#Nhl 17 be a pro player types full#

He remembers his first practice to feature checking, back at North Toronto Arena (the answering machine message there now advertises the barn as the “home rink of Stanley Cup champion, Tom Wilson”). He couldn’t wait until he was old enough to have time in practice devoted to learning body checking. Tom Wilson has always enjoyed slamming his body into other people’s. “It’s what I’ve been trying to find the answer to.” “It’s a question I’ve been working on for years,” he says. And, as Wilson has found, that line is incredibly fine. A new breed of power forward in a league that’s ever-changing in its tolerance of physical play, he’s writing a blueprint for the role in the modern NHL a how-to on skating the line between tough guy and dangerous liability. The blend of new and old school, skilled and physical as all hell - Wilson is a bit of a unicorn, and that’s part of what makes him so valuable.

#Nhl 17 be a pro player types full#

Now seven years into his NHL career, there isn’t a player in the league quite as polarizing as the Toronto-born power forward, and maybe that’s because there aren’t many players in the NHL quite like him - full stop. The reaction has only spread and intensified as Wilson has grown up and played under an increasingly bright spotlight. “I learned to deal with it at a very young age.” “Stuff like that, you wouldn’t believe,” he says. His voice gets a little deeper imitating the angry dad. “’My son’s going to take care of you on the ice, and I’m going to go take care of your dad in the stands!’” Wilson says. He received his first pre-game threat at nine or 10. His own dad, Keven, was one of his team’s coaches back then, and to avoid targeted heckling from irate parents for the rest of that season, they took the kids’ nameplates off the backs of their jerseys. “I remember pretty vividly a dad coming over the glass and being like, ‘Wilson, you suck!’” he says. Yes, it sure has, and the 25-year-old doesn’t recall a time when it didn’t. The question that set Wilson nodding was about whether his play has always elicited an impassioned reaction from opposing fans and players.