Path To The Throne – Mikey Anderson

In Joey Anderson’s mind it is always the same.

He and younger brother Mikey are on the backyard rink. It’s 2-on-0. The clock is winding down.

Maybe the local school bus had come around the neighborhood corner signaling time for the boys to quickly scrape the rink and get ready for school.

Maybe it was in the summer and the boys were passing a well-worn tennis ball on the pavement instead of a puck on ice during a frosty Minnesota winter.

Regardless, it was always Joey who got the puck last. Always Joey who made the final play for the goal.

“You know, we’re about to win a state championship or we’re playing for the Wild, repeatedly hitting those situations up in a 2-on-0 situation in our backyard,” Joey Anderson recalled during a recent conversation.

But that was Mikey. The younger brother by 11 months was just as happy to provide the assist. He didn’t need to score to enjoy the moment.

“He had no issues being just right along with it,” Joey said. “He’ll be the guy passing the puck or he’ll do whatever, much like he is now. It’s funny, he does that now and he’s been the same way his whole life.”

By most signposts, being 25 years old still suggests an NHL player learning the craft, finding his way in terms of role and style of play, strengths and weaknesses. Yet there is almost nothing about Mikey Anderson that suggests youthfulness or uncertainty.

Quite the opposite in fact.

In a very short period of time Anderson has gone from being an untested sidekick to veteran Drew Doughty, to a kind of dressing room magnet for an even younger group of young Kings, including young defenders like Brandt Clarke and Jordan Spence.

It’s a role that has been even more demanding this season with Doughty, the future Hall of Famer, missing more than half a season with a fractured ankle.

“I think I’m way different,” Anderson said of his personal evolution as a young leader. “I feel like I’ve always done a decent job of it, but when you’re younger and you’re trying to make it, you’re very nervous at the rink just because you don’t want to do anything wrong. “You’re trying to not step on anyone’s toes so you’re maybe a little timid with yourself and maybe even the way you play practice, but as time goes on, you’re more comfortable around the staff, the players and you kind of be more of maybe what you would be back home, with your family and friends, which I think comes out now. You learn a lot from watching the older guys, but every year you feel more comfortable. You feel like you’re taking steps, growing as a person.”

In some ways Anderson is one of those rare players whose value to a team transcends points and advanced stats and expected goals against, though he ranks well in those areas also. He has established himself as a top shut-down defender, which is undeniable. But he is also the guy that younger players come to see when they need to know about how to dress for an event or what to do in certain situations.

He is the guy around whom other players coalesce and find comfort.

It has seemingly always been so for the happy-go-lucky defenseman.

Joey, who captained Team USA at the World Junior Championships in 2018, a year before Mikey would wear the ‘C’ at the same tournament, has been marveling at his brother’s self-awareness since they were in their early teens.

“You’d watch him and literally how he plays in the NHL right now is how he played it at 13,” Joey said.

At that age all most people see are the goals and assists and the big-time bodycheck.

Not for Mikey Anderson.

“You watch Mikey and the way he sees the game is so different,” Joey said. “He was one of those guys that he just understood exactly how to play and what he needed to do and every step of the way, he just got better and better and better.”

It was that almost impossibly grown-up mindset that made Anderson both a popular teammate and popular player with his coaches.

“That was honestly the beauty of Mikey,” Joey continued. “He’d come into a room and even when he was 16 and he was in Waterloo (in the USHL) and he was almost like the center of attention. He’s not a guy that’s always the center of attention as far as talking but he’s a guy that everyone gravitates to, like he’s the center of a room without having to be the rah-rah loud guy. He did that same thing when he went to UM-Duluth and now you see it with the guys on the Kings, the way he meshes in that locker room. You can tell how much he cares about every single person and you can tell how much they all care about him.”

Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NHLI via Getty Images

The boys’ father, Gerry Anderson, watches his son the NHL defenseman interact with coaches, teammates, and fans and sees the same boy on that backyard rink all those winters ago.

“He’s really still kind of that same kid,” Gerry said. “He’s been like that his whole life coming up. I mean, he was the kid in elementary school that would go help the kid that no one was sitting with him at lunch. So, he’s kind of always been that guy.”

Scott Sandelin’s son, Ryan, played some summer hockey with Mikey Anderson growing up so Sandelin, the long-time head coach at the University of Minnesota-Duluth who has also coached Team USA internationally for USA Hockey, had a sense of the family dynamic before he ended up coaching both brothers at the collegiate level.

Joey joined the Bulldogs first and a year later Mikey came to Duluth even though Mikey had basically been committed, at least in his heart, to UM-D since the eighth grade.

“Yeah, they’re different, definitely different,” Sandelin said of the two brothers. “Obviously Joey was a big recruit in our state and we were very fortunate to get him first. So that was great. I think we kind of knew that if Joey committed, we’re getting Mikey, which happened. So that was kind of a good deal for us.”

Sandelin figures that Joey was the more serious of the two boys. Mikey was a little more outgoing and a little bit more like his mother, Dana, according to Sandelin.

“He gets along with everybody. You know, not that Joey didn’t, but Joey was really, really serious. It was hockey, hockey, hockey. Mikey could balance both,” Sandelin said.

The normal routine was for all the freshmen to live in the same apartment complex on campus and for the upper classmen on the team to move into different housing. But Joey was insistent he wanted to live with Mikey and vise versa.

