Old Pal Helps Samoskevich Make Speedy Kraken Transition

Mackie Samoskevich doesn’t immediately walk in and dominate the Kraken locker room with his upbeat personality, despite having a longtime friend and a couple of current housemates inside.

Instead, akin to his career trajectory, he’s taking his time settling in. Much like his on-ice persona dating back to youth hockey days, last June’s trade acquisition from the Florida Panthers often tends to blend in before standing out.

But the Newtown, Connecticut native can’t avoid separating from the pack in one specific area once on the ice; he has speed to burn and most importantly, agility to go with it. That’s only part of why Samoskevich has formed a natural connection with agile centerman Matty Beniers, his onetime teammate from college – and even briefly with a youth spring hockey team in Massachusetts as well – who he is currently living with in an Eastside home along with equally elusive and nimble Berkly Catton.

“It’s a good time,” Samoskevich said of the housemate situation. “Every day we’re doing something different. We’re always figuring something out about living together and making the house work. And sometimes, we’re learning it in just a few seconds. We’ve had a lot of laughs together already.”

Plus a lot of ice time with Beniers, beginning earlier this month when players unofficially skated together without on-ice coaches at Kraken Community Iceplex. Kraken head coach Lane Lambert has since paired Samoskevich and Beniers on the top line at Kraken Training Camp, pres. by Starbucks, alongside Jared McCann, a trio that saw action together in Thursday night’s 4-3 shootout victory over the Calgary Flames in preseason action at Climate Pledge Arena.

“Obviously, we’re living together so that helps a lot,” Samoskevich said of Beniers, who he teamed with one season on differing forward lines at a tight-knit University of Michigan squad. “He’s a smart player and I think he’s only going to get better. We know where each other are out there and I think that’s a really big thing.”

Samoskevich seeing top-line action wasn’t something the former two-time Stanley Cup champion Panthers could offer. He scored 15 goals for the Cup-winning Panthers two seasons ago while playing just more than 13 minutes per game. Then 12 more goals last season averaging about a minute more in playing time, finishing both seasons with 32 and 31 points, respectively.

The hope now, especially if given top-line minutes alongside a player such as Beniers, is that his numbers could take off just like he does when chasing after a puck. He’s also being looked at for penalty kill work, with nearly four minutes of that against Calgary along with some power play usage and 18:30 of total ice time on his first preseason night.

Lambert hasn’t yet committed to playing Samoskevich and Beniers together permanently and indeed the final preseason game ahead of the team’s Oct. 1 regular season opener in Calgary could go a long way toward determining that. Even so, Samoskevich and Beniers winding up on the same team and literally in the same home together as NHL regulars seems an outcome almost pre-determined since they began crossing paths in youth hockey.

Samoskevich grew up in a hockey-playing family where his older sister Melissa and twin sister Maddy went on to become women’s collegiate stars and pro players. His father, Fred, and mother, Patty, knew from experience – and his older sister’s advice – that young Mackie would eventually need to go beyond  Connecticut to find the best competition.

He’d started off always playing a year beyond his age group. The family would venture across multiple states looking for travel teams Mackie could play on.

“We were all over New England, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts – obviously Connecticut,” Samoskevich’s father said. “So, we were all over the East Coast pretty much every weekend. It was nonstop and it was fun. Like mini vacations for the family.”

It wasn’t just Mackie playing, but also his sisters. Sometimes, the family would ship one of them off to a teammate’s parents to stay for logistical reasons and save some money. Mackie would start off just blending in with the older kids. He was always among the fastest on the ice, but by mid-season, his work ethic – forechecking and backchecking – took over and he’d find himself on the top line. 

“I’m proud of him for that to this day,” his father said. “He worked his tail off to get to that top line, get the minutes.”

One of the better teams he’d wind up facing was a loaded South Shore Kings squad of 11-and-12-year-olds from Foxboro, Mass. about 2 ½ hours from the Samoskevich family’s home. The Kings had a talented young forward named Matty Beniers among a half-dozen other future NCAA Division 1 players.

It was coached by Bob Beniers, a former Boston College football wide receiver who also happened to be Matty’s father.

“Mackie was that good to where Bob (Beniers) was actively recruiting him to come play for them,” Samoskevich’s father said. “But we were in Connecticut, and my wife and I were both working. We had to work to support all this (hockey) stuff.”

At one point, Samoskevich’s family took him to play for a spring hockey league team Beniers’ dad was coaching.

“He was a good little kid – always very fast, hard–working,” the elder Beniers said. “I was impressed by how tenacious he was.”

Samoskevich got noticed in other ways. He showed up not knowing anyone on the team and started getting dressed in the opposing locker room.

“The players start coming in and they’re like, ‘Who are you?’” Samoskevich recalled. “That was really embarrassing.”

Samoskevich eventually found the right locker room. Once he took the ice, Bob Beniers again liked what he saw the handful of games Mackie played. But he needed Samoskevich at mid-week practices two or three times weekly while the most he could possibly do was one because of the distance.

“I wanted to have him on my team, but his dad told me, ‘Sorry. I have to work. I just can’t do it,’” Bob Beniers said.

He added: “You could tell he had skills. You could tell he had the work ethic. You saw it at Michigan and you see it now.”

Matty Beniers remembers mostly playing against Samoskevich in youth games.

“He was a lot like the player he is now – fast and dangerous,’” Beniers said. “He was a smaller guy. A smaller little guy. But he was fast. He was always fast.”

They didn’t meet up again until Michigan several years later.

