From Manly, Australia, to Osaka, Japan, to Cornwall, P.E.I., Moncton, New Brunswick, then to Los Angeles, and now Ottawa, Jordan Spence has taken the road less travelled in pursuit of his hockey dream.
Tonight, as the Senators play the Montreal Canadiens in Quebec City for the second of two preseason games, his parents will be in the stands to witness their son play without having to cross a continent.
Coincidentally, this is the second fall in a row Spence has played preseason games in Quebec City and granted them that opportunity.
Playing preseason games at Centre Vidéotron last season with the Kings gave his parents a glimpse of life if their son played closer to home, making the trek from Cornwall, P.E.I., to see him suit up against Boston and Florida.
Spence left sunny California this past offseason after spending the first five years of his pro career there when the Kings dealt him to Ottawa on the second day of the NHL Draft in exchange for a third-round pick (67th overall) and a 2026 sixth-rounder.
That cross-continent move has brought joy for Spence’s parents, who are thrilled to have their son playing much closer to their home on Prince Edward Island.
“My parents, my family, my friends, they’re all so excited,” Spence told Sens360.
"I know my family has hinted at coming [to Ottawa] way more than they did in LA,” Spence laughed. “At the same time, I’m really excited too, for my family and my friends to finally be able to come to more games.”
Being back on the East Coast means games will also start at reasonable hours, unlike his 7:30 p.m. California games, which translated to 11:30 p.m. at home, making for droopy eyelids for any Maritime viewers of Kings games.
Born in Australia to a Canadian father (Adam) and Japanese mother (Kyoko), Spence moved soon after to Osaka, Japan, where he would learn the game of hockey. It wasn’t until Spence was 13 years old that he moved to P.E.I. and fully transferred the hockey skills he had developed in Asia to Canadian rinks and competition.
Spence had some experience with playing hockey in Canada before the move, as he had spent his springs at his paternal grandparents’ house playing hockey. Part of the reason for the family’s move to Canada was to pursue a future in the sport for Jordan.
In Japan, with few teams around, most of his experience came through practice, encouraged by his father. So a full-time move to Canada, with oodles of tournaments and games waiting for him, came at a perfect point in Spence’s development.
There was just one problem — Spence had a very limited grasp of the English language when he first moved. “Sport is an international language in itself,” his father Adam told The Athletic’s Lisa Dillman in 2020. “If you can play, you can fit in. The boys took to him quickly. All of a sudden, he was invited to a lot of things outside of hockey.”
Spence quickly grasped and mastered English, as well as French. By the time he was 16 years old, the right-shot defenceman was captaining Hockey P.E.I.’s U-16 team at the QMJHL’s Gatorade Excellence Challenge and combine in anticipation of being drafted that spring.
But the defender went undrafted through all 14 rounds and 250 selections in 2017, a memory that Spence looks back on as “a huge reality check.”
“I was way smaller, I was still growing at the time,” said Spence, who checked into camp this year at 5-11 and 188 pounds. “I wouldn’t say I had a bad season, but I also wouldn’t say that I had a great season.”
Spence added that he felt there were a lot of improvements in his game that he could have made but specifically felt confident that his performance at the QMJHL combine and tournament just before the draft was good enough to have his name called.
“Sometimes things don’t go your way, and you’ve just got to work through it,” said Spence. “That’s kind of the biggest thing that I took [away from that], and probably the biggest adversity that I had to face, was, there’s a lot of people that aren’t going to believe in you, and so you’re going to do the best you can and work hard to prove them wrong.”
But by 2018, in his second year of eligibility, Spence had risen his stock so much that he was selected with the second pick of the second round, going 20th overall to the Moncton Wildcats after a 13-goal, 51-point season with the MHL’s Summerside Western Capitals, totals that both ranked second among all defenders in the Junior A league.
