After humble hockey beginnings and 2 bouts with Crohn's, this Admiral fights for an NHL job close to home
One’s a kid from an area where opportunities to play are spread far apart who beat long odds to play in the National Hockey League.
One overcame a debilitating disorder that caused him to lose 40 pounds just as he should have been at his strongest, battling for a spot in the game.
One’s a Yooper, happy to be playing as close to home as he can in professional hockey.
Intriguing storylines, all.
Now wrap them together and you have Kevin Gravel, the 30-year-old Milwaukee Admirals defenseman and a hat trick of quirky tales of development unto himself.
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“Just kind of grew up not really serious about it,” Gravel said of the game he has played as a pro since 2014.
“It was nothing that we knew was going to happen or overly pursued. Just kind of continued to advance and make teams and roll with it. And here I am.”
Kevin Gravel grew up in Upper Michigan, where hockey options were limited
Although born in Marquette, Michigan, he lists Kingsford, his hometown. That’s where he spent his formative years – in a city of 5,000 across a narrow river from Wisconsin – between the ages of about 2 and 15.
It’s a sports-crazy area, where fans of the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions are neighbors, and where the line between Kingsford and its larger twin, Iron Mountain, are largely ignored when it comes to claiming Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo and former NFL coach Steve Mariucci as Dickinson County’s native sons.
There's an active but sometimes overlooked hockey community there, and Kingsford High School has a successful club team. Gravel’s jersey hangs at the Mountain View Ice Arena. Still, opportunities to advance are sparse.
“Iron Mountain, I don’t know what they have now, but they only had, like, local house hockey,” said Gravel (pronounced grah-VALL).
“My parents spent a lot of time in the car….”
He played Pee Wee (age 11-12) with a traveling team from Escanaba, about an hour’s drive away, and then Bantam (13-14) for another in Marquette, a 90-minute drive. Then Gravel resettled in Marquette for two years, attending high school and playing low-level juniors, before getting to the USHL, the top junior league in the United States, in Sioux City, Iowa.
“That’s what I mean when I talk about (I kept) making teams and keep playing,” Gravel said. “Yeah, OK, you might have a shot to go to college is what it was at first. And then they start talking NHL draft, and you’re like, well, that doesn’t make sense.”
Selected in the fifth round of the NHL draft by the Los Angeles Kings in 2010, Gravel played four seasons at St. Cloud State. His first full season with the Kings was 2016-17, when he played in 49 games.
Crohn's disease interrupted Kevin Gravel's NHL career twice
But a bout with Crohn’s disease, a condition that affects the digestive tract, took 40 pounds off Gravel’s 6-foot, 4-inch frame in the summer of 2017. A flareup in 2019-20 took him out of action another three months and nearly cost him his career and his colon.
“Yeah, a little bit of anxious times,” Gravel said. “I was up for a deal in L.A. We were negotiating the deal, starting the process of it and I was in the hospital. And at that point we kind of didn’t know what was going on.
“Obviously I had a little bit longer road to get back but ended up getting back to Edmonton. And then for it to kind of happen again (while with the Toronto organization) was a little demoralizing. But you know what? There’s worse things. I’m healthy now, I’m still playing hockey. So life’s good.”
Counting the past two seasons, when Gravel played entirely in the minors, he has played for eight teams, four each in the AHL and NHL. When he signed a two-way contract with the Predators last July, Gravel gained the closest thing to job stability he has had in years.
More:Kevin Gravel's statistics from HockeyDB.com
Kevin Gravel is a leader for the AHL Milwaukee Admirals
A dependable defender, Gravel became a part of the Admirals leadership corps and has played five NHL games in three call-ups to Nashville.
“He has a lot of experience. He went to the conference finals last year with Stockton,” Admirals coach Karl Taylor said. “He’s just an elite defender. He’s got a long body, a long stick, his care factor is through the roof, he’s knocking on the door to be a full-time NHLer, even with his so-called ‘advanced age.’”
Gravel has his heart set on making a home in the NHL again, but he also understands he’s well past the prospect stage. If his role is to provide depth for the Predators and a steady hand for the Admirals, then what he has now is a good life too.
He and wife Morgan are expecting a child, and his parents have driven down to Milwaukee to watch him in Admirals games. After hauling Gravel around the U.P. in his pre-teen years and driving across Wisconsin and half of Minnesota to watch him play in college, it’s not a bad trip.
“Before it was a flight to Edmonton or a flight to Los Angeles or Ontario instead of a drive to Milwaukee, a drive they’ve done millions of times,” Gravel said. “It’s the closest you can get.
“It’ll be nice to have some roots and be close to family when we need the extra help, which I’m sure we’re going to need, and not be going through into this summer with a newborn and then trying to figure out what city we’re going to live in, which is going to be a blessing.”
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NHL veteran Kevin Gravel close to home with Admirals, clear of Crohn's
