published on June 30, 2024 in today

Blues forward Dakota Joshuas path to the NHL started with Moms love of the game: She was my

The name of the team was the Michigan Polar Bears. The player they went to watch was the team’s center.

Her name was Jullee Joshua.

The games they played in the Metro Senior Women’s Hockey League (MSWHL) were late at night, like 8 or 9 o’clock. The 50-year-old lady looks back now and laughs about how she had to keep her sons — Dakota, Jagger and Bishop — from running wild at the University of Michigan-Dearborn rink.

“I had to bring them with me, and I was like, ‘What am I going to do because they can’t come on the bench with me?’” Jullee says. “I don’t know what made me think of it, but I just took a skate lace and I looped them all through their belt loops. I mean, I gave them a little slack. I didn’t tie them together. I figured nobody is going to be kidnapping all three of them. They’d be bringing them back!”

That was some 15 years ago, and Blues forward Dakota Joshua still chuckles at the memory.

“Yeah, sitting by ourselves, cheering for her,” he says. “As I got older, I can remember maybe working the door on the bench. But it’s been a long time since I wanted to go back to those games.”

St. Louis has seen several young players make it to the NHL following in their father’s footsteps: Matthew and Brady Tkachuk (Keith), Paul Stastny (Peter), Philip McRae (Basil) and Logan Brown (Jeff) to name a few. But with Joshua, he’s following in his mother’s size 6 GRAF skates — half the size of her oldest son.

“I would say that she was my introduction,” Joshua says. “I don’t think that I would have played hockey if my mom didn’t play. I like other sports, too. I played basketball until my sophomore year in high school. But I can say for sure that I wouldn’t have been a hockey player if it wasn’t for her.”

Neither would his younger brothers, Jagger, 22, a left winger at Michigan State University who will be a junior for the Spartans this season, or Bishop, 20.

“That’s 100 percent true,” Jagger Joshua says. “Without a doubt, we would not be playing hockey if it wasn’t for her.”

Their mother hasn’t stopped playing competitively herself. She hasn’t retired the skates that she got married in — “under my dress, nobody knew, I walked down the aisle and everybody assumed they were high heels.” But she’s now more than willing to put the focus on her son, Dakota, who is in Blues training camp this season with a legitimate chance to make the roster.

“It’s so crazy to me,” she says.

How did Jullee get hooked on hockey?

“That’s a good question,” Dakota says.

He doesn’t know the answer, though, so Jullee has to provide it. Her biological father was from Massachusetts and coached his three boys: Jullee’s brother and two stepbrothers. She wanted to play, too, but her mother said “no way,” and got her into figure skating at 8 years old. She reluctantly went along with it, but every week her attention would turn to the hockey practice at the other end of the rink. Her figure skating coach noticed that and eventually agreed that once she finished her drills, she could join the hockey practice.

“Finally they said, ‘She’d make a better hockey player,’ so they finally let me start playing,” she says.

Over the years, Jullee has played in men’s leagues, co-ed leagues and women’s leagues with the Michigan Polar Bears and the New Jersey Quarry. And with her passion for the sport, it was obvious when she had her first son in 1996 that she would get him involved at a young age.

Joshua was standing on his own set of blades at 18 months.

“I was like, ‘If he can walk, he can skate,’” she says.

Dakota Joshua wears his mom’s helmet during his early hockey days. (Photo courtesy of the Joshua family)

Dakota was never, as his mom describes it, “a normal kid.” He didn’t watch cartoons or play with Army figurines. He always had a ball or stick in his hand, and as he grew older, he was usually tuned into ESPN.

At age 10, Dakota began playing AAA hockey in the Michigan area with Honeybaked, Victory Honda and Little Caesars.

The day of his tryout with Victory Honda, his mom was tightening his laces when the father of another player assumed the dynamics incorrectly.

“He came up to me and said, ‘Hey little lady, let me get that for you,’” Jullee remembers. “I looked at him and said, ‘That’s OK.’ Then he asked Dakota, ‘You want me to tighten those up for you?’ And Dakota said, ‘No, my mom can get it!’”

