Deterrent By Necessity, Player At Heart

Towering forward and newest Kraken addition Curtis Douglas had just stepped off the ice at one of his thrice-weekly private skating lessons meant to keep him in the NHL for something other than pounding his fists into opponents. 

Douglas, a 6-foot-9, 242-pound lesson in perseverance at age 26, is still basking in the glow of his first full-time NHL contract, a two-year, $2.5 million deal signed with the Kraken last week on his father’s Canada Day birthday. His Toronto-area family celebrated double that night and now Douglas, call him a hockey “deterrent by necessity” if you will, has spent ensuing days at various local Ontario rinks determined to have his playing ability keep up with his throwdowns. 

“At the end of the day, do I want fighting to be my only thing that I do? I mean, I don’t really think anyone does,” said Douglas, now tied with Matt Rempe and the retired Zdeno Chara as the tallest players in NHL history. “But to get my foot through the door and to get to this point in my life, it’s just been that adapting thing. I’ll continue to do what my team needs and my teammates need. And if they need me to fight, then I’ll fight.”  

And fight he has, ever since his hockey career seemingly hit the deadest of ends five years ago in the Austrian Alps. The Dallas Stars had decided 10 months earlier not to sign their 2018 fourth round pick, casting him into a vast free agent pool of has-been and never-was guys struggling for a place to play. What should have been his final, last-ditch Ontario Hockey League junior season with the Windsor Spitfires had just been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enter the Linz Steel Wings of Austria, a second-tier, pro developmental team in Europe’s border-spanning Alps Hockey League, where players such as Douglas, nearly 21 and struggling with his lanky, top-heavy frame on skates, kept hockey dreams alive.

“It was just an amazing experience culturally,” said Douglas, who shared a room with three other Canadian players and would be taken by team officials on tours to various landmarks. “But the goal of going there was to get a pro contract somewhere else.” 

His 16 games for the last-place squad, where he scored eight goals and added four assists playing teams from Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, came with only six penalty minutes attached. The Alps league prohibited fighting and Douglas, at that point, was still trying to get where he needed to be through hockey skill alone. 

“There were times when I’ll admit, I thought it might not work out for me,” he said. “But I never stopped trying.” 

Douglas parlayed that Austrian stint into an 11-game AHL audition that spring with the Belleville Senators. When that ended, with no other pro prospects, he agreed to play for the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Just 12 hours later, the AHL Toronto Marlies, farm team to his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs, swooped in with an offer to extend a pro hockey lifeline that continues to this day.  That’s when Douglas, determined to stay a pro, made a dramatic shift to his game. While his goal scoring totals barely reached double digits in seasons since, his penalty minutes exploded.  

“I’ve been lucky enough to have some incredible coaching staffs, some incredible mentors that were basically telling me, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get your foot in the door and the way to do that is to throw your weight around and to fight a little bit more than maybe you want to,’” Douglas said.  

That he’s done plenty of; 45 bouts, to be exact, over five preseasons and regular seasons of AHL and NHL action according to HockeyFights.com.  

It’s something Douglas had spent his hockey life largely avoiding, though he’d always been taller than most ahead of sprouting six more inches one summer at age 13. He was nearly 6-foot-6 and weighed 186 pounds when the Barrie Colts drafted him into the OHL at 16, liking how he protected the puck with his body but wanting him to develop a “mean streak” rather than passively using his size. Today, Douglas admits his major focus back then was “getting my body to cooperate” with its unusual proportions.

The most fights he wound up having in any of his four OHL seasons with Barrie and Windsor was three; with the league automatically suspending players after their third. 

He’d once been a 30-goal scorer in junior hockey and managed a fairly impressive pro-career-high 13 for the AHL Marlies his first 2021-22 season with them, along with 21 assists. But his penalty minutes shot up to 86, with help from a half-dozen fights.  

