Gabriel Vilardi’s offseason was marked with milestones. On the business end, he was shipped from Los Angeles to Winnipeg as part of his first NHL trade. On the personal front, he attended his first concert ever — and completely geeked out about it — before moving from California back to Canada to start the next chapter of his life.
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Transitions can be tough. There’s built-in uncertainty — everything from choosing a place to live to figuring out which companies provide internet to discovering a new favourite restaurant or grocery store. And yes, Vilardi will miss living by the beach. He’ll never argue with a bit of sunshine and warmth or the relaxation that comes with it. But transitions also reveal a lot about how we deal with the challenges that life gives us.
Vilardi is doing everything in his power to start the Jets chapter of his life on his best possible foot.
He was the first player on the ice at last week’s informal, pre-training camp skate at the Hockey For All Centre, for one. This is a positive sign for a player who is new to his club and who is eager to prove that last season’s breakout performance — 23 goals and 41 points in 63 games for Los Angeles — was the start of something great.
There’s also the attitude he’s brought with him.
“Make the most of what you’ve got,” Vilardi said of his move north in an August phone conversation. “I haven’t been in the snow in six years so I’m excited to see it again. I’m not sure if I’ll be excited all of the time when I see the snow but I’m sure the first few times I’ll be excited again. I want to try new things and redo old things that I used to do when I was a kid.”
On the ice, Vilardi says the days of injury concern are behind him. Whereas he used to spend his offseasons in Los Angeles, in close proximity to the specialists he worked with to rehabilitate a chronic back ailment, his full bill of health meant he got to spend summer at home in Kingston.
He credits his Canadian summer for a positive shift in perspective.
“It’s tough when you spend the whole year in one place, especially when you’re going to the rink every day,” Vilardi said. “It’s nice to come home, skate at my local rinks here, and train with my friends. It’s better to unwind a little bit.”
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Vilardi is close with his family. He’s looking forward to hosting his older brother, Francesco, who is studying law at the University of Calgary, and says he dropped in on one of Francesco’s men’s league games there last year. Francesco played in the OHL and at Queen’s University before law school and scored a hat trick to Gabe’s delight.
“He was going a little hard out there,” Vilardi laughed. “He was trying to put on a show, it was pretty funny.”
Part of Vilardi’s offseason unwinding might sound familiar if you’ve ever been (or parented) a young man coming back home to live with the family. When he’s on his own, Vilardi is an enthusiastic cook. There’s a salmon and sweet potato dish he particularly enjoys preparing and his girlfriend cooks, too. Give him a couple of months at home with his mom, Giovanna, though, and with her cooking available, Vilardi concedes it was easy to regress back to childhood.
“That’s exactly what I’m dealing with right now,” he laughed. “For the most part, it’s my mom. I’m not looking forward to living without her again — I’m going to have to start cooking. She definitely spoils us.”
Giovanna and Natale Vilardi immigrated to Canada from Reggio Calabria in Italy, an area known for a cuisine that includes a diverse array of seafood and a regional approach to lasagnas and ravioli.
“Everyone thinks it’s just the pasta but to be honest with you, it’s everything,” Vilardi said of his mom’s home cooking. “Whatever she makes, I’ll eat it. It could be anything. Pasta or not, she knows what she’s doing in the kitchen.”
Vilardi’s on-ice expertise is sniping. The 23 goals he scored last season were a career high. Given his health, youth and the kind of opportunity available in Winnipeg, there’s every reason to believe he can surpass that total with the Jets — even acknowledging the spike in his shooting percentage last season. Major spikes tend to return to normal — he may not shoot at 18.9 percent forever — but Vilardi has every chance to play more than the 15:36 he averaged for the Kings last season. If everything goes well, he’ll take close to 200 shots this season, which is a massive increase over the 122 he put on goal in 63 games.
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Poring over Vilardi’s highlight reels, it seems important to clarify a misconception about his game. He is an excellent finisher, just as advertised, but his shot — his biggest weapon, often lauded by pundits — doesn’t succeed because of its power. Vilardi’s sneaky skill is his ability to read goaltender and defenceman positioning with tremendous accuracy and speed. Combine that with an excellent, quick release and he beats goaltenders not by overpowering them, Patrik Laine style, but by picking exactly the right seam. It’s a treat to watch in an entirely different way.
