Josh Manson’s path to Avalanche OT heroics: Snowboard dreams, a Lucic fight and a lucky haircut

Josh Manson wanted to quit hockey. He had never felt much passion playing the sport and, as a 12-year-old in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, wasn’t sure he’d like the coach on the team he was set to join. Snowboarding, meanwhile, was fun. There weren’t mountains near his home, but he loved taking his board to a local hill and flying down the slope. That’s how he wanted to spend his free time, he decided.

So as the start of the hockey season approached, Manson approached his mom, Lana, and told her he thought he was done with it. Manson’s parents never forced the sport on him, despite the fact that his dad, Dave, played more than 1,100 NHL games, but in this instance, Lana put her foot down. She didn’t want her son to quit a sport before even giving his new team and new coach a chance.

“No chance, buddy,” Manson remembers her saying. “You’ve got to see this thing through.”

Good move, Mom.

Manson says that was the year hockey grasped him. He loved his coach. He loved putting in the effort needed to maximize his potential. He loved helping the team, and he believes the experience helped him find himself.

“It could have come to an abrupt halt when I was 12 years old,” Manson says. “Thank goodness my mom stepped in.”

“It was just a good experience overall,” Lana adds. “He was playing well and had good people to be with. That just made him a little more passionate.”

The Avalanche are current benefactors of Lana’s insistence. Ahead of the trade deadline, Colorado general manager Joe Sakic saw Manson as a necessary addition to a roster with Stanley Cup aspirations, acquiring the defenseman for prospect Drew Helleson and a second-round pick. The move looked genius in Game 1 of the second round Tuesday as Manson potted an overtime winner past a seemingly impenetrable Jordan Binnington in St. Louis’ net. He leaped into the air after he saw the puck cross the goal line, throwing his arms above his head.

“It’s been fun to watch,” says Lana, who watched from her couch in Edmonton and also threw her hands up after the goal. “Especially when Josh has that big smile.”

Playing as well as he has since joining the Avalanche, Manson is as far as could be from his snowboarding days. Now when he sees the mountains in Denver, he doesn’t think about his former passion. That itch has passed; he hasn’t gotten on a board for more than a decade.

“I’m a hockey player now,” he says.

A little more than a decade ago, Manson wasn’t much of an NHL prospect. Heck, he wasn’t even a full-time defenseman.

Back in his developmental years, Manson almost exclusively played forward. The now-30-year-old didn’t switch positions until his second year with the Salmon Arm Silverbacks, a Junior A team in the British Columbia Hockey League.

“Even by his own opinion, he was someone who was a little bit of a late bloomer,” says Cam Fowler, his former teammate with the Ducks. 

Manson’s first year with the Silverbacks started right around his 18th birthday, and he struck up a friendship with linemate Devin Gannon. They played video games together, watched sports and spent time on the golf course, where Gannon remembers being awed by his buddy’s strength when he drove the green on a par 4. Manson also would pull out his guitar to play, and Gannon says he has a good singing voice.

Early in Manson’s second season with Salmon Arm, his coach, Tim Kehler, suggested he try out defense. Another player the coach had worked with had benefited from a position change, and he thought Manson could be similar.

At first, Manson felt like he was struggling. The move didn’t seem to work, so he switched back to forward. But later in the season, when the team was without multiple defensemen, Manson played out of necessity. That’s when things began to shift.

“It went well,” he says. “I kind of found my way through it.”

He ended the year with 47 points in 57 games, up from 24 points the year before. And at least one NHL team took notice: Anaheim picked him that summer in the sixth round of the 2011 draft. Though he had yet to play a full season at defense, the switch was already paying dividends.

“Josh has always been a simple player,” Gannon says. “You’re not going to see many toe-drags, but he always makes the smart play. That translated right to D where he was making that first pass out of the zone. His mistakes were limited. It was just a very easy transition for him. I’m sure he’ll tell you differently, but he made it look pretty easy.”

Not everyone can fight Milan Lucic. The bruising 6-foot-4 forward is viewed as one of the tougher players in the league, and he’s never afraid to drop the gloves.

Neither, Anaheim quickly learned, is Manson. Back in the 2015 preseason, after a three-year NCAA career at Northeastern and with only 28 NHL games to his name, Manson objected to a Lucic — then with the rival Kings — hit on Chris Wagner, and the two immediately squared off. Their bout lasted a full minute and ended with Lucic bringing him to the ice. That didn’t matter to the Ducks bench. The full team applauded by tapping their sticks against the boards, a memory that still jumps out to Fowler.

