Really, what are the chances?
Even Richard Park, a former NHL player, will tell you the odds of making it as a pro athlete are so small they might as well be “invisible.”
And the odds of making it to the NHL from California? Real slim; hockey-reference.com tells us there have been 56 California-born players all time – from a state of nearly 40 million.
So what, then, are the odds of one Southern California family possibly producing two NHL players? Let’s estimate that’s somewhere around, I don’t know, infinitesimal? About the size of as a strand of DNA?
And the odds of that family being of Korean descent – something that only four NHL players in the history of the league can claim, including the aforementioned Park? So I guess, ballpark, four-to-7,500?
And yet, as fate has it, the Park family could produce two NHL players.
Long odds, but real potential: Nineteen-year-old Aidan Park – a 6-foot-1, 188-pound Michigan-bound workhorse center – is waiting to learn whether his hockey dream comes true June 27 and 28, when the NHL draft will happen at L.A. Live’s Peacock Theater.
Or, if he doesn’t hear his name this time among the draft eligible 18- to 20-year-olds, to learn whether another route will open. After all, in 2024 there were 82 undrafted players on NHL rosters – 11.5% of the league, if you’re still doing the percentages.
Reasonable prospects for a prospect about whom one draft site gushed, “Park is a clever center with a never-say-die motor and polished defensive habits,” and whom hockeywriters.com described as “undoubtedly a player who can make whichever general manager takes a chance on him look like a genius.”
And to think, you can trace Aidan’s life in hockey to an improbable encounter decades before he was born, at the Brea Mall, of all places.
Richard Park can remember, in the 1980s, being dragged along to the Orange County shopping center by his older sisters, who went there to ice skate. And he remembers the day he met a boy there who played hockey, and who introduced Richard – he’d wanted, back then, to be a baseball player – to a new sport.
“Just by chance,” Richard said, “that’s really how my career got started, at the Brea Mall.”
Soon he’d link up with the Jr. Kings and have local newspapers writing features: “They Call Him Flash: Korean-born Richard Park of Rancho Palos Verdes may be the best 12-year-old hockey player in Southern California.”
At 13, Park persuaded his parents to let him move to Toronto to sharpen his skills – a giant leap for a kid who’d moved with his family to Southern California from Korea at 3. And well worth it.
Because at 18, the Pittsburgh Penguins picked Richard 50th in the NHL draft, dropping the puck for a career that began and in 1994 and ended in 2012. In 738 NHL games, Uncle Richard tallied 241 points (102 goals, 139 assists) for the Penguins, Ducks, Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota Wild, Vancouver Canucks, New York Islanders and – and! – inspired his older brother’s son to give hockey a go.
Richard gave Aidan his first pair of skates when he was 5. Hockey didn’t take until later though … when he was 6.
Still, by then the boy had grown out of the first pair of skates. But that next pair? Those fit.
Yes, Aidan tried soccer and Taekwondo. He played flag football growing up in Playa Vista at school with the other kids. But there was really only one sport for him: “Hockey, I just fell in love with it right away and I was like, by the age of like 12, 13, it’s all I wanted to do.”
And by 14, he was skating in his uncle’s trail, playing for the Jr. Kings and working hard to persuade his parents to let their son – and only child – take his talents to Faribault, Minn., where he was accepted into Shattuck-St. Mary’s, a prestigious school known for a hockey development program that has for years churned out NHL players like Aidan’s all-time favorite, Sidney Crosby.
“Of course you support their dreams, but you don’t really realize the reality of it,” Sunny said. “And the thought of letting him leave at 14 was unfathomable. I did not think that was something I could do.”
But neither could she stand in the way of something that meant so much to her son, something he’d wanted for so long. So she and her husband, Michael – Richard’s older brother – agreed to allow Aidan to enroll.
And it was a dream come true.
“I only had tears when I said goodbye after the initial drop-off,” Sunny said. “After that, he was just so happy that we were happy for him.”
So happy – to get to be working so hard, Aidan was in his element among Shattuck’s top-of-the-line coaches and facilities, happy to bear the weight of the program’s high expectations.
“If you have the desire to get better and you go to a place like Shattuck, as long as you’re using all the resources around you, you’ll get better,” he said. “So I just loved every second of it. From day one, I loved it.”
He was having so much fun, even the cold – “minus-20 with wind chill!” – was chill. “I got used to it pretty quick,” he said.
And the COVID lockdowns happening during his first year? Safe to say Shattuck’s young hockey players dealt with their bubble better than than most of the NBA’s participants did down in Orlando.
“Our entire U-14 team lived on one floor of the dorm together, the entire team,” Aidan said. “It was mostly online classes. So it was really just wake up, do online classes, go to the rink all day, eat dinner, come back, hang out with all the boys and go to sleep … it was a super fun year, summer camp all year.”
And for another three years, until, as a senior, Park scored 30 goals and recorded 63 assists for 93 points in 56 games.
He threw his name in for the 2024 NHL draft, and got bypassed the first time. Determined to keep improving, he played this past year for Green Bay of the United States Hockey League. He amassed 66 points (33 goals, 33 assists) in 55 regular-season games and improved his stock from 151st at the midterm mark to 94th on NHL Central Scouting’s Final Rankings.
Now, for the past few weeks, he’s been back in Southern California, hanging with all his old hockey buddies, enjoying mom’s healthy home cooking and training in El Segundo, “doing everything right, sleeping right, eating right, just trying to push myself to be the best I can be,” he said.
“He’s done extremely well, giving himself an opportunity,” said Uncle Richard, now a pro scout for the Minnesota Wild. “Anyone who’s been involved in hockey will tell you that alone is a great accomplishment, in and of itself.”
“I’m not only proud of him, but I respect him,” Sunny said, “for the decisions he’s made and how he’s worked toward attaining the goals he’s set.”
Much respect, indeed, to anyone keeping his childhood ambitions alive, to anyone exercising the gumption to really go for it — and to the families inspiring and facilitating those pursuits, no matter the odds.
Playing in the NHL has “been my dream since I first laced up my skates when I was 6 years old,” Aidan said. “So it would mean everything, but not only to me, to everyone that supported me. My family, my teammates. Because without them, you really can’t accomplish your goal.”
