Editor’s note: This feature story by Matthew DeFranks was originally published in August 2019. We’re bringing it back with Stars prospect Jason Robertson making his NHL debut in Toronto tonight.

PLANO — A small restaurant in Plano, bookended by an all-day breakfast café and a national pizza chain, should not feel like a familiar place to Jason Robertson. It’s a mile west of U.S. 75 and nearly 1,500 miles east of Arcadia, Calif., where the Stars prospect was born.

At the counter, the dishes are served without labels while explanations are given to the uninitiated. In the refrigerator, the drinks are imported. The scene unfolds at Kainan Sa Laguna, a Filipino restaurant 20 minutes from the Stars' practice facility in Frisco.

It's not home for Robertson, not by a long shot. But it's a retracing of sorts to his roots, and a reminder of what could become a unique part of Robertson's journey to the NHL. On a summer afternoon, Robertson comes to the restaurant as one of the Stars' top prospects ready to turn professional in the fall, and set to talk about his Filipino heritage in hockey.

Robertson, 20, a left wing who was the No. 39 pick in the 2017 draft, could become the first Filipino-American to play in the NHL, but only if he beats brother Nick (Toronto's second-round pick this year) to the world's best hockey league. Over pork adobo and pancit, garlic fried rice and bistek, Robertson talked about family histories, Filipino food and the changing face of Asians in hockey.

Culture change

Mercedes Robertson's Tagalog comes out when she's around family. It's the native tongue of Filipinos, a language derived from Spanish after hundreds of years under Spain's rule, and one prevalent in restaurants such as Kainan Sa Laguna, where English is commonly the second language spoken. For Mercedes, it was a language spoken around the house growing up, when she was the youngest of six children in the Philippines.

Mercedes, Jason's mother, was born in Manila before she immigrated to Los Angeles as a 3-year-old in the early 1970s. In the Philippines, the family escaped the martial law dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and believed more opportunity to work would arise in the United States, plus they could help support other family members in Los Angeles.

Her father, Lee Dano, who is now deceased, left behind a career as a lawyer in Manila to become a taxi driver and real estate title officer in the United States. ("He always had two jobs, and sometimes maybe three over the weekend just to put food on the table," Mercedes said.) Her mother, Ofelia "Shirley" Dano, did data entry in a medical office to help put the kids through Catholic school.

When the family arrived in California, they became Lakers fans and cheered for Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Pat Riley during the Showtime era. It makes sense, since basketball is the Philippines' most popular sport, followed by boxing. But hockey? Ice in the tropical jungles of the island nation? To the family, hockey was a foreign concept.

"I'm just envisioning older men with their face mashed up with no teeth," Mercedes said in a telephone interview.

Dallas Stars prospect Jason Robertson (left) has lunch with Dallas Morning News sports writer Matt DeFranks at Kainan Sa Laguna in Plano, Texas on Thursday, June 25, 2019. (Lawrence Jenkins/Special Contributor) (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

Jason's father, Hugh, is of Scottish descent, originally from Michigan. He introduced Jason and his brothers (older brother Michael and younger brother Nick) to the sport. Jason said he began playing competitively at around 4 or 5 years old, and the family actually moved from Southern California to Northville, Mich., to help their sons chase their dreams in hockey instead of traveling for tournaments seemingly weekly.

Hockey was how the Robertsons learned their numbers, by looking at the backs of jerseys. It was how they learned time because of the clock ticking down on the scoreboard above them. It was what the kids enjoyed doing, and what the parents thought could get them into college.

"When they have an application and the admissions person is looking at two applications, and they're pretty much the same but they see that they're able to maintain this grade-point average and still be able to do hockey, and that's able to get them a leg up, that was our motivation for the kids," Mercedes said.

Living in Northville, the Robertsons often went to Plymouth Whalers games just minutes from their house, and it was an introduction to the Ontario Hockey League. For Jason, playing in the OHL was the quickest way to get to the NHL, faster than playing juniors in the United States or going to college in America. That was the path he wanted to pursue.

Jason was the OHL's leading scorer last season playing for Kingston and Niagara and could compete for a roster spot during Stars training camp in September. It's the goal he's set and one that his father wants reached when the Stars visit the Kings twice this season.

"He said 'I want to see you at the Staples Center,'" Jason said. "Like, 'Dad, I'm going to try my hardest.'"

Making history

When Jason was drafted by the Stars, it served as a notice both to his extended family and himself. The Filipino side of Jason's family paid a new attention to the sport.

"Now, my grandma pays attention, has some idea about it," Jason said. "If you asked them 10 years ago what hockey is, they'd think soccer."

When he spoke to reporters after the draft, Jason said he was asked about his ethnicity and being a Filipino-American. That was another eye-opener for Jason, who said he'd always been one of the few minorities on his teams.

"They said, 'You know, just because of this, you're a role model for all the young kids coming up,'" Jason said. "Now that I think about it, it's pretty impressive."