“I just try to get it off quickly. I think being accurate is more important than shooting it hard all of the time,” Vilardi explained. “That’s something I work at a lot: puck placement. But I don’t know, there’s not much to it. I do miss a lot of shots. Like you said, you’re watching the highlights so they all go in. But it’s something that I’ve always worked on and want to keep working on.”
There’s a moment of dust-off in this clip but Vilardi’s release is on full display:
So what should Jets fans expect from Vilardi in Winnipeg?
That story is still being written. He played wing for most of last season, getting the eighth most minutes among Kings forwards. He moved to centre during the playoffs, playing similar minutes and posting good defensive metrics at both positions. At this stage of his career, it seems as though Vilardi can be trusted as a two-way forward, although his faceoff percentage (46.6 percent over the course of his career, 44.9 percent during L.A.’s playoff run) may relegate him to wing on a Rick Bowness-coached team.
Assuming that Mark Scheifele is the Jets’ No. 1 centre, Winnipeg’s forwards will be a versatile group. Vilardi could play centre or play right wing on the first or second lines and any consistent, sustained success in the Jets’ top six will mean progression for the 24-year-old. In a best-case scenario, this kind of opportunity will combine with good health and work ethic to produce the best season of Vilardi’s career to date.
He says he’s not thinking about it like that.
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“I’m just going in with the mindset that I just want to help the team,” he said. “Wherever that is, whatever position it is, I’m just doing everything to get ready for the season and hopefully things go well. I’m sure it’s going to be an adjustment period but hopefully I’ll adapt quickly and help the team however that is.”
What can Jets fans expect from his game?
“I think I’m a smart player. I try to make good reads all over the ice. I’ve got more of an offensive mindset. I’d describe myself as a shooter and a passer — I try to do a bit of everything well and just make good reads. I’m not someone that’s going to flash with speed — I’m more of a puck protection player who can slow the game down.”
There’s a nice video from the Kings where Vilardi breaks down the goal from the previous clip. In it, he details the reads he makes on the way to scoring — everything from looking for triangles on the ice to using body positioning to take advantage of a Vegas player who doesn’t have his stick.
It’s not surprising that this summer marked the first time Vilardi was traded in the NHL. He was 23 at the time and had a strong start to his career with the team that drafted him in the first round.
However, it is shocking that when Vilardi saw Post Malone in Toronto in July it was the first time he attended a concert.
“Post Malone was pretty nasty,” Vilardi said, with admiration. “I had a really good time and it was actually my birthday just a couple of days ago and I got a T-shirt for his new album. I’m a big Posty fan so it was a cool experience.”
How is it possible that a young man of Vilardi’s means made it until just a few weeks before his 24th birthday before seeing his first concert?
“That’s a good question. It’s a question my friends ask me too. But I don’t know. I’d just never went to a concert, I guess. It was definitely a good first experience, though. I’ll definitely be going to see him again whenever he drops his next album.”
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Jets fans with a particularly intense passion for music may be interested in the following piece of trivia. In 2020, the Jets celebrated several of their wins by cranking a song called “Post Malone” by an artist named Sam Feldt. Billed as something of an ode to Post Malone, Feldt’s song featured the singer RANI and deafened many a reporter on their way into the Jets dressing room.
The player responsible for that song choice? Blake Wheeler, whose departure leaves a gaping hole at right wing that Vilardi could help fill.
Back to Vilardi’s concert experience, though. Despite the prestige of being an NHL player, Vilardi balked at the idea of watching his favourite artist play from some kind of VIP-only box seat.
“No, no, no, I go and I sit with the rest of the people. I don’t need that (VIP treatment). I enjoy the show just as much as the standard person — I don’t need to go in the back,” Vilardi said. “I wouldn’t even know what to say to him — I’d be so nervous — so I like it better sitting in the crowd. That was my first concert so I’m cool sitting in the stands. I don’t need VIP or anything like that, you know?”
(Photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
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