Stanley grew four inches and put on 40 pounds of muscle.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI was like, don\u2019t worry dude, you\u2019re going to be big. You\u2019re going to be big, have you seen your sister?\u201d laughed Kyra. \u201cIt\u2019s not a bad thing to learn to play when you\u2019re smaller and play smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was tiny, and he got the \\\\\\\\ kicked out of him too,\u201d said Graham, adding colour. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable, the hits he would take. And then he\u2019d jump in my car and go, \u2018Dad, I was terrified out there today.\u2019 I said, \u2018I would have been too!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanley took a similar route to his father, eschewing major junior to go play at Cornell University (Graham attended Dalhousie University in Halifax, where he played what was then known as CIAU and is now known as U SPORTS).<\/p>\n
There, he became fast friends with teammate Jonathan Castagna, who he lived with for all three years in Ithaca, the small town in upstate New York where the Ivy League school is located.<\/p>\n
Just hours after Stanley hit the ice for his rookie lap on Thursday in Ottawa, so too did Castagna in Calgary, where he was traded to from Utah at last year\u2019s trade deadline as part of the package for MacKenzie Weegar.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and Jonny lived together for three years at Cornell, all the same classes. Our lives were kind of meshed together for all that time, so it was pretty crazy to make the debut the same day,\u201d said Stanley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve almost been running parallel lives since they joined Cornell, and then they got drafted the same year,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did the same program, they graduated in three years, they\u2019re both super smart kids, and then they both debut on the same fricking night, it was crazy, beautiful,\u201d said Kyra.<\/p>\n
With an offseason injury to Artem Zub helping to clear the way for a right-shot defenceman in Ottawa, Hoyt made it all the way past the final cut at training camp despite having only the six pro games last spring in Belleville on his resume.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe played at a pretty good [program] in terms of transitioning to pro,” said Stephen Halliday, who was not surprised by Stanley\u2019s beeline to the NHL.<\/p>\n
\u201cHoyt\u2019s a great guy. I\u2019ve seen him for a couple years, known him for a while. So it was super cool to see him get called up. He had a great camp too, so it\u2019s no surprise he got a call-up\u2026 Belleville\u2019s done a great job getting guys ready. I still watch all their games and talk to those guys down there. I love when guys from Belleville get called up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanley has played just under 20 minutes combined over his first two NHL games, both one-goal wins. After his first game, Senators head coach Travis Green gave him one of the best compliments a rookie defender could get for their debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t look out of place. Found the rink well. Made hard plays. I haven\u2019t seen his minutes yet, but you know if you don\u2019t notice a guy a lot in his first game on the back end, he\u2019s probably had a pretty good night,\u201d said Green.<\/p>\n
However his career in the NHL winds up, Stanley at least has the upper hand on his father, who had a 116-game pro career himself with stops in the AHL, IHL, ECHL and Austria, but didn\u2019t quite reach his final destination.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to see him surpass me financially, skill-wise, it\u2019s great. I mean, it\u2019s been a good journey getting\\] here, and there\u2019s another journey starting,\u201d said\u00a0[Graham, who runs his own asset management firm in Vancouver<\/a>\u00a0(Kyra is a chemical engineer).<\/p>\n\u201cSo, hopefully he fulfills his dreams, it\u2019s been an awesome experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in the suite at Canadian Tire Centre in the middle of Saturday\u2019s game, Graham wants to show…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-929542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}