By Jared Clinton, Features writer
The puck had only just dropped in
the round-robin meeting between Canada and the U.S. at the 4 Nations
Face-Off, and there was Brandon Hagel, mitts off, fists cocked, standing
toe-to-toe with Matthew Tkachuk. And in that moment, any thoughts about
Tampa Bay drifted free from Jon Cooper’s mind.
As Cooper watched
on, the Lightning bench boss could have been concerned about Tampa’s
second-highest scorer. He could have been chewing his hand off worrying
about Hagel getting dinged up in what some had decried as a meaningless
mid-season cash grab disguised as an international competition. Against a
backdrop of political agitation and in his then-role as coach of
Canada’s club, though, it was all Cooper could do to contain his own
emotions. “When we were in it,” he said, “it was all flag waving.”
For
his part, Hagel never had any intention of becoming the on-ice avatar
for a nation. Even with a fistful of NHL scraps under his belt and
several dustups in major junior, Hagel insisted fighting isn’t part of
his game, at least not really. He wasn’t even thinking about fighting
until he lined up across from Tkachuk. But when the offer came, Hagel
was all too happy to oblige. Then, in the 45 seconds that followed, from
the clutching and grabbing on through the first flurry of punches and
all the way to his arm-raising, crowd-pumping cries after the combatants
were separated, Hagel etched his way into the memory of hockey-mad
Canadians the world over. “He had the weight of 20,000 people in that
Bell Centre on his shoulders, and he fought like it,” Cooper said. “I’ve
told ‘Hags,’ ‘If nobody knew you going into this tournament, pretty
sure you won’t have to buy a beer in this country for quite some time
now.’”
Hagel puts it another way: “It’ll probably be one of the biggest moments in my life.”
And
one made bigger, perhaps, by virtue of the number of times it seemed
that it was the exact type of moment that would never come.
Like
any number of talented kids from Western Canada, Hagel viewed the WHL
bantam draft as a rite of passage. In some ways, even, the draft had its
way of feeling less like one step toward achieving the NHL dream than
it did the dream itself. The major-junior circuit has been the breeding
ground for a great many big-league stars, and whether you’re growing up
in a Prairie town or west of the Rockies, if you’re among the best
players in your age group, it’s seen as the most-direct route to The
Show.
That’s
why it was just about all Hagel could think about as his draft year
drew near. There was chatter about peers starting to find advisors and
agents. There was a personal desire to follow in the footsteps of
friends and competitors who had made the leap to ‘The Dub.’ And there
was a foreboding sense that everything – his entire future – hinged on
taking that next step. It made the 2013 WHL draft feel not just
important but monumental.
So, when it came and went without
Hagel’s name getting called, he felt as though the ground beneath his
feet had suddenly disappeared. He was 15, sitting in class and starting
to question his NHL dream. “It has the feeling that it’s slipping away,”
he said.
“He had the weight of 20,000 people in that Bell Centre on his shoulders, and he fought like it.”
– Jon Cooper
There
was nothing for Hagel to do, really, other than get back to work. For
him, that took the form of another two seasons in the same Fort
Saskatchewan Rangers system in which he’d been playing during his WHL
draft year and then a brief turn with the AJHL’s Whitecourt Wolverines.
And it was in Whitecourt, only a few games into 2015-16, where he caught
the eye of Red Deer Rebels scouts. That opened the door for him to
practice with the Rebels, where he turned coach-GM-owner Brent Sutter’s
head and earned a spot on the roster.
While Hagel was not a
standout, his first season in Red Deer saw him assert himself as a
possible NHL-caliber talent. He finished with 47 points in 72 games, and
his performance gave him enough cachet that the Buffalo Sabres decided
to take a flyer. He was scooped up with the 159th overall pick in the
2016 NHL draft.
Now, if this were about almost any other top NHL
scorer, you could chart the pathway from there: he would’ve headed off
to Sabres camp, landed on the radar of Buffalo’s higher-ups, eventually
earned an AHL spot, turned that into an NHL opportunity and gone on to
cement himself as a lineup regular. But that wasn’t the case. Over the
next two off-seasons, Hagel spent time in upstate New York in hopes he
would ingratiate himself to the organization and earn an entry-level
contract. Instead, after Hagel wrapped up his third season with the
Rebels, the Sabres relinquished his rights.
The first phone call
Hagel remembers receiving after Buffalo gave him the news was from
Sutter. “He basically said, ‘I am going to do everything I can to try
and get you to that next level. You just have to continue putting your
head down and try to get better and try to get yourself there,’” Hagel
said.
That didn’t stop him from feeling, though, that he was
reliving the WHL draft nightmare all over again. As a 20-year-old
entering his fourth WHL campaign, there was a cold, creeping feeling of
doubt. He felt like an unfortunate reality was beginning to set in –
that a life in hockey wasn’t going be in the cards. So, Hagel gave
himself an ultimatum. “If this isn’t going to work, I need to go to
school,” he said. “That was my assumption, that I’d give it to
Christmas.”
With that in his mind, Hagel started to think about
his future. While putting in some serious off-season work, he made time
to sign up to head back to school. If hockey wasn’t going to work out,
he wanted to improve his grades so he could go to college. But when he
got back to Red Deer to start 2018-19, he looked like a different
player. The season prior, before Buffalo had let him walk, his offense
was inconsistent. Now, seemingly out of nowhere, he was uncontainable.
He had 10 points through his first five games and was pushing 20 by his
10th. And by his 15th game, he was tied for third in WHL scoring, with
28 points. Hagel’s hard work was shining through.
