Healthy Nazar Finding His Groove : College Hockey News

November 13, 2023
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Michigan First Rounder Producing Again After Difficult Year

by Chris Murphy/CHN Reporter

The streets of Detroit paved the way to the ice for Frank Nazar. 

Before the University of Michigan center was born, his father owned a parking garage in downtown Detroit, where Red Wings fans would park for games. Interacting with them, finding out how the team did each night, got his father hooked on hockey. 

About 20 miles from downtown Detroit, at their Mount Clemens home, years after that parking garage was sold, a 5-year-old Nazar sat down to watch a Wings game with his dad. His dad asked him if it looked fun. Nazar said it did. 

So began a journey that, in July of 2022, had Nazar on stage at the Bell Centre in Montreal as the 13th overall pick of the Chicago Blackhawks.

“Hockey is like a drug, an addiction,” Nazar, 19, said. “You need it every day. It’s not something I could ever quit. I don’t think that’s even an option.”

Nazar remembers his first day in the Learn to Skate program when he was 5. His friends were falling over on the ice, making snow angels, while he was skating circles in the offensive zone. After that first session, an instructor pulled his mom aside and asked why he was in the program. 

Nazar stood out from the beginning. 

Michigan coach Brandon Naurato saw it when he skated with Nazar in the summers in his youth hockey days with HoneyBaked Hockey Club.

Those were the days when Nazar would wake up at 7 a.m. to get fully dressed in his gear for 9 a.m. games. In the car, he’d make bets with his dad on how many goals he’d score.

“Unbelievable motor,” Naurato said. “The kid is a rink rat, loves the game and is always smiling when he’s playing hockey.”

The smiles weren’t there this time last year. Nazar had been playing through pain with the U.S. Under-18 Team, even though he finished with 28 goals and 42 assists in 56 games. When he got to Michigan, something was off. So a few months after being drafted by the Blackhawks and entering Michigan as one of the top freshmen in the country, Nazar elected to have hip surgery. It looked as though that decision would cost him a season. 

“I was thinking long term, not a short run,” Nazar said. “If you just let it sit, it won’t get better. Surgery meant fixing it, but a lot of work to get back to where I was.”

The four months he was out was the longest he’d gone without…