A makeshift Thanksgiving in Ottawa for the Stanley family

Hoyt Stanley wasn’t planning to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

He expected to be on the road with the Belleville Senators, playing for Ottawa’s NHL affiliate as they went on a road trip through Syracuse and Utica. 

His mother, Kyra, was supposed to be in the Muskokas for Thanksgiving weekend visiting her side of the family. His father, Graham, was back at home in Vancouver. And his older sister, Kaiden, was in New York City, where she works in AI after graduating from Berkeley with a degree in economics.

But the family changed their plans abruptly when Hoyt, a 21-year-old defenceman drafted in the fourth round by the Senators in 2023, abruptly made his NHL debut on Thursday night. 

There was no chance for the three to watch Hoyt’s debut in person, his recall coming just seven hours before Thursday’s win over Philadelphia.

Instead, Graham and Kyra watched at home — Graham said it was almost better that way, so he could yell at the television — and Kaiden watched at The Canuck, a popular NYC sports bar for all-things-Canadian where she knew she could convince a bartender to throw on a random Senators-Flyers game.

But of course, they couldn’t miss his second NHL game — and with Sunday an off-day for the team, they could also spend a little bit of time with their son and brother before he headed off to New Jersey with the team in the afternoon.

And it wasn’t just his family members who were watching Hoyt from a suite on the 200-level at Canadian Tire Centre on Saturday night, as the Sens improved to 4-1-0 on the season with a dramatic comeback victory over the Nashville Predators.

A group of his former teammates from Cornell — where he played for three seasons before turning professional with Belleville at the end of last season — drove up from New York State. And family friends of the Stanleys who were in Toronto to visit their own children changed their plans and moved their Saturday night gathering to Canadian Tire Centre.

“My buddies just facetimed me last night, and were like, ‘Hey, can you get us some tickets?” said Stanley after morning skate on Saturday.

“I don’t really know how it works. So I talked to [Sens Director of Team Services] Jordan [Silmser], and they were pretty accommodating in helping me out, so I was definitely pretty thankful for that.”

Speaking at his new dressing room stall ahead of his second NHL game, the defender credited both of his parents for the different contributions they had made in getting him to the NHL, including the rides they gave him to 5 a.m. practices, and the “delusional belief” that his father had in him. 

“Just my biggest supporters, and if I had a bad game, [my dad] thinks that I played great, so it’s nice to have in my corner,” laughed Stanley.

His parents also gave him the advice to stop at Metro on Thursday afternoon following his late call-up to the Senators, and to skip the fast food.

“I love that kid. He’s just so perfect because he literally called both of us and was like, ‘What should I eat?" said Kyra on Saturday night during the first intermission, recalling a list of fast food joints Hoyt was driving past. 

Kyra, a former internationally ranked trampoline star, advised him to look for a grocery store instead. 

“Thank god for Metro,” chimed in Graham.

Back in the suite at Canadian Tire Centre in the middle of Saturday’s game, Graham wants to show a picture of Hoyt when he was 13 or 14 playing up a year in Midget. Stanley was an undersized forward at that point in his career and only measured 5-foot-6 by the age of 15, at which point he switched to defence.

But with Graham measuring in at 6-foot-3 during his playing days, and Kyra and Kaiden not far behind, they were confident that Hoyt would follow in their footsteps. During the summer of 2020, Stanley grew four inches and put on 40 pounds of muscle.

“I was like, don’t worry dude, you’re going to be big. You’re going to be big, have you seen your sister?” laughed Kyra. “It’s not a bad thing to learn to play when you’re smaller and play smart.”

“He was tiny, and he got the \\\\ kicked out of him too,” said Graham, adding colour. “It’s unbelievable, the hits he would take. And then he’d jump in my car and go, ‘Dad, I was terrified out there today.’ I said, ‘I would have been too!’”

Stanley took a similar route to his father, eschewing major junior to go play at Cornell University (Graham attended Dalhousie University in Halifax, where he played what was then known as CIAU and is now known as U SPORTS).

There, he became fast friends with teammate Jonathan Castagna, who he lived with for all three years in Ithaca, the small town in upstate New York where the Ivy League school is located.

Just hours after Stanley hit the ice for his rookie lap on Thursday in Ottawa, so too did Castagna in Calgary, where he was traded to from Utah at last year’s trade deadline as part of the package for MacKenzie Weegar.

“Me and Jonny lived together for three years at Cornell, all the same classes. Our lives were kind of meshed together for all that time, so it was pretty crazy to make the debut the same day,” said Stanley.

“They’ve almost been running parallel lives since they joined Cornell, and then they got drafted the same year,” said Graham.

“They did the same program, they graduated in three years, they’re both super smart kids, and then they both debut on the same fricking night, it was crazy, beautiful,” said Kyra.

With an offseason injury to Artem Zub helping to clear the way for a right-shot defenceman in Ottawa, Hoyt made it all the way past the final cut at training camp despite having only the six pro games last spring in Belleville on his resume.

“He played at a pretty good [program] in terms of transitioning to pro," said Stephen Halliday, who was not surprised by Stanley’s beeline to the NHL.

“Hoyt’s a great guy. I’ve seen him for a couple years, known him for a while. So it was super cool to see him get called up. He had a great camp too, so it’s no surprise he got a call-up… Belleville’s done a great job getting guys ready. I still watch all their games and talk to those guys down there. I love when guys from Belleville get called up.”

Stanley has played just under 20 minutes combined over his first two NHL games, both one-goal wins. After his first game, Senators head coach Travis Green gave him one of the best compliments a rookie defender could get for their debut.

“He didn’t look out of place. Found the rink well. Made hard plays. I haven’t seen his minutes yet, but you know if you don’t notice a guy a lot in his first game on the back end, he’s probably had a pretty good night,” said Green.

However his career in the NHL winds up, Stanley at least has the upper hand on his father, who had a 116-game pro career himself with stops in the AHL, IHL, ECHL and Austria, but didn’t quite reach his final destination.

“It’s great to see him surpass me financially, skill-wise, it’s great. I mean, it’s been a good journey getting\] here, and there’s another journey starting,” said [Graham, who runs his own asset management firm in Vancouver (Kyra is a chemical engineer).

“So, hopefully he fulfills his dreams, it’s been an awesome experience.”

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