A two-time Calder Cup champion with the Hershey Bears, Joe Snively is focused on accomplishing the feat again, this time with the Griffins.

Story and photo by Mark Newman

        From a young age, Joe Snively had his sights set on hockey.

        Although he also played soccer and lacrosse growing up, he enjoyed playing hockey the most. As a boy living in the D.C. area, he was a fan of the Washington Capitals and dreamed of someday playing in the NHL for his hometown team.

        It seemed like he was destined to make a career out of the game he loved the most, but if not for a quirk of fate, Snively might never have realized his dream or even knew it was his dream in the first place.

        In 1958, Snively's grandfather was a textile executive at Burlington Industries in North Carolina when he was sent to the company's hosiery factory in Montreal, Quebec. What was supposed to be a temporary assignment became a permanent gig when the man who ran the plant had a heart attack.

        The Snively family patriarch settled in Canada with his wife and newborn son – Snively's father, Richard Jr. – which meant growing up in a suburb of Montreal in the 1960s and 1970s when Stanley Cup parades were almost an annual tradition.

        "He fell in love with hockey and brought it back [to the U.S.] with him and taught my brother and me," said Snively, whose earliest memories of playing hockey were at the ice rink in Ashburn, Virginia. "I remember going for a public skate with him a few times. And when we played, I remember he coached our house team, which was fun.

        "My love of hockey took off when I was about 7 or 8. I started really, really loving it. I played soccer, and lacrosse is very big on the East Coast, so I played lacrosse until I was about 15. I golfed a little bit when I was younger, too, and I wish I had played more because I play a lot of golf now.

        "My older brother played hockey, and I looked up to him. My dad was very involved in the youth hockey program in our area, so I was around rinks a lot growing up. My dad would take us to one or two Capitals games a year."

        His favorite player, however, was Martin St. Louis, the diminutive, dynamic all-star winger who built a Hall of Fame career as one of the Tampa Bay Lightning's first breakout stars before becoming the current head coach of the Montreal Canadiens.

        Listed at 5-foot-8, St. Louis is widely considered one of the best undrafted players ever. A two-time Olympian, he won a Stanley Cup with the Lightning in 2004, was a three-time winner of the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as the NHL's most gentlemanly player, and became the oldest player ever to lead the NHL in scoring when he won his second Art Ross Trophy at age 37.

        "He was always the smallest guy on the ice, and growing up, I was always one of the smaller players in every age group, so I looked up to him, for sure."

        Snively's parents were both optometrists in the D.C. area, and they saw that he had every opportunity to play.

       "Growing up, you always had to have good grades to play sports," he said. "If you weren't getting good grades, you weren't going to play sports or get to do other activities that were fun. That was instilled in me early.

        "My parents did a lot of driving to get me to practice or to get me to school, where I was carpooling with friends. Once I started having some success, playing hockey into high school, my goal and dream became to play college hockey."

        Already showing signs of becoming an elite player, he was good enough to join the local Washington Little Caps AAA organization. He decided to develop his talents further by heading to Connecticut for prep school following his first year of high school.

        He attended the Selects Hockey Academy at the South Kent School, a private, all-boys boarding school similar to Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Minnesota, where students split their day between classroom studies and sports education – namely, AAA hockey.

        "The idea of being able to walk five minutes and skate whenever I wanted at the rink on campus was appealing to me," he said. "That's when I started getting a lot of looks from Division I schools in the East, and I felt it was a great year for my development."

        Snively had already committed to play at Yale when he decided to head first to Sioux City, Iowa, in 2012 to play junior hockey in the USHL.

       "Harvard was the other Ivy League school that showed interest, along with a few hockey schools in the East like the University of New Hampshire, Providence, and others," he said. "I didn't look in the Midwest because I'm from the East Coast and really like New England."

        In 2011, when Snively was 15, Yale won the ECAC Hockey Championship for the second time in three seasons.

        "Yale was having a lot of success at the time," he recalled. "They were scoring a lot of goals, and they had two or three players who were 5-foot-9 and under and doing well – so good hockey, great education. It fit what I was looking for."

        Snively considered returning to South Kent for his junior year but ultimately headed off to see if he could play in the USHL.

        "I made the team out of camp as a 16-year-old, so I decided to stick there and challenge myself," he said. "My parents were super supportive, and I played there during my last two years of high school. I stayed one more year after that, just to play hockey and to grow into my body. I think the experience set me up for success in college."

