Andrew Basha, like countless Calgary kids, grew up dreaming of nights like Monday.
When he’d be playing in the backyard, Basha would himself be donning a Calgary Flames jersey and skating out onto the ice at the Saddledome.
For most kids, it remains just a dream.
But Basha is one of the lucky few, and on Monday the Calgary kid was set to be in full Flames gear for the first professional hockey game of his career.
“It’s incredible,” the 18-year-old said Monday morning. “For it to be the first time playing in the Dome with the Flames, it will be very surreal for me. I’m very fortunate to have lots of family and friends in the building. Just excited to get going.”
Basha is living his dream, plain and simple. Picked in the second round, 41st overall in this year’s draft, he’ll be spending this season with the powerhouse Medicine Hat Tigers in the WHL. They’re Memorial Cup contenders, and it should be an exciting season.
In a year or two, though, he’ll probably be fighting for a spot in the Flames’ lineup and maybe he’ll grow used to the feeling of wearing the jersey of the team he’s grown up loving.
You get the feeling that Monday night will be one he won’t forget, though. Even if it’s just a pre-season split-squad game where half his Flames teammates will be skating in Edmonton at the same time, it’s still a first game wearing an NHL jersey at the rink where he dreamed of playing as a kid.
“One hundred per cent, for a Calgary kid this would be incredibly cool to be able to play in here with some of the guys he grew up watching play,” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska. “We have him on the power-play with some pretty good players tonight and you can see this morning he had a tendency to want to pass it all the time instead of shoot, which I get, but it’s pretty exciting for him.
“The thing we like about Bash is he’s done a really good job right from Day 1 of our prospect camp and he’s continuing to get better every day.”
It has, by Basha’s own admission, been a whirlwind couple of weeks. He scored in the second game of the Young Stars Classic tournament against the Edmonton Oilers’ prospects and is now working alongside the Flames veterans.
He’s adjusted to that reality as best he can, but it was definitely an adjustment.
“When you kind of move into the big boy room, it’s definitely different,” Basha said. “I think it’s just about being confident in myself and knowing I’m being put in these positions for reasons and I deserve to be part of that group. That’s the only way you can look at it, I think.
“You don’t want to miss any opportunities you’re given or waste them based on being star-struck. Obviously, it’s cool, but I’m more focused on that.”
Basha will have a big cheering section on hand for Monday’s game and the loudest people in the Dome might be his parents, Richard and Ronda.
As Huska noted, Basha was pencilled in for power-play time, too, so there may be opportunities to make this dream even better if he could bury his first goal in a Flames jersey on the same night he was wearing it for the very first time at the Saddledome.
“I’m not a guy that gets too nervous,” Basha said. “I don’t want to look back on this and say I overthought everything and went into it thinking I have all this pressure — I’m still 18 years old and I don’t really think there’s much pressure for me, it’s going out and having fun and treating it like I was with any other team.
“Maybe there is a little bit of extra spotlight just because I’m from here, but at the end of the day it’s a privilege to have that and I just want to go out and have fun.”