VANCOUVER—When Morgan Rielly left home the first time his mom cried and he cried and then he had the best time of his life, the best. He left for the Notre Dame hockey school in Wilcox, Sask., at 14 years old, and it was everything he ever wanted. Or it seemed like it, anyway.

“Just being in a dorm with three other guys who turn into your best friends and doing what you love — yeah, it was the best thing ever,” says Rielly, now 22.

“I think Shirley and I missed him more than he missed us,” says Morgan’s father, Andy.

“Ten months later there they are, hugging each other and crying because they didn’t want to leave,” says Shirley, his mom. “He looks back now and he says it was the best time of his life.”

The Maple Leafs defenceman was always an exceptional skater and athlete. His older brother Connor played sports, but wasn’t driven by competition; he became a writer and has worked as a production assistant on a string of TV shows in town, and Rielly still talks admiringly about how smart his brother is, and how hard he works on what he does, too. Morgan? Sports, sports, sports.

“Because Connor was not as competitive, he looked at Morgan and was always really proud of whatever Morgan did,” says Shirley. “At the end of the day he was reading a book or drawing. Morgan . . . if he picked up a tennis racquet, he could ace all his serves. He was a fantastic pitcher in baseball, and I think a lot of people thought that was where he was going to go. He could pick up a basketball and swoosh three-pointers. I remember when he was in Grade 1, and we were walking to the front of the school and there was a hoop, and the kids would play before the bell rang, and he would throw the ball up and it would just go through, every time.

“One of the parents came up to me and said: You look after him. That’s your retirement.” She laughs. “I think about that now.”

And he was always told that if his tiny West Vancouver club’s peewee and bantam teams were going to beat the powerhouses from Burnaby and North Van, he had to be better than anybody else, and sometimes he was, and they did. But three of the other good kids left Hollyburn — including future No. 4 pick Griffin Reinhart — leaving Morgan largely alone. After a year of deliberation he was off to Notre Dame, and a little scared.

He blossomed. Rielly was picked second overall by Moose Jaw in the WHL, and then fifth overall by Toronto. This season he has been challenged with some of the toughest minutes in the NHL, and pulled up teammate after teammate. He’s a pillar of the Leafs’ rebuild, rich and famous.

“I don’t know if I’ve changed that much,” he says. “I think I’ve grown.”

When he first got to Toronto he didn’t know where to live, what to do. He didn’t know what waivers were; he just wanted to play, and he played. Now, he asks the trainers about injuries, checks in with teammates, wants to know more. He’s weighing where he wants to focus his charitable energies; Shirley is a cancer researcher, and he lost a grandfather to cancer, but then he thinks about other causes that need help. His mom says he’s always been drawn to underdogs, and when he goes fishing with his childhood buddies, he always throws the fish back. He’s thinking of ways to help.

“It’s in the works, but I don’t want to half-ass it,” says Rielly. “I want to make it good and make it important and make it something that means a lot to me.”

Rielly is looking for places to buy in Toronto, because that’s home. Notre Dame: that was home, too. And Moose Jaw.

But when he comes back here, you can see what it means to him, and therefore, what it meant for him to leave. When he turns on late-night talk shows in Toronto it still reminds him of watching Letterman with his dad, so he texts mom or dad, to say hi. His mom asks him all the time about how he’s doing, and who he’s going out with, and he tells her: mom, I’m 22.

“And I always say: Look, I missed out on three years of parenting,” says Shirley. “I’m making up for it now. You just have to live with it.” Rielly grins. “She’s the best mom in the world, so I don’t think she missed out on parenting,” he says.

When they were growing up the Riellys always had dinner every night, the four of them. On vacations, it was the four of them. It’s the same house and the same people, and Rielly can’t wait.

“The idea of . . . I’m going home today, I mean, to my parents, to the home I grew up in, see my dog, my brother’s coming over for dinner,” he says. “And it’s so natural. My mom will cook, and me and my dad will have a glass of wine, and my brother will lay on the couch, like it always was, my whole life. That’s the best part for me.”

Oh yeah, the dog. They had a dog when he was growing up, a schnauzer-poodle named Teddy, and when he died it was sad, but his mom was OK with some time not taking a pooch for late-night walks in the drizzle, the showers, or the pouring rain. It was OK. Things change.

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And then Morgan came home for a summer from Moose Jaw and next thing you know they’re in the car and there’s a yellow lab coming home with them. Maggie. It was important, he said. We need to have a dog. She’s 5 ½ years old now, and she’s Morgan’s dog, more than anything.

“Maggie is coming to Toronto, for sure,” says Rielly. “Oh, she’s coming. She knows I’m in Vancouver. I’ll see her today. She’ll go swimming. It’s cold, but she won’t care, she’ll go right in. She’s the best. She’s getting smarter, too.”

Willing to jump in no matter what, getting smarter, growing. Sounds like he picked the right dog.

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