Early Life

Pernell Karl “P.K.” Subban was born on May 13, 1989, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to a Jamaican father, Karl, and a Montserratian mother, Maria. (His mother named him after the actor Pernell Roberts, best known for his role on the television western Bonanza.) Both of his parents had emigrated from the Caribbean in the 1970s. They raised Subban and his four siblings—older sisters Nastassia and Natasha and younger brothers Malcolm and Jordan—in a four-bedroom home in the Toronto neighborhood of Rexdale. His father taught and served as principal at a succession of Toronto schools before retiring in 2013; his mother is a quality control analyst at CIBC Mellon.

P. K. Subban comes from an athletic family. His father played basketball at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and his mother ran track at Bathurst Heights Secondary School. His eldest sister, Nastassia, who is now a teacher, played basketball at Toronto’s York University, where she scored the most points in Ontario university basketball history. Though he played basketball, Karl Subban was a zealous hockey fan who spent his youth rooting for the Montreal Canadiens and playing pickup hockey games with children from his mostly French-speaking neighborhood. His passion for hockey was passed down to all of his children, but none more so than Subban, who started skating at the age of two.

Subban had his father enroll him in his first house-league hockey team at age four, after being mesmerized by the popular weekly sports program Hockey Night in Canada. When Subban was six, Karl, recognizing his son’s potential, began devoting all of his scant free time to developing Subban’s hockey skills. Each weeknight, Karl would return home from a moonlighting vice-principal job, wake up his son, and drive him downtown to Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square outdoor skating rink, where they would spend countless hours skating and practicing. Before heading home he would treat his son to a slice of pizza. “A lot of times, as a kid growing up, there were times when I didn’t want to go and play, I didn’t want to go skate,” P. K. Subban explained to Dave Feschuk for the Toronto Star (24 Dec. 2007). “But my dad encouraged me to do it, ‘If you want to play in the NHL, that’s what it takes.’”

The Road to Excellence

By age ten Subban was already showing glimpses of his star potential. “He was bigger than other players and had more depth in his abilities, and more guts,” Hague noted. Armed with a blistering slap shot that could lift the puck off the ice, Subban initially played forward before being converted into a defenseman by his father, who felt he would thrive in the less flashy and often overlooked position. Commonly referred to as “blueliners” in reference to their lining up and playing near the blue line on the ice rink that indicates the boundary of the offensive zone, defensemen are primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from taking shots on their goal. Unlike traditional defensemen, Subban worked to cultivate an aggressive, offensive style of defense that would complement his elite skating and puck-handling abilities, one that not only allowed him to block shots and prevent goals on the back end but also contribute on offense.

In 2004, at age fifteen, Subban began playing for the Markham Islanders in the Greater Toronto Hockey League, where he met and befriended the future NHL star John Tavares. In sixty-seven games with the Islanders, he recorded fifteen goals and twenty-eight assists. Subban’s journey toward becoming a professional hockey player accelerated in 2005, when he was drafted in the sixth round of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) draft by the Belleville Bulls. The OHL is a major junior league in Canada for players aged fifteen to twenty and one of three that make up the Canadian Hockey League, the world’s largest development hockey league.

After being drafted Subban left home and relocated to the Bulls’ home base in Belleville, a city in southeastern Ontario, so he could train and practice with the team on a full-time basis. He attended Quinte Secondary School and resided with a Belleville city employee, Amy McMillan, who took on the role of surrogate mother. Because he was a sixth-round pick, Subban, who at the time was regarded as nothing more than a raw talent, arrived in Belleville with little fanfare. Nevertheless, he immediately impressed the Bulls’ head coach and general manager, George Burnett, with his strong desire to play, work ethic, and confidence, which presented itself on the day of his draft, when he declared he would make the team as a rookie. Determined to make good on that brash declaration, Subban spent the summer of 2005 overhauling his diet and adding muscle to his frame through an intensive training regimen. His hard work paid off, as he earned a Bulls roster spot after proving himself in his first training camp with the team. “He took advantage of an opportunity and we were happy to provide it,” Burnett told Stu Cowan for the Montreal Gazette (10 Jan. 2014). “He ran with it.”

