You never know what random thing might hold special significance to a family. To the Dermott family, the mere mention of a clipboard is likely enough to lead to a smile or a little laugh, the type you have when something reminds you of a story dear to your heart.

So why does a clipboard evoke such an emotional response for the Dermott family? It at all started over a decade ago when Travis, then a minor hockey player with the York Simcoe Express, constantly asked his father Jim when he would know if he might have a chance to advance in hockey, perhaps to the junior ranks or maybe one day, to the NHL. The question was the type really young kids ask expecting there to be a definitive answer, the same way as when they ask, for example, what is six times eight?

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Of course, for Travis’ question, there is no cut and dry answer. However, after a few times, Jim, who coached Travis for the better part of a decade up until he was 14 years old, did his best to come up with a response, partly to answer his son’s question as truthfully as possible and partly to give him a reason to stop asking it all the time.

“The first thing you’ll see,” Jim recalls telling Travis, “is there will be people in the crowd with clipboards. If they have a clipboard, that means they’re taking some notes, maybe about you, but probably about someone else who’s playing as well.”

Little did Jim realize how literally Travis would take it. No more than 10 years old at the time, Travis instantly equated a clipboard to his ladder up the hockey ranks.

One day a year or so later, Travis was at a minor hockey tournament in Mississauga. Suddenly, things got real. A man found Travis in the hallway outside the locker room and asked if he could speak to his dad, who also was on the coaching staff at the time. This gentleman held a clipboard. Travis instantly knew he had no time to waste and took off for the lobby where he found his father speaking with a few of the other parents. He began tugging on Jim’s sleeve and yelling, ‘Dad, dad, dad!’ desperately trying to get his father’s attention, but was ignored.

“Of course you like to finish your conversation before you acknowledge your child so I just said, ‘hang on, son, one second’,” Jim said.

Travis didn’t take no for an answer and continued pestering his dad.

“Dad, dad, there’s a guy who wants to talk to you…and he has a clipboard!” Travis exclaimed.

Right away Jim knew this was serious. He’d remembered what he told his son a few years back and knew how much Travis fixated on it. Travis stopped asking when he would know if he had a chance to move up in hockey and replaced the question with, “dad, did you see anyone with a clipboard?” after most of his games.

As soon as he mentioned clipboard, Travis had his dad’s attention.

“I was kind of interested too so I said ‘okay fellows, Travis and I are going to take a walk and figure out who’s got this clipboard’,” Jim said.

The man holding the clipboard was Mitch Larnerd, the coach of an East Coast select spring hockey team that was interested in having Travis come to Buffalo on New Year’s Day for a tryout. Not knowing much about the program initially, Jim was reluctant to make the trip at first, especially given that it was on New Year’s Day, but Travis really wanted to go. So they went.

Travis ended up making the team and played spring hockey with that team for the next four years, traveling to Moscow, Iceland, Sweden and all across North America for tournaments throughout the spring and summers. Among some of the other players who played on the team were Michael Dal Colle and Josh Ho-Sang of the New York Islanders.

“Some people like spring hockey, some people think it’s too much,” Jim said. “The coaching he got there was good, but more importantly, he got to play with players where hockey was in the forefront of their mind 24/7. I think he found it nice to connect with guys where that was their main interest and wanted to be professional hockey players.”

Fast forward to January 5th, 2018, the day Travis got to make the phone call he had been dreaming about making his whole life. After arriving at the Ricoh Coliseum in the morning prepare for a Toronto Marlies AHL game against the Lehigh Valley Phantoms later that night, Dermott received a call telling him to report to Toronto Maple Leafs practice at MasterCard Centre, about ten minutes away. He had been called up to the NHL.

“How fast can I pick up the phone and call my dad,” Travis said was all he could think about. “Once I found out, your stomach drops and you get all the nerves and goosebumps. It was pretty special being able to tell my parents.”

Jim and his wife were at home when the phone rang and saw it was Travis calling. He put the phone on speaker-mode and when they answered, Jim said Travis asked if he wanted him to cancel their tickets for the Marlies game. He sounded choked up when he said it so his parents began asking what’s wrong? Was he not feeling well? Was he not playing for some reason?

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Travis asked again, “Should I cancel your Marlies tickets?”

Then it hit Jim. “Oh man, did you get a phone call?” Jim asked his son.

“Oh yeah,” Travis said.

Needless to say, words were hard to come by at that point in the conversation. Tears, on the other hand, on both ends of the phone, were not.

“The feeling I would equate it to was the way I felt just after he got drafted by the Maple Leafs,” Jim said. “We stayed down in Florida for a few extra days and I kept having to remind myself as the minutes and hours and days went by that this actually happened. It was like a dream feeling. When I got that call, I had to keep pinching myself when I thought he finally has access to this life he wants and might be able to have a career as a professional hockey player in the NHL. That was an incredible feeling.”

Travis admitted he had to take a few minutes to calm his nerves and make sure his foot wouldn’t be too heavy as he made the short drive west along the Gardiner Expressway to Maple Leafs practice. It was clear the pride Dermott felt at finally achieving his dream of making it to the NHL when he arrived at practice.

Growing up in Newmarket, Ontario, a 40-minute drive north of Toronto, the Maple Leafs were Travis and his dad’s team. He dreamt about playing for the Maple Leafs long before getting drafted in 2015. More like since the day he put on skates.

“It’s what I’ve been looking for my whole childhood, not even just since I’ve been with the organization,” Travis said.

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Travis did not have to wait long to make his NHL debut. He was in the lineup the next night on Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks. Jim was on hand early at the Air Canada Centre that night sitting directly across from the gate the Maple Leafs enter the ice through. Wondering if the team might send Travis out for a solo lap during the warm up before the rest of the team took the ice, Jim had video mode on his phone’s camera poised and ready. That didn’t end up happening, but it didn’t matter to Jim.

“To watch him go around the ice and to see his face, I’m watching the warm up intensely, that was pretty amazing,” Jim said.

Then a sobering feeling hit him. How was he going to manage to get through watching the game? Travis looked pretty poised over 12:03 of ice-time in his NHL debut, but Jim said the same couldn’t necessarily be said for him.

“At least for the first two periods watching the game, every time he was on the ice, I was on the edge of my seat,” Jim said. “I didn’t want anything bad to happen and I didn’t think it would. He’s pretty resilient when things go wrong, he can get back on track pretty quick, but I didn’t want to experience that for him. I felt like every emotion he’d have through that game, I’d be living it as well.”

Midway through the third period, Dermott made a nondescript pass to Morgan Rielly in his own zone and Rielly then airmailed a pass to Tyler Bozak at the far blueline. Bozak knocked it down and went into score the tying goal. Dermott picked up his first NHL point on the play. The Maple Leafs went on to win 3-2 in a shootout.

“You know things are moving in your direction when you make a pass in your own end and get an assist out of it,” Jim said. “That was pretty good.”