Montour’s Start All About Body And Especially Mind

TAMPA, Florida – There was no way Brandon Montour would miss the last two games his older brother would ever see him play.

Montour, off to a strong start for a surging Kraken team that plays the Tampa Bay Lightning here Thursday night, a year ago was coming off minor surgery for ankle bursitis and missed the entire preseason. But the Kraken were opening the regular season with home games against Anaheim and Vegas at Climate Pledge Arena and his brother, Cameron, 34, was flying in from Ontario, Canada to attend both with his wife and children.

This was no ordinary trip. Cameron, nearly four years older, had advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and wouldn’t live much longer. He was wheelchair bound, needing round-the-clock care even when he and his wife, Chelsea and their two daughters and stepdaughter were staying with Montour and his family. He couldn’t use his hands to eat and needed somebody to feed him. They all knew this would be his final trip to Seattle. Or anyplace else.

“I made sure I was just capable enough to be up to playing,” Montour said. “So, I told these guys in the room, ‘Hey, I’ve got to. If I can stand up and move, I’ve got to play in the games.’ ”

Montour had just two days of practice, then logged an assist on Mason Marchment’s winning goal in a 3-1 victory over the Ducks. Two nights later in a 2-1 overtime win over Vegas in the second game his brother watched in-person, Montour dropped the gloves against 6-foot-3, 209-pound defenseman Ben Hutton, trading blows and winding up on top after wrestling him to the ice.

“Cam chuckled about that one,” Montour said of his brother. “He laughed. It was good to have him around.”

That was a year ago this week.

Cam died nine days later. Next Tuesday marks the first anniversary of his passing. For his Kraken defenseman brother, now 32 and in his third season of a seven-year deal with the team, memories of opening week in Seattle will never fade.

But a year removed from the emotional weight of what he lived through has given Montour fresh perspective on what lies ahead. You never get over losing a sibling though many hope to compartmentalize it with time. And Montour starting this season fully healthy, with a letter “A” on his jersey as a new alternate captain and a memorializing guitar tattoo on his back – his brother was deeply into music – has him looking ahead in hope of better times. That’s good news for a team leaning heavily on his “heart-on-your-sleeve” style.

He’s got five points already in seven games for a Kraken squad with a somewhat surprising 5-2-0 record after beating the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday for a third straight win on this five-city road trip. And he’s got hope that some of the promise he saw when signing his seven-year, $50 million contract here the summer of 2024 is taking shape.

“I think it’s been good so far,” Montour said. “I mean, we’re still learning. There are still parts of our game we need to clean up. But yeah, I think this year our guys have a better understanding of what can go wrong and what needs to change.”

Montour in summer 2024 had been braced for major change as a pending unrestricted free agent fresh off a Stanley Cup title with Florida. He and his wife Ryian, were in search of a permanent hockey home in a city they could feel comfortable living in with their second child on the way.

“I felt this was a spot my wife and I wanted to keep building our family,” he said of Seattle. “My wife is from the West Coast and she leans West Coast. And I felt this was a team that, at the time, was a year removed from making the playoffs. So, I knew it was going to be a process. I knew it was going to take time. And now, we’re in year three of this and I’d like to think I see change happening.”

Montour was careful not to descend upon his new Kraken team like a sledgehammer. Though he quickly assumed locker room DJ duties and organized road trip dinners for Kraken players, he recognized the leadership group already in place and knew he’d need to earn their respect and everyone else’s.

But he’d also seen how the Panthers went about their on-and-off-ice business ahead of winning consecutive Cups and making three straight finals. And he knew those experiences over three Panthers seasons and parts of a fourth – and his ability to impart them on Kraken players – were part of why he’d been signed for seven years.

Not to mention, playing parts of three seasons in Anaheim for the Ducks, who drafted him in 2014, and then three more in Buffalo after a 2019 trade, had given Montour a well-rounded perspective on other teams. For a man of Mohawk descent, who’d grown up in the village of Ohswekhen on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve outside Toronto, these were places he’d never imagined someday winding up.

And it helped Montour and his wife immensely during their free agency search.

“I talked to my wife about this and it’s actually great that we’ve had the chance to experience places and travel and change cities,” he said. “To play in all of these different cities. I’d never thought of ever living in California. Or Buffalo, or even Seattle. Who would have thought that? So, I picked all these corners and got to experience it.”

