To Jackson Playfair, the scene remains vivid.



“To the day I leave this earth, I’ll remember,” he said.



What Jackson recalls is walking home one winter’s day in Saint John, N.B., with his big brother, Dylan, and his baby brother, Austyn. The boys, bundled up, are keen to get out of the cold.



Yanking open the front door, they walk inside their home. Inexplicably, half of their belongings are in boxes. Meanwhile, their parents, Jim and Roxane, are smiling and huddled around the kitchen TV, which is tuned to TSN.



“I could see across the bottom of the picture, it said, ‘Jim Playfair hired by the Calgary Flames’ — that was his first NHL coaching job,” said Jackson. “That was when all three of us kids realized that Dad was going to The Show — and we were going to get to go with him. It was a pretty cool experience.”



Understandably, that snapshot from the 2002-03 season, when he...