Canadiens’ Shea Weber draws only praise from fellow NHL players

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Let us consider the man's game face, a stony mask that evokes Roman marble statuary: Mars, the god of war, maybe, only with a migraine.

Or perhaps the mood is better described as severely aggrieved medieval gargoyle.

Anyway, some of those who have known Montreal Canadiens defenceman Shea Weber longest suggest he inherited the expression from his late mother Tracy, a legendarily tough cookie. ("She could look right through you," said Wayne March, who runs Weber's childhood arena in Sicamous, B.C.).

The point is, this is not someone to be trifled with.

"Even when he was 15 or 16 he already had that look. He could be laughing and joking in the room on the day of a game, but an hour before the game people knew you didn't talk to him," said Blair Robinson, who coached Weber with the Sicamous Eagles of the Junior B Kootenay International Hockey League.

If the murk where respect bleeds into fear were an actual physical place, Weber would be standing in the middle of it, arms crossed, wearing his don't-even-think-it stare.

New Jersey Devils winger Mike Cammalleri matched wits with Weber a few dozen times in the NHL's Western Conference and refers to him, not at all uncharitably, as "the Big Nasty."

One of the favourite off-ice activities in the NHL is to carve, rip or otherwise malign one's fellow professionals, even widely beloved NHLers.

Not so with Weber.

Talk of the Team Canada stalwart tends toward the effusive; Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock reflected a broadly held belief earlier this year when he said Weber "cuts a wide swath."

There's nothing much new there. Robinson said the other teenagers looked up to Weber and his seriousness.

"He was dedicated. He knew what he wanted to be," Robinson said.

Journeyman forward Vernon Fiddler first saw Weber, a highly touted 20-year-old, while on a minor-league assignment with the Milwaukee Admirals, the Nashville Predators' farm team.

"I remember getting called back up to Nashville and telling the guys this kid is going to be the real deal. He doesn't take any time off, ever. He didn't then, he doesn't now," said Fiddler, who now plays for the Devils. "He doesn't really let his guard down all that much. I think he cares what people think about him, he wants to be that leader."

Even his critics, who are numerous in the analytics crowd, will quickly admit he's a fine hockey player (if older and less dynamic than P.K. Subban, the guy for whom he was traded last summer).

Cammalleri has a theory about why Weber is held in such high esteem: He embodies the hockey world's Platonic ideal.

"Size, strength, defence, physicality, can score, does it all at an elite level," said Cammalleri, ticking boxes. "It's also the personality. There's a calm, humble confidence there."

And given half a chance, he'll cheerfully rip your head off.

A few years back, former Detroit Red Wings defenceman Andreas Lilja was asked by a Hockey News reporter what he'd learned in a year spent away from the game recovering from a concussion, the result of an encounter with the then-Predator.

"I don't know. Not to fight Shea Weber, maybe," he said.

Players don't reach the big time by scaring easily, but that doesn't mean intimidation isn't a real thing.

It's also a reputation league, so when replays show Toronto tough guy Matt Martin's head snapping around as Weber arrives in a scrum, as happened in Montreal earlier this fall, it's not because a referee is yelling at him.

Weber, who led his junior team in penalty minutes as a 17-year-old, is famous for doling out nasty cross-checks as he takes opposing forwards into the corner that for whatever reason aren't perceptible to most refs.

Maybe it's because he straddles the line between mean and dangerous.

"He can put you in a position where it's like 'uh-oh'," Cammalleri said. "He plays an honest game, he doesn't forget there's a puck there, but he'll get you. You have to have an awareness of where he is."

Several NHLers have had oh-no moments in Montreal this year – a brutal open-ice hit on Toronto's Leo Komarov in Weber's first preseason home game as a Hab springs to mind.

Teams don't systematically attack Weber's side of the ice. Given his fondness for high-percentage (read: safe) plays, the puck isn't usually on his stick long enough in the defensive zone.

There have been numerous occasions where players with a reputation for aggressive fore-checking have chosen not to finish their checks in Weber's corner. Names have been withheld to protect the culpable.

The law of diminishing returns applies on a hockey rink, too.

Part of it is down to the sheer size of the guy, which is not adequately conveyed by a television screen. At a muscular 6-foot-4 and 230-odd pounds he is indeed, as Babcock called him, a "man-mountain."

Then you add a terrifying point shot, which he can put pretty much wherever he wants, and that – oh joy – he isn't much worried about ripping at ear level.

