Rural Slovenia
Growing up on a farm just outside Ljubljana, Slovenia, Ryan Kastelic didn't see much of hockey growing up. He had always heard from his grandfather about how the great Anze Kopitar was the first ever elite hockey player to ever come from his home country, but the concept of the sport had never really caught Ryan's attention.
Growing up, he played a lot of football (the real kind, not the American kind), ran track at his middle school (and eventually his high school), and often inline skated with his father.
When Ryan was 13, his grandfather passed away. Having lived to the ripe age of 86, nobody was particularly surprised by this, but it still hit Ryan pretty hard. Going into his first year of high school, Ryan heard his grandfather's voice in his head throughout the entire month of September telling him to 'just do it'. It took Ryan a couple weeks to realize that he was hearing this every time he was passing the extracurricular opportunities board in the hall. Upon closer examination, one poster in particular caught his attention:
Misliš, da imaš, kar je potrebno, da bi bil naslednji Anže Kopitar? Odprti poskusi za hokejsko ekipo srednje upravne administrativne šole Ljubljana začnite v petek!
It was at that moment that he decided to see what this hockey thing was all about.
From the moment he stepped on the ice, he knew that he had been missing out on the sport his whole life, because it was exactly what he was meant to do. He excelled through his first three years of high school, leading the team in points as a defenseman each year. Ryan and his friends knew that in year 12, their final year of high school, their team had a real chance to push for a national championship, something that most of his teammates had been striving for their entire minor hockey careers.
That summer, between years 11 and 12, Ryan got a call. His dad had refused to pick up calls from this number multiple times because it appeared that they were calling from out of country and he always hated long distance charges. Eventually, Mrs. Kastelic convinced Mr. Kastelic to answer it, saying that he could always hang up within a minute and the couple cents that they would be charged for it would be worth not having the same number call every day. Upon his father answering, Ryan was surprised that his father merely grumbled for a minute or two and then handed him the phone. Ryan had barely touched the landline in his life, never mind had any kind of important call on it. On the other end of the line was Rob Papineau, the GM of the Sudbury Wolves, telling Ryan that he's just been selected in the most recent CHL Import Draft.
"Will you be joining us for camp this fall?" the voice on the other end asked.
All that Ryan could think of at the time was his teammates, how badly they wanted that national championship, and he’d never even considered the concept of traveling to North America to play hockey, so he immediately said no, and that nothing would get him to leave where he was.
Then he started thinking about his grandfather again, his stories of Anze Kopitar, and realized that what was just presented to him was a genuine shot at making a career out of hockey. After careful considerations with his parents, Ryan decided that he would attend camp in Sudbury, but he would not commit to them for the whole season until he was sure that he could acclimate well to life in Canada. To avoid any potential awkward encounters, Ryan kept this from his friends and told them that he was just traveling to Canada as a vacation with his father.
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
After arriving in Toronto and the subsequent drive to Sudbury, Ryan had already decided that he loved Canada. The dense forestry on either side of the Trans Canada highway fascinated him, and he wanted to take the chance to explore some of the natural landscape surrounding the small city. Along the way, Ryan mused to his father that they must have crossed half the country just to get to Sudbury, knowing that it wasn’t exactly true, but he hadn’t yet actually considered the actual grandeur of the country.
At training camp, Ryan got along with his teammates and coaches, and was offered a roster spot for the following season. The most difficult decision of his life so far was the one that Ryan made to stay in Canada. He never had the chance to say goodbye to his friends back home and explain to them his reasons for leaving them. Back home, Ryan’s high school team went 1-23-1 and most of them swore against Ryan, saying that not only did his leaving the country hurt the team’s skill, but also the team’s cohesion and morale. It is for this reason that, to this day, Ryan is known in his hometown of Ljubljana as “The Snake”.
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
In town for the CHL Top Prospects game, Ryan got his first glimpse of what being a star could really be like. He struggled through some English interviews with TSN but aced the one French interview that he got with Radio-Canada (he’d always loved French class). The weekend also made Ryan think about what his future in hockey held. Since leaving Slovenia, everything had been such a blur; his slow start to the season, acclimating to the North American ice surface, and finally getting his season on track enough to draw the attention of many high end scouts and get him an invite to Brandon in the first place. After speaking to some NHL scouts and even an Assistant GM, Ryan was approached quietly by a GM representing a team in a relatively new, still wet-behind-the-ears league called the Victory Hockey League. Although he would have to make his way through another league, the VHLM, Ryan liked the idea of using the league to develop his skills more while actually making a bigger paycheck than the NHL, and so he made it clear that he would pursue a career in the VHL.
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