He’d contemplated returning to Anaheim in the midst of their own rebuild. But then-Kraken general manager Ron Francis kept staying in the conversation with his agent. Montour was impressed by how aggressive and committed the Kraken were to improving their team after a disappointing 2023-24 season.

Coming from sunny Florida, he’d previously experienced Seattle only through its wet, gloomy mid-winter weather during infrequent visits as an opposing player. But he began hearing more about where the Kraken were headed. He talked to current and former players about the team’s top-flight training infrastructure at Kraken Community Iceplex as well as the city’s passionate sports fans. 

“If I’d never gotten to experience all of those great places and seeing what they’re all about, it would have been harder to choose where we did decide to go,” Montour said. “But fortunately, I’ve been able to be in all of those areas.”

Finally, he and his wife took the plunge. They quickly settled into an area home. Just months later, Ryian gave birth to a daughter, Maison, during the opening Kraken road trip, to go along with their son, Kai, now 3.

And last spring, they had their third child and second one born in Seattle, a boy. They immediately fulfilled a promise Montour had made his brother several months before his death, naming their son Cameron Wesley in tribute to him.

Drawing teammates into the fight

Montour donned a “Cam Strong” hoodie and cried in front of the television cameras upon rejoining the Kraken five days after his brother’s death. He isn’t shy about putting it all out there, whether showing  vulnerability or telling off opponents. Always the first into an on-ice scrum and not shy about throwing punches when things get heated, firing-up listless teammates on nights they don’t have much.

“I think he’s done a good job of trying to pull everybody into the fight,” Kraken head coach Lane Lambert said.

One of Montour’s punches last December missed Avalanche defenseman Brent Burns during a wild scrum against Colorado and his fist smashed into the ice. Montour needed ensuing hand surgery and missed another month in an already frustrating and emotion-charged season for him.

He returned in the midst of a six-game January losing streak that appeared to knock the Kraken from contention. Just as quickly, though, the team reversed course and won six of eight to head into the Winter Olympic break in a playoff position.

Then, it all fell apart. The Kraken went 7-17-2 after the break and Montour seemed increasingly frustrated. He’d played for a Cup champion and knew the commitment level it took to contend down the stretch.

For whatever reason, the Kraken kept making critical mistakes at key moments. Montour continued trying to draw them into the fight, imploring them to shake it off and keep going.

But it was not to be.

When the season ended, Montour headed to his summer place in Muskoka, a “cottage country” lake community about 90 minutes north of Toronto frequented by NHL players and Hollywood celebrities alike. He thought often about his late brother, a longtime lineman and senior foreman for Windsor Power & Light, who’d worked with his hands installing power lines to provide for his family.

Cam had been only 31 when ALS symptoms began appearing in late 2021. He’d still resided in Windsor, a southern Ontario city just across the river from Detroit and only 50 miles from the town of Tilbury, population 4,600, where the Montour family had moved when the brothers were still young boys.

The elementary school Montour attended 1^st through 8^th grade now runs a “Brandon Montour Skating Program” – featuring Learn to Skate classes for local youth – set up by the defensemen and his former teachers his first year with the Kraken. But while Montour long ago left the area behind for NHL life, his brother had always remained close by until his ALS caused him to move back in with their parents several hours away in suburban Toronto.

Montour thought a lot this past summer about how the biggest moments of his life often intersected when some of his brother’s worst. When Montour married Ryian in August 2022, Cam was at his side for the wedding but struggling with ever-advancing ALS symptoms of twitching and loss of strength in his fine motor skills, spreading from his hands and arms lower down to his feet.

He found it increasingly difficult to keep working as a lineman, or play the guitar music he loved. Doctors initially were stumped by his symptoms, thinking it couldn’t be ALS because he was still so young and 55 is the average age of most diagnosed with the disease.

By late summer 2023, as Montour was coming off his first Cup finals appearance, his brother was forced to quit his job at the power company with all four of his limbs becoming increasingly immobile. The following spring, as the Panthers were making another run, his brother, who’d already been to some playoff games and was planning to attend the Cup Final, was hospitalized with two blood clots in his lungs.

Cam watched from his hospital bed as Montour’s team defeated the Edmonton Oilers in seven games to win the championship. Later that summer, Montour’s family members gathered at his Muskoka summer home when he got to keep the Cup for a day.

By then Cam was in a wheelchair for good. But he insisted on getting up out of it, with help from Montour and their younger brother, Colin, to have their picture taken together with the famed trophy.

