Samoskevich Honed ‘Compete Level’ Facing Sisters

Newest Kraken winger Mackie Samoskevich had to learn to stand tough in his own backyard long before making it as an NHL regular.

In fact, competition with two future women’s professional hockey playing sisters gave him some of the more grueling on-ice challenges he’d face. His older sister, Melissa, was a future college and then pro forward with the Connecticut Whale of the Premier Hockey Federation who loved putting Samoskevich and his twin sister, Maddy, through “boot camp” style regimens at a makeshift family rink behind their home in the Newtown, Connecticut neighborhood of Sandy Hook.

“She was very, very good and played boys’ hockey until she couldn’t and was very dominant at it,” said Samoskevich, 23, acquired by the Kraken on Sunday from the Florida Panthers for a No. 25 overall pick in this week’s NHL Draft plus a conditional second-rounder next year. “I got to see that growing up and I got to look up to her. I obviously wanted to be a good hockey player and saw that she worked hard, so that helped me out a lot.”

Back then, Melissa, five years older than the twins, grew big time into training and nutrition to prepare her for the college hockey grind with Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, then a gold medal winning Team USA squad at the 2019 women’s world championships, a Swedish pro team and eventually her two full Whale seasons. She was impressed by how her brother took after some of what she showed both siblings as they all competed hard in the backyard.

“He was just my goofy, sh—thead little brother growing up, honestly,” said Melissa, 29, now an assistant coach for the University of Delaware’s women’s hockey program. “But I think throughout his youth, he always had that drive, the work ethic. He was always doing the extra thing.

“Once I retired, I lost the love of training and that’s why I’d stopped playing,” she added. “But he didn’t. And right now, with my sister it’s the same thing, I just kind of live my life through looking at him because he does all the right things. Health wise and details and habits, he’s locked in. He always does all the right stuff when people aren’t watching.”

Back then, the twins always felt big sister was watching them on the backyard rink, which their onetime high school hockey player, Fred, had built complete with boards – and a basketball hoop for summers – so they could train. Their mother, Patty, had been a strong women’s amateur softball and basketball player as well and wasn’t worried about her two daughters mixing it up on the ice with her son or other boys on local teams they played for.

Samoskevich’s twin, Maddy, today a pro defender with Vancouver Goldeneyes of the PWHL, remembers just how heated things could get in their backyard games.

“We were so competitive,” she said. “I was the defenseman and my brother and sister were both forwards, so they were always coming 2-on-1 against me. Growing up, I wasn’t really on their skill level you could say. So, I was sort of like a cone out there.”

But all that Washington Generals foil work Maddy put in against her siblings’ on-ice Harlem Globetrotter routines is something she figures prepared her for her own college career at Quinnipiac and then being drafted by the Goldeneyes ahead of this past rookie PWHL season. She remembers her sister putting her and Samoskevich through “boot camps and hard workouts and stuff” to toughen them up.

“She never took it easy on us,” she said.

But she and Samoskevich would go to all her sister’s games and practices, effectively growing up around elite hockey and wanting to be part of it. Maddy had always played boys’ hockey – just like her older sister – and by high school started coming into her own as somebody who competed at an above average level once out of her backyard.

It was Maddy as a toddler who’d birthed the “Mackie” nickname her brother, whose birthname is Matthew, carried through youth hockey, the University of Michigan – where he teamed for a season with current Kraken forward Matty Beniers – and then got carved on the Stanley Cup in 2025 as a Panthers rookie.

“When I was younger I had a really bad speech impediment,” Maddy said. “My parents took me to speech therapy and stuff, but I couldn’t say Matthew growing up. So, I just took on ‘Mackie’ and it kind of just stuck.”

Samoskevich said his father stuck to calling him “Mackie” as his “hockey name” once he began playing on organized teams and “Matthew” soon faded from memory. He’d put on a snowsuit and skates and hit the backyard rink on frozen mornings before school, then hop back on it immediately after class, when his sisters would often join him.

“That’s where it all started for us was out there,” he said. “Just kind of screwing around and shooting pucks and having competitions. I couldn’t really raise the puck and then my (older) sister was just blowing it through the net. So, I always wanted to catch up to her.”

But she didn’t make it easy.

“She’d never let me win,” he said. “She beat me up pretty good.”

As fierce as the competition got, their parents kept reminding the sibling trio they were each other’s best friends. That “bond’’ they forged began showing as they matured, with Maddy going on to star for Quinnipiac just as her older sister began coaching there on the side while still a pro player.

It meant they wound up hanging out together even more at the school than they had at some points in their prior youth.

And now, with the twins playing just a few hours up Interstate 5 and across the border from one another for the Kraken and Goldeneyes, some increased family reunions will likely be in order.

“We’re so pumped,” Maddy said. “Florida came to Vancouver last year and so my family flew up and we got to spend some time together during the season which was really rare and super nice.

“We both had an off-day,” she said of her twin. “So, I kind of took him around Vancouver and stuff and he was saying it was super nice. I remember when I first got drafted, he was telling me Vancouver was his favorite city and that I was going to love the West Coast. So, we’re both super excited and my parents are, too.”

As is their older sister. Melissa said any “moments of tension” from their backyard rink experiences have faded with time as they’ve come to appreciate their respective careers. She admitted some additional trips by her out West might now be in order given how, “I’m going to struggle getting used to all those 10 p.m. eastern start times” trying to follow the nightly games of two pro hockey players.

“It’s amazing,” Melissa said. “I’m definitely living vicariously through both of them. Even though I’m around the game every day and that’s still my day job, I’m super proud.”

Samoskevich is proud as well. Of what they’ve all done for one another. He mentioned speed and an above average shot – honed in part by trying to keep up with his older sister in the backyard -- being two things he hopes the Kraken can immediately benefit from this coming season.

But he also discussed how playing for a two-time Cup champion in Florida taught him the value of a strong “compete level” among elite teams.

“I remember the training camps, they always worked so hard,” he said. “It was one thing they definitely harped on right away – the compete level. All the practices were threaded around being competitive and having that drive. Even with the guys in the locker room, too. They’re the best competitors, obviously, in the league and I definitely learned a lot from them. Especially being so young and coming into the league. It was great to learn right away.”

But that learning curve for Samoskevich was undoubtedly made a tad easier by an upbringing where compete level was needed just for family bragging rights.

“It’s a really unique thing,” he agreed. “Really cool for sure.”