GLOBETROTTER: MASON MCTAVISH ADDS TO TRAVELS WITH TRIP TO BEIJING

He first heard he was being considered for the Olympic hockey team during the world junior championship last month when he got a call from Hockey Canada telling him he was on the long list.

“They just kind of said, ‘Don’t really think too much about it,’ ” former Peterborough Petes centre Mason McTavish says.

Sure. No problem. It’s only the biggest tournament in the world and there’s a chance you could be part of it, but don’t give it much thought. Right.

Except, he didn’t.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it was a possibility I could even go,” he says.

That actually makes sense and it’s not false modesty. For years now, this event has been filled with the very best players in the world. Wayne Gretzky played under the rings. Same with Mario Lemieux and Joe Sakic, Sidney Crosby, Dominik Hasek, Peter Forsberg, Nik Lidstrom and on and on and on. He may be one of them someday, but considering he doesn’t turn 19 until Sunday and has a grand total of nine NHL games to his credit, he wasn’t expecting that day to arrive yet.

However, when the NHL announced its players wouldn’t be going this time, the doors were opened for some others. Suddenly, Team Canada’s brass was going to have to get creative. So, he kept his fingers crossed but that was about it. No sense spending energy contemplating something that’s a little too implausible even for a budding star.

Here’s the thing, though. If anyone knows implausible, it’s him. And his travel agent. McTavish’s past 12 months haven’t just been implausible, they’ve been ludicrous.

Last February while the OHL was paused for COVID-19, he joined a pro team in Switzerland and lived with the CEO of the franchise. Once that was done, he joined Canada’s under-18 world championship team in Dallas where he lived in a hotel followed by a month living in a hotel in Anaheim — and then a short time in a house with a teammate — while playing for the NHL’s Ducks.

From there, it was to San Diego where he joined the AHL’s Gulls and lived in a hotel, back to Anaheim and another hotel, to Peterborough and his billets for a few weeks and then off to the world juniors in Alberta for another month. This time in two hotels.

When that ended, he returned to Peterborough and his billets before being traded to Hamilton where he got new billets. Maybe even some stability.

Until a couple days ago, that is, when he got another call from the Hockey Canada folks. This one telling him he’s going to Beijing.

“It was definitely a call you’d never really even dream of getting,” he says. “The Olympics. It sounds crazy.”

He’ll join a roster filled with NHL veterans like Eric Staal, other juniors like Owen Power and a bunch of longtime pros most Canadians really won’t know much about. Not yet. But, they will.

Bulldogs’ president and GM Steve Staios knew McTavish was in the Olympic mix when he traded for him. That wasn’t a deterrent. The kid is so good (if that wasn’t clear before now, becoming a teenage Olympian should announce it rather clearly) that the gamble and the handful of missed games in black and gold is worth it.

Of course, letting a star player go to an international tournament always opens the door to the possibility of an injury. Staios saw that up close a couple years ago when Bulldog Jan Jenik suffered a seasonending knee injury at the world juniors.

Even factoring the possibility of a positive COVID test that could delay his return by a bit, McTavish would still be back in Hamilton for the stretch drive of the season and the playoffs. So it was worth it.

The goal now?

Pretty simple, McTavish says. Win gold in Beijing, win an OHL championship here and win a Memorial Cup in Saint John, N.B.

And then after playing for eight teams in less than a year, maybe stop moving around for a few months.

“It’ll be great for me to hang out in one spot and not be flying around the globe,” he says. “It’ll be nice when I’m settled back in Hamilton for sure.”