In his first season with the Wildcats, he led the team’s defenders and all rookie defenders in the league with 47 points, and Spence was named the QMJHL’s Rookie of the Year. Two months later, the NHL would come calling, and the Kings would select Spence with the 95th overall pick in the 2019 Entry Draft.
How’s that for proving people wrong?
“I kind of had that mentality after [the snub], to be the best version [of myself] that I can, and control the controllables. That’s that biggest quote that I always have in the back of my mind, is to just control everything you can control. And you know, if things go your way, things go your way.”
As a 19-year-old, Spence was invited to Canada’s World Junior Championship selection camp in Red Deer, Alta. That was shut down for two weeks after positive COVID-19 tests, forcing players, coaches, and staff into a full-team quarantine.
Following the resumption of camp, Spence felt he “gave everything he had” in the inter-squad games but waited anxiously for word from the team on final cuts. Team officials let Spence’s parents and younger sister Kairi break him the news that he would be going to Edmonton.
“It was awesome hearing it from them just because of the sacrifices and everything they have done for me,” Spence told Jason Simmonds of PNI Atlantic shortly after the team was announced.
But the road to the 2021 WJC was anything but straightforward from there. When the tournament finally began in Edmonton, it did so without fans in the stands, making the experience unlike any other.
Spence made the team’s roster but began the tournament in the press box. When Braden Schneider was suspended, he drew into the lineup on short notice and scored on his very first shift, breaking a 0-0 deadlock in what ended as a 3-1 win over Slovakia in the round-robin.
“Just being able to go to that camp, getting invited, and to be able to make that team and score on my first shift, even though we didn’t have any fans, it meant so much to me, of where I came from and how I got here,” said Spence.
“We came second place and the U.S. won, but at the same time, all the experience that I had at the world juniors, I was really happy with,” added Spence, who said that he made the choice to represent Canada over Japan — where he also has citizenship — because of the better competition levels in the highest division.
By the age of 20, Spence had graduated to the AHL for the 2021-22 season — and by March of that season, the NHL. Spence made his debut against the San Jose Sharks and became both the first Australian-born player and the first skater with Japanese citizenship to play in the NHL.
Spence even drew into three playoff games that postseason, a series which began the Kings’ streak of four straight first round exits to the Edmonton Oilers.
The right-shot defenceman began his tenure as a full-time NHLer for the 2023-24 season and has recorded eight goals and 61 points overall in 180 regular season games since, along with a goal and an assist in 13 playoff games.
“I’m really fortunate,” said Spence of being able to gain playoff experience at such a young age.
“Players are a lot hungrier, they’re faster, they finish every check. Last year we weren’t able to beat [the Oilers], again, in the first round. But at the same time, I think I’m becoming more mature, on the ice, on what to expect during playoff games, and what to do, and what it takes to win playoff games.”
Senators head coach Travis Green isn’t one to show his cards, preferring instead to answer questions about specific players’ roles on the team with the sentiment that ultimately, the player will decide what their place in the lineup is with their play.
But for Spence, he is no stranger to having to prove himself, no matter where his journey has taken him across the globe — and if being uprooted from Los Angeles to Ottawa felt like a shock at first, he has once again embraced the challenge, just like he always has.
“Personally, I wanted to have a bigger role [in Los Angeles], and we couldn’t quite see eye to eye on certain things. They thought it was best for me to go somewhere else to get that opportunity or to have a fresh start,” Spence said.
“At first, when you’re getting that call, you’re kind of shocked a little bit — I got drafted in L.A., I spent four or five years in L.A., being able to make lifelong memories and friends there. It kind of all hits you at once, that you’re not going there anymore, and you’re going to Ottawa.”
“And you know, it took a little bit of time and some process to sink all that in and to really think about what's best for my future. As the summer went on, [I felt like] it’s not the end of the world. It’s part of the business. So after that, I was really excited that Ottawa believes in me and wanted to trade for me, and to be able to be here and have that opportunity to win games.”