“He just wanted to be standing for it,” Montour said. “He didn’t want that picture to be of him in a wheelchair.”

Montour pondered that this past summer while decompressing by the lake. He thought about how good he and his teammates had things by comparison. The Kraken’s tribulations last March and April seemed trivial, which didn’t make them any easier to accept.

Montour today looks back on it all and still feels frustrated about a missed opportunity.

“Yes, your coach tells you kind of the game plans and stuff,” he said. “But in the end, we’re all adults and should know the process after seven months.”

Montour channeled his feelings into his off-ice workouts, his body fully healed from last season’s injury woes. He wanted to come back stronger and pick up from what he and his teammates started last season but couldn’t finish.

The key now, he added, with players more familiar with head coach Lambert’s on-ice systems and expectations, is greater consistency.

“The quicker we pay attention to the details,” he said. “The better off we’re all going to be by season’s end.”

Looking back to look ahead

Bestowing the “A” on Montour’s jersey, along with fellow defenseman Vince Dunn, had been two years in the making ahead of it becoming official. No one doubted Montour’s commitment. Especially the way he comported himself last season.

Montour’s second game back after his brother’s death, he scored twice and added an assist in a home game against Montreal. He hadn’t missed a beat.

“I thought his demeanor for everything he was going through last year was really good,” Lambert said. “It’s a credit to him and his character, the kind of person he is.”

His defensive partner on the team’s second pairing, Ryker Evans, saw that demeanor up close from Montour’s first Kraken season. It was the second full NHL season for Evans and the team made the sure two sat next to each other in the locker room.

“When he first came here, he was always chatting with me,” Evans said. “I feel like that’s why they put him next to me in the dressing room. We kind of got to know each other.”

Evans said Montour is “always very chatty” whether in the room – where he’s been known to bestow humorous nicknames upon unsuspecting and suspecting teammates alike – or on-ice communicating plays with his partner in real time.

“He’s been around for a while and so he’s a good guy to bring a team together,” Evans said. “He was in Florida when they won the Cup, so he knows what a team like that looks like and what we’ve got to do to be more like that.”

Evans appreciates most how Montour is “always talking” with him on the ice, making it easier to remember his role and where he needs to be. For Montour, that dual role of on-ice producer and off-ice leader has admittedly felt easier thus far with some distance put between him and the “out of your control” part of last season’s final days with his brother.

His coach, Lambert, opined: “You can maybe see there’s a little weight that’s been lifted off his shoulders.”

For Montour, the weight of responsibility to maintain his brother’s legacy will never go away. He draws strength from his family, especially his wife and “three kiddos” now living with him in Seattle but still does what he can to promote more awareness of ALS.

“I know we’re working with our team to do a night that shows awareness and show the support that’s needed for this disease,” Montour said. “I think league-wide it’s a serious topic that everybody wants to get on-board with. Every team needs to find a way they’re comfortable with.”

The Kraken have previously honored co-founders of the community-led “I Am ALS” non-profit group as Heroes of the Deep recipients.

The relatively young age of Montour’s brother definitely hit home. Montour said a number of NHL players are concerned about the higher prevalence of ALS among professional and collision sport athletes.

Those final days with his brother in Seattle last season were where Montour really got to understand Cam’s mindset. That he was ready to depart for good, knowing his body and mind were going.

“Watching him decline and experiencing what he had to deal with was literally a first for literally everyone that was close to him,” Montour said.

 It didn’t make things any easier for Montour at the time, but now, with the perspective of 12 months to build upon, he realizes it was for the best.

And that there’s nowhere to look but forward.

“It’s been a crazy couple of years,” he said.

Hockey and the Kraken are not on the same level. But hockey is Montour’s chosen life and the only one he can continue fighting where his brother no longer can. And he’ll keep trying to draw others into the fight, whether in Kraken games or ALS work so his brother isn’t forgotten.

He did it last week against Vegas, goading Golden Knights captain Mark Stone into a fight by telling him he hadn’t stood up for a teammate run by a Kraken player. The Kraken had been rather listless at the time, but seemed to energize along with Montour.

“I haven’t changed,” he said. “I’ll never change. I just need to play on the ice and know my effort level is there. And off the ice, be comfortable with the young guys and speak when I think it’s needed.

“I’ve experienced quite a bit,” he added. “And obviously, I’m not afraid to share it.”