The Fraser Minten story: From ‘unknown’ to the Maple Leafs’ opening-night lineup

Chantal Minten desperately wanted an answer out of her son but secretly knew she wasn’t going to get one.

It was less than a week before the Toronto Maple Leafs announced final cuts ahead of their season opener on Wednesday. Chantal’s son, Fraser, had hung around training camp longer than predicted for a 2022 second-round draft pick.

There was one Leafs preseason game remaining. The roster was full of players who had a chance to make one last impression, including Minten.

Chantal and her husband, Trevor, had sat idly by throughout preseason as Minten’s stock rose. They understood their fiercely independent and thoughtful son processed his future on his own terms. This is a piano-playing, voracious reader and soft-spoken teenager who was built to do things free of the typical conventions surrounding young hockey players.

But they couldn’t sit any longer.

“I said to Fraser, ‘Your Dad and I have jobs, should we be making plans to see you in Toronto on Wednesday? Can you give us a feel of things?’” Chantal told The Athletic. “And he got very irritated at the question. He said, ‘Mom, they’re probably sending me home on Sunday. I’m playing another game and I’m happy I’m playing another game. Don’t bother me with that. I’m focused on the next game.’”

Minten’s game that Sunday was not his last for the Leafs.

Instead, the 19-year-old centre became the surprise story out of training camp. He would not return to the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers, instead locking up an opening night roster spot on the third line. The Leafs liked how he improved throughout training camp and showed remarkable maturity and poise throughout.

On the ice, his responsible positional play off the puck and smart decisions with the puck saw him become just the second teenager to crack the Leafs opening night roster since 2016-17. What’s notable is not just that he is starting the season on a Stanley Cup contender. It’s that as of a few years ago, the Vancouver-born Minten had no business even considering a professional career.

“An unknown in the Vancouver landscape,” was how his coach at West Van Academy Prep, Steve Marr, described the outlook for Minten in 2019-20 before moving to the WHL. “Fraser was always on the outside of the mix.”

That he has arrived in the NHL is a testament to his individuality and the people who fostered it.

Grandparents can serve different purposes in a child’s life: An extra set of hands for overworked parents, or possibly to spoil children when their parents have to walk a hard line.

Fraser Minten’s paternal grandparents Peter and Glenda were all those things to him, but most importantly, they fostered a sense of curiosity that has propelled him throughout his entire life. Every other summer, Minten would travel throughout Canada with just his grandparents.

“From a very young age, his grandparents were very good at involving the grandchildren in conversations,” Chantal said. “Not just about what they were doing, but about current events and exploring the world around them. That curiosity translates into finding books that he was interested in and thought could help him.”

Growing up in Langley, B.C., Minten’s interests stretched beyond hockey. His grandparents implored him to play piano and gave him books teenagers don’t normally read to fuel his curiosity. To this day, Minten credits his grandparents as having a strong influence on his life.

When he became interested in the human body, he devoured “The Body” by noted humour writer Bill Bryson. Chantal and Trevor could only stand in shock as Minten didn’t just ask them to take him to the local library; he’d often ask them to return almost immediately. Minten could devour an entire book in a day.

The list of books that sat on his bookshelf at his billet’s home in Kamloops, B.C., including “Your Place in the Universe” by astronomer Paul Sutter, was not a short one. Every book, one way or another, helped Minten feel remarkably at ease with the written word. So much so that he began journaling to express himself and making detailed lists of his goals to keep himself accountable.

Chantal would rarely get to see the lists. But when she did, she was floored by Fraser’s contained detailed plans on how to improve himself in hockey.

“It was like, ‘Wow, this kid is taking steps to get to a certain place that is his dream,’” Chantal said.

Journaling, reading, playing piano: Not the typical activities for a young athlete verging on elite status. But enjoying these activities helped Minten become comfortable in his own skin when his peers struggled with self-expression.

Minten loved hockey, but it did not define him. His parents supported and encouraged every one of his endeavours, and did so in a graceful, nurturing manner that is unmistakable in Minten today.

They wanted him to understand there was more to his life than the sport. They wanted him to act “with the community in mind,” according to Chantal.

“You just do what you can to keep in sight the reason you’re there,” Chantal said.

That meant being an inquisitive and caring teammate and never trying to show others up. Minten was never afraid to share his unique hobbies with teammates.

“He didn’t hide from that. Because he just treated his teammates so well, you’d be a fool to use that as a negative against him,” Marr said.

That’s partly why Minten is still devoid of ego off the ice. He was never coached to be a star the way some of his peers were. Chantal and Trevor approached the West Van Academy with skepticism.

“The politics of hockey are prevalent here in the lower mainland,” Marr said. “Parents try to get into political cliques as early as they can because they think it’ll help their nine-year-old. But Fraser’s parents didn’t get into that. They wanted to let Fraser grow and love the game organically.”

As Fraser improved in his WHL draft year, Trevor and Chantal tried to keep him aware of how the odds of playing in the NHL were stacked against him, with a simple message: “It is a bit of a longshot, dude.”

“But sometimes I feel badly because we tried to instill a sense of realism. Fraser read the book ‘Outliers’ and we would say ‘Well, we’re not flying all over the place in our private jet to get you to train with this guy or that guy,’” Chantal said.

They didn’t have to.

Minten entered the academy as a pure playmaker.

