Born in Miami, raised on roller

One rink, and it was for roller

Jaxon Cover is, technically, one of ours. He was born in Miami. About a month later, his family went home to Grand Cayman, and that's where he grew up.

Grand Cayman had one rink, an inline rink. That's where he learned to skate, and roller was the only hockey he played there. His dad, who grew up in Canada playing ball hockey, put him on inline skates at 3, and a local roller league became his whole hockey world.

He was good. By 8 he was traveling with Cayman Islands teams to tournaments across the U.S., including Florida and California. At the 2016 North American roller championships he was named MVP in two age divisions, and he later played in the pro division against men in their thirties.

Around the same age, on a family trip north to see relatives in Toronto, he went to an ice camp. He tried a roller-style stop and went straight onto his back.

Twelve years old, and nobody had explained offside

In 2020, at 12, Jaxon and his older brother left the island for St. Andrew's College, a boarding school north of Toronto. His first year there, he played soccer.

In his second year he tried out for ice hockey and made the Aurora Tigers' U14 AA team. It was his first organized ice hockey. At that first tryout he kept drifting offside, because roller hockey doesn't have offside or icing.

"I didn't know what icing or offside was."

Jaxon Cover, to The Hockey News

The hands came with him. His St. Andrew's coach, David Manning, has said roller gave Cover his puck skills, and Cover credits it for his vision. Stopping and starting were the hard part. Roller teaches you to keep moving, and on ice that can carry you into the wrong spot.