After not being drafted in OHL or NHL, he is No. 1 among rookie defencemen with five goals and is No. 2 in the league in penalty minutes (72).
Xhekaj’s podcast interview with Nilan was a good one and covered a lot of ground concerning his road to the NHL.
It was Xhekaj’s mother, Simona, who first got him into hockey when the family was living in Hamilton. Simona was born in a remote village in Bosnia and grew up without electricity or running water. Her parents fled the former“It was a big thing in Czech for them to be playing hockey,” Xhekaj told Nilan. “Her brothers played hockey and her dad always brought them to the ice rinks in the winter. She loved hockey. So she said: ‘There’s no way he’s not playing hockey.
After making the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers as a walk-on and not getting selected at the NHL draft, Xhekaj’s parents gave him an ultimatum. “My parents were like: ‘We’re done,'” Xhekaj told Nilan. “‘If you’re going to go all in, we’re going to support you all the way and we’ll be right behind you the whole way through it. But if you’re not going to give it your all, then just stop now because you’re just going to waste time and money. Invest it in going to school and start learning something and find a different career path. If you want to put your head to this, we’ll be there for you 100 per cent of the time.
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