John Madden Biography [1/2]

[Thranduil 293]

Early Life

John Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Madden was born May 19th, 2001 in the town of Heddesheim, Germany. He was the third-born son of Hughie and Brunhilde Madden. He grew up with three brothers (two older, one younger) and two sisters (both younger). Hughie Madden (John's father) ran a mine with his brother-in-law, Sebastian Mischler (John's uncle). Brunhilde Madden was a stay-at-home mom who was, at-the-time, looking after three kids and was pregnant with a fourth. When John was two years old, there was a tragic accident at the mine where his father worked and seven miners were killed, including John's uncle. The mine was closed do to unsafe conditions, leaving John's parents impoverished and unemployed, with three hungry boys. It was then that John's parents made the decision to pool what money they had saved and move back to Hughie's home-country, Canada.

 

Hughie's Story

Hughie Madden was a young-man who grew up in an orphanage in Edmonton, Alberta. In 1988, he graduated from public school as an and following his 18th birthday, was immediately kicked from the orphanage for good. He picked up odd jobs here and there and after apprenticing at a hydraulic fracturing firm, found he had a knack for mining. Growing up as an orphan, toughened Hughie up and no job was too much for him. Being only 18, he still had an explorative nature about him and never stayed at one job long enough to get a pay-raise or promotion, though managers always spoke highly of his work ethic. One day, after a long work day, Hughie was sitting in a bar, enjoying a hard-earned beer, when a Calgary Flames game came on. He had known what hockey was, but never payed much attention to it. He immediately noticed how everyone in the bar was glued to the television and decided to watch a game just to see what all the fuss was about. To his own surprise, he actually enjoyed it and decided to come back to watch another game. When he arrived at the bar, a few days later, the whole place was packed to the gills with hockey fans. It was all Hughie could do to squeeze inside. Every time the Flames scored, everyone went wild, and eventually Hughie joined them in the excitement. At the end of the game, the whole bar went completely ballistic and the screen showed a hairy guy with a giant moustache lifting what appeared to be a hunk of metal, in the shape of a chicken leg. Later he learned this was called the Stanley Cup.

 

Flash forward a year and Hughie is playing a game for his recreational team, against a team from Germany. He scores three goals and wins the game in overtime. After the game, he is asked to give an interview for the local newspaper. In the interview, he jokingly says "I think this warrants a raise from my boss back at the mine." After hearing the interview, Sebastian, one on the German players tells Hughie about his new mining corporation in Germany and how he is looking for someone to run it with. Hughie, having always wanted to visit Germany, had nothing to lose by leaving Canada, and so he took Sebastian up on the offer. Once arriving in Germany, Sebastian introduced Hughie to his sister Brunhilde, and the two instantly fell in love. Eight months later, they were married. Hughie continued working at the mine for some ten years until the day of the accident. Little did they know at the time, but they accident would be the event that paved the way for John Madden's career.

 

Moving to Canada

After arriving in Vancouver, Hughie Madden was offered a job at a mine 200 kilometres North of Prince George, British Colombia. He didn't see a chance for another job, so the Maddens rented an apartment in Prince George, while Hughie went North to begin his new job. Brunhilde, a pregnant woman had three boys to look after, so she had to find ways to keep them busy. She signed her eldest son, Thomas, up for ice-hockey as it seemed that was what a lot of boys his age were doing. One year later, Graham, the Madden's second son joined hockey as well. John remembers watching his brothers play when he was three years old and wanting nothing more than to join them on the ice, but instead he was stuck on the bleachers with his mother and baby sister.

 

The only thing John Madden wanted for his fifth birthday was to play hockey like his brothers. He had a hockey themed cake and hockey-themed party hats. Of course, his birthday being in the middle of the summer, he still had to wait four months for the season to begin but every day up until then, he was on the street practicing with his brothers. John was three years younger than his oldest brother, but by the time the season rolled around, he was already better than both of them. His father was able to come to his first game and John scored 5 goals, including one from outside the crease. It was the proudest moment of his life, and from that moment on he has completely dedicated to hockey, wherever he went. When John was seven, Hughie suffered a mining injury and was forced to retire at the age of 48. Fortunately, in his five years as an executive with the mine, he had accumulated one million dollars and a nice big pension. From then on, he coached every one of John's hockey teams until John was twelve. Hughie taught John lots about the game and entered him in power skating lessons. John quickly became the fastest skater in his age-group.

 

Prince George Rep

Madden began to play AAA rep hockey for Prince George and became a dominant force. When he became an Atom at nine years old, he made AAA in his first year eligible. He did not disappoint, scoring 19 goals and 18 assists for a total 37 points in 36 games, good for third in team scoring. Keep in mind, half of the kids were one year older than John. In his second season playing Atom AAA, he met his future VHLM teammate, Basaraba Moose. Basaraba's parents had immigrated from Ukraine just before he was born and neither of them spoke very good English. John could relate to Moose as they had both grown up in families who had immigrated, the only difference was that Basaraba had lived in Canada for his whole life. The two young boys quickly became inseparable and played the 2011-12 together, Moose on the blueline and Madden playing up front as the team's top player. That season, John put up very good numbers, leading his team by a mile in both goals (26) and points (48), in 35 games, playing with his new best friend, Basaraba.

