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But wait, there’s more. On Labor Day weekend, Matthew and Abby drove from the North Andover campus to Foxborough, and sat in the Gillette stands to watch older brother Adam, 23, a pro lacrosse player, suit up as a midfielder for the PLL’s Maryland Whipsnakes.
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On a splendid New England day, it was a Poitras family reunion of sorts, approximately 600 miles from their hometown of Whitby, Ontario.
“Yeah, kind of crazy when you think about it,” Matthew said days later, musing over the various career paths of the Poitras siblings and their sports achievements and aspirations. “If you told all of us that 10 years ago, I don’t know if we’d believe you. I think we’d all be like, ‘Crazy how it’s all gone and to think we’d all be in the same spot at once.’ It’s awesome.”
Back home in Whitby, Tricia Poitras sounded especially delighted during a telephone interview that son Matthew and daughter Abby have landed so close together. They argued incessantly as kids, acknowledged Tricia, but they’re close pals now. To have Matthew so nearby provides some extra comfort for a mom whose daughter is living away from home for the first time.
“My kids are very, very close,” noted Tricia, “so it’s very nice to know if she needed anything, he would be there at a moment’s notice.”
Matthew and Abby worked out together a few times this summer, including on-ice sessions at Warrior with their skating coach, Ashley Jones. But by and large, they forged their hockey paths separate from one another, in part because Matthew is 23 months older, as well as the fact that girls and boys in their part of Ontario, even at grammar school age, rarely play on the same teams. It’s not like, say, rural Manitoba, where Bruins center Morgan Geekie and Emma Coulter, the woman who became his wife, played on the same team and on the same line when they were ages 10-14. When the Poitras kids were at home, though, it was a different story. When really young, Abby and her brothers were avid participants in mini-sticks, setting up their tiny nets between doorways near the kitchen and family room.
“Oh, yeah,” recalled Tricia, a project manager for Johnson & Johnson, “we had to patch a lot of walls.” As they grew older and bigger, the action moved to the basement, with a hockey net set up at one end, a lacrosse net at the other.
“We replaced a lot of insulation down there, knocked down and torn up from pucks and lacrosse balls,” said Tricia. “The washer and dryer were spared. They’re upstairs, thank goodness.”
The three Poitras kids played both sports, with Adam and Matthew deciding by their early teens to concentrate on their preferred sport. Abby, who began playing hockey at age 5, moved on earlier to playing only hockey, and always chose defense.
At near 5 feet 9 inches, Abby is only 2-3 inches shorter than Matthew. The two bear a strong facial resemblance. As for their games, well, position alone provides a major difference.
“I’d say not really,” said Abby, asked if she felt she and her brother, the hopeful second-year Bruins center, were the same style of player. “But it’s hard to tell, because I’m on D and he’s a center.”
“Good stick, and a very high hockey IQ,” said Matthew, offering his view of his sister’s game. “She likes to carry the puck. I think we’re probably the same that way; we like to have the puck on our stick.”
Matt Poitras (far right) posted five goals and 10 assists in 33 games for the Bruins last season.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
For choice of music, Abby is all-in on country, with Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, and Luke Combs at the top of her playlist. She’s eagerly looking forward to her first trip to Nashville at the end of November, when Merrimack plays in the Smashville Women’s Collegiate Hockey Showcase.
Matthew is also down with the same western vibe, but like his father Phil, he likes a lot of classic rock as well as The Tragically Hip, the popular Canadian rock group that originated in Kingston, Ontario. Aside: Your aged faithful puck chronicler was rocked to learn Matthew knew nothing of the extensive works of Joni Mitchell, legendary songstress of Fort Macleod, Alberta.
Time permitting, Abby and Matthew said, they are eager to see each other during the hockey season, though their schedules could be hard to align.
Matthew still has to find out if he’ll be suiting up in Black and Gold in Boston or Providence. Wherever he’s based, half the season will be spent on the road. Leisure time is rare.
Abby knows exactly where she’ll be for the school year, but downtime is scarce for a Division 1 student-athlete. She is majoring in health sciences, with an eye on becoming a nurse or nurse practitioner. She feels fortunate, too, that college women now have the real option of pursuing a path to play pro hockey.
“I think about it,” she said. “It’s really cool, as I’ve grown up, that it’s changed so much. I think it’s cool that it’s expanding and the dream of so many girls now actually can be attained.”
Membership in the Poitras family hockey franchise also has its perks, of course, a fact not lost on Abby or her teammates. It’s good to have a brother who, prior to his shoulder injury, was a surprisingly comfortable fit in the NHL last season.
“They want to go to games,” said a smiling Abby, asked what her sister Warriors make of her brother on the Bruins. “They’re all like, ‘When can we go to games?’ Yeah, they think it’s cool.”
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.
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