As former Habs defenceman Mathieu Schneider used to say: Given enough time, the willingness to shoot high usually wins out over the willingness to block shots.

The slap shot as demoralizer.

One-piece sticks have democratized shooting. Most players can, as Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty says, "put their head down and twist one up."

But Weber's remains king: It has ripped clean through nets, it has put opponents on the injured list (and nearly teammates, as Habs winger Brendan Gallagher can attest after taking one off the meaty part of the thigh this season).

Weber's shot even sounds different than other players' hitting the boards on the occasions his rangefinder is off.

"Some of it is size and some of it is speed, you can't have a shot that hard if you're not a very fast skater. He's a fast-twitch guy. People also probably don't realize how amazing his body control is when he finishes," Pacioretty said recently.

All players take a little off their shot in practice, but the Habs' goalies report things can still get a tad hazardous if the puck comes off Weber's stick at the wrong angle.

Carey Price, who has spent his career facing down Boston Bruins giant Zdeno Chara, said his fellow B.C. native's shot presents a unique problem.

"It's deceptive because it doesn't look like he's shooting it hard. I'd almost compare it to [golfer] Ernie Els. So fluid and smooth, and just so, so hard," he laughed. "There's also not too many guys who can pick what side of the net they're shooting at on a one-timer."

Weber also uses one of the stiffest, most unyielding sticks in the league (although he says Chara's "probably has a steel rod").

"You need to be a strong man to use that thing," said Price, whose summer house is near Weber's Lake Okanagan spread.

So how did this fearsome weapon evolve?

March said Weber has been able to hammer the puck since he was a wispy preteen (Weber wasn't selected in the WHL bantam draft, but was later scooped up by the nearby Kelowna Rockets at the Eagles' urging).

Weber, whose distinct preference is to talk about anything other than himself, can't pinpoint the moment where he discovered his freakish ability to shoot.

Many hockey players learn the finer points from their dads, and James Weber coached both his boys, although he was never a star in his own right. ("My dad never really played hockey actually, maybe one year when he was 12," the younger Weber said).

"I went to hockey schools, but nothing really sticks out. Just repetition, I guess. I found what worked," he said. "I still go to the same hockey school in the summer."

It should be said the minor hockey set-up in Sicamous in those days was unusually good.

One of the youth coaches, town doctor Jack Beech, saw his son Kris drafted in the first round and play 198 NHL games.

Cal Franson, who has been an ice-maker at the Sicamous and District Recreation Centre since the 1980s, also had a boy reach the big time: Buffalo Sabres defenceman Cody Franson, another big guy who can shoot.

Another Weber contemporary, Andrew Kozek, was picked by the Atlanta Thrashers in the second round of the 2005 draft (he now plays in Germany).

One of the benefits of growing up in a small town (Sicamous has a population of 2,400) is plentiful ice time.

There were lunchtime shinny sessions during the school year, and whenever the rink was unused, Weber and his cohorts would often hustle over there.

"We knew the guys who worked there, so if there was no one on we'd get over and flip them a toonie, which seemed like a lot of money as a kid. We'd beg for money from our parents … and just ask to go play by ourselves, shinny or whatever," Weber said. "I also remember early morning practices, we'd be out at 7 or whatever, but the rink would be open at 6 or 6:15. I'd go over there by myself before the team got there and skate around and shoot. I don't think my dad was too happy about it."

It can't have been that bad. When James Weber retired from the local sawmill he joined Cal Franson on March's arena staff. The three of them can be found there most days.

The freewheeling aspect of Sicamous minor hockey – when Weber played bantam the team had just 13 kids – made it such that one of the most fearsome defenders in the NHL even played lots at forward.

It was a throwback-hockey upbringing. In that sense, Weber represents the ethos of his hometown – stalwart, tough – well.

Sicamous, it turns out, may also have been a breeding ground for winners.

In Weber's only full season with the Eagles, they won the Western Canadian championship. He scored the tying goal in the final, on a point shot, of course.

In Kelowna, he played in a pair of Memorial Cups, winning one.

Then came gold medals at the junior and senior world championship, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Sochi, and this fall's World Cup.

There's only one thing left to win, and as Robinson said "he burns for the Stanley Cup."

The former coach tells a story about watching a Rockets game with an NHL scout of his acquaintance; Weber had quipped before the game he would score a goal and beat the snot out of somebody.

By the end of the second period Weber was on the scoresheet with a goal and a fighting major.

"[The scout] turned to me and said, 'Does he always do exactly what he says?'" Robinson laughed.

The short answer: Pretty much.