Sandelin relented but the veteran collegiate and international coach also relayed how the coaching staff would sometimes gather before the start of a week’s practices and ask aloud just how heated things were going to get with the Anderson boys because their competitive nature often had them treading the thin line between brotherly love and mayhem.

“I would always joke, ‘how many fights are we going to have in a week or a month with these two guys battling each other in practice,” Sandelin said. “It was a pleasure to have them because I think they both had that drive. I think it was good for our young teammates to see that too, but I just think that I would say this jokingly, but it’s serious.”

It’s been a long time since Mikey Anderson patrolled the Bulldog blue line but Sandelin brings him up regularly when talking to his current teams.

“Just when you talk about players knowing what they are and what they’re good at early, versus trying to be everything,” Sandelin said. “And I think a lot of players struggle with that.”

Not Mikey Anderson.

And while it’s been a pleasure for Sandelin to watch Anderson’s evolution with the Kings since they selected him 103rd overall in 2017, none of it has come as a surprise.

“He already kind of had that foundation and I think he’s really growing. He’s added things to that foundation, but he always kind of knew what he was, right? And I really, like, as a coach, you really appreciate that because those are the guys that seem to really excel and get better quicker,” Sandelin said.

Photo by Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Now, let’s make one thing positively clear.

As popular as Anderson is and has always been for that matter, this is not to suggest there isn’t a molten core of competitiveness that runs through his soul.

As kids, it is true that Joey would often test the limits with his brother, as many big brothers do, but just let anyone else try and get the better of Mikey, well, they’d better be prepared to go through Joey first.

It was so as youngsters, it was so as teenagers and it is so now.

“I’m his biggest fan. If anyone even came near him, they better not even look at Mikey the wrong way,” Joey said. “So, it’s fun just talking about him because everything you see is exactly how he is and how he’s been his whole life. There’s no fluff about it. He is so down to earth and humble, which is probably why I love being able to talk about him because I’ve just, I’ve been his biggest fan since, really, forever. There’s nothing about him that he thinks of himself on top of anyone else.”

Gerry Anderson works for Thomson Reuters as a publisher of legal research materials. He and his wife, Dana, may have had ideas early on that they would move on to a different home as their family started to grow, but they just never got around to it.

“We kind of laugh. We’re still in the starter house that we outgrew and grew back into,” Gerry said with a laugh.

One of the main reasons? The backyard rink.

“It was too hard to give up,” Gerry said. “Good location and we had the backyard.”

While the boys parlayed that backyard rink and the love of the game into pro careers it really started with older sister Sami who was two or three when Gerry flooded the back patio.

Sami, whose sports-reputation is well-known, would go on to play hockey at Gerry’s alma mater D-III College of St. Scholastica. And the backyard rink would grow into a real Minnesota-style rink as the boys got older.

“I loved hockey and hoped that they would like it. Thankfully they took to it and it’s been great,” said Gerry.

The boys played youth hockey in Roseville, MN, and then went to a private school, Hill-Murray School, where they both played as well before reuniting at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Every other year the boys would end up playing on the same team all the way through youth hockey.

“They were inseparable and everything was competitive,” Gerry recalled. “Most everything led to a fight and then five minutes later, they’d make up. We’d get down in the basement, they’d play knee hockey, mini sticks, whatever, and they had created a little rink where they’d put up signs, kind of like the ads on the boards. At one point, we looked down there and they’re all at this height and there’s one lower.”

When you talk to the boys’ father about how all of this has evolved there is still a sense of wonderment.

After all, it’s not something that you can make happen, having two boys playing professional hockey. When an athlete gets to be 13 or 14 it’s not about forcing them down a path but rather supporting them on path they choose.

“You saw that they still loved it and wanted to work hard,” Gerry recalled. “So, you just kind of come to that gradual realization that this is real.”

Is there still a sense of awe when Gerry and Dana see their sons step onto the ice wearing an NHL jersey or does it become part of the norm?

“Weird answer, but a little bit of both,” Gerry said. “There’s always that awe that, wow, they’re here, it’s surreal that they’re playing in the National Hockey League. Then, at the same time, we’ve been through it enough and you start to see the business side of things and the day-to-day grind, and you’re watching the team so closely that you kind of fall into that ‘just another day at the office’, even as a parent. So, it’s like kind of in and out of those moments but you never completely lose the awe part of it which is good I think.”

Over the past two summers Mikey and Joey have lived in the same house in Minnesota.

Joey and his wife have two small children and Mikey and his fiancé, Shannon, sometimes take over on the weekends, looking after the kids so Joey and his wife can have a break.

Shannon has moved to Los Angeles and the couple not long ago became the ‘parents’ to a labrador puppy named Bubba.

Life lessons to be sure.

“You kind of learn what it’s like, which is something I would never have thought to do at 24 and 25, to help out with a couple of little kids, but it’s fun,” Mikey said.

The responsibilities, whether it’s being an uncle or a puppy dad or planning for a summer wedding, are all reminders of just how quickly times passes and the importance of taking stock and keeping things in perspective. Things Mikey Anderson has been doing all along.

“It goes by really quick. We were talking about that the other week, and it’s just, I think this is year six already, and it doesn’t feel like that at all,” Anderson said. “I mean, I still come in, I’m not the youngest one here, but I’m still in the younger half of the team, which still is just funny to think it’s been six years, and it doesn’t necessarily feel like that with how fast things have gone by. Couldn’t ask to be in a better place.”

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