‘Hockey is not the be-all, end-all. It’s family and friends and stuff like that’
Justin Kirkland marked this massive accomplishment with an emotional fist-pump, an enormous smile and an impromptu celebration on his doorstep in the wee hours of the morning.
As the 28-year-old centre buried that rebound, as he later showed off a keepsake puck in a televised interview, it shined a light on his inspiring backstory — from the long minor-league grind to the car accident in January 2023 that he worried might end his career.
As his better half, Madison, summed up on social media, the hockey world had just witnessed “the smile that says his childhood dream came true.”
“My wife is so supportive,” Kirkland said prior to Tuesday’s clash with the Chicago Blackhawks at the Saddledome, his third game in the Flaming C and his 12th on the NHL stage. “I think we got back from Edmonton at midnight and she’s on the front steps of the street, dancing in her pyjamas.
“I have these amazing people in my life who’ve helped me out so much. To be able to share it with her, to come home that night and have a little celebration, it was very special.”
Kirkland is still in pinch-me mode.
He still gets goosebumps when he sees a replay of that timely tuck, a different level of thrill than he experienced on any of his 92 major-junior markers or any of the 84 on his AHL stat sheet. To put his wait in perspective, consider this — the last two dudes to score their first NHL goal more than a decade after being drafted were Linus Ullmark and Tristan Jarry. Yeah, both netminders.
And while Kirkland was focused Tuesday on visiting superstar Connor Bedard and the Blackhawks, he still has a whack of text messages to reply to. When he checked his phone after Sunday’s victory in Edmonton, he had 100-and-some unreads.
“It was overwhelming. It was crazy,” said Kirkland, a prairie boy who was born in Winnipeg, raised in Camrose and is an alum of the famed hockey program at Notre Dame in Wilcox, Sask. “It almost seemed like everyone that I’ve ever crossed paths with was reaching out. The support was amazing to see. I had so many emotions, I don’t even know what to say. I haven’t stopped smiling in 48 hours now.
“Just a lot of memories. You get text messages from people you haven’t talked to in a while, and you think back. I’ve been fortunate to cross paths with some amazing people over the years, so it’s special to see that. I haven’t got back to everyone. That will probably be done maybe sometime next week. Just trying to enjoy all of this and take it all in.”
Because Kirkland, who signed a two-way contract with the Flames in the summer, returning for his second stint with the organization after a farmhand role from 2019-2022, wasn’t sure if he’d ever light a lamp at the NHL level.
He wondered if he’d even skate in ‘The Show,’ but he finally earned that opportunity with the Anaheim Ducks midway through the 2022-23 campaign. He was driving to what was supposed to be his eighth career game when he was involved in a crash on a California freeway.
“Obviously, with Anaheim when I got that opportunity, that was the absolute highest point of my career — living out my childhood dream playing in the NHL,” Kirkland recalled. “Then the accident happens, and then I’m at the lowest point of my life.
“It was a long journey. I had some pretty severe head trauma and some facial fractures and stuff like that that required surgery. So dealing with that right away, it was a lot. I’ve never gone through anything like that before. I spent some time in the hospital and then a lot of appointments and stuff like that to figure out what was going on. Mentally was probably the toughest part. The head and the wounds heal. But it was mentally trying to figure out how I was going to go about moving forward from that, that definitely took me a while.
“At the start, it was, ‘Am I going to play again?’ At the start, it was definitely on my mind of, ‘What’s this going to do to my career?’ And as we progressed through it, I think hockey kind of started to go on the back-burner and I started to look at really what’s important in life. And I think it gave me a bit of a new perspective that hockey is not the be-all, end-all. It’s family and friends and stuff like that. Going through that process and having the support that I did, it kind of helped me balance out my life a little bit between hockey and family. I think hockey was always in the forefront — ‘This is what I want to do. This is what I have to do.’ It sort of forced me to take a step back and look at the big picture of things … ”
The 28-year-old pauses for a second, perhaps reflecting on Sunday’s pay-off — from silencing the crowd at Rogers Place in Edmonton to celebrating on his doorstep a few hours later.
“And it’s been going good ever since,” he said, finishing his thought. “So just try to keep it rolling.”