But after a few years, with three sons playing and now divorced from her husband, Jullee did need some assistance. She was working many hours and couldn’t get them all to all of their practices. The boys’ grandparents — Jullee’s stepdad, Gerry Pitts, and her mom, Lucy — lived just a couple of miles away and were always available.

In fact, they would rollerblade to grandpa and grandma’s house, where there’d be a ham and cheese sandwich waiting.

“We knew that we were getting lunch at grandma’s, for sure,” Joshua says.

Afterward, they would play hockey on the 10-by-15-foot concrete pad in the backyard, shooting a rubber ball off a garage that had a dent on every square inch. They’d play for hours, well into the night, which one time angered the lady who lived next door. She called the police.

“She said the scraping of the sticks was too loud,” Jagger says. “I remember the cops coming, and they were just looking at her like she was crazy. They said, ‘Just let her win tonight and go inside.’ It’s not that we didn’t want to listen, but we wanted to keep playing. So after (the officers left), we went outside for about another hour, but with no sticks, just rollerblading around.”

The grandparents took them to many practices and games, but on some occasions, Jullee dropped Dakota off at his coach’s daytime employer, Osburn Trucking, which happened to be near the family’s house.

“That’s how I was able to start playing AAA,” Joshua says. “I would get dropped off at his work, and he would take me.”

The Joshua boys were regulars at their mom’s hockey practices and games. Here is Bishop, left, and Jagger. (Photo courtesy of the Joshua family)

Joshua was always one of the better players on his AAA clubs, and in 2012 was drafted by Sioux Falls (S.D.) of the United States Hockey League (USHL). He was also selected by Plymouth (Mich.) of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) but stayed in the USHL, and the path led to him being taken by Toronto in the fifth round of the 2014 NHL Draft.

He wasn’t even invited to the NHL combine. He interviewed with a dozen or so teams but had no idea if he’d get drafted. Then the Maple Leafs, a rival team of the hometown Red Wings, made the Detroit-area kid the No. 128 pick.

“A lot of jokes with the family and friends,” Joshua says. “It was a good situation to be in and just cool to be drafted by an Original Six team. You would like to think they know what they’re doing, and it was a good confidence (boost) for me to have at that age.”

The 6-foot-2, 200-pound forward was committed to the Ohio State University. He went there with high expectations but was dealing with an injury that carried over from the USHL and was now going against bigger and stronger competition. He had just five goals in 29 games as a freshman but pushed through with help from OSU coach Steve Rohlik.

“Coach Rohlik played a really important role in my development, always pushing me to be better, seeing what was ahead of me, even though I didn’t see it at the moment,” Joshua says. “There was a time or two where he pulled me aside, telling me how important it was to practice and compete every day.”

Admittedly, Joshua had difficulties with school. He was assigned a staff member at OSU, who routinely checked up on him to make sure his work was being done and that he remained eligible to play hockey.

It was while taking classes for a degree in Sports Industry that it clicked. Some students were learning about the laws of sports business, some were aspiring agents and some were interested in the marketing side.

“There came a point where you need to take hockey seriously or you’re going to be selling the tickets instead of playing,” Joshua says. “There was a realization of: It’s either one or the other.”

In his last three seasons at OSU, Joshua had 35 goals and 83 points in 99 games, and as a junior in 2017-18, he helped the Buckeyes advance to the NCAA Frozen Four.

“It was a special run, given that the school wasn’t known for hockey,” he says.

At one point during Joshua’s postseason travels, a few of Jullee’s teammates with the New Jersey Quarry met up with him on the road. Those players, who had won a couple of titles themselves in women’s hockey, made a sign that read: “Hey Dakota, Don’t let your mom be the only Joshua with a national championship. Bring it home!”

Joshua poses with his mom’s teammates at an Ohio State University game. (Photo courtesy of the Joshua family)

While at OSU, Joshua attended three development camps with Toronto, but he never signed a contract. It was tough trying to break in with the Maple Leafs because of the abundance of good young prospects in the organization, most notably William Nylander (drafted in 2014), Mitch Marner (2015) and Auston Matthews (2016).

