Adam Lowry has been a professional hockey player for eight years. Seven of those seasons came with the Winnipeg Jets, while one year was spent in the American Hockey League with the Jets’ affiliate team.
According to ESPN, the average length of a National Hockey League career is just five years. So Lowry has already surpassed that mark.
But what he has done much longer than the time spent playing NHL minutes and living the ‘pro’ life is his time as an amateur and minor hockey player.
Born in St. Louis to Dave and Elaine Lowry, the now 28-year-old was raised in Florida, San Jose, and Calgary, respectively, before playing out four years of junior hockey in the Western Hockey League, where he served in a leadership role with the Swift Current Broncos. But prior to even playing within the WHL, the 6-foot-5, 210-pound centreman skated many laps around the rinks in Florida, California, and most notably Alberta.
Coming from a household of four kids and one NHL-playing father, the Lowry residence was always a bit of a zoo.
Coaching Adam and his siblings in baseball as well as hockey, Dave did his best at home when around the house. Adam admits, however, that it was his mother who rang the ship for the majority of the season.
“Coming from a hockey family, my mom played a huge role,” Lowry told reporters on Mother’s Day. “My dad was on the road a ton and I have a brother and two sisters. We had a really busy household. My mom, she had to take on a lot of that burden.”
And as he detailed, that burden was probably enough to be a 40-hour/week job for not only one, but likely two people.
“She shuttled us to and from the rinks, getting us to our different sporting events, cooking us dinner and making sure we were all looked after and everything was taken care of,” he added. “She made a ton of sacrifices (as we were) growing up.”
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Now serving as the Jets’ assistant coach, Dave Lowry had himself quite the professional career. Spanning five teams and 19 years, the elder Lowry put together 164 goals and 351 points in over 1,000 career games.
“He and my mom have been wonderful role models for me,” Lowry said back in 2019. “He’d always get home late, but he’d be up to take us to school in the morning, and he’d spend as much time with us as he could when home. My mom was kind of a single mom for half of the year, every year. With dad on the road she had to coordinate four kids and our crazy busy schedules. She would always be racing around from one rink to another; it was a hectic household, but my parents always made time for us and support us in everything.”
With COVID-19 running rampage through the lives of not just the ordinary folk, but also the lives of professional athletes, certain annual celebrations have been nixed across the board.
For Lowry, Mother’s Day is one of those highlights that he has now missed for two years running – and more when playoff hockey is added into the picture.
“It’s been tough with the pandemic, but you’d obviously like to be able to see them more often,” he said of spending time with his mother. “It’s one of those things where in the past if you’re not in the playoffs, you’re able to go out for dinner or celebrate and make sure she knows how important she has been – and is – in my life and my brother and sisters’ lives and our family’s lives. Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there.”
Happy #MothersDay from your #NHLJets! 🤗 pic.twitter.com/YjpMGr3qZq
— x – Winnipeg Jets (@NHLJets) May 9, 2021
Much like that of international celebrations, individual team events such as the yearly ‘Moms Trip’ have had to be put on hold until social distancing is no longer the norm. But when they return, both sons and mothers alike will most certainly never take any such moments for granted again.
