As K’Andre Miller sat around a table eating breakfast with a small contingent of family and friends in Dallas last month, the teenager’s mind began to race.
By the end of the night, he’d be a first-round selection in the NHL Entry Draft, the course of his life and future dramatically altered by the Rangers announcing his name with the 22nd overall pick from the stage at the American Airlines Center.
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But the uncertainty of the hours before that started weighing on the 18-year-old defenseman from Minnetonka, Minn., as Miller started having trouble breathing at the table due to the anxiety of the day.
“I just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he was saying.
Thankfully, Rick Helling did. The former major-league pitcher, who has served as a mentor to Miller over the past few years, walked away from the table with him and began a nearly hourlong conversation, dispatching wisdom that only someone who has reached the pinnacle of success in his sport could provide.
“Whether you get taken first overall or at the end of the first round, or second round, fifth round, whatever it is, you’ve already had a better career than 99 percent of the people who’ve put on skates,” Helling told him. “If you never play another hockey game in your life, you’ve had an unbelievable career. You’ve traveled to Russia as part of Team USA, you’ve played in World Championships, you’ve done all these things. The rest of this from here on out is gravy.
“I hope you play 10 or 15 or 20 years in the NHL, but if you don’t, everything you’ve done up to this point is pretty amazing. Have you looked back at where you’ve come from and where you are and realized how special this is, that you’re here?”
Miller nodded, “Yeah.”
“No,” Helling continued. “I really want you to realize how it’s really hard to make it, and from where you were to where you are now, you should appreciate that.”
“I think,” Helling would say later, “by the end of the talk he realized whoever took him was going to be very happy and lucky that they got him, and all the work he’d done throughout the years put him in the situation for that to happen.”
So how does a major-league pitcher end up the mentor, and life sculptor, for a soon-to-be pro hockey player? Through football, of course.
Helling, now 47, pitched for 12 seasons in the big leagues, including a 20-7 season for Texas in 1998. But he was always a three-sport athlete, playing football at the University of North Dakota before transferring to Stanford for baseball. When his baseball career ended, he coached youth football in Minnetonka. He was also the league coordinator, responsible for keeping parity, so when this tall, talented wide receiver/cornerback transferred from the nearby Hopkins School District, he placed Miller on another team, not his own.
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Helling, though, also came to the realization that he already knew him. A few years earlier, Helling’s daughter Jordyn, who was seven at the time, was one of the few girls playing on the Junior Blades hockey team. The Minnesota Blades’ young teens would help coach and put on clinics for the Juniors. One of those who was most heavily involved and who made it a joy for the younger kids was Miller.
“K’Andre is really good with kids,” Helling said. “I mean, off-the-charts good with kids. I didn’t know him at all at the time, but (Jordyn) had come home from these camps and talked about how cool this coach was, and how nice he was, and he was just a teenager. But he was so nice. At the time I had no idea who he was. I just thought it was cool that all these high-level hockey players helped coach these little kids in camp.”
Soon enough, Miller was playing football for Helling. Helling’s family, including his wife Tomasa and their three kids, became intertwined with Miller and his mother Amy Sokoloski, who was raising Miller by herself.
“The first night, when they had (football) orientation, Rick said, ‘I’m not somebody who’s going to give you accolades all the time. I want you to work hard for it and I’m fair and we’ll see how this goes,’” Sokoloski said.
“K’Andre really respected that and trusted that he was going to do the right thing by him, by the other players, and really played his heart out for Rick. At the end of the season, I could see the relationship that had been developing, so I had a conversation with Rick at our end-of-football party and asked him if he would consider being a mentor for K’Andre as he was growing up and developing into an athlete. We didn’t know if it was hockey or football or baseball where his heart really lied, so Rick took him under his wing and would take him out for dinners and have conversations with him when he was struggling. If he had problems in school or other sports he would run things by Rick. They just became very, very close.”
Rick Helling pitches for the Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. Helling played for five teams during his 12-year MLB career. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Sporting News via Getty Images)
Miller has tried to return Helling’s generosity as best he can.
“He was the one who kind of instilled the most,” Miller said. “I try to mentor his kids, like he did to me. I’m trying to pass that on. He’s always been there for me, kind of like my figure I always look up to. You can’t really describe it. He’s everything that I don’t have, I guess.”
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Now each family calls the other an “extension” of our own. When Miller heard that Jordyn Helling had gotten permission to skip a lacrosse tournament to travel with her dad to Dallas for the draft, his mother says he “teared up.”
And when the New York Rangers, armed with three picks in the first round, caught wind of the Anaheim Ducks’ interest in taking Miller at No. 23 overall, Rangers GM Jeff Gorton made a trade with Ottawa to get the 22nd pick and selected Miller – as he and Sokoloski shared a tearful hug.