During the 2005–6 season Subban tallied five goals and seven assists in fifty-two games. He made significant improvement the following season, when he was paired with veteran defenseman Geoff Killing. He amassed fifteen goals and forty-one assists in sixty-eight games. One month after he turned eighteen, Subban entered the 2007 NHL Entry Draft. Despite initially being projected to be a middle-round pick, he was selected by the Montreal Canadiens in the draft’s second round, as the forty-third overall pick. In an interview with Luke Fox for the Canadian website Sportsnet (6 Sept. 2012), Subban called his drafting “the most special day of [his] life.” In his conversation with Cowan, George Burnett said that it was Subban’s fierce competitiveness that ultimately helped him move up in the draft. “That competitiveness is something that I think a lot of people underestimate . . . how hard he is to play against and how much pride he takes in winning the battles.”

Subban remained with the Bulls for two more seasons, after which he signed for three years (and $2.6 million) with the Canadiens, commonly referred to as the Habs, short for Les Habitants, the name given to the original French settlers of Quebec. During the 2007–8 season he posted forty-six points (eight goals and thirty-eight assists) in fifty-eight games, leading the Bulls to a runner-up finish in the 2008 J. Ross Robertson Cup. Then, in 2008–9, he recorded a junior career high: seventy-six points in only fifty-six games. Subban was also a two-time member of Canada’s junior national team, winning consecutive gold medals at the 2008 and 2009 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.

Subban was assigned to the Hamilton Bulldogs, the Canadiens’ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, to begin the 2009–10 season. He displayed his all-around talent in his first professional season and was selected to play in the 2010 AHL All- Star Game in Portland, Maine. A few weeks after that game, on February 11, 2010, Subban earned his first call-up to the Canadiens. The following day he made his NHL debut in a game against the Philadelphia Flyers, in which he registered his first career point on an assist. Subban went on to appear in one more game for the Canadiens before returning to the Bulldogs.

Subban first made his presence felt around the league during the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs, when he was recalled to the Canadiens for their first-round matchup against the Washington Capitals. He notched his first career playoff point on an assist in his NHL postseason debut and added seven more points (one goal and six assists) in thirteen other playoff appearances with the Canadiens, who advanced to the Eastern Conference finals. Subban’s performance was key in the Canadiens’ playoff run, and his hard-nosed and exciting style of play immediately won over the team’s rabid fan base.

Subban returned to the Bulldogs after the Canadiens’ playoff exit and played for them in the 2010 Calder Cup playoffs, helping them reach the Western Conference finals. For his achievements with the team during the 2009–10 season, Subban was honored with the AHL’s President Trophy.

The Emerging Champion

Subban earned a permanent spot on the Canadiens’ roster in 2010–11, his first full season in the league. He entered that season as a top contender for the Calder Memorial Trophy, bestowed annually to the NHL’s Rookie of the Year. However, his patented “brashness” and “all-out persona,” as Charlie Gillis noted for Maclean’s (22 May 2014), quickly made him a lightning rod for controversy.

Just months into his rookie season, Subban became more known for his trash talking and showboating than for his performance on the ice. Around this time Michael Farber, writing for Sports Illustrated (20 Dec. 2010), described Subban as “a one-man on-ice filibuster” who “harangues opponents with a playground you-can’t-beat-me braggadocio.” Subban’s unpredictable and risk-taking nature led Canadiens head coach Jacques Martin to bench him for three games in December 2010, following a dismal fifteen-game stretch in which he recorded only one goal and two assists. Nevertheless, he bounced back to put up solid overall numbers as a rookie, tallying thirty-eight points (a career-high fourteen goals and twenty-four assists) in seventy-seven games.

In January 2011 Subban was among a select group of rookies chosen to participate in that year’s NHL All-Star Game festivities in Raleigh, North Carolina. The highlight of Subban’s rookie campaign, however, came on March 20, 2011, when he recorded a hat trick (at least three goals in a single game) in an 8–1 Canadiens victory over the Minnesota Wild. He became the first rookie defenseman in team history to accomplish such a feat. For his regular-season performance, he was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team, becoming only the second Canadiens defenseman ever to receive the honor (after Chris Chelios in 1984–85). The Canadiens, meanwhile, finished second in the Northeast Division with a record of 44–30–8. In the first round of the playoffs, the Canadiens lost to the eventual 2011 Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins in a hard-fought seven games.