        Snively excelled at Yale, leading the team in scoring during each of his four years at the school, where he majored in political science. The 2015-16 Bulldogs, his freshman team, went 19-9-4 overall behind the play of future Detroit Red Wings goalie Alex Lyon, a two-time winner of the Ken Dryden Award as the ECAC's best goalie.

       "Athletes at Yale were hard-working, down-to-earth people, for the most part," he said. "I also met a lot of people and had a lot of friends who weren't athletic, many from different backgrounds and different countries, so it was an overall great experience.

        "The big thing for me was that I needed to build strength. I hit the gym hard, which was big for my development because I was a little on the leaner side when I got to school. The ECAC has changed a lot over the last decade, and while there are fewer NHL draft picks than Hockey East or the NCHC, it was a hard league to play in."

        Upon graduation, Snively signed a free-agent contract with his hometown Capitals. He would spend most of the next six seasons with the AHL's Hershey Bears, getting rewarded with a pair of 12-game callups to Washington before a three-game stint last year.

       "Playing in the pros is a big jump from college," he said. "You're playing with the top players from Europe, Canada, and other colleges, so the pyramid of talent gets skinnier as you go up, and the hockey gets tougher as the amount of skill increases."

        Snively benefited from coaching at every level. In his second and third years in Sioux City, he improved his play under the direction of Musketeers head coach Jay Varady, now an assistant coach in Detroit on the staff of Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan.

        "We had great teams, and I liked how he broke down video," he said. "I started seeing systems within the game. I started to learn how the game was played, which was big for me at the time because it was new to me."

        Spencer Carberry, now in his second NHL season as Washington's head coach, was Snively's head coach for his first three years in Hershey.

        "He's a very intense coach who keeps you accountable," Snively said. "He communicated with you on what you're doing well and what you're not doing well. He is very direct, which I think helps a lot when you're young. Sometimes you don't know where you fit in or what your role will be, so he was very good at that."

        At the other end of the coaching spectrum, Snively has nothing but praise for Todd Nelson, the former Grand Rapids defenseman who coached the Griffins to their 2017 Calder Cup championship and has since added two more AHL titles to his resume with back-to-back championships in Hershey.

        "Nelly is awesome," he said. "He's one of a kind, very unique. Nelly's just a great coach, a great people-person who knows how to get the most out of his players. He knows everybody's different, knows how to approach people, and communicates very well with the team. There's a reason why he's won so much."

        Snively said that while Hershey's 2023 and 2024 title-winning teams were quite different, both shared a communal sense of purpose.

        "The first year we won, we were more of a gritty, hard-checking team, very defensive. We had great goaltending, timely scoring from all four lines, and we could wear teams down. That year was really special because it was the first time winning for many of us.

        "The following year we lost a few players with that sense of grit, so we were more skilled. We scored a lot more. We still had guys who played hard, but it was less up and down the lineup. We had a good power play and our scoring might have been a little more concentrated.

        "Both teams were extremely close off the ice, and I think that's partially due to Nelly, too. He is good at building the kind of culture that brings guys together."

        Hershey's two-time Calder Cup-winning teams had another thing in common. Both were captained by veteran Dylan McIlrath, the big, rugged defenseman who was also a key contributor to the Griffins' 2017 championship.

       "Dylan's one of my best friends, and he's just a great leader," Snively said. "He's built for the playoffs. He plays hard, wins battles, and stands up for his teammates. He's an all-around strong defenseman and a great guy off the ice. We had some awesome times together."

        McIlrath was one of the first people Snively consulted when he contemplated coming to Grand Rapids last summer.

        "Dylan spoke highly of the city, and I thought it'd be a fun place to play," he said. "I love Hershey, and I had teammates there who will be friends for life, so there were no issues. I was very tempted to go back, but I thought maybe it was time to try a new adventure."

        Snively felt he had proven he could play at the NHL level. He made his NHL debut during the 2021-22 season when he appeared in 12 games with the Capitals, tallying four goals and three assists in the short time he was in Washington.

        After playing parts of four seasons in the AHL, Snively made his NHL debut at Capital One Arena on Dec. 19, 2021, against the Los Angeles Kings. At the time, he had recorded 22 points (8 goals, 14 assists) in 21 games with Hershey, leading the team in points and tying for first in goals.

        "It was awesome," he said. "It was a home game a few days before Christmas, so I had family and friends watching. It was a quick callup, so there wasn't a lot of time. Luckily, my parents live 30 minutes away, so it was fun to have them there.

        "I was having a really good year in Hershey, and I felt like I was playing at my peak. So physically and mentally, I felt like I was in a great spot to get the callup and play my first game. We lost 3-2 to the Kings, but I had an assist on the game's first goal [Connor McMichael]."

