When he was 4 years old, Cole Perfetti would stand on the bench at his Whitby, Ont., skating rink, psych himself up and then take three running steps onto the ice — just like the players did on TV.
He had become so fascinated by the moment in an NHL broadcast when the lights went down and the crowd went wild and the players flooded out onto the ice that he decided to master it himself.
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“There was a step a few inches off the dasher board from the bench to the ice,” says his dad, Angelo. “He would step back and run onto the ice as if he was coming onto the ice for the first time for a game. You get goosebumps, just thinking about it.”
On Wednesday night in Anaheim, Perfetti will get to run out onto the ice at an NHL game wearing a Winnipeg Jets jersey.
“I didn’t anticipate this,” Perfetti told reporters at Canada Life Centre after learning he’d be in Winnipeg’s season-opening lineup. “Obviously I wanted it so bad, but it’s crazy to think about.”
This time, Perfetti will tie his own skates. He’ll play on a line with Adam Lowry and Jansen Harkins. The goosebumps will be as all-encompassing as they’ve ever been.
And it will be a lifelong dream come true for Cole and his entire family.
From the moment Perfetti arrived home as a newborn, his parents say he was the model child.
“He woke up early on his own with a smile on his face,” says Angelo. “He was always very loving, both to us and to his sister (Abby).”
“I used to think it was me,” says his mom Sandra. “I’d be like ‘Wow, this parenting thing is simple!’ But it really wasn’t me. It was them.”
There is a Perfetti family story where Abby, who is two years and 10 months older than Cole is, was not at all impressed the day she met baby Cole. For whatever reason, whether it was having gotten used to being her parents’ one and only or just struggling with all of the changes a newborn brother meant for her household, Abby decided she was not going to like her little brother.
He won her over in a week, started calling her “Abba” long before he became the articulate teenager he is today, and has been her biggest supporter as she pursues her education at the University of Western Ontario; she’s now enrolled in a Master’s of Arts in Kinesiology — Management and Leadership.
The Perfettis also tell a story about the time in Grade 1 where Cole brought home a bad mark from school.
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He was crushed — for a day — and then never came home with bad marks again.
(What is a “bad” mark to Cole Perfetti? Good question. No one in the Perfetti family seems to have the answer. He just wanted to do better … So he did.)
“That’s true of both Abby and Cole,” Sandra explains. “I’m not sure why they’re made up that way but they just are. I never had to nag my kids to do homework or to get up for school.”
So, yes, Cole Perfetti’s is a family story.
Yes, he called his mom and dad moments after Paul Maurice told him he’d be making his NHL debut in Anaheim on Wednesday.
And yes, his dad nearly cried.
And when Maurice pulled Perfetti aside at Jets practice to give him the news, he focused his message squarely on Perfetti’s family story.
“It’s kind of a canned speech but I believe it’s true,” Maurice told reporters in Winnipeg. “When I tell a guy (he’s playing in the NHL), what I’m thinking (about) is his mom and dad. There’s that phone call in the last hour — ‘I’m in’ — and what that household is like today and tomorrow … Just every crappy cup of coffee in every small rink that we’ve all had a thousand of, right? All of it. The kid’s playing his first NHL game and it’s gotta be awesome in that house.”
Perfetti says “that house” is doing its best to hustle to Anaheim, so they can be at the Honda Center when he realizes one of his lifelong dreams.
“They worked so hard to get me where I am today and my dad almost started crying on the phone,” Perfetti said Tuesday. “It’s a special day, it’s a whole family thing. Everyone put the effort in, not just myself, there were a lot of people behind the scenes that got me here. They’re just excited and so happy. My dad said ‘OK, I’m going to look at flights’ and hung up the phone.”
It turns out that if you talk to Cole Perfetti’s family for long enough, you realize he was always meant to play for the Winnipeg Jets.
The first time Cole Perfetti put on a Jets jersey, he was 10 years old.
Already a standout as a hockey player, Perfetti played at The Brick Invitational Super Novice Hockey Tournament in Edmonton along with his Toronto Bulldogs teammates.
The Bulldogs cruised through group play, winning three straight games, before going undefeated in the playoffs and winning the championship.
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With nine points in six games, the 10-year-old Perfetti gave onlookers at the prestigious minor hockey tournament a glimpse of his future greatness.
But it’s a chance meeting with a Winnipeg-born goaltender named Dante Giannuzzi — now the starting goaltender for Portland of the WHL — that hinted at Perfetti’s Winnipeg-bound future.
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“It’s pretty funny. At the end of the tournament, you swap one of your jerseys with another kid at the tournament as a keepsake,” says Perfetti. “And we ended up getting to know a family — the Giannuzis, they live in Winnipeg. During the tournament, my parents had conversations with their parents and we kind of just made a deal that, at the end of the tournament, Dante and I would trade jerseys.”
Dante’s team? The Winnipeg Junior Jets.
From the time they were 10 years old, Cole and Dante have become friends and their families have remained close.
When Perfetti was drafted at No. 10 in 2020 by the Jets (and the pick was announced by Crystal Hawerchuk, wife to the late, legendary No. 10 Dale Hawerchuk) the Giannuzzis were among the first to congratulate him.
