: Lightning fast Garrett Collopy skates with the puck during earlier action this season. The 5-foot-6, 136-pound senior continues to come up big for the Highland Park hockey team. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER
Garrett Collopy was on an ice rink, down on all fours, gasping, wheezing, wondering if the wind that got knocked out of him would ever return. He also had never felt more … alive. Collopy was a grade-schooler at the time, a rookie Chicago Youth American hockey player, and he loved everything about hockey, even the harsh stuff.
He was new to the checks-are-legal games on that day. A check into the boards had reduced Collopy to an ice chip in skates.
“That happened to me all the time,” Collopy, a Highland Park Giants senior center/wing, recalls. “Collisions, so many collisions.”
He would pop back up, breathe again and skate again, sore but more than eager to catch up to a free puck and make it do whatever he wanted it to do. A nine-inch glove on a nine-inch hand, Collopy on ice. Good fits, both of them. The 5-foot-6, 136-pounder is a third-year varsity member of the Giants. He is lightning fast and running-bull-in-Pamplona tenacious. He administers board-rattling, wind-snatching checks these days.
“Garrett plays like a 6-foot-6, 260-pounder,” Highland Park hockey coach Sean Freeman says of his alternate captain. “He’s a spitfire, plays a lot like I played when I was young. He’s got skill and fire, a tough kid. If I am ever in an alley, and I need someone there with me, I’m picking Garrett.”
Through Dec. 16, when HP and visiting Evanston skated to a 1-1 tie, Collopy had scored 14 goals and delivered 13 assists (in 27 games) for a 15-14-2 club, both of the stats ranking second among teammates. Forward David Shapiro had scored 24 goals (in only 19 games), and forward Kieran Jagadeesh had provided 23 assists (in 23 games). Collopy, Shapiro, Jagadeesh, defenseman Casey Eisenberg and goaltender Ty Jablonski, along with Coach Freeman, were picked to represent HP in an Illinois High School Hockey League (IHSHL) All-Star game at West Meadows Ice Arena in Rolling Meadows on Jan. 3.
The Giants sat atop the IHSHL North-Central standings, with a 7-3-2 record, before the winter break.
Collopy struck for 17 goals and had 12 assists in a 35-13-2 season last winter. That crew featured plenty of leaders, many of them HPHS graduates today. Freeman wanted a leader, needed a leader, with some feistiness and resolve, in 2015-16. He is getting that, and more, from Collopy. Daily.
“I have to be a leader,” Collopy, author of six goals and seven assists as a sophomore on varsity, says. “We’re young; we have a ton of young kids on varsity. I’m here to teach them a work ethic, the right work ethic, in the most demanding sport. We play really, really good teams on varsity, established teams. There’s a huge difference between junior varsity and varsity hockey games, and part of my job is to make sure our young guys are ready for that difference.”
Collopy does not have to say a word to get his teammates inspired in games. Teammates watch him. Teammates get energized, instantly. It is a good thing referees do not issue speeding tickets to skaters in games, because Collopy would be a serial offender if they did, a teen without a license to thrill. There is a sandpaper side to him, too, a critical trait in hockey, one that comes in handy when a puck has to be dug out of a corner or when a situation calls for a brash check.
“Garrett is the energy behind our team a lot of the time,” Giants junior left wing Jake Mandel says. “He pumps us up before games, makes big hits and big plays in games. If we need a spark, he gives us that. I love it when someone takes the puck away from him and he does everything he can to get that puck back. He’s showing everybody he’ll never back down. He’s illustrating his true grit to everybody.
“On the ice,” he adds, “Garrett never runs out of fuel.”
Collopy’s first major hockey influence was one of his Falcons Hockey Association coaches, Jan Masopust. Collopy was seven years old, showing up for practices and games but “not showing much as a hockey player,” Collopy admits. Masopust sensed something in Collopy, something special. Masopust helped Collopy find that something and exhibit that something in practices, in games. The coach coached. Hard. The player listened. Intently. The sport was no longer just a sport to Collopy; it had become a passion, plus a part of his identity.
“[Masopust] was the first to push me to my limits,” Collopy says. “He convinced me that I had a future in this sport. I’m glad he did that. I’m glad he believed in me. I still, because of him, try to be the best all-around player I can be when I’m on the ice. He gave me the edge I still have today.”
Freeman took Collopy’s hockey game to another level by being, well, Freeman: highly competitive, mad about hockey. He works in the construction industry. Collopy served as an intern for Freeman at construction sites last summer. Collopy, son of a former biochemist (Jim) and a marketing professional (Fran), cleaned up sites, bashed walls, cleaned up the stuff that used to be walls. The grinder on ice was a grinder outside, adept at transitioning from a worker with a hockey stick to a worker with a shovel. The grinder made things happen in chilly ice arenas and under an unforgiving sun.
“Coach Sean, his work ethic … it’s unbelievable, in hockey and in construction,” Collopy says. “That guy loves to win more than anybody else I know. That guy loves to work. Nobody is as competitive as he is. His desire to win continues to rub off on me.”
Highland Park’s Giants play their home varsity hockey games at Centennial Ice Arena. The arena was where a tot named Garrett Collopy, between his second and third birthdays, first wore a pair of skates, beginner skates, the ones with double blades attached to each boot. Ice, ice, baby. Giants pour out of their locker room, hit the ice, start to warm up for a mid-December game. A board door slams shut. An opposing team warms up at the other end of the rink. Blades produce soothing music. Collopy, wearing skates with single blades and jersey No. 79, is all grown up, faster and grittier and a nice, nice player.
“The biggest difference I’ve noticed from Garrett this year is his leadership,” Freeman says. “He has ownership of this team, proprietorship of this team. He also gets that the clock is ticking, that there’s going to be a last dance soon, that the last song in his high school hockey career is about to play. Garrett is fully aware of the investment he has made as a hockey player.
“I love Garrett, the hockey player,” the coach adds. “But there’s more to him than that. Every day, be it at a practice or at a game, Garrett makes me laugh, and that makes me remember why I coach high school hockey.”
Notable: HP hosts Latin at Centennial Ice Arena on Jan. 9, beginning at 8:20 p.m. It will be HP’s first game since a 1-1 tie vs. Evanston on Dec. 16. … Highland Park’s top six Giants, in points, through Dec. 16: Kieran Jagadeesh (36 points — 13 goals, 23 assists); David Shapiro (27 — 24, 3); Garrett Collopy (27 — 14, 13); Dylan Abt (19 — 11, 8); Thomas Quirk (18 — 10, 8); and Kyle T. Powers (15 — 8, 7). … Giants goaltender Ty Jablonski was 13-9-2, with four shutouts, after that 1-1 tie on Dec. 16. He stopped 16 shots against Evanston.