He played junior hockey in Green Bay and pro in Milwaukee. One special family got to see both.
Tracy Ward is not a hockey scout, but she came from a hockey family and she’s been close enough to the game for long enough.
She can recognize talent. She can read young players. She may not be able to tell you if a player will make it in the pros – there are so few who do and so many variables in play – but she’s pretty good at sorting out who has the best chance.
Her credentials?
For nine seasons over 10 years, Ward and her husband, Butch, lodged, fed, inspired, consoled, polished and did laundry for 15 young men who billeted in their Ashwaubenon home for a year or two and then advanced in hockey.
Most got to college. Some have been drafted by NHL teams. Some made it to the minors. And John Leonard has gone on to play more than 60 games in the NHL and is chasing the AHL’s Calder Cup with the Milwaukee Admirals, a two-hour drive from his junior hockey home.
“That’s every kid’s dream, and we always hope that dream comes true,” Ward said. “Some you kind of think it might happen more than others.
“John was one that really, really you could tell he wanted the NHL bad. And he worked for it. He really wanted to, with his diet and nutrition and working out, he really had the drive.
“Some, you can tell they have the talent and the drive. Some have one or the other.”
The billet arrangement is an unknown from all sides
Billeting is a way of life in junior hockey, with exceptional teens playing in leagues around the U.S. and Canada as they are trying to make their way to college or even the pros.
Tracy Ward’s father coached and her brothers played hockey, and Butch was an enthusiastic fan. They had two daughters and Tracy wasn’t keen on the idea of Andrea and Molly taking up the game, but Butch had a coworker whose family billeted players and saw an opportunity.
“When our girls were in high school I told him no, that was insanity,” Tracy Ward said. “And we didn’t really have any room. So then when they moved out, he was, ‘We can do it now, can’t we? We can do it.’ I was like, uhhhh … OK.”
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Leonard, a forward from Westwood, New Jersey, joined the Wards in their third season of hosting Green Bay Gamblers players, as did Chris Grando, another forward from Islip, New York. Mostly the Wards housed two players at a time for one season each, typically when they were in high school, although there were exceptions.
“They’re all from various backgrounds and various parts of the country, so it is a little scary at first,” Ward said.
“They all came from really good families; you could tell that real fast. The parents always pretty much came with them so we could get to meet them right away. … We heard stories of ones that were a little more wild, but we never had that so we were lucky.”
Billeting can lead to lifelong friendships
For Leonard, joining the Gamblers meant packing up before his senior year of high school, moving a thousand miles from home and trading his family and friends for strangers who didn’t stay strangers for long.
“I was 17. Not really sure (what to expect), honestly,” Leonard said. “Just kind of go into it blindly and hope for the best.
“They made the transition really easy and treated me unbelievably. I got to obviously know them, but also their extended family as well, which made things awesome. Did barbecues and things like that that we’d go to, so it was a lot of fun.”
A grandnephew named Logan became a surrogate little brother for Leonard, who missed his own.
“He’s just in awe of John,” Tracy said. “He would wrestle with him and do all kinds of stuff. … Logan started enjoying hockey after watching him. Then they’d play hockey in the garage … and in the spring they’d go outside and play soccer and stuff.”
The Wards have stayed in contact with their boarders
Leonard and Grando played for the Gamblers in 2015-16 and 2016-17, with both graduating from Ashwaubenon High School then joining a new family for their second season.
Then Leonard went to the University of Massachusetts, where he played three seasons, scoring a Division I-high 27 goals as a junior when he was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award given to the top men’s player in NCAA hockey. He was selected by the San Jose Sharks in the sixth round of the 2018 NHL draft.
Grando went to Boston University and then Arizona State, and he played this past season in the ECHL.
The Wards haven’t just kept tabs on the players who lived with them, they’ve actually kept in touch. They’ve also used vacations to see them play again in college and beyond.
“Every now and then I’ll call or I’ll text them, ‘How’s it going? How’s school?’ Just connect a little bit,” Tracy said.
“We’ve been going to watch most of them play at their colleges, so we connect with that. … We went out to Massachusetts to watch John play at UMass. We went out to Arizona State. We’ve been to North Dakota, Ohio State. The Badgers. We’ve been pretty much seeing them all at their different places. We go and do that. That’s a lot of fun.”
The continued support is appreciated.
“They liked to travel as well, so they got to see a bunch of new places and travel the country, just like we do,” Leonard said. “They love to do that kind of stuff, so it’s been awesome to keep in touch.”
Life changes for Tracy and Butch Ward and for John Leonard
The Wards, looking for a little less excitement around the house in their retirement years, hosted their last players during the 2021-22 season.
Leonard joined the Sharks organization in 2020, played 58 NHL games over two seasons and then was traded to the Nashville Predators last summer. He played 67 AHL regular-season games with the Admirals, and got called up three times for a total of six NHL games.
The Wards got to see him twice, first just Tracy and Butch in January and then with a group of 15 – including Logan – in March.
“My family, we got tickets to go watch him and they had pulled him up to Nashville just before that,” Ward said. “We were all like, oh, for crying out loud. We’re happy for him, but then it was like, now? We all like hockey, so whatever, we’ll enjoy it, but then boom, they sent him back right before. So we did end up getting to see him.”
In that March 11 Admirals victory over the Tucson Roadrunners, they got to see Leonard assist on a third-period goal by Jordan Gross, another former Green Bay Gambler.
"It was awesome to have everyone together and got to talk to them after the game too,” Leonard said.
The Admirals are in the AHL Western Conference finals against the Coachella Valley Firebirds, tied at two games apiece with the fifth game of the best-of-seven series set for Saturday at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.
Leonard is a restricted free agent after the season, and in the transient world of pro sports, there’s no guarantee he’ll again play so close to the Wisconsin family who helped him develop.
The Wards remain proud of the players they’ve accommodated and of whatever role they’ve played.
“They’ve matured just that much more and they realize and understand, and they’re always so thankful,” Ward said. “I get a few of those, ‘thanks for putting up with me' and think, you weren’t that bad at all.
“But yeah, they realize looking back, my gosh, you let a strange kid come into your house and that’s just so awesome. It’s a lot of fun, and it makes it all worthwhile.”
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Admirals' John Leonard close with Ashwaubenon hockey family
