In any other season, Connor Brown's rookie campaign would have been the talk of the town. Only four other rookies—Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Sebastian Aho and Patrik Laine—had more goals than the 20 Brown scored. When two of those players (Matthews and Nylander) also played in Toronto, however, and you throw in Mitch Marner's 19 goals and 61 points, Brown picked a tough year to have a strong rookie season with the Maple Leafs.

As a result, the spotlight did not shine in his direction as much, but Brown was cool with that.

"I definitely don't mind it. I almost enjoy it a bit," Brown told VICE Sports. "It's kind of nice just being able to go about my business. With them being so good, they deserve all the spotlight they can get so it's nice that you've got guys to kind of share the experience."

While Matthews, Nylander, and Marner put up all-time great numbers for Maple Leafs rookies, it was Brown who quietly went from a question mark to make the team out of training camp, to fourth-line right winger, to a key contributor on a shutdown line with Nazem Kadri and Leo Komarov. He was one of two forwards—Komarov being the other—used regularly at even strength, on the power play, and on the penalty kill.

His versatility was unmatched and coach Mike Babcock's confidence in him quickly grew. When Babcock mentions Brown, he often uses the term "drive-train" player, a compliment he does not use lightly.

Marner (left) and Brown: two members of the Leafs' extraordinary rookie class. Photo by Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

"Everyone talks about Marner and Matthews and Nylander and they don't talk about Brown and [Zach] Hyman and [Nikita] Zaitsev. These guys, they bring it every single day and if you go through being professional and doing it right and pushing your teammates, they're as good as anybody," Babcock said during a recent morning skate.

"Those guys are the guys that you need on your team to be successful. Ideally, the better players those guys are, the more impact they can have. And because they play in our top nine, I think that makes them real good players. Good for Brownie, you're a kid in the league and you get twenty goals—it's hard to get twenty goals."

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Growing up in west Etobicoke, not far from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Connor and his brother Jeff had the passion for the Maple Leafs rooted in them since they could walk. Their parents, Dan and Anne, are big Leafs fans, as well, and would take their boys to games whenever they could get tickets and it fit in with Connor and Jeff's busy minor hockey schedule.

"We're just big Leafs fans. To go to a Leafs game for us was exciting anytime in our lives," Brown's mother Anne told VICE Sports. "Whenever we could get to a game, it was a real treat. The boys would be going crazy when they thought they could go to a game, and same with my husband and I."

For Connor's family, his ascent up the hockey ladder to a prominent position on his hometown team has been a surreal experience. Unlike some families of elite young hockey players, the Browns never expected that one of their sons would make the NHL. That was never the end goal and they never put any extra pressure on their sons to make the NHL. It was all about enjoying the game. If they talked about anything, it was perhaps that they might play hockey at the collegiate level, like Dan had at the University of Western Ontario. So to have Connor playing such an integral role with the Maple Leafs has been a truly unexpected occurrence, and an actual dream come true.

"To have Connor a part of it with the Leafs, we just keep having to pinch ourselves, it's certainly not lost on us," said Anne. "We're Toronto people. It's not lost on him the responsibility that he has for this city because he's been on the other end of it as a fan and how disappointed he was, and he doesn't want to disappoint."

Dan Brown, an accomplished minor hockey coach with the Toronto Marlboros who was inducted into the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame in 2014, coached Connor for several years of minor hockey. When he hears Babcock refer to his son as a "drive-train" player, it leaves him feeling immense pride not just because he always preached the value of hard work to his son, but more so that it always seemed to be Connor's default setting.

"Obviously, I'm very proud. That's one of his biggest traits that made him successful in athletics," said Dan. "It doesn't really surprise me because if you knew him as a kid growing up, you knew how competitive he was at everything. Just seeing him on the backyard rink playing against older boys and how hard he tried. Whether it's playing cards or mini-sticks, he's always just the most competitive guy, but it was a natural competitiveness. It's just easy for him; it's really internal, so I think that's what coach Babcock is referring to and it makes going to the gym and those hard workouts easy for him because it's ingrained in him."

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The seminal moment in Brown's terrific season came in game 81 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Already having whiffed on their first two chances to clinch a playoff berth, the Maple Leafs were facing the Penguins with another opportunity to punch their ticket. Tied with under three minutes left, Jake Gardiner fired a shot from the point that Brown deflected over the glove of Marc-Andre Fleury to give Toronto a 4-3 lead. It held up as the game-winning goal and put the Maple Leafs in the playoffs for the first time since 2013 (and the first time in an 82-game season since Brown was a 10-year-old).

"That's a night I'm sure I'll remember for a long time," Brown said after the game.

"When he scored it, there were lots of tears. We just couldn't even believe it—it was pretty surreal, it still is," said Anne, who was at the game with her husband. "How many times do you play ball hockey pretending you get that goal? So to see your son get it is just crazy."

When you get your hometown team into the playoffs. Photo by John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports

Four years ago when the Maple Leafs were last in the playoffs, Brown was nowhere near the ACC. He, Jeff, Dan, and Anne were on a family vacation at a hotel in Dublin, Ireland.

So naturally, even though Game 7 against the Boston Bruins in 2013 was starting at midnight local time for the Browns, not watching wasn't an option even though they were scheduled to fly home early the next morning.

"The emotion in that friggin' room! When they were scoring, Jeff's jumping up and down on the bed and Connor and him are high-fiving and then when they lost, it was like we lost a family member," said Anne. "The boys were swearing and pissed off. It was to the point when we were on that vacation, we were kind of thinking, 'Shoot, what are we doing over here in Ireland when the Leafs are in the playoffs?'"

