Not many people here in Lewiston know this, but you’ve suffered through a broken hip already in your career. How hard was it to come back from something like that?

It happened when i was 14 the first time. It was really hard to come back, and once I came back, I rebroke it, so I actually broke the same leg twice. I ended up spending two years, not off the ice completely, but in and out. It all has to do with your personality. If you realize that you have to go through the bumps to get to the horizon, or whatever, you find your way through. If you work hard and you stick with something, it ends up coming to you. Hockey is something I’ve done my whole life and loved my whole life, and I knew if I wanted to keep doing something I loved, I had to battle through all my injuries.

When you first got to Lewiston, you were getting ice time, quite a bit of it. Then you went through a spell of being a healthy scratch on and off. Now you’ve become a go-to guy. Talk about that evolution in your game.

My first year in Bathurst was pretty tough, I didn’t play all that much. When I came over here, I had an opportunity at first. I would probably consider it my rookie season because I didn’t really play when i was 16. I started the season strong, but there were bumps, there were ups and downs. Then the coaching change happened, and I really started to play a lot more … Sometimes, it’s all about how a coach sees you, too. Things like that will happen, and you just have to battle through them. Things ended up working our really well for me.

This year, playing with your brother on the same team, has to have been an interesting and fun experience. How did that first year together go?

I don’t think there’s a lot of people who could ever say they played with their brother at such a high level. I mean, hopefully this isn’t the highest. It was certainly a great experience. I had my own, uh, protection issues with him. When something would happen I’d always want to be the one who would step up and help him out. When I was that age, I would have been a little bit scared, too. As a 16-year-old, he wasn’t a lot of maintenance or anything like that. He fit in with all the guys, he quickly became friends with everyone, he quickly adapted to the speed and the play. Kudos to him for being that confident and that mature to just come in and not really have that adjustment period. Most people at 16, they do have that.

Most forwards tend to like shorter sticks, to maneuver better with down low, and to get more leverage on a shot. You have the longest stick on the team. Why is that, and how does that fit your style of play?

It depends on your style of play. I consider myself a power forward. I like to joke around that I have a lot of skill, and I can put the puck in and I can get around people and stuff like that, but my main job is to go in the corners, to get pucks out, to beat defenses wide with speed. Cutting to the net isn’t an issue for me. My stick gives me an extra reach with my arms and my legs, and there are only a couple of defensemen in the league that I know who can turn and poke the puck off me when I’m trying to take it around them to the outside. It’s beneficial for me, I’ve never played with a short stick. When I was younger, my sticks used to go up to my forehead.

How big has this season been for you, and for the team, to rebound from the last couple of seasons?

I think it’s been an unbelievable turnaround, not only from a playoffs point of view, but I’m talking about from the management to the coaches, to all the people involved who play a part in the team. It took the team three years to dig itself out of that rut, but once you’re out of it and keep working hard, it’s like it is as an individual. At some point something good is going to happen and come out of it. It goes to show, the series we just had against Montreal, it goes to show with a lot of things. The organization did a great job of picking people who want to win and not just said they want to win. Things are just working out. Everyone’s close, everyone’s friends, and it’s hard not to win, because we want to win for the people who are with you, not just for yourself.