Under strange circumstances, a Canes rookie makes an unexpected mark in his NHL debut

Strange things happen in strange circumstances and these were those. For the Drury family, which was about to fan out across the midwest and northeast for a weekend of hockey tournaments, Thursday was a mad scramble just to get to Raleigh from Chicago.

For Jack Drury, the reason for their rearranged plans, his separate trip from Chicago was slightly more momentous. One of three emergency call-ups thrown into the Carolina Hurricanes’ lineup amid a COVID outbreak that left six players on the shelf, Drury’s NHL debut against the Detroit Red Wings came amid exigent circumstances.

And it’s one thing to see your son or brother play in his first NHL game. It’s another to see him take a pass from Jesperi Kotkaniemi while barreling down the center of the ice and bounce a shot off Alex Nedeljkovic and have it fall right back onto his stick.

“You knew he had a great opportunity,” his father Ted said, later, a veteran of 414 NHL games — 40 for this organization in a Hartford Whalers sweater — enough to recognize a great opportunity and also to know that opportunity isn’t always enough.

It was this time.

Drury beat Nedeljkovic and went rocketing into the boards in the corner, an explosion of pure joy. In the stands, his sister Lily was in tears. The entire family – mom Liz, Lily, three younger brothers – jumped around in disbelief. It was the 297th NHL goal for a Drury, joining Ted’s 41 and uncle Chris’ 255.

One of the other arrivals from Chicago (AHL), Stefan Noesen veered away from the celebration to grab the puck for safekeeping. On the bench, as the Hurricanes announced Drury’s first NHL goal, Noesen threw his left arm around Drury’s shoulders and kissed him on the helmet, another moment of unprompted and unexpected joy.

Drury even got the first-star treatment at the end of the 5-3 win, soaking in the crowd’s applause.

“On the bench there at the end, that was really special,” Drury said. “It’s hard to put into words how that felt. But if we don’t get the win there, it’s all kind of forgotten.”

These circumstances are, for the Hurricanes, something entirely less than ideal. It took everything they had, especially from Drury and Nino Niederreiter --— this would be an ideal time for one of Niederreiter’s hot streaks — and others to get past the Red Wings.

“We had some young kids score their first goals tonight,” Niederreiter said. “Those were memories we built off tonight. It was great to see, part of why we got the win.”

But for players like Drury and Noesen — a 28-year-old with 208 NHL games under his belt but none with the Hurricanes — it was a crack in a door that normally stays closed. Drury, who spent last season in Sweden, had designs on making the roster out of training camp only to be one of several players left in the slipstream of Seth Jarvis’ meteoric rise despite scoring in his preseason debut as well.

Still, the second-round pick in 2018 has his best hockey ahead of him at 21, a reality not lost on his father amid the celebration. His stay in the NHL this time may be short, but there’s going to be a day when he shows up and stays. Even in this fleeting moment, there was that sense of inevitability.

“Hopefully this is a mark along the way,” Ted Drury said. “It’s OK for a day to be proud and reflect on everything, but now you’ve got to keep going.”

Drury should get another shot Saturday and Sunday as the shorthanded Hurricanes try to navigate this busy portion of their schedule, five games in eight days before the Christmas break, although it seems quite unlikely the Hurricanes would risk crossing the border to play the Ottawa Senators in the fifth after having to pull off an almost-Argo operation to get Jarvis and Sebastian Aho players out of Canada on Thursday.

Either way, it’s merely the beginning for Drury, perhaps not quite how he or his family or anyone else envisioned it, but impossible to forget nonetheless.

This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Under strange circumstances, a Canes rookie makes an unexpected mark in his NHL debut."

Luke DeCock

The News & Observer

Luke DeCock is a former journalist for the News & Observer.