“Nylander was my draft year, so I was just trying to do my best and make sure I wasn’t sticking out for bad reasons,” Joshua says. “I was there for Marner and Matthews the following year, and seeing those guys, they’re obviously very talented. I wasn’t comparing myself to them. I put myself in a different class and knew that that was not going to be my way to the NHL. But it was definitely cool to compete and know that I was right there. It’s not like they were skating circles around me.”

Joshua was set to become a free agent, but the Blues had interest in him. Keith Tkachuk, who became an NCAA scout for the organization after his playing days, took a liking to the big forward and recommended the club get him.

So on July 12, 2019, the Blues acquired Joshua in a trade with Toronto for future considerations. He had to approve the trade, in that, if he didn’t want to sign in St. Louis, he could have just become a free agent.

“It was nice to know that they wanted me and I had a place to go,” he says.

Joshua’s first stop with the Blues was the NHL prospects tournament in Traverse City, Mich., in 2019, which Tkachuk attended with the team’s brass.

“I knew that (Tkachuk) was the one that stuck his neck out for me, so I just gave him a ‘Thank you!’” he says.

In 2019-20, the first-year pro was assigned to two of the Blues’ minor-league affiliates, including a demotion to Tulsa of the ECHL. He was eventually recalled to San Antonio of the AHL, and between the stops, he had just six goals and 18 points in 50 games.

“Kind of a rough start to start pro when I got sent down to the (ECHL),” Joshua says. “That was a big adjustment period in my career, kind of a low point. It happens. You can still make it, but when you’re down there, the NHL seems really far away.”

Joshua wasn’t even invited to the Blues’ main training camp for the 2020-21 season. Instead, with the Blues’ new AHL affiliate in Springfield shut down for the season due to COVID-19, he was assigned to Utica, where he might have been sixth or seventh on the organization’s depth chart center.

However, the Blues went through a rash of injuries, and Joshua was called up in February. He made his NHL debut on March 1 in Anaheim and scored a goal that went in off his pants in a 5-4 victory over the Ducks. After the game, he posed for a picture with the puck, which had tape wrapped around the outside with, “Hi Mom!!” written on it.

Dakota Joshua scored his first NHL goal in his debut. (Photo courtesy of the Joshua family)

A couple of weeks later against Vegas, Joshua showed a physical side, laying a hefty hit on former Blues tough guy Ryan Reaves, which led to a fight against Golden Knights forward Keegan Kolesar.

Dakota’s brother Jagger was on the road with Michigan State and didn’t see it live. A teammate sent him a video replay of the hit on Instagram, which he watched on his cell phone.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, no way! There’s absolutely no chance that’s Dakota,'” Jagger says. “My eyes went through my phone. I could not believe it. But then, selfishly, I was thinking to myself, ‘Reaves can’t be that big if Dakota is hitting him … because I know how strong Dakota is, and he’s not … like me and my brother wrestle around.

“But it was cool to see. I remember showing up to breakfast the next morning, and that was the buzz around the room. Oh my God. Your brother hit up Reaves. It seemed like St. Louis loved it, too!”

Ah, the brotherly love.

But back to the motherly love.

Last season, Jullee and a longtime friend both traveled to St. Louis to watch their sons play hockey — Dakota with the Blues and her friend’s son with his Division III team.

“It’s a girl I’ve been playing with since I was 7 years old,” Jullee says. “Dakota said to me: ‘I’m going to have practice in the morning.’ I said, ‘Perfect because we brought our equipment.’ I kept saying we were going to skate with them, and he was like, ‘Mom, I really don’t think you’re funny.’”

Joshua jokes that she likes to take a lot of credit for his career.

“He knows I taught him how to skate,” Jullee says. “I tell him all the time, ‘I taught you that.’”

It’s a career that could lead Joshua from the Polar Bears to playing in front of another polar bear, Louie, in St. Louis.

“Dakota got an opportunity last year and he did a good job,” Blues coach Craig Berube says. “He came in and showed us something, and he’s going to do the same thing in (training) camp. He’s a confident guy in my opinion. He knows that he’s a good player and, in my opinion, he’s going to go out and prove in these exhibition games that he belongs here.”

(Photo: Keith Gillett / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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