© André Ringuette/NHLI

OTTAWA — The 350-mile drive from Hearst to Sudbury is a tree-lined journey through the guts of remote northern Ontario forest country, punctuated by a handful of small hamlets with cool names like Moonbeam and Smooth Rock Falls.

At some point this weekend, if they haven’t already, a convoy of Claude Giroux’s relatives from his hometown of Hearst will get on Highway 11 and make that 6-hour odyssey to the southeast in order to watch his Ottawa Senators play the Pittsburgh Penguins at Sudbury Community Arena on Sunday as part of 2024 Kraft Hockeyville (7 p.m. ET; SN, SN1, NHLN, SN-PIT).

The Giroux entourage include uncles, aunts, cousins and, arguably, his most special fan, his 80-something-year-old grandmother Helene. For them, this hardly constitutes as a lengthy road trip. For them, Claude may as well be playing in their own backyard.

Welcome to life in the vastness of northern Ontario.

“Playing in Sudbury, it’s probably the closest I’ve ever and will ever play to my hometown,” the Senators forward told NHL.com this week. “So I’m excited for my family to see me play, especially for my grandmother. She hasn’t seen me play live in a while.

“With all those people who are coming, it should be a fun game for me to play. Any time you get to play closer to home, it’s special.”

Six hours is close to home?

“Ya, it’s kind of like that, isn’t it?” he laughed.

For hockey-loving kids in northern Ontario hoping to be the next Claude Giroux, it certainly is. Distance and travel is what you deal with to find opposing teams to play against. In the big Ontario cities to the east and south like Toronto and Ottawa, you can find hockey rinks sprinkled through the community every few miles. For communities like Hearst, the mileage between them is more like hundreds.

During his childhood, sitting in a car for hours to go to a game or tournament was not an issue for young Claude. It’s what you did.

“Growing up, Kapuskasing (60 miles away) was an hour away and probably the closest community where we’d go to play,” he said. “Then you had Timmins (162 miles away) which is about three hours away. And if we were going to tournaments, bigger tournaments, they’d be in places like Sudbury, Thunder Bay (322 miles away), Toronto.

“Ya, those were long drives. But for us growing up, we didn’t consider them long. We kind of enjoyed going on the road and playing in other towns, other cities. I have great memories of doing that.”

For the record, Toronto is 620 miles and a 10-hour drive south from Hearst, a primarily French-speaking community of 5,500 that bills itself as The Moose Capital of Canada. Indeed, in Hearst these large antlered animals are more in abundance than people.

It’s where Giroux spent the first 14 years of his life before moving to the Ottawa area. Getting ice time was never an issue, he said, since the local rink, Arena Claude Larose, had two ice sheets. He and his sister Isabelle had stalls in the basement of the family home for their equipment because one of them, if not both, would be heading to the rink to play pretty much every day of the week.

He played for HLK, the Hearst Lumber Kings, noting that pretty much anyone who tried out would make the team because the town was so small. That didn’t take away from the fact that Giroux played with what he calls “some great players.”

As for dreams of one day making the NHL, kids like Giroux looking for inspiration needed only reference the man the local arena was named after. Claude Larose, now 82-years-old, played 944 NHL games with the Montreal Canadiens, Minnesota North Stars and St. Louis Blues from 1963-78, getting 483 points (226 goals, 257 assists) and was part of five Stanley Cup-winning teams, all with the Canadiens (1965, 1966, 1968, 1971, 1973).

Today, decades after his minor hockey days, it’s the 36-year-old Giroux the town’s young NHL wannabes look up to. And they need only look at the front of the local team’s jerseys to be reminded.

In 2017, the Hearst Lumberjacks, who were poised to begin play in the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League, made Giroux the team logo. His scowling cartoon face was a tribute to the financial and inspiration support provided by him that helped establish the franchise.

In northern Ontario, they don’t forget their own.

“Any time a guy from northern Ontario gets drafted, it’s always pretty special,” said Giroux, who was selected No. 22 by the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2006 NHL Draft. “And growing up, you paid attention to guys from northern Ontario who made it. For example, I remember Steve Sullivan, who’s from Timmins, when he made the NHL, it was kind of a big deal up there.”

© Hearst Lumberjacks

These days, Giroux is the big deal. In 1,182 NHL games with the Senators, Flyers and Florida Panthers he has 1,066 points (350 goals, 716 assists) and has at least put himself into the Hockey Hall of Fame conversation.

As such, friends and family are eager to make the six-hour drive to Sudbury to see him play in person, including grandma Helene. The game is part of the celebrations surrounding Kraft Hockeyville 2024 winner Elliot Lake, which is 110 miles west of Sudbury. Despite that community winning the contest, it could not host the game because the arena is not in condition to hold an NHL game.

“With Kraft Hockeyville, I’d actually hoped that one day we’d be able to play in Hearst,” Giroux said. “But Sudbury is halfway there from Ottawa. And it’s something that, when I saw we were playing there, I got pretty excited.

“It’s going to be fun for me. And it’s going to be fun for the people of northern Ontario.”

Especially grandma.