On Saturday, as Arshdeep Bains strapped up to make his home debut for the Vancouvers Canucks against the Boston Bruins at the Rogers Arena, he pasted stickers of ‘Bibi’ and ‘Baba’ on his hockey sticks paying respect to his grandmother Guran Kaur Bains and late grandfather Kewal Singh Bains.
His father, Kuldip Bains, still remembers the time when he would take his three sons, including his youngest, Arshdeep, to the Canada Hockey Place by the Skytrain from Surrey to Vancouver to watch the Canadian Ice Hockey team’s winning campaign in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Now, Kuldip and his family are harbouring Olympic dreams for one of their own.
“Arshdeep made a visit to our home to meet his grandmother and show her his team jersey before Saturday’s game. Earlier, when he made a lap of the rink before his debut at Colorado as per the rookie tradition, I recorded the moments and showed it to the family later. We all cried that night and we hope to see him in the Canadian jersey in the Winter Olympics one day,” Kuldip tells The Indian Express from Surrey.
Earlier that week, the 23-year-old left-winger made his National Hockey League (NHL) debut, becoming the fourth Indian-origin player after Robin Bawa, Manny Malhotra and Jujhar Khaira to do so. He recorded more than 12 minutes in each of the three games he has played so far.
“On Saturday afternoon, as the whole Bains family cheered for Arshdeep, it was a dream come true for all of us. They say here that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a professional ice hockey player. This game time of one hour was like a whole lifetime for all of us,” Kuldip says.
As a teenager, Kuldip Bains often featured in local football leagues near his village, Parsowal, in Hoshiarpur district in Punjab before the family immigrated to Canada in 1982. Bains would relocate to Surrey, where he would become a mechanical engineer and started his own workshop AK Diesel. It was in the area of Newton, Surrey that a young Arshdeep would accompany his elder brothers, Amrit and Harvir, who took up the sport only recreationally, to learn his first ice skating lessons.
While the family would relocate to Cloverdale in Surrey, Arshdeep would play in the Surrey Minor Hockey League at different age groups with coaches like Surrey Minor Hockey president Harb Bains. For the…
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