“As a coach, you have a love-hate relationship with playmakers because they’re so good at setting up good plays but they have a tendency to pass up prime shooting opportunities,” Marr said.

Marr kept track of 30 different practice stats to hold players accountable, including the percentage of shots that hit the net and the percentage of passes completed.

Minten took note of his poor shooting percentages early on.

“He identified he had one of the best shooters on the planet in Connor Bedard on his team. He said, ‘I’m going to have the courage to stay as close to Connor in shooting practice as I can,’” Marr said.

Bedard’s shooting percentage ended at 53 percent in practice. And while there were far more talented shooters than Minten on the team, Fraser finished second on the team at 48 percent.

“And that pushed Bedard,” Marr said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit toward the end of that season, ice time was hard to come by. Minten knew he’d be heading to Kamloops the following season after being selected in the fourth round of the 2019 WHL Bantam Draft. His focus shifted. The child who once loved going to school hardly found online learning palatable. While he still completed his assignments, “he began studying hockey,” according to Trevor.

When he wasn’t reading hockey books, he would stop and rewind the NHL games he’d watch nightly to better understand plays.

His parents had since moved to Vancouver’s Yaletown. To keep improving his shot, Minten would skate east with a bucket of pucks and a net over his shoulder to the BC Place concourse and spend hours under street lights firing pucks with the net against the stadium’s wall.

“Fraser’s always liked to do things by himself, or for himself,” Chantal said. “He’s an old soul.”

During Minten’s first year in Kamloops, he moved up from fourth-line centre to third-line centre, giving him the confidence to understand he could succeed at an advanced level of hockey.

He might have been quiet, as to be expected for a rookie, but he didn’t deviate from his off-ice passions and his genuine care for teammates.

“He wasn’t a follower because he was always able to make the right decision, no matter what the decision was. He was never worried about standing out because his emotional IQ was very high,” Tim O’Donovan, Blazers director of hockey operations, said of Minten.

Minten showed glimpses of a pro future in his second year, his draft year. Gone was the quiet newcomer. In his place was one of the most talkative players on the bench, who constantly gave instruction and feedback to teammates when they came off the ice. Minten would ask his coaches for the phone numbers of incoming Blazers rookies to offer his own support and guidance.

“He’s never going to embarrass anyone. That’s what his leadership style is,” O’Donovan said.

Throughout the season, a battery of tests and interview requests from around the NHL came. While players sometimes seek assistance, Minten kept his parents and the Blazers’ education consultant in the dark, trusting his own instincts.

“He had finished everything before we had the full scope of what he was doing,” Trevor said. “He knows we don’t know enough about hockey to help him.”

On the ice, Minten’s game elevated. He averaged 0.82 points per game in the regular season but while playing in all 17 Blazers playoff games, that number improved to 0.94. Among players classified as rookies in his draft class with at least three rounds of playoff games, that number was third in the WHL behind first-round picks Zach Benson and Matthew Savoie.

“When the games got harder and everything was on the line, that’s when we saw Fraser at his best,” O’Donovan said.

That timely improvement meant that come the 2022 NHL Draft, the Leafs focused in on Minten. Their Western Canada scouts Garth Malarchuk and Darren Ritchie pushed hard for him.

Because Minten’s Blazers went to the conference finals in the WHL playoffs, Minten missed the NHL Combine. The Leafs believed so highly in Minten they flew him into Toronto for an additional round of interviews and quizzes including the video work that asks prospects to predict outcomes of plays. Minten’s heavy analysis of games gave him a leg up. He had seen many of the plays shown unfold and correctly predicted plays. And when he was asked to describe what he would do in various plays, his hockey intelligence impressed the Leafs.

Under director of amateur scouting Wes Clark, the Leafs have looked for picks who can combine intelligence with mental and physical toughness and high levels of competitiveness. These are the same attributes found in 2023 first-round pick Easton Cowan.

And like Cowan, the Leafs were set on Minten. Though they were slated to pick at 25, they began to believe they could nab Minten later on. He was still on the board on day two at 38 after a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks allowed the Leafs to pick high in the second round.

When the Leafs called Minten’s name, Chantal and Trevor could not believe the soft-spoken kid who was curious about the cosmos would soon walk toward the Leafs front office to shake their hands.

They wondered: How would he handle everything in front of him?

The Leafs welcomed the Mintens into a suite in the Bell Centre in Montreal after the draft for a small party. They felt underdressed and they wondered if Minten was too: He walked in with a backpack full of books over his shoulder.

It had been a whirlwind few hours and Fraser hadn’t had time to use the bathroom. Immediately after he stepped out of the bathroom, he was stopped by an in-house media member looking for a few soundbites.

Chantal and Trevor both took a step toward their son to offer their help. Or maybe just to advise him to take off his backpack.

But they stopped when he began the interview with a beaming smile and his shoulders looking relaxed under that backpack.

They realized that their son was on the doorstep of the NHL: Exactly where he wanted to be.

“I think about my past a decent amount and I’ve been thinking about it more than usual,” Minten said.

Chantal, Trevor and Fraser’s grandparents will be in Scotiabank Arena to see Fraser play in a game that, at least from the outside, few could have pictured he’d play in.

“We’ve said to him, ‘We care, and we’re here,’” Chantal said, her voice pausing to fight back a tear. “But ‘Wow, kid, you’re doing great.’”