Before he went to Vancouver to watch his brother Nick get drafted by the Maple Leafs in June, Jason trained in Southern California (his family has since moved back to Sierra Madre in the Los Angeles area). One of the coaches brought a young Korean player over to Jason.

"He's like, 'This kid looks up to you because you're Asian and there's not a lot of Asians that play in the NHL, who make it somewhere,'" Jason said. "At that time, I thought, that's something that I can be a role model towards. Not a lot of people can do that."

Last year, Jason said he was approached by a group of Filipino boys in Toronto who said they look up to him, and Mercedes is proud of how both Jason and Nick have embraced their heritage.

"I did not realize with all the hustle and bustle of life and the hockey chaos how important it was until people started to point it out," Mercedes said. "With them, I'm actually really proud because they are embracing it and they really understand how exciting it is. Since hockey is not typical for the Asian community, it's not a permission but almost like 'Hey, it can be more than just the normal, typical sports that you see. Now, there's hockey.'"

When Jason was drafted, he capped a historic draft for Asians. He was one of three Asians selected in the first two rounds in 2017, joining Nick Suzuki and Kailer Yamamoto (both of Japanese heritage). Never had three players of Asian descent been taken so highly.

When talking about other players in the growing Asian hockey community, Jason rattles off names.

There's the Suzuki brothers, who may be wrestling with the Robertson brothers to be the first family of Asian hockey after both Nick and Ryan were first-round picks. There's Mitch Vande Sompel, who is part of the Islanders system. There's Jonathan Ang, who lived with Nick's Filipino billet family in Peterborough before he did. There's Cliff Pu, who was Jason's teammate before ending up in the Panthers system.

"You see an Asian hockey player, I feel like there's always a connection right there," Jason said. "It's weird, but you just feel comfortable talking to with them."

Height advantage

Forward Jason Robertson participates in a workout on the first day of Dallas Stars development camp at the Dr Pepper StarCenter on Saturday, July 8, 2017, in Frisco. (Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

The history of Filipino hockey is a short one.

Only one player of Filipino descent — Minnesota defenseman Matt Dumba is Filipino-Canadian — has played in the NHL. No one born in the country has cracked an NHL roster. The Philippines’ national hockey team has never participated in the Olympics or World Championships but won an unlikely gold at the Southeast Asian Games in 2017 by beating Thailand.

At the Challenge Cup of Asia earlier this year, the Filipino roster listed only one player taller than 6-foot and one player as light as 115 pounds. "Yeah, we've got to give the Asian people something else other than basketball here," Dumba joked. "They don't have the height for basketball."

Mercedes joked that she doesn't know where Jason got his 6-3 height from. She is 5-2 and Hugh is 6-0, and Jason is the tallest person in the family, taller than Michael (6-0), Nick (5-9) and younger sister Bri (5-2). When he was growing up, Jason was "husky," Mercedes said, and his size and subsequent slowness set him up to become a playmaker with the puck.

"For Hugh and I, we really think that's where Jason found his calling in terms of passing and learning the game, because he, as a bigger player, couldn't move as fast," Mercedes said. "So what the coach found was get the puck to Jason in the neutral zone and just sprint to the net because Jason will find you. That's what he does.")

In the fall, the country will host the Southeast Asian Games at Manila's Mall of Asia Arena, since many of the ice rinks in the Philippines are inside shopping malls. In Canada, informal Filipino hockey teams have popped up in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg.

Filipino hockey players are unlikely, but that doesn't mean Filipino hockey fans are unnoticed.

When the Wild travel to the West coast (particularly Los Angeles, San Jose and Vancouver), Dumba said Filipinos will approach him after games, sometimes as he's walking to the team bus.

"Some of them roll up on me and start speaking the language," said Dumba, whose Filipino mother, Treena, was adopted as a child and grew up in Canada. "I got nothing to give back, I kind of feel bad."

The path Robertson will travel could look much like the one Dumba has already gone down. He'll be the face of a community not often represented in hockey, and one doing so at the highest level in the world.

Whether Jason makes his future in Dallas this season or next, Kainan Sa Laguna will sit in Plano. The walls will have pictures of Pagsanjan Falls. Its Philippine Calamansi juice (like a lemonade) will still be in the refrigerator. Kainan Sa Laguna (translated to mean "eating in Laguna," and Laguna is a province in the Philippines) will still have The Filipino Channel on its mounted flat screen spewing game shows in the middle of the afternoon. The lumpia (spring rolls) and lechon (roast pork) will still be fried in the kitchen.

"For me, it would have been nice for my dad to see that, but I'm just happy that my mom is seeing it," Mercedes said. "They always tell us that they're proud of us, but it's just nice to see the next generation, what's becoming of them and that their sacrifices, what they had to do 30, 40 years ago, how it continues to pay off."

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