Beniers by then had been drafted No. 2 overall by the Kraken in July 2021 and was entering his second college season when Samoskevich arrived in September 2021 following a two-year stint with the USHL Chicago Steel junior team. Samoskevich had been taken No. 24 overall by the Panthers in the same 2021 draft and soon found he had plenty else in common with Beniers.

They’d been born 10 days apart in November 2002 month, Beniers just ahead of him, and both been given “Matthew” as a birth name. Beniers wanted a nickname and felt “Matt” was too formal, so he went with “Matty” while Samoskevich’s “Mackie” nickname began early when his toddler twin sister, who had a speech impediment, improperly pronounced his real name that way and it stuck.

Samoskevich’s good friend from USHL days, current Toronto Maple Leafs forward Brendan Brisson, had joined Michigan a year ahead of him and was rooming with Beniers. The three hung out all the time.

“He’s a funny guy – a goofy guy,” Beniers said. “He keeps it light always. Nothing’s ever too serious. Those are fun guys to be around, especially in a long season.”

Beniers remembers Samoskevich as a “speed-skill guy” upon arriving at Michigan, but also how he later worked constantly to round out his game.

The tight-knit Michigan players had all bought mopeds to ride to their practices. When Beniers left Michigan to join the Kraken for 10 games in April 2022, he wound up selling his moped to Samoskevich.

Five years later, the pair are back together.

“Going to a new team is tough because I really don’t know a lot of the guys,” said Samoskevich, who also knows Kraken defensemen Brandon Montour and Josh Mahura in passing from their limited time crossing paths in Florida. “But having him (Beniers) has helped a lot, hanging out with new guys and spending time with them. He’s been really good for me.”

It didn’t take long for those new guys to notice how fast Samoskevich is. Even Bobby McMann, one of the fastest players in the NHL, remarked on it.

“He does a good job of playing with pace, but he can also make plays with that pace and slow the game down if he needs to,” McMann said. “He does a good job of sucking guys in and then making a play if he needs to. That’s definitely one of his strong suits. You can’t always go right at him. Whether he’s using speed or standing still, he’s a very dynamic player.”

That uncanny speed and ability to control the pace is a reason Kraken coach Lambert has tabbed both Samoskevich and McMann for early penalty killing work. Lambert has already said Jared McCann looks recovered from his lower body ailments of last season simply because he’s been keeping up with new linemate Samoskevich in camp.

They say you can’t teach speed, even if Samoskevich does hone it with dryland training workouts emphasizing leg strength and explosiveness. Those lucky enough to be born slightly faster than everyone else have a distinct sports advantage so long as they do the other work to best harness that edge.

For Samoskevich, not the biggest player at 5-foot-11, 180 pounds, the other work centers around agility to avoid crushing hits. Also, around tenaciousness in grabbing and holding on to pucks without being muscled off them.

The Kraken feel that, between Samoskevich and McMann, their team has a destabilizing speed element that wasn’t there in camp 12 months ago.

Interestingly, had Samoskevich had his way as a youngster, his speed might never have factored into his game at all. To hear his father tell it, little Mackie only wanted to play goalie from the time he was a toddler.

He’d don Franklin pads and an oversized blocker along with a goalie mini stick and pretend to make saves in the family kitchen or alone on a backyard rink then used mostly by his older sister. His parents would gather just within earshot and hear their young boy doing his own play-by-play commentary of making pretend saves while also mimicking crowd noise reactions to his  goaltending movements.

“As soon as he noticed we were watching, he’d get embarrassed and stop playing,” his father said. “But anytime we’d see him start up, we’d go, ‘Look! Look!’ and stop to watch it. It was the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.”

But becoming the world’s fastest goalie wasn’t meant to be. A coach who’d once been a goalie told Samoskevich’s parents to soak some tennis balls in water, take them outside until they froze in the cold and fire them at Samoskevich one after another. If he still wanted to be a goalie after that, the thinking went, then it was fate.

The tennis balls didn’t completely dissuade him. But not long after, playing for a team his father coached, the regular goalie didn’t show up and his father thrust Samoskevich between the pipes.

“He got smoked,” his dad said. “They were scoring from the blue line. He looked over at me with his arms raised and I’m like, ‘What do you want me to do?’

“So yeah, he played goalie a couple of times and it didn’t really work out.”

Samoskevich today is glad that it didn’t. Now, he sticks to making the most of his speed and putting pucks in the net rather than trying – not too well – to keep them out. He models his game after former Cup winning player and current Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, focusing on how a sub-6-foot player can maximize leg power and leverage.

He does plenty of work on linear crossover skating, where a player crosses their legs in a continuous, side-to-side motion to generate explosive acceleration and deceptive speed while moving in a straight line down the ice. Top NHL stars like Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Sydney Crosby use the technique.

His journey began in the family yard, which had a dedicated space paved over by heavy machinery. That’s where he and his sisters did dryland training and running drills.

“I’d run every day,” he said. “That’s kind of where I got my power from.”

And he hasn’t stopped working since to better the speed given him at birth. Playing for that Cup winning Panthers squad two seasons ago also taught him the training never stops even upon reaching the highest pinnacle.

“There’s a ton of little things that go into it,” he said. “Winning the battles and doing all the hard little things add up to winning in the end. I’m trying to bring a lot of that with me here.”

Knowing Beniers from before and having Catton as a housemate as well is another of the “little things” helping him quickly acclimate. They go out to eat often as a trio – none of them really cooks much yet – and he likes that their home is near Lake Washington where he can go out for walks and feel relaxed.

In many ways, it’s all helped a much-coveted speed guy make an even speedier Kraken transition.

“I feel really good about my situation,” he said. “They’ve made it easy for me out here and that’s what I’m so excited about.”