Near season’s end, the parent Maple Leafs gave Douglas his first NHL contract, a two-year deal for the league minimum. It seemed the realization of a dream, especially for a guy who’d grown up watching the Leafs from a couple of suburbs over in Oakville, Ontario. But it was a two-way contract, meaning Douglas would be paid less than $100,000 if he stayed in the AHL. As it turned out, he’d never see the ice with the Leafs. Or get a one-way, full-on NHL deal prior to last week. 

Still, his AHL penalty minutes kept climbing and garnering attention, especially after Toronto traded Douglas in November 2022 to the Arizona Coyotes for then-minor league defenseman Connor Timmins. Playing for the Coyotes’ farm team in Tucson, Douglas amassed 119 penalty minutes in 50 games and took part in eight fights that season – one of them against burly Kraken defensive prospect Ville Ottavainen of the Coachella Valley Firebirds. Douglas then had 148 minutes in 57 games along with nine fights the ensuing season and then another 117 minutes and nine more fights in 63 games.  

That final Tucson season in 2024-25 had also seen Douglas notch 10 goals and 13 assists to start rounding out his physical game with more all-around production. He’d begun taking private lessons the prior summer from a local skating coach in the Toronto area named Tracy Tutton, a former competitive figure skater who’d spent years working with NHL and OHL teams and players. She and Douglas have continued their work to this day. 

“He’s such an amazing, coachable guy,” Tutton said. “He reached out to me about two years ago now and he’s almost seven feet tall, so he’s not a mobile, tiny little guy. He needed work on his skating.” 

The knock against Douglas had always been that, while not the slowest skater, he lacked an explosive first step. There’s a reason guys his height rarely make the NHL, especially at the forward position, and it starts with lacking a low center of gravity with which to quickly power off and change direction.

“He has put so much time and effort into this for two years now and what a difference,” Tutton said. “We do a lot of technical work. We work on stride, speed and explosive power. We work on edges, tight turns. Stops, starts, pivots, crossovers – everything. It’s not just one specific detail. It’s a lot of foundation work, especially for someone his size. Being in balance is so important. There’s been so much work that he’s put in.” 

But the foundational piece Tutton could not complete needed to come from within. And why she quickly felt Douglas would indeed make the NHL someday.  

“If I’d just watched him skate and saw the size of him, I would not have thought that,” she said. “But after getting to know him, just a couple of sessions, I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s going to make it.’ He’s dialed in. Pays attention to detail and puts the work in whether you’re with him or not. I knew that there was nothing that was going to stand in his way.” 

Nothing and certainly nobody – especially on the ice. 

The Coyotes had moved to Utah midway through his AHL stint in Tucson and last summer, given his well-rounded game and obvious physical skills, it seemed the Mammoth would finally call Douglas up to the NHL. But he was a late training camp cut. And when the Mammoth tried to slip Douglas through waivers back to the AHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning jumped in and claimed him. 

His life hasn’t been the same since. Three days later, he made his NHL debut in the Lightning’s season opener at home against the Ottawa Senators. 

“I found out probably at 5 p.m. the day before,” Douglas said. “Five of my buddies and my brothers and parents all hopped on a redeye and got there in the morning and came out to cheer me on.” 

Douglas was doing some hallway exercises down in the dressing room area when his mother, Angela, and father, Tom, who were coming down to do some media interviews about their son, bumped into him. 

“I was able to give them both a hug before going out and living my dream,” he said. “It’s something that I’ll never forget.” 

Fewer than three minutes into the game, Douglas gave the Lightning something they didn’t quickly forget his very first NHL shift. He dropped the gloves against Senators heavyweight Kurtis MacDermid, quickly nailing one of the NHL’s most feared combatants with several overhead rights and an uppercut before taking him to the ice. 

The Tampa crowd roared its approval.  

“I said at the beginning of the year last year to the guys at Tampa and the coaching staff, ‘I’ll crawl through glass if the team needs me to,’” he said. “If they want me to fight every night, that’s what it is. I want to play in the NHL.” 