“It’ll probably be one of the biggest moments in my life.”
– Brandon Hagel on his fight at the 4 Nations
More
importantly, NHL clubs were circling. Now, his self-imposed deadline
didn’t seem so worrisome. And by the end of October 2018, days after his
fifth three-point game of the WHL season, Hagel put pen to paper on a
three-year, entry-level deal with the Chicago Blackhawks.
Sutter
had encouraged him, pressed him to work even harder and told Hagel he
could still make his NHL dream come true. “I couldn’t give more credit,
and I give a lot of credit, to Brent Sutter,” Hagel said. “He was the
best thing that’s probably ever happened to me in hockey.”
“Brent Sutter was the best thing that’s probably ever happened to me in hockey.”
– Brandon Hagel
If
the pandemic didn’t nearly shutter one NHL campaign and change the
landscape of another, it’s worth wondering how enamored the Lightning
would have become with Hagel. The 2020-21 season brought with it a
temporary divisional realignment that made Chicago and Tampa – normally
in opposite conferences – regular foes. Eight times the Blackhawks
squared off with the Lightning that season, and it was during the third
of those meetings, the first for which a rookie Hagel was in the lineup,
that Cooper couldn’t shake him. “I just remember I was like, ‘Who is
this kid, whose name I don’t know, who is flying all over the place and
being a pest?’” Cooper said. “It’s like, ‘Oh my God, this kid is always
involved.’”
Cooper was all too familiar with Hagel by season’s
end, as was the Lightning front office. What they had seen was soon
apparent to the rest of the NHL, too. During his sophomore season, Hagel
worked his way up Chicago’s lineup, and as the trade deadline
approached, with the Blackhawks in full rebuild mode, there were
rumblings he was a sought-after trade chip. Hagel, though, didn’t think
anything of it. “A couple days before, the (Blackhawks) coach at the
time (Derek King) came out and said something along the lines of, ‘If we
trade Hagel, I don’t know what type of rebuild we’re doing here,’”
Hagel said. “Rumors were going around, questions were being asked, and
in my mind, I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”
Then came the news.
On a road trip to Minnesota, Hagel was pulled aside by a Chicago staff
member and sent to meet with the Hawks’ brass. He was told he’d been
traded, learning soon thereafter his destination was Tampa Bay.
Initially, he couldn’t believe it. His head was “in a blender.” But
disbelief soon became a realization: he was going to get an opportunity
to compete for a Stanley Cup with the back-to-back champions.
It
wasn’t long, however, before his elation dissipated. On the
bottom-feeding Blackhawks, Hagel was seeing big minutes. He was proving
himself a capable top-six player. But a similar role with the Lightning
was blocked by Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos and a
cadre of veteran talent on a Cup-contending club. “I’m coming over from
Chicago, I have 21 goals already, and there’s still however many games,”
Hagel said. “I’ve been playing 18 minutes a game when I was in Chicago,
and now I’m playing 12 or 13.”
Frustration was setting in. Hagel
had been used to working his way up the lineup, not slipping helplessly
down it. But Cooper preached patience.
So, Hagel did as he’d done
prior: he put his head down and went to work. The result, as always, was
a breakthrough. Against the New York Rangers in the third round of the
2022 post-season, Hagel landed on a line with Alex Killorn and Anthony
Cirelli. It was a defensive role, and he bought in. Ultimately, Hagel
played an important part in helping the Lightning to a third-straight
Cup final, and while the Bolts left empty-handed, Hagel’s commitment to
doing the little things well wasn’t lost on Cooper.
Indeed,
Hagel’s work ethic and attitude were the very things that landed him on
the wing alongside Kucherov and Point just two games into the following
season. It wasn’t some dalliance with the Lightning top six, either.
Hagel became a fixture of the unit, authoring a breakout 30-goal,
64-point campaign. “Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, just throw me on the line, and
I’ll get points and be able to do this.’ But that’s not how it works,”
Cooper said. “These guys, they think the game at such a high level, they
play the game at such an incredibly fast pace. That it’s why it’s hard
to play with really, really good players. Good players also want guys
who are going to do some of the work that they’re not going to do.”
That,
Cooper said, is Hagel. But it’s not just what he brings to the attack
or his ability to thrive alongside elite talents that have led Hagel
from being an overlooked 15-year-old to a role player for Team Canada in
best-on-best play. From where Cooper is standing, it’s because
everything that has been thrown at Hagel, whether an off-ice obstacle,
grind-line minutes or the chance to skate in the top six, has been an
opportunity he’s accepted, learned from and used to build a bigger,
stronger, better foundation for the rest of his game. In his earliest
moments with the Lightning, Cooper said, Hagel kept taking bites of the
apple. And once he was ready, bit by bit, as with his entire career, the
bites just kept getting bigger.
“The cycle just continues,”
Cooper said. “Late draft pick. Sixth-rounder. And it’s just never being
given a chance. It’s always that a door keeps shutting in his face, and
he keeps opening it. It shuts in his face again, and he walks through
again, everywhere he’s gone. When you have that much fight in a player,
and you watch what he’s done in his career, probably not that surprised
at what he’s doing now.”
This article appeared
in our 2025 Yearbook and Fantasy Guide. This issue features team
reports for all 32 NHL teams heading into the 2025-26 season, including
an analysis of their offense, defense and goaltending, as well as our
prediction for where we think they will finish in the league standings.
We also include features on Oilers center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Flames
defenseman Rasmus Andersson and more. In addition, we take a look at
the top skaters and goaltenders ahead of the coming season.
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