He\u2019d play hockey in the winter, then put the bag away in the summer. While he had some talent \u2013 his midget B team won a championship when he was 17 years old, \u201cand I like to think I was a pretty good factor,\u201d Shelley quips \u2013 a hockey career didn\u2019t appear to be in the cards when he was a senior in high school playing with \u201cteammates that would smoke cigarettes and eat French fries between periods.\u201d<\/p>\n
But luck arrived in 1994 when the then-Quebec Major Junior Hockey League \u2013 one of the three leagues in Canada that serves as the top incubator for top talent north of the border \u2013 arrived in Halifax. Needing homegrown players, the Mooseheads extended an invitation to the big but raw forward from across the island in Yarmouth.<\/p>\n
Not that Shelley believed it when the call came.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was mowing the lawn and the phone rang, and I went in and answered the phone,\u201d Shelley said. \u201cAnd they said, \u2018Jody, we\u2019d like to invite you to the Halifax Mooseheads inaugural training camp.\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, I got to ask my mom and dad. You\u2019ll have to call back.\u2019 Hung up the phone and walked away. They call back a few weeks later, and I went up to camp and ended up getting in a fight and doing OK and somehow made the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around 90 players were invited to the Mooseheads\u2019 inaugural camp, but with his size, Shelley had a unique edge on some of the others. He\u2019d never been in a fight to that point in his life, he said, but he quickly realized that physical play was his ticket to success.<\/p>\n
He went on to score 48 goals and post 98 points over three seasons while racking up 933 penalty minutes, and Shelley was a force his final season, racking 25 of those goals and 420 PIMs. He was captain of the Mooseheads that season, as a Halifax team that featured Alex Tanguay up front and Jean-S\u00e9bastian Gigu\u00e8re in net made it to the league semifinals before falling to a Chicoutimi team with future CBJ teammate Marc Denis between the pipes.<\/p>\n
Shelley tore his ACL near the end of the season but played through it in the playoffs, and there weren\u2019t any offers from pro teams forthcoming. He chose to continue playing at Dalhousie University in Halifax while watching some of the guys he fought in the QMJHL \u2013 Peter Worrell, Georges Laraque and Gordie Dwyer \u2013 having success at the pro level.<\/p>\n
The itch remained, and while Shelley had a scholarship to Dalhousie provided by the QMJHL, he admittedly wasn\u2019t fully in on school. Then the phone rang again, and this time, the Saint John Flames of the AHL were on the line. Doreen wasn\u2019t the biggest fan, but the tryout opportunity Shelley received was something he believed he couldn\u2019t pass up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got offers to go to the American Hockey League,\u201d Shelley said. \u201cSaint John offered me a 25-game tryout. They were with the Flames, and I could turn that into an invite to camp and an American Hockey League contract. I called my mother Doreen, and there were two things she was worried about \u2013 my teeth and my education.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as you sign a professional contract, you lose the scholarship, so I called her to let her know I was pursuing a dream and I was going to leave school to go sign this tryout, which meant nothing. The tryout could have been one day. The max is 25 games. She was in tears. I said, \u2018Well, I have to do it if I can play one game in the NHL,\u2019 you know? These guys are playing. I have to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He ended up playing 18 games with Saint John that year, then signed a deal to return \u2013 or so he thought. Shelley ended up playing just eight games in Saint John the next season and 52 with Johnstown of the ECHL, where he met a young radio broadcaster named Bob McElligott.<\/p>\n
Shelley spent two seasons in the same situation, then was a free agent. With an expansion franchise coming to Columbus, Blue Jackets assistant general manager Jim Clark reached out to add some muscle to the team’s affiliate in Syracuse, and suddenly Shelley found himself in the CBJ system.<\/p>\n
Again, fate would smile on Shelley. Columbus traded enforcer Krzysztof Oliwa to Pittsburgh midway through the season, leaving the Blue Jackets without a pure fighter, and the Penguins were set to return to Nationwide Arena on Feb. 17 with Oliwa in tow and revenge on his mind.<\/p>\n
Shelley signed an NHL contract with the Blue Jackets on Jan. 31, then worked with Syracuse coach Gary Agnew on his game. He studied videos of Oliwa knowing what was coming, and finally the call came in the days before the game against the Penguins.<\/p>\n
Shelley knew the assignment, but he also was aware of who was on the other side of the ice. The Penguins weren\u2019t quite the juggernaut that won Stanley Cups in the early 1990s, but it was still a star-studded squad headed to the Eastern Conference Final with a lineup that included such names as Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Kevin Stevens and Alex Kovalev.<\/p>\n
Nine minutes into the game, Shelley finally got the call from head coach Dave King and stepped on the ice for a faceoff in the neutral zone. We\u2019ll let Shelley take it from here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came out to this dot right here in front of the penalty box,\u201d Shelley said, pointing from a spot in the Nationwide Arena seating bowl. \u201cI was here to fight Krzysztof Oliwa. I didn\u2019t see Steve McKenna, who was on the other side of the ice. I didn\u2019t even know he was on the roster. It\u2019s like, this is the Pittsburgh Penguins. Mario was there! I couldn\u2019t believe it. I floated around warmups, I floated on the ice, I heard the cheers, but it was like, it wasn\u2019t me. It was like I was in another land.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the puck drops, I look at Oliwa, and here comes 6-foot-whatever Steve McKenna. I\u2019m like, \u2018Wait a second, this isn\u2019t supposed to happen!\u2019 So I fought him, and I had a short trip, three steps to the penalty box, and the crowd was going bananas. Somehow, I got four seconds of ice time with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next shift, Dave King put me out on a faceoff in the offensive zone. I wasn\u2019t thinking defense at the time, (so he put me) as far away from my own net as possible. The puck hits the ice, I fight Oliwa. The place goes crazy. I did my job.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave me one more shift in the offensive zone, I think. I don\u2019t even remember that. I just remember the crowd, the buzz, the atmosphere, the team, the organization, talking to Geoff Sanderson and Luke Odelein and thinking, \u2018Is this real? Is this really happening right now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019d play hockey in the winter, then put the bag away in the summer. While he had some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-486214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}