Douglas did that for 29 games, notching his first two NHL points on assists and racking up a team-leading 92 penalty minutes that short span. He became known for standing up for teammates and deterring others from taking liberties with them. 

He got into eight fights during that limited Tampa Bay span, including some November bouts with noted NHL heavyweights Nicolas Deslauriers and Tom Wilson, who both got the better of him. Apparently, being 6-foot-9 and heavier than most players doesn’t mean one can simply step on NHL ice and win any bout. 

“It’s a huge learning curve,” Douglas said. “I mean, this league is the best of the best.” 

And Douglas continued to navigate that curve following the NHL trade deadline last March, when the Lightning put him on waivers to send him to the AHL and clear a roster spot and the Vancouver Canucks claimed him. Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin, who is now an assistant GM with the Kraken and played a role in bringing him to Seattle, said at the time: “With our young guys in the lineup, I want the players to feel safe. I don’t want them to get beaten up. And we’ve been looking for a player like this, with more size and physicality.” 

Douglas quickly became a fan favorite in Vancouver, scoring his first career NHL goal in April off a goalmouth scramble against goalie Lukas Dostal and the Anaheim Ducks. He also added 16 more penalty minutes in 14 games – helped by two additional fights to tie for the NHL lead with 10 – and give him 108 penalty minutes in roughly half a season’s worth of playing time.

Along the way, he jumped into community work, continuing a “March Mullets For Mental Health” campaign he’d started in Toronto with the Marlies in which he shaves his head mullet-style throughout that month. It raises campaign funds for the Canadian Mental Health Association every March and more awareness of mental health issues through a #"AskMeAboutMyMullet" tagline -- employing his hairstyle as an icebreaker to have uncomfortable but important conversations with others. 

“My family and I have had our mental health struggles and it’s just something I’m very passionate about,” he said this week. “And think is super important especially in sports where it supposed to be seen as indestructible.” 

Canucks coach Adam Foote quickly noted how Douglas and his energy tended to make other Vancouver players play bigger when he was around. After Douglas scored his first NHL goal against the Ducks, Foote said: “He can play physical and emotional and get guys in the game — especially with the Ducks having big hitters — and you knew he would drag our guys into the pile. There is value for sure in what he brings. (The Ducks) knew he was out there, and that’s a good thing.” 

Foote was let go by Vancouver as part of sweeping offseason changes that brought Allvin to the Kraken. When Douglas entered free agency, a prior two-year, two-way deal initially signed with Utah having expired, Kraken GM Jason Botterill had heard enough good things to take a plunge with the coveted one-way NHL offer. 

“It’s an element that we haven’t had here in the last couple of years,” Botterill said. “I think it’s just that he has a physical presence out on the ice. With our due diligence and just knowing the kid a little bit from people on our staff, he has a good, amazing work ethic to continue to improve as a player. And he’s going to add a different dynamic to our group here.” 

Douglas feels his willingness to keep improving at the non-fighting aspects of hockey is what Allvin saw most from him in Vancouver. And he knows that, while fighting helped provide an NHL entry point, more of that ever-improving skill to go with his toughness will help him avoid the exit. 

“There’s a lot of guys that come up and they’re so good that they can just take their game to that next level,” he said. “I mean, I wasn’t one of those people. I had to grind and adapt.” 

Right now, he’s adapting to the fact he’s got a seven-figure NHL deal. That he’ll be coming to camp next fall with Botterill, head coach Lane Lambert and others expecting him to make the Kraken roster. His entire year has been rather surreal, but this latest part really is the culmination of a dream he never wants to awaken from. 

“This whole process doesn’t really feel real yet,” Douglas said. “I don’t think it will feel 100% real until I put the jersey on. If you were to have told me last year after I got sent down by Utah that I’d go on to play 40 NHL games, I think I would have probably slapped you across the head. It was pretty special the whole year, and I’m just in awe about the whole experience with Tampa, Vancouver and now this next chapter with the Kraken. I’m just so excited.”