High expectations surrounded Subban and the Canadiens in 2011–12, but the team grossly underperformed. Two months into the season, after leading the team to a subpar 13–12–7 record, Jacques Martin was replaced by interim coach Randy Cunneyworth. The former assistant coach did not fare much better, and the Canadiens finished last in both their division and conference with a 31–35–16 record. Subban again put up impressive numbers, notching seven goals and twenty-nine assists in eighty-one games, but was ultimately disappointed with the team’s results. “I learned right away that momentum is not carried season-to-season,” he told Fox. “It’s built from Game 1 to Game 82—not individually but as a team.”

After the 2011–12 season Subban became a restricted free agent. Afterward he and his agent, Don Meehan, engaged in a lengthy contract dispute with the Canadiens that held him out of training camp and the first four games of the 2012–13 season, which was shortened to forty-eight games due to a lockout. Despite being perceived by fans and teammates as greedy and selfish, Subban, who ultimately agreed to a two-year, $5.7 million deal, silenced many of his detractors in his return by establishing himself as arguably the best defenseman in the league. In only forty-two games he led all NHL defensemen in points (thirty-eight) and finished second and third among league blueliners, respectively, in goals (eleven) and assists (twenty-seven). He earned his first selection to an NHL All-Star Team and won that year’s James Norris Memorial Trophy, recognizing the league’s best defenseman.

Thanks to Subban’s stellar play, the Canadiens, under new head coach Michel Therrien, had an impressive bounce-back season, winning the Northeast Division with a 29–14–5 record. Though the Canadiens lost to the seventh-seeded Ottawa Senators, four games to one, in the first round of the playoffs, the season was regarded as a success.

During the 2013–14 season Subban finished second on the Canadiens and fifth among NHL defensemen with fifty-three points (ten goals and a career-high forty-three assists) in eighty-two games, which tied for the league lead. In February 2014 Subban traveled to Sochi, Russia, to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics, as a member of Team Canada. Despite not receiving any playing time in the six games Canada played, he won a gold medal after Canada defeated Sweden, 3–0, in the final.

Once NHL play resumed Subban helped lead the Canadiens to a third-place finish in the newly formed Atlantic Division with a record of 46–28–8. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Canadiens swept the Tampa Bay Lightning and upset the top-seeded Bruins, respectively, before facing the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals. They lost to the Rangers in six games. Subban led all Canadiens with fourteen points (five goals and nine assists) in seventeen postseason games. In August 2014 the Canadiens expressed their faith in Subban by signing him to an eight-year contract extension worth $72 million. The deal makes him the highest-paid defenseman in the NHL and the league’s third highest–paid player.

Continuing the Story

Despite being one of the Canadiens’ most popular players, Subban is arguably the most polarizing figure in the NHL, so much so that he was named the league’s most hated player in an article by Sports Illustrated in 2013. Subban has been known to pose as an archer after scoring goals, share triple low-five handshakes with teammates after victories, and refer to himself as the Subbanator, antics that some NHL players, coaches, analysts, and pundits have interpreted as being disrespectful to the game and its traditions. Other hockey observers, however, have embraced Subban as a breath of fresh air in a conservative sport. In an interview with Joe O’Connor for the National Post (11 Apr. 2014), Canadian senator and former Canadiens coach Jacques Demers described Subban as “the kind of player you want to pay to see . . . he is good for the game.”

Subban’s younger brothers, Malcolm and Jordan, have also been drafted into the NHL. Malcolm is a goaltender in the Boston Bruins’ system, and Jordan is a defenseman in the Vancouver Canucks’ organization. “All three of us playing in the NHL is a product of us working hard,” Subban explained to Luke Fox. “It’s work ethic.” Subban owns a condominium in downtown Toronto. He spends much of the offseason training and spending time with his family.

Additional Sources