"We were hoping they'd win so we could get back and experience the playoffs from a fan's point of view," said Brown. "I just remember it was a tough, heartbreaking game but the way the city reacted and the way the city responds to this team, it's incredible."

Brown had been drafted by the Maple Leafs about 11 months earlier and was about to start his third season with the Erie Otters as a 19-year-old later that fall. Unlike Matthews, Nylander, and Marner—who were all high first-round picks and entered the scene with lofty expectations—Brown was an undersized late pick. He went in the sixth round, 156th overall.

Brown jokes that when he was a 16-year-old with the St. Michael's Buzzers of the OJHL, he weighed "a buck 37, soaking wet." With picks that late, if players even get a crack at The Show, it's rare. To become a regular contributor, not to mention putting up 20 goals as a rookie, is even less likely.

Brown, a little more than a buck 37 at this point, wears the 'C' for the OHL's Erie Otters in 2012. Photo by Aaron Bell/OHL Images

To think four years later, it would be Brown scoring the game-winning goal to put the Maple Leafs back in the playoffs for the first time since the heartbreak hotel experience in Dublin seemed like a long shot, at best.

"I probably would have asked them what they were smoking," said Jeff, when asked what he would have thought in 2013 if he'd been told the guy next to him in the hotel room would score the playoff-clinching, game-winning goal. "I know Connor's a great player but a lot of stars had to align to have him in that spot and it just kind of seems a little bit of destiny, whether people believe in that or not. It's pretty surreal and it's pretty wild as an outsider looking in, and it's even more so as his brother being there with him every step of the way."

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If his game-winning goal in the Maple Leafs playoff-clinching win was the high point of the season for Brown, his performance in the NHL's Centennial Classic on New Year's Day at BMO Field was a close second. You could say it was his coming out party at the NHL level, scoring a goal and setting up both of Matthews' markers, including the overtime winner. He played 19:47 in that game, second only to Komarov among forwards. Of the 82 games he skated in this season, it was the fourth-most ice time he saw in a single contest.

It was almost as if Brown had an unfair advantage that day. Backyard and outdoor hockey is about as familiar to him as putting on a pair of shoes. It was something he had been doing in Toronto every winter since he put on a pair of skates.

In fact, every winter for the last nine years, Brown figures, his family and a bunch of buddies gathered around Christmastime for an outdoor shinny game at a local rink in Toronto to celebrate the holidays and catch up. The game affectionately became known as the "Beauties Bowl."

Brown (left) skating alongside Calder Trophy favourite Auston Matthews at the Centennial Classic. Photo by Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sport

This was not any ordinary group of guys, though. It really was more of an outdoor top prospects game. Sean Monahan was a regular before he made the Calgary Flames, as was Scott Laughton of the Philadelphia Flyers. Adam Pelech of the New York Islanders, Scott Kosmachuk (who is in the Winnipeg Jets' system), and Mike Latta, who spent this past season in the AHL but has played over 100 NHL games, were also part of it over the years. This past year was the first time the Browns could not be there. Jeff was playing professionally for the Nottingham Panthers while getting a master's degree in England, and Connor was obviously engaged in an even bigger outdoor game.

Jeff reminded him the night before with a phone call, though, that the Centennial Classic was still the same as the "Beauties Bowl"—just on a much bigger stage.

"All I said was shinny hockey in the middle of Toronto, outdoors, like we've been doing for about twenty years, so I think you've got home-ice advantage," said Jeff. "You saw him in that game, he was absolutely flying and having fun. We've had so many of those "Beauties Bowl" games outdoors with all our buddies, middle of winter having a few beers.

"I'm not exactly sure if he was having any Molson Canadians on the bench in that game, but I'm sure he had a few after."

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Reaching the NHL brings with it a wide variety of off-ice demands, as well. It only multiplies when the NHL team you make is the Maple Leafs and you happen to be from Toronto. As much as Brown's success on the ice has left his family full of pride, it's been the way he's navigated his responsibility as a role model off of it that has made them most proud.

On the day the Maple Leafs lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning on April 6, squandering their second straight chance to clinch a playoff berth, an old friend of Anne's got in touch with the Browns earlier in the day asking if their 12-year-old daughter could meet Connor after the game. Anne said she hadn't seen them since she was in university, but Connor was happy to oblige. Even after the disappointing result, he held true to his promise and spent a few minutes.

"He had the worst feeling about that game but he came around after to meet her and said, 'Hi, I'm Connor, what's your name?' And I just looked at him shake her hand and look her in the eye and that made me really proud," said Anne. "He just stepped up, he knew his responsibility and he wants to represent the sweater, the city, and our family well."

Brown was one of five 20-goal scorers on the Leafs. Photo by Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports

To Brown, the responsibility with which he has been entrusted by playing for the Maple Leafs is not something he has taken lightly.

"It's important to be a good role model in the way you conduct yourself and also the way you approach the game with passion and hard work," said Brown. "It's meant the world to play for the Leafs."

For every kid, 15 or 16 years old, who's a "buck 37 soaking wet" grinding it out in minor hockey, constantly being told they're "too small," Brown's path to the highest level on the biggest NHL stage has shown all those people what they can attain. He has done it on the ice, he has done it off the ice, and with a team that looks like its window to win will be open for years to come, his journey has just begun.

"I think there's a lot of young kids, skinny kids, who are small for their age who are looking at Connor and he's setting such a great example both on the ice and off the ice," said Jeff.