That selection rang a bell with Helling, who picked up his phone and googled his own draft selection back in 1992. He too was drafted 22nd overall by the Rangers – the Texas Rangers.
Much like Helling, New York Rangers executives were immediately taken by their first encounter with Miller as well.
“In that combine setting,” Rangers director of player personnel said Gordie Clark shortly after making the selection. “Where you have him for 20 minutes and you listen to him talk about what his mother means to him – you know, single mother …
“I was actually coming back from the stage and she was talking to the press and she was just shaking. Just shaking. I was just like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome for him and her.’ And his whole thing is, ‘Yeah, I want to play pro hockey and I want to do it to take care of my mother.’”
Moments after he was drafted, Miller spoke about his attachment to Sokoloski before mentioning that he couldn’t wait to get to New York and get out in the community and start giving back.
“[He’s] a special athlete, a special kid,” Gorton said. “I think anyone who spent some time with him (at the draft) can understand the kind of kid he is and the character he has. On the ice, there’s unlimited potential. He can really skate, he’s big (6-3, 200), he’s aggressive. But he’s just touching the surface here.
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“He’s a guy who, at the end of the day, is going to do everything he can to be as good as he can, and that’s the kind of players we want.”
As a high school sophomore, Miller was playing forward when a coach asked him to move to defense. Miller’s offensive skills learned as a forward transfer to make him a two-way defenseman, or as he has said, “a fourth forward,” but one who wants to defend. When he transferred from Hopkins to Minnetonka he had to sit out a year by rule. So Miller spent the entire year working on his skating.
Miller left home after that sophomore season to join the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in Plymouth, Michigan. He’s now headed to the University of Wisconsin, where he will play for ex-Ranger Tony Granato, the Badgers’ head coach, and associate coach Mark Osiecki, a former NHLer who has a considerable rep for transforming college defensemen into pros.
“Kee recognized that right out of the gate,” Granato said, “and recognized the success Mark’s had with other players and wanted to get a chance to play for him and learn from him and elevate his game to hopefully have an opportunity in the NHL for a long time.
“When I first recruited him, I said to his mom, ‘Hey, I want to coach your kid.’ I think he’s an outstanding human being, and I see the development, maturity and confidence he’s gained in the last two years and the steps he’s taken, not only on the ice but off the ice. He’s just starting to figure out how good he can be. He’s got a lot of special talent there.”
Miller’s life has obviously been shaped by many. A Minnesota Wild fan as a kid, he got a chance to see the Wild play in Dallas as a birthday gift. He met and spent a little time with Mikko Koivu, a favorite Wild player. The next time he went to a Wild game, Koivu remembered him and gave him an autographed stick. That, Miller thought, is the kind of player/person he wanted to be.
He models his game after Seth Jones, a fellow player of color and a big defenseman for Columbus.
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“Obviously there’s not many of us, so to kind of add to our collection, if you want to call it, it’s pretty cool,” Miller said. “It’s special to be a part of. I know that Willie O’Ree just got inducted into the Hall of Fame and I saw P.K. Subban give a bunch of support and say a bunch of words about him. So that was pretty cool. To kind of be the next guy, or in the next wave of African-American hockey players is pretty cool to experience.”
As Miller continues his development, Rangers fans will have to wait to see the type of player he might be. But it seems like Miller’s personality could easily make him a fan favorite at Madison Square Garden at some point in the future.
“It’s hard to believe,” Helling said. “He’s really genuine. It’s not made up. It’s not something I’ve coached him on or anything like that. If you were to see him around my daughter or coaching any kids or just playing in the park, or whatever it is, he’s just a really good kid. You could just tell. He’s got that air around him that’s just inviting and warm. A person you want to be around. People gravitate to him. He’s genuine, he’s real, and it’s pretty amazing. He’s just a special kid. For as good a hockey player as he is, he’s a better person, which is pretty amazing because he’s a pretty darn good hockey player.”
Miller credits his mom’s upbringing, and the lessons of his coaches, particularly Helling.
“He’s got such a big heart and he puts everybody else first,” Sokoloski said. “He’s a person that a lot of his friends can come to talk to, a confidante, that type of kid. But he’s also very responsible and compassionate, empathetic. He cares about other people and he puts them first, before his own wants or needs. He usually thinks of others first.”
In Dallas, K’Andre Miller thought of many who were responsible for where he was, but he worried about himself and what was about to happen. As Helling predicted that morning, though, whichever team drafted him would be “happy and lucky,” it got him.
The Rangers certainly seem to be.