        "I didn't play many minutes [6:53, to be precise], but I thought I played well. I got sent back down and then got called back up about a month later. I had another assist in my second game, then scored my first NHL goal in my fifth game back.

        "It was in Montreal, but it was near the end of COVID-19 in Canada, so unfortunately, there was no one in the building. It still felt amazing. It was like a weight off my shoulders. One of your dreams is to play a game in the NHL, the next is to score a goal, and then the next is to stay."

        It was a memorable night not only for Snively but also for his boyhood idol, Martin St. Louis, as the Canadiens were playing their first game with the Hall of Fame winger behind the bench.

        "We won the game 5-2, and I had two goals and an assist," he said. "I can still remember the first one. Justin Schultz shot the puck, which went right off the pad [of goalie Cayden Primeau, son of retired Red Wings forward Keith Primeau]. I drove the net, and it was a nice, juicy rebound – one touch, and it felt great."

        Seven days later, Snively scored in back-to-back games, but 10 days later, his season was over.

        "I was doing very well, but I was actually playing with a broken wrist at the time, although I didn't know it. I had it checked out earlier, but they didn't see anything. I was in constant pain. I had no range of motion. I couldn't put much pressure on my bottom hand. I finally went to the trainer to have them take another look.

        "My wrist needed a screw, so I had season-ending surgery, which was a bummer. I felt like I finally got my shot and was doing well, so it was a disappointing finish to a promising season."

        Snively made the Capitals out of training camp heading into the 2022-23 season but saw little action during the first half of the schedule. "I was getting scratched from the lineup a lot, so there wasn't a ton of opportunity. I played six games in the first 40, and then the team got both [Tom] Wilson and [Nicklas] Backstrom back from injury, so they sent me down."

        He played the rest of the season in Hershey. If there was a silver lining, it was helping the Bears win the first of their back-to-back Calder Cups under Nelson.

        "It was tough [to be sent down], but at the same time, I was just grateful to be in The Show and be with the team that I grew up watching. I'm happy I got the opportunity to play there, but I have mixed feelings, for sure."

        And now Snively hopes to do something very few players have done. Only 11 players in AHL history have won three consecutive Calder Cups, and no one has accomplished the feat since Mike Busniuk won his record fourth straight in 1979 with Maine.

        Snively decided to sign with the Red Wings last summer in hopes of getting a fresh start in the Detroit organization, and if he didn't make the roster there, he would help win a third title not only for himself but for the Griffins as well.

        "It was hard to leave because Hershey is only two hours away, and the Capitals are 30 minutes from where I grew up," he said. "It was a decision I thought about for a while, but I'm happy I made it.

        "I felt it was time to try for a new opportunity with another NHL team. I was looking for something different – new adventures, a new city, a new division, a chance to play different teams and see new cities."

        And while the Griffins' recent cold stretch mirrored the frigid West Michigan weather and tested his intestinal fortitude, Snively has embraced the city and its residents as he seeks to win their hearts with his play.

        Through the first 50 games of this season, he was tied with Sheldon Dries with a team-leading 18 goals, a personal best. His previous high was 15 goals in 35 games with Hershey in 2021-22.

        "I love Grand Rapids," he said. "I love the city. I really enjoy living here and exploring the different restaurants and variety. Some of the travel is a little tougher than I experienced in the East, but it's been cool to see other cities."

        He is confident that the Griffins can do some damage during the postseason, provided the team regains its footing.

       "Whether you're young and trying to make the NHL, you're older and you were in the NHL and now you're trying to get back, or you're an AHL player who wants a way to get a better contract, everyone has to put the team first.

        "When everyone buys into that shared success, that's the most important thing. Guys have to understand and know their roles on the team and take pride in doing whatever needs to be done.

       "Sometimes it's hard to get through these slumps, but you've just got to find a way to get through these things and do it together. You can't do it with guys on different pages. When things are hard, you've got to get back to playing simple hockey."

        For Snively, it's all about keeping his eyes on the prize, even when his vision is less than perfect, as his recently retired optometrist parents will attest.

        "You want to know something ironic? I have really bad eyes," Snively said. "I've never met anyone who has worse eyes or wears stronger prescription contacts than I do. I started wearing glasses when I was about 6 or 7 and contacts when I was 7 or 8. My whole family has bad eyes."

        Faulty optics aside, Snively likes what he sees lying ahead. "Our goaltending is among the best in the league, and goaltending and special teams are what get you through the playoffs," he said. "We still have some things to figure out, but I can see we have the tools to go far."