You probably could fit all the professional hockey players from Brainerd, Minnesota, into one good-sized ice fishing shanty.
That seems appropriate.
Mitch McLain and Cole Smith might be there already anyway.
“Small town,” McLain said. “So everybody knows a little bit about each other.”
“Sandy and Bartholomaus were probably the first,” Smith said. “My uncle was probably one of them, Sandy Smith, and (Keith) Bartholomaus was a goalie. He played pro, right?”
Scratch that. Although Sandy Smith played in the International Hockey League and in Europe in the 1990s, Bartholomaus peaked at the NCAA Division I level from 1993-96 at Northern Michigan.
“Then we had a group of guys that we played high school with,” McLain said, “so probably (from) 2010 grads to Cole (who) was 2014, we had a group of probably four guys who played pro.”
Although everyone from Brainerd’s pro hockey fraternity might know one another, no two are as close as McLain and Smith, who grew up together, went to the Little League World Series together, trained together in their college offseason and have continued to hunt and fish together.
As improbable as it sounds for childhood friends to both make it to the pros, these two share ice time with the Milwaukee Admirals at the second-highest level in North America. Their lockers at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena are just three spots apart.
“That’s a very rare situation,” said Admirals coach Karl Taylor, who has been happy to have both this season. “Those guys, they train hard, they push each other well.
“Smitty’s game has improved drastically, his puck skills. Obviously he’s played six, seven games in the NHL, and he’s fought for spots and jobs there. And Mitch has done a really good job here supporting us but also he’s done some hard things. He’s fought some really tough guys in this league. When we needed some momentum change, Mitch has taken it upon himself and we appreciate what he does.”
Tom Smith coached high school football and youth hockey, and he and Shawn McLain coached youth baseball together. They also played softball, pretty competitively, their sons say. That’s where Cole and Mitch met before they even got to grade school.
They were inextricably linked through sports, even if their two-year age gap meant Smith, now 26, was just a pewee when McLain was a bantam.
“We played youth baseball together, 10U,” Smith said. “We ended up going to the Little League World Series. I remember it was regionals, I can’t remember what team we were playing but they had this big pitcher. Ten years old. They called him Big Papa or something. He just threw absolute gas down the middle. He was big, a big thrower.
“And (McLain’s) first at-bat, he steps up … right over the fence, gone. That set the tone for the rest of the game. That’s one I remember. He was 10, I was 8.”
Smith’s memory of his own standout performance isn’t as impressive.
“Mine was in the World Series, the first at-bat,” he said. “Took one right off the ear.
“My dad was on the bench, kind of dugout benches. It hit me and he freaked out and stood up as fast as he could and gave himself a concussion pretty much. Couldn’t even get out there.”
Both smiled at the story some 18 years later.
“One of the coolest things for us was growing up at the ballpark with our dads and the Little League World Series, having them coach both of us,” McLain said. “They were both our coaches.
“I have a picture of Cole and I standing on the first base line for introductions and both of our dads are giving us knucks coming through the handshake line. That’s a picture I have in our house, and it’s a pretty cool one.”
Both became three-sport athletes in high school, teaming in football in the fall, hockey in the winter and then Smith running track and McLain playing baseball in the spring.
McLain went to Vancouver for juniors, playing with the Langley Rivermen of the BCHL before landing at Bowling Green State University. Then Smith went to Manitoba and the Steinbach Pistons of the MJHL and subsequently the University of North Dakota.
“For me, being older and moving to pro and watching Cole go through how good North Dakota was and what he was chasing down, I kind of got to live through him and how good they were, chasing a national title,” McLain said. “So I was always watching Cole on the side.”
“That’s funny he says that because back when we were younger, obviously when you’re younger two years is kind of a big difference,” Smith said as they took part in a joint interview. “So I was always watching him and his hockey career. Even football. He’s always someone I looked up to through my youth, so for him to say that is cool.”
In the summers they returned to Brainerd and skated together and pushed each other in workouts.
Neither thinks of himself as a naturally gifted hockey player, and neither heard his name called in the NHL draft. Consequently they credit each other for having a significant role in pushing each other through an improbable climb through youth, high school, juniors and college hockey to the American Hockey League.
Although McLain and Smith are pushing for opportunities to advance in the game – McLain is a center, Smith a left wing – they have never looked at their situation as competition for a job.
“Honestly I think it’s how we got here,” McLain said. “We’ve pushed each other at everything our whole lives in everything we do. You remain friends through that because you become so close.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re playing pickleball or basketball, or fishing. We’re competitive and we want to best the other person, but it comes from a good place where we want each other to succeed as well.”
McLain joined the Admirals on an AHL contract in the offseason after three years with the Iowa Wild, and Smith is on a two-way deal after signing with the parent Nashville Predators last season as an undrafted free agent. Last season the two played against each other professionally for the first time when Smith skated for the Chicago Wolves while the Admirals were on hiatus and McLain for the Wild.
“Their team last year took it to us pretty good,” McLain said. “But the cool thing for us is how we’ve made it being so competitive and … how we got there. We both knew how hard each other worked.
“And it was cool last year when the Iowa Wild did have success and I got to score a goal and Cole and I scored in the same game a couple of times. So for our parents to share that, for us to score in the same game was pretty special.”
Smith has 14 goals and 17 assists in 46 games with the Admirals this season and has played eight NHL games with Nashville. McLain has 13 goals and four assists in 61 games.
After a weekend series in Texas and a game Tuesday at Rockford, the Admirals play five games at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena from April 1-9. Nine of the final 12 regular-season games are at home.
Whatever happens in the future, whether Smith or McLain can make it to the NHL and stick there, both will take fond memories from their time together as pros the same as they did from the Little League field.
“There’s a lot of guys throughout the league from college that I know and I played with, so that’s kind of cool,” Smith said. “But there’s not really anyone else I’ve grown up with playing, even through high school.
“I know in Minnesota it might be a little more common, but from a smaller town for that to happen, last year it was pretty cool against each other. That doesn’t happen often either. And then this year to be able to play on the same team with him is incredible.”