The Rookies: A Home Away From Home

Moving away from home for most Junior hockey players means living with a billet family. For those who don’t know, hockey billet families are local families who open their doors to out of town players, housing them, feeding them, helping them with homework, and making sure they’re ready to perform on the ice.

Wallaceburg’s Brady Pataki and Chatham’s Joseph Raaymakers, who both moved several hours from home this season to play in the OHL with the Sudbury Wolves, and Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds respectively, are both living with billets, and have both found a home away from home.

“I live with a young couple with no kids and two dog,s really nice people, Dorothy and Emerson,” explains Brady Pataki of his billets in Sudbury.

“I can pretty much talk to them about anything, but If I need any serious help I can go to the team,” he continued.

Raaymakers moved into more of a family environment, with his billet family in Sault Ste. Marie.

“My billet family has a 4 year old boy named Quinn, another 10 year old boy named Riley, and a 13 year old girl named Cora,” explained Raaymakers of his billet parents Sharleen and Darcy.

“I’m really grateful to have billets like mine, because we’re so close and they do a lot for me. Like Brady, I can be open with them and talk to them about anything.”

Many 16-year-old hockey players would find leaving home a struggle, but billets are there to soften that transition, which is why OHL teams continue to be very selective of the people and families they choose to house their players with. Due to that diligence, both Raaymakers and Pataki have had seamless transitions from their blood families, to their billet families.

“It wasn’t to hard to change,” says Brady Pataki of moving from his house in Wallaceburg to Sudbury. “They only thing is I have to grow up a little faster because I am expected to do things without help. I can make myself at home here and I feel comfortable,” added Pataki, who lives on a lake outside Sudbury.

“It was a pretty easy transition for me moving into a new home because they were very welcoming and made it very easy for me to feel comfortable. They definitely made me feel part of their family and I enjoy that a lot,” added Joseph Raaymakers.

While moving in with hockey billet families may be stressful, or even a scary proposition for some teen hockey players, Raaymakers and Pataki, who are now over a month into their first OHL campaigns, have truly found, what Pataki calls, a “second home.”

“These people are really nice it’s like a second home to me.”

“The Rookies” will be a season long feature following 16-year-olds Joseph Raaymakers and Brady Pataki as they enter the Ontario Hockey League. The Rookies will chronicle what it’s like to be an OHL rookie hours away from home, for two Chatham-Kent hockey players. We’ll follow all aspects of Raaymakers and Pataki’s lives, both on and off the ice, throughout their rookie seasons. Chatham’s Raaymakers, a goaltender plays for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, while Wallaceburg’s Pataki, a forward, plays for the Sudbury Wolves.