Son of Notorious Minor League Goon Might Be Next Big Thing in US Hockey

Scotty Bowman remains one of the biggest rink rats out there. At 82 years young, the legendary former NHL coach was right there with all the other coffee-swilling amateur scouts in Buffalo recently, looking at prospects at a U.S. National Development Team camp.

A man once almost as famous for his sparse praise for players as his many Stanley Cups, Bowman came away raving about a 5'10", 163-pound 15-year-old from the hockey hotbed of...Bettendorf, Iowa.

Luke Toporowski is the name, and if it isn't recognizable now, just wait until he becomes eligible for the NHL draft in about three years. It's a name that Bowman, a 14-time Stanley Cup-winner, had no trouble remembering after watching him skate.

"He's one of the best prospects I've ever seen," Bowman said. "He's got a terrific stride, skates like [Sidney] Crosby. Hard to knock off his feet, just cutting around the defense and accelerating."

In May, the Spokane Chiefs of the Western Hockey League selected Toporowski with the eighth pick in the first round of the bantam draft, which marked the first time since 2009 that an American-born player went in the first round.

Before joining his older brother, Jake, an 18-year-old defenseman with Spokane, Toporowski will play one more season with the Chicago Mission, a Bantam Major Triple-A team of the High Performance Hockey League, coached by former NHL player Gino Cavallini.

With 22 goals and 11 assists in 20 games last season for the Mission, he was the league's highest scorer. He also led all players in scoring at the 2015-16 Pat Quinn Classic Bantam Elite Tournament.

"He's among the strongest skaters I've ever coached," said Cavallini, who played 593 NHL games from 1984 to 1993 with Calgary, St. Louis and Quebec. "I would say, the way he's tracking, he's going to be one of the top prospects in the country."

The fact that Toporowski has a father who played professional hockey isn't uncommon. What does make his story unique is the fact that Kerry Toporowski was one of the most notorious fighters in hockey history, a player called a "goon" more than once in his 12 years of pro hockey—all at the minor league level, not including a three-game stint for a Russian team in 2001-02 (he only posted two PIM there).

In 65 games for Spokane in 1990-91, Kerry Toporowski accumulated 505 penalty minutes.

"And they didn't include game-misconduct minutes either," he says with a laugh. "They said if those had been counted, I'd have had over 800 minutes."

Toporowski isn't sure he ever played a game in the minors in which he didn't get at least two penalty minutes, while five for fighting was almost as much of a guarantee. 

"I had a few dinners bought for me by grateful teammates who didn't have to do the fighting I did," he said. "But that was my job."

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So how did the youngest son of one of the meanest, nastiest players straight out of the Slap Shot era of hockey turn into one of the U.S.' top offensive prospects? 

"Good question. I don't know," Luke Toporowski says with a chuckle. "Fighting's not much a part of the game anymore. I'd probably do a little more of it if it was."

Not that he is shy about the physical parts of the game. 

"Oh no, he plays hard. He goes into the corners and he'll bang with anyone in front of the net," Cavallini said. "He'll do anything to score a goal. He's not a selfish player, but he's just insatiable to score goals.

"He's a bit of a throwback player, who really drives the net. You see him walking around the rink just in his street clothes, and you wouldn't think much of him physically, but he's very strong and he's going to get bigger," Cavallini added. 

Said Kerry: "There's a little more money to be made scoring goals. He's on the surer path than I took. But I enjoyed what I did."

Kerry, a native of Paddockwood, Saskatchewan, was a promising prospect coming out of Spokane, good enough to be taken 67th overall in the 1991 NHL draft by the expansion San Jose Sharks. Right away, though, the Sharks dealt his rights to Chicago in a deal that brought veteran defenseman Doug Wilson to San Jose, where he resides as the team's general manager today.

Toporowski suffered a broken left arm, his punching arm, early in his career in the Blackhawks' system, but he was still paid to play hockey for 12 years. His goals and assist totals were minuscule, his PIM astronomical.