“When I was drafted to Winnipeg, Gino — the father — was the happiest guy in the world. He was so excited that I was coming to Winnipeg to play for his team.”
The significance of his first Jets jersey is not lost on Perfetti. The Winnipeg Junior Jets jersey he got from Dante hangs in his room to this day.
“It’s just a cool story — trading and wearing that Winnipeg Jets jersey eight or nine years ago and it now being real, it’s kind of funny.”
But if you want to get to the heart of who Winnipeg’s third line right winger against Anaheim is, you have to talk to his big sister.
When asking around about Cole as a child, his parents, billet family from Saginaw and agent all agreed that Abby knows him best.
Abby is the one who watched “Friends” with him so many times he can quote every episode from memory. She’s the one who bought him the “Jurassic Park” DVD box set for Christmas so they could watch it on long family road trips. She’s the one he’d beat by scores of 15-2 and 20-1 at NHL because, even though she didn’t love video games, she loved her little brother.
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“Ever since I was little, we’ve always been super close,” says Cole. “My entire life, it’s always been like that. Even when I was in Saginaw and she was in London for school.”
“Honestly, my entire life that I can remember, he’s been my best friend,” she says. “When we didn’t have scheduled playdates, we did everything together: swam in the backyard, played on the street, went biking … We do everything together.”
“We’re a big Star Wars family as well,” says Cole. “We’ll just pick a movie and watch that. We don’t go out that much. We just relax and spend time together at the house.”
Beyond a shared fascination with Jedi and dinosaurs, consider how central Abby is — and has always been — to her hockey phenom brother’s life.
There is a Subway restaurant between the Whitby, Ont., elementary school Abby attended and the outdoor rink where Cole learned to skate. Every Wednesday, the kids’ Nono (grandpa) Angelo Sr. would pick Cole up in the morning, take him to a learn to skate program and then pick Abby up for lunch. She would get chicken and cheese and nothing else; he would get a steak and cheese or pizza sub.
The three of them would have their sandwiches together, laugh for a full hour and then Nono would take Abby back to school and drop Cole off at home.
Perfetti learned to skate at “Nono’s backyard rink” but his time with Abby and their grandpa was equally precious.
“Little things like that just show you the support and love we got from our grandparents and our family,” says Cole. “And Abby is the best big sister that I could ask for. She’s so supportive. When she was 13, 14, she would give up going to her friend’s house on the weekend and come to the rink, supporting me, wanting to be there.”
When Cole became a star for the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit and started “Fett’s Friends,” a program that worked with Covenant Kids in Saginaw, Abby visited him as often as possible. She’d travel down to Saginaw from London, Ont., where she was working on her undergraduate degree.
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What Abby found in Saginaw was that Cole had grown into a mature young man.
“Fett’s Friends” raised money and awareness for the Covenant Kids, a fund dedicated to supporting critical pediatric medicine in Michigan, both before and after Cole’s time in Saginaw. Covenant Kids helps fund urgent care for children, trauma care for a child’s whole family, neonatal intensive care and pediatric intensive care.
One of the first things “Fett’s Friends” focused on was funding a waiting room and outfitting it with a massive gaming table for kids to play at.
“It’s essentially a huge iPad that three or four kids can play on at once,” Perfetti says. “It’s just there for the kids to do something to get their minds off of being in the hospital. Bring a little normality into their life and allow them to have some fun and just be a kid for a couple of hours in the hospital.”
In early 2020, “Fett’s Friends” also raised money for Covenant HealthCare’s frontline workers, providing meals to a group of staff working overtime in the fight against the pandemic.
OK, so Winnipeg’s No. 91 is thoughtful, giving and compassionate.
But what is he really like?
Abby says the answer is simple.
“He’s a good person. He’s the person who wanted to start a charity. He’s the person who worked really hard in school. Who is always really kind to people. It honestly makes me a little bit emotional — thinking about how well he treats people and how he makes sure that his fans or Saginaw Spirit fans always feel included and happy.”
“It comes from my parents and the culture I was raised in,” says Cole. “They set such a good example for me. That’s the way they think and that’s the way they raised us … it’s all due to them and the way they raised us as people.”
When the Honda Center lights go down and the crowd roars in celebration of a new hockey season, 19-year old Cole Perfetti will take the three strides onto NHL ice that he’s dreamed of his entire life.
He will do so with a sense of gratitude and appreciation for his parents that would be unique for a man of any age.
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“They do everything for me,” he says of his mom and dad. “The sacrifices they’ve made … I can’t thank them enough. Words won’t describe how I feel about that. The time and effort that they put in. Late nights. Early mornings. Long drives. All that kind of stuff. Making sacrifices in their own personal lives that allowed me to do what I want to do. The support I get from them is crazy. I can’t thank them enough.”
Perhaps a dinner is in order.
Because after hanging up the phone following Cole’s NHL debut news, the Perfettis have had some luck with their flights.
Mom and dad will both be in Anaheim to watch Perfetti realize his lifelong dream.
(Top photo: James Carey Lauder / USA Today)