“I remember watching it from the bench and being blown away by the toughness he showed and the willingness to get in there,” says Fowler, at that point a five-year veteran. “It kind of set the tone for what he was willing to do for our team and what he continued to do up until the day he ended up going somewhere else.”

Gannon remembers Manson’s willingness to fight in the BCHL, too. Off the ice, he was “a very kind individual,” his former teammate says, but if he didn’t like a hit on a teammate, he’d never shy away from a fight. His Ducks teammates took to him quickly, and he lived with Andrew Cogliano — who is also now with the Avalanche — as he got settled in the NHL. Cogliano says he made Manson drive him “everywhere” and calls him “one of the best guys I’ve met in the game.”

On the ice, Manson brought his team more than just toughness and a 6-foot-3 frame. Fowler noticed his poise immediately, and he earned a reputation for strong defense. Manson helped the Ducks to the conference finals in 2017, and he ended up playing 22 career postseason games for the club.

“He’s the type of guy that other players in the league don’t enjoy playing against, because he plays hard, he’s physical and he makes you earn it,” Cogliano says. “He’s a presence.”

The Ducks failed to make the playoffs after 2018, and with the team in a rebuilding phase and Manson’s contract set to expire this offseason, the team began shopping him ahead of the March trade deadline.

For the Avalanche, who needed another defenseman and struggled against a physical Vegas team in the 2021 playoffs, Manson emerged as a fit. The trade went through March 14, an off day in New York for the Ducks. As Fowler left the team hotel for dinner, a fan seeking autographs told him the news: His primary D partner in 2021-22 was on the move.

“We’ve both grown up in this organization,” Fowler says. “It hit me a little harder when he was moved. But he’s got a great opportunity now with a great team.”

Adds Lana Manson: “He was really lucky to go to Colorado.”

After finalizing the deal for Manson, Sakic came down to coach Jared Bednar’s office to tell him the news. The coach was instantly excited. This wasn’t a young player or Eastern Conference transplant he needed to do film study on. Bednar immediately knew what the defenseman could bring.

“It was the type of guy we’d probably been missing,” the coach says. “They’re hard to find. Teams generally don’t move guys of his caliber.”

But as happy as the Avalanche might have been to make the move, the on-ice transition wasn’t seamless. Manson had been with the Ducks for 450-plus games, and he had to adjust to a new structure. He was thinking too much on the ice, Bednar says, and the defenseman said late in the regular season that he needed to let the game come to him. During a four-game Colorado skid less than two weeks before playoffs began, Manson had a minus-5 rating and took two minor penalties. All of the sudden, his play looked like a reason for concern, not excitement.

Manson cut his hair ahead of an April 26 game against St. Louis, ditching his shoulder-length locks. After scoring against the Blues that night, he joked that his goal had “everything” to do with his fresh haircut. And whether it’s because of the haircut (unlikely) or more comfort in the Colorado systems (more likely), Manson’s game turned a corner in the final three regular-season games and in Colorado’s first-round series with Nashville. He’s fit into a second-pairing role where he helps create space for partner Samuel Girard, a strong skater with a smaller frame. He finished with the second-highest Game Score (4.32) in the league Tuesday night, according to Hockey Stat Cards, trailing only his partner, Girard (4.39).

“As he’s gotten more clear on (the structure), he’s become more dangerous offensively, he’s become a better defender for us and a really relied-upon guy,” Bednar says. “Now we’re seeing exactly why we did get him.”

If all goes well for the Manson family, the conference finals could serve as a reunion. Dave Manson is an assistant with the Oilers, who are playing the Flames in a second-round series, so if both Edmonton and Colorado win their series, the father and son will face off. Manson talked to his dad after the Oilers beat Los Angeles in Game 7 of the first round, and Lana says Dave told their son, “We’re coming for you!” The two have a close relationship, and Josh told TNT after his overtime winner that Dave passed along a few tips on the Blues.

“He’s been amazing with that throughout my entire life, just being able to compartmentalize things for me and be a hockey dad when he needs to be a hockey dad and be just dad when he needs to be dad,” Manson says. 

According to Manson and those around him, he has enjoyed his time in Denver, though he says he hasn’t thought much about the prospect of signing beyond this year. For now, that’s out of his control.

How he plays, on the other hand, is in his control, and he’s enjoyed the feeling of being on a winning team.

“It’s a different mentality,” he told reporters shortly after the trade. “You can feel it: Guys in the room expect to win. It’s intoxicating. You feel it and you’re like, ‘Let’s keep winning. This is fun.’”

(Top photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)