He spent parts of six seasons with the Quad City Mallards of the United Hockey League and won two league championships. His No. 77 became the first to be retired by the Mallards, and there remain several tribute videos to "Topper" from Mallards fans on YouTube. Here is one with him and young sons Luke and Jake, along with daughter Alexis, from his Quad City days:

While with the Mallards, Kerry settled with his wife, Joy, in one of the Quad Cities, Bettendorf, Iowa. Luke and Jake started skating pretty much as soon as they were able to walk. The family still lives in Bettendorf, where Kerry works as a financial adviser and is an assistant coach with Luke's team.

"I never pushed them into the game," Kerry said. "But they just took right to it, and there are some really good youth leagues that started to percolate here when some teams like the Mallards came in."

The Chicago Mission, however, represented the highest-quality team near Bettendorf, but that was still a two-hour drive away. For both boys, the decision was made that, rather than move, either Kerry or Joy would make the drive to Chicago and back for every game and practice.

Added up over three to five games or practices a week, the Toporowskis have driven close to 20 hours every week, back and forth from Chicago, the past few years.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Kerry said. "They can do their homework, or they can get some sleep, and there's almost no bad traffic the whole way on I-88. The facilities of the Mission are on the outer suburbs of Chicago, not in the city."

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Luke, who counts golf and water sports as other passions, turned down numerous NCAA inquiries to follow in his father and brother's footsteps to Spokane. 

"For me, I just thought that was my best option," said Luke, who attends Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf. "I feel like it's more toward a regular NHL schedule, and that's obviously my goal, to play in the NHL."

A lefty-shooting left winger, Toporowski has what hockey people call "good edges," meaning he cuts and drives past opponents on his skates with ease. In the family basement, there is a "shooting wall," which Luke regularly fires 300 to 500 pucks off of a night. Maybe a big NHL paycheck will go toward repairing the dents someday.

Courtesy of Kerry Toporowski

"I'd describe myself as a power forward, but who likes to skate the puck and drive the net," said Toporowski, who lists Dallas' Jamie Benn as a player he admires. "I really like to shoot as much as I can."

Toporowski has to wait three more years until he's eligible for the draft, and he knows now is not the time to get complacent about anything. But yes, he pictures himself on the draft stage as a first-rounder when the time comes, being welcomed into the NHL by Commissioner Gary Bettman. In the 2016 NHL draft, 12 Americans were taken in the first round, one more than Canada. 

"The U.S. has just gotten better at developing players. It's exciting for the future. There are going to be a lot of great players coming along from different states," he said. "Obviously, I want to be one of them. But I have to keep working really hard. You have to work harder at it every year."

About the four-plus hours he spends in the car most days with one or both of his parents, Toporowski acknowledges that comes at the expense of a more normal social life with friends at school.

"I try to be with my friends as much as I can when I'm not at hockey. In the summertime, I can veg more with friends," he said.

Toporowski will attend a two-week training camp at Spokane soon before coming home for one more year of the Bettendorf-Chicago shuttle. 

Those long car rides were boring at times, yeah, but Luke can see where he'll start to miss them a lot once he leaves the nest for good.

"I mean, it's really good quality time with my parents, those drives," he said.

Said Kerry: "It's some of the best bonding time we probably ever had. I'm going to miss that. On the other hand, you feel so proud when they take that next step. Jake took it to Spokane, and now Luke too. For an old fighter, I feel pretty lucky."

Toporowski isn't likely to spend anywhere near the time his dad did in the penalty box. And his name figures to be in the "goals" column of the stat sheet a lot more than the "penalties" column. But that's not to say he isn't his father's son.

"I learned so much just from watching my dad, how he played for the guy next to him, for the logo on his chest," Luke said. "Ultimately, that's how I want to be judged, too."

Adrian Dater covers the NHL for Bleacher Report.