Steven Santini has been presented with two options throughout 2018: Dwell on the negative, or focus on the positive.
He keeps choosing the latter, even through the most difficult of circumstances.
In February of last season, and already with four goals and 13 assists in 75 National Hockey League games on his résumé, the defenseman from Mahopac, N.Y., was demoted by the New Jersey Devils to their American Hockey League affiliate in Binghamton.
He didn’t appear in an NHL game again until this campaign, his third full professional season, but when he did, the joy was short-lived. After being scratched for the season’s first five games, he played on Oct. 20 at the Philadelphia Flyers but suffered a broken jaw when he was hit by the puck in the first period.
Santini was then placed on injured reserve, where he remained until Dec. 1. Now healthy, he’s waiting for his next opportunity to shine.
“This whole calendar year has felt like a nightmare,” Santini said. “The team had to make a tough decision to send me down. I start this season out of the lineup. When I finally get a chance I get hurt and I’m back out of the lineup. Then I get healthy and am struggling to get back into the lineup. It’s been hard. But, thankfully, I have a really good support group. I have an awesome and supportive wife (Erin) and in-laws and some really close friends who’ve helped me. It’s still a hard situation right now, but I’m hoping there’s going to be a bright light at the end of the tunnel.”
The 23-year-old remembers when he received the news from head coach John Hynes and assistant general manager Tom Fitzgerald that he was going back to the minors, where he toiled for a portion of the previous season with the Albany Devils.
“It was an emotional conversation,” said Santini, who was drafted by the Devils 42nd overall in 2013. “They told me, ‘Stick with it; keep working hard; keep doing all the right things; keep being a good teammate. Hopefully you’ll be back before you know it.’ It was a positive conversation. Hockey is a business, so sometimes you have to make tough decisions. I understand. There are no hard feelings at all.”
The Boston College product admitted “it was hard to see the big picture when it all went down,” but with the benefit of hindsight, he’s now appreciative of his time with the B-Devils.
“Being in Binghamton really helped me grow, round out my game and become more of a complete player,” Santini asserted. “I worked on making plays with the puck, a good first pass, my transition game and getting up in the play. I grew a lot as a person and as a player.”
The growing process wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. For starters, Santini had to say goodbye to a team that would eventually clinch a Stanley Cup playoff spot for the first time in six seasons, and hello to a squad that was losing far more than it was winning.
“When I left New Jersey, we had been a winning team all year, so I felt the beat in the room was positive,” he remembered. “When I arrived in Binghamton, it was kind of the opposite because they had a losing season to that point. We won games when I was there, and we had fun. We tried to turn it around and end on a good note. I give credit to those guys. They worked hard all year, stuck with it and fought all the way to the end.”
Although Santini didn’t step on the ice again in an NHL game for the remainder of the season, he kept his chin up, tracked how his New Jersey teammates were performing, and continued grinding in the AHL, where he totaled three goals and three assists in 27 games.
“You follow the team,” Santini said. “It’s not a secret what’s going on. You’re checking the scores and watching the highlights because you got a lot of buddies on the team. Sometimes it’s hard to watch because you want to be there. At the same time, you have to do the right things. A lot of it was out of my control. I just had to control what I could control, get better every day and stay in the moment. Adversity doesn’t define you. It makes you stronger in the long run.”
During the toughest parts of the process, he didn’t have to look far to receive a boost.
In fact, those people he was watching on television were some of his top supporters.
Revealed Santini: “Guys such as Travis Zajac, Andy Greene, Will Butcher and Miles Wood reached out to me when I wasn’t around and really helped me out.”
While the skaters in Newark did their share to lift the spirits of their momentarily former comrade, someone else took center stage when it came to keeping Santini’s head straight: Erin.
“My wife is my best friend,” Santini said. “We’ve been together for nine years now, so she knows me better than anyone else. I wouldn’t have been able to stay as positive, upbeat and mentally sane without her because there were a lot of ups and downs. Thankfully, I have her. My wife and my in-laws really helped me a lot. I’ll always be thankful for that.”
One of those “ups” came after Binghamton’s campaign concluded. That’s when Santini was summoned back to New Jersey to serve as a spare defenseman during the playoffs.
The even-better news for Santini was that he wasn’t considered a Black Ace. Although he hadn’t been with the big-league club in two months, he had substantial experience playing with the team, and he took part in meetings and practices.
“That was a really good experience,” Santini said. “You get exposure to the intensity and the build-up. It’s similar to the regular season, but on a bigger scale. There’s a little more preparation because you game plan for one team and then make adjustments between games. It was definitely really cool to be around.”
The Devils were defeated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in five games. A little over two months later, Santini became a restricted free agent. However, he wasn’t one for long, signing another three-year deal with the Devils in August.
The 6-2, 205-pound blueliner took a moment to smile about his new contract.
“Any time you can get rewarded for your hard work, it’s a pretty cool feeling,” Santini said.
After signing his name on the line, he went right back to improving his game, working on his puck play and puck handling while also making adjustments to his stick.
“That was just a step,” Santini stated. “There’s a lot of work to be done now. I still feel like I have a lot to prove. The staple identity of my game is to be physical, bring the intensity and be sound defensively, so I’m going to continue to do those things.”
The next step for Santini is to become a mainstay in New Jersey’s lineup.
And in his mind, that’s his only option, even though his first chance to do that this season didn’t have the ending he desired.
