AVON — At 3 o’clock Thursday, six hours after the Stanley Cup arrived and nine hours before he would need to relinquish it, Nick Bonino lifted his 7-month-old daughter Maisie over his head and sat her inside the most famous trophy in sports.
Nestled over the names of Brian Leetch, Jonathan Quick and her own daddy, Maisie, already a social media star, fit perfectly in the silver bowl.
“I only have two words to describe this,” Nick’s dad, Steve, said. “Surreal and wow! Especially when we walked in and saw this.”
When it was announced that Bonino, one of the stars of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ playoff run to their fourth Stanley Cup, would pose for photographs for two hours at his alma mater, Avon Old Farms School, his wife, Lauren, said they were thinking maybe 1,000 people would show.
What the family saw was a line that snaked all around the Brown Student Center out through the entrance and into the warm humid afternoon. What they saw was a crowd that the fire marshal estimated to be close 5,000.
“An incredible turnout,” Lauren said. “Nick loves this school. It’s amazing how many people are here to support him.”
“Very humbling,” Nick said.
At one point Nick was asked if he could have imagined a day like this 10 years ago, back when he played for the legendary John Gardner at Avon Old Farms.
“I dreamt of it,” he said. “It’s tough to think of it as reality.”
As the Penguins grew hotter over the course of last season, as reality peeked out from his dreams, Nick allowed himself to think about the Stanley Cup. From Farmington High, to Avon Old Farms, to a national title at Boston University, to an NHL career with the Ducks, the Canucks and a 2015 summer trade to Pittsburgh that had shocked him, yes, reality was growing nearer. As much as he didn’t want to jinx the magical spring, Bonino turned to Lauren in the kitchen of their Pittsburgh rental home during the Eastern Conference finals against Tampa.
“Hey, this is what I want to do if we win the Cup,'” Nick told Lauren.
The two met the first day of class at BU. Lauren had missed orientation. She didn’t know where to go, so Nick walked her to class. They started talking, Lauren said, and they never stopped. Nick wasn’t the only one to play ice hockey at BU. So did Lauren. She knows how the puck bounces and she knows not to tempt the hockey gods with premature talk of championship celebrations.
“She’s like, ‘Don’t do that right now. Win it first,'” Nick said. “But everything is playing out like I hoped it would.”
Nick got the Cup at TPC River Highlands. He had the idea he could play nine holes. They got in a couple of holes.
“I took like four shots, took pictures and we took it to my dad’s work … in Hartford,” he said. “It was nice to share it with his co-workers.”
They took the Cup to his parents’ house in Unionville where in Unionville grew up. And from there he ate pasta out of the Stanley Cup with his grandparents. There are so many grand stories about what players have done with the Stanley Cup over the years. Some are crazy. Some are ribald. Some are touching. This one is touching.
“Nick would say, ‘If we ever win the Stanley Cup, we’re eating pasta out of it,” Nick’s mom, Joanne, said.
“His grandparents are probably Nick’s biggest fans,” Lauren said. “Poppa calls Nick before every single game. He leaves him a voicemail.”
Joanne’s dad, Jim Orsini, is 93. Her mom, Nina, is 90. Nina broke her hip and is doing well in rehab, so the feast would have to go to her. Nick cooked the pasta, Joanne said. Tuna fish with angel hair, Steve said. Yes, Lauren said, it is Nana’s secret tuna fish pasta.
They brought it to The Reservoir in West Hartford. Mr. and Mrs. Orsini: Dinner for two, compliments of Lord Stanley.
“I think that’s the one memory I will cherish the most,” Bonino said. “My Nana and Poppa kissing the Cup and eating pasta out of it is something I will never forget.”
Is it any wonder Nana teared up?
“All this is wonderful,” Joanne said, “but when I saw that …”
Joanne, a speech therapist at Stafford School in Bristol, tells this great story about Nick back when he played at Farmington High. He was stopped on two breakaways in overtime of a state semifinal loss to Hand-Madison. Nick didn’t talk for a week. A whole week!
“He’d be sitting there on the couch, his hands moving, replaying it in his mind,” Joanne said. “I’d go to say something and he’d give me that look.”
Not yet mom. That’s how much he burned to succeed. The next year, he scored in double overtime to lead Farmington to the state title. Then he’d lead Avon Old Farms to one of Gardner’s eight New England Division 1 championships.
Gardner likes to talk about the first time he saw Nick skate at Farmington. “Horrible!” Gardner said. Great hands. Great vision. Awful skater. Stiff-legged. Slow. He breaks into a laugh now when people tell him what a nice skater he is. The story has a moral. It’s a tribute to how hard he worked on his legs, worked on his skating to become a Stanley Cup champion.
During his four-decade career, Gardner coached Leetch. Gardner coached Quick. Think about it. Two of the four Americans to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP are Connecticut kids who went to Avon Old Farms. And now here was Nick Bonino bringing the Stanley Cup to the school for the first time.
“I didn’t make it to Quickie’s Stanley Cup party [in Greenwich in 2014],” Nick said, referring to Jonathan Quick. “He sent an invite, but it’s a little different when you haven’t won it. You don’t know if you really want to be around it. Brian Leetch, Jonathan Quick, it’s an honor to be included in that company.”
From high school to the BU national championship game to the NHL, Nick has scored a number of huge goals. Yet it was this spring when he scored the overtime series winner against the Capitals and again with a Game 1 Finals winner when announcers on CBC’s Hockey Night Punjabi made his name irresistible. “Bonino! Bonino! Bonino!” He can’t go anywhere without somebody screaming it.
“Nick is such a great kid,” Gardner said. “Really classy. Today is so much fun. I really wanted to do this outside. Our Village Green is such a beautiful venue, but the heat index is over 100. People would be dropping like flies.”
So there was Nick Bonino smiling, posing for photos for two hours inside Avon Old Farms School; and then he left for the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center — he asked those at Avon Old Farms to make a donation.
“Having a child and doing visits to children’s hospitals with the Penguins, Canucks and Ducks, it’s eye-opening,” he said. “It changes the way you look at life. Those kids in there haven’t had the best fortune but you wouldn’t know it by their demeanor.
“I partnered with Uber today. They drove me around and donated $4,000 in our name.”
A few hours later, there he was posing again with Lauren, and yes, Maisie was back in the Cup along with a $10,000 check for the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.
From the hospital, the Cup — washed clean of pasta — was heading to a get-together with friends and family.
There would be one more moment before Nick relinquished it: a visit with South Windsor sixth-grader Brian Azinheira. In May, Nick hosted Brian in Pittsburgh for Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals before Brian underwent surgery to have a cancerous tumor removed from his arm. Both the Penguins and Capitals took care of Brian with what Nick said was “a lot of sticks and a lot of love.”
“I’ll see Brian later tonight,” he said. “He’ll have a chance to kiss and hug the Cup.”
By that time, he would have a day of memories to last a lifetime.
“This is incredible, like a wedding,” Nick’s dad, Steve, said. “We’re going to have to look at the pictures afterward to remember it all.”