Hughie began to notice John's natural ability to score and strongly encouraged him not to pass as often, which he would realize, years later, wasn't doing John any favours. In 2012-13, he coached John and Basaraba for the last time, again in AAA but this time as PeeWees, playing with 11 and 12 year-olds. That was the season John became a major puck-hog. Though he was still capable of passing, he didn't often and many of his teammates, including Basaraba began to resent him for this. Hughie took note of this resent but thought the other players were just jealous of his son's ability and it only made him play John more. He didn't understand that the problems that had arisen had been his own doing. That year, John averaged almost a goal per game, finding the back of the net 28 times, but only adding 15 assists, for a a total of 43 points in 36 games. John's spectacular goal-scoring pace had put him on the radar of a lot of scouts from other, larger cities.

 

Springbank

 In the summer of 2013, the Maddens moved to Calgary, Alberta, so John could play with other players his level. He had been invited by a scout from Springbank, a PeeWee AA team in Calgary, to join the roster. Before he left Prince George, him and Basaraba had one last visit. They got into a big fight about hockey and the day ended with Basaraba hitting John over the head with a mini-stick. Basaraba was sent home and John was devastated that his friendship had ended that way. When arriving in Calgary, John had a hard time making friends at school and hockey was his only getaway. In one season with Springbank, John continued his amazing goalscoring pace, putting up 19 goals and 32 points in 20 games. He felt like he was on top of the world and nothing could stop him. In 2014-15, he played on the Springbank Bantam team and this was the year where John was finally expected to make some adjustments. His coach told him that if he really wanted to have a shot at turning pro, he'd have to stop being such a puck-hog and pass more. For the first time in John's career, someone expected him to be a playmaker. He made some adjustments to his game and for the first time ever, he ended the season with more assists than goals, finishing the season with 12 goals and 15 assists in 18 games. John continued to run smoothly, through his second year in Bantam, captaining the team to an almost perfect regular season, and leading the way with a spectacular 19 goals and 43 points in 20 games. At this point, John was sure he would be the first overall pick in the NHL draft a few years down the road. Everything seemed to be going very well. That is until John hit Midget hockey.

 

 It was in his first season of Midget, 2016-17, with the NWCAA Stamps when John finally began to struggle. He had a lot of adjustments to make. For one, he no longer was the top player on his team and was playing with lots of other young men who had all been the best players on their teams the year before. This meant a number of things. For one, his ice-time went drastically down and he wasn't on the powerplay very often. He couldn't always have his way like he was used to and he had to learn to be more of a team player in order to stay on the team. He realized the basic passes that had worked the last two years to help him become a better playmaker no longer worked. He also had a harder time than he ever had, finding the back of the net. John spent the majority of the season playing on the third line and only managed 14 goals and 14 assists in 42 games. He began to doubt that he would get drafted to the NHL at all, never mind first overall. John trained hard over the summer and did very well in training camp, the next season. He had a very strong start to the season, putting up 24 points in his first 16 games of the season, but in game 17, John was slammed headfirst, into the boards and suffered a concussion. John was very upset with himself as he had a duty to fill as alternate captain, which he could not fill. John sat out 15 games before finally returning to the roster. By then he was too out of shape to continue where he left off and only managed 9 points in his last 11 games of the season. That year John was offered a contract from the Red Deer Rebels of the WHL. He was on the verge of signing it, when he got another call from the VHLM, Halifax 21st, offering him more money in a much higher level league. If he decided to join Halifax, this meant he was signing his rights over to the VHL draft and would no longer be eligible for the NHL draft, a season down the road. John wasted no time in accepting the contract with Halifax. He felt it was the better decision for his career, based on what his goals were. He bid his a family goodbye and set out to begin a new chapter of his life on the east coast.

 

Halifax

When John arrived in Halifax, he was quicly introduced to his teammates, Nikita Flipachyev and Nathan MacKinnon, whom the Halifax general manager, Shawn planned to play on a line with. John once again got off to a very slow start, but picked up momentum as he went along. The team was slowly built into a contender as the league's best defenseman, Jesse Wilson was added to the team as well as defensive-minded gritmeister, Evgeni Komarov. Halifax also traded for two-way specialist, Wlodziemers Zajaczkowski and to John's surprise signed his old best friend, Basaraba Moose. Moose apologized for the incident that had happened so many years ago and the two of them played the season together, recovering their old friendship. John's line was very successful. Both MacKinnon and Flipachyev finished in the top ten in scoring. The three of them were 1, 2 and 3 in VHLM plus / minus. They taught John a lot about being a good player and he put up decent numbers with them, scoring 21 goals for the Halifax 21st and 42 assists for 63 points in 72 games. Next season, Madden hopes to come back a better player and leader, possibly as captain of the 21st. His mother, father and five siblings watched every one of his games last season and could not be prouder.

 

 

Madden in the 2013-14 season.

 

1,812 words (Not including part about Hughie)

Edited December 5, 2018 by Thranduil

[StamkosFan 72]

Review: 

You definitely went above and beyond instead of just trying to hit the 1000 word requirement! It was a good idea to give the background of his father and to focus on parentage. I think it was cool to hear about his junior hockey background as well and to tie that into the VHL. Overall, I think it was a solid biography, and the story of the mine accident really functioned well into everything.