was a junior goalie, and he said that because there’s so much to learn, it’s better to learn now, so I just said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ And the type of person that Jet is, he put everything he had into it.”
Backyard Memories
The backyard rink and basement at the Greaves house in Cambridge quickly became havens for two sports – hockey and baseball.
The Greaves brothers excelled at both, lacing up the skates in the winter and grabbing the bats and cleats during the summer. As the kids got older and things started to break, Gerry invested in some smaller practice baseballs that caused a little bit less damage, and Jet found a use for them in hockey as well.
Whenever he wanted to get some extra work in, Jet would recruit a family member – Gerry, Kai or their mother, Brenda – and ask them to come to the basement and throw the balls at him so he could make saves.
“Kai would, my mom would, all of them,” Jet said. “I would have them in the basement throwing tennis balls and stuff and trying to make the saves, and I’d get on them if they weren’t throwing it good enough.”
When the weather was right and he could be outside in the winter, much of the time was spent on the backyard rink, which was no easy task to assemble but became a source of plenty of family bonding. As Jet got older, it wasn’t uncommon for him to find a way to spend as much time as possible with the skates on, even if it meant running home from school during the day.
“He’d even come home at lunchtime to skate on the rink,” Gerry said. “One day, he was looking at a video of Jonathan Quick and how good his edges were, and he said, ‘Hey, is it OK if I come home at recess or lunchtime and skate?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ So that’s what he would do while his buddies were eating, he would come home and skate on the rink at lunchtime.”
Since those days, Jet has made it to the Ontario Hockey League, spent four seasons in the American Hockey League and is now in the NHL full-time. Yet looking back, getting onto the backyard ice with friends and family remains a special experience.
“It was the best,” Jet said. “Probably my favorite memories playing hockey, just being out there with my brother. We’d come home from school, put on our skates, come in, eat dinner in our skates and then go back on the rink. It was so much fun.”
It also helped that the way things developed, Jet became a goalie and Kai – who now plays at Princeton – was a defenseman. With one shooter and one goalie, family competition was natural.
After all, if you’ve ever seen brothers go at it, you understand how much each wanted to win against his sibling counterpart.
“That helped teach them about competition,” Gerry said. “Like good, friendly, strong competition, too, because Jet didn’t want to let Kai score and Kai didn’t want to let Jet get the best of him. It helped both of them, absolutely.”
Learning The Game
If the Greaves brothers share a trait, it’s their understanding of what needs to be done to maximize their talents.
A premium was put on education in the household – Jet is an avid reader and chess player who tested at a fifth-grade reading level in kindergarten, and he took in a few classes at Princeton during a recent visit to see his brother – and there’s an uncommon level of discipline each possesses to do the right things at the right times.
“One of the things is how dialed he’s been ever since day one, and even Kai,” Gerry said. “If you said, ‘OK, you have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning,’ you would never have to say it twice. Boom, he’s ready. All the bags are packed, and he never, ever, ever complained about going to practice or anything. That’s since day one.”
Indeed, having two sons playing hockey at high levels is a testament to the family’s dedication to the sport and to one another. Gerry taught Jet from a young age that if a scout is coming to watch a game, he shouldn’t be able know the score of the game based on the goalie’s emotions, so the unflappable nature of Jet’s game was built from a young age. On car rides home from games, Brenda would drive home the message not to worry about any outside noise and focus only on the puck. As Jet found a home between the pipes, Gerry bought a GoPro camera to mount on the glass to record video clips his son could watch after games.
It’s probably no surprise where that level of dedication came from. As a firefighter, Gerry must be at his best every day given the nature of his job, and that means preparation and doing things the way they need to be done every time. As a testament to that, he has a tattoo on one arm with a simple message – “No shortcuts.”
“I think being a firefighter, it’s obviously serious stuff,” Jet said. “It’s life or death, whether it’s the firefighters that are going in the fire or whatever the call is, or the people that are in there. It’s dangerous situations and scary situations. I think from that, just the way he goes about things and the detail that he carries from that, he can’t mess around. You have to make sure everything is done the right way.
“There’s no shortcuts, and I think he’s that way in every aspect of life. I think that attention to detail and that focus and drive are things that he’s instilled in me and I'm super grateful for.”
From goalie to coach to dad, Gerry has had a unique life in hockey. Even more fulfilling, he’s helped his sons chase their dreams and make it to some of the highest levels in the sport.
“Kai and I were very lucky in that way,” Jet said. “Our parents were always available for us, whatever we needed. They were always supporting me so much. They’re a bigger part of everything than I was almost, so I’m super grateful for that.”
