SUNRISE, Fla. – Approximately three and a half hours northwest from the hustle and bustle of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, lies Dauphin. The smallest city in the province, Dauphin and its population of 8,300 are intertwined with the agricultural as the area's primary economic driver.

It's a far cry from the southeastern tip of the United States, where the temperatures in the tropics of Florida rarely dip below 60 degrees, while the Manitoba winters can routinely sit in single digits. The weather and a population difference of close to 90,000 only scratch the surface of the dichotomy between the small prairie city of Dauphin and the booming suburb of Sunrise, Florida. But the two cities separated by more than 2,000 miles share a common bond: hockey.

It's a bond perhaps few know better than Myles Fee.

Like many that called Dauphin home, Fee was raised with a stick in his hand and skates on his feet. It was his skill set that was honed on the rinks of Manitoba and with the Dauphin Kings of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League that caught the attention of a fledgling collegiate hockey program in Purchase, New York, and kicked off a journey that brought him down to Sunrise to lift the greatest prize in professional hockey for the last two years as a Stanley Cup champion.

"I was shocked to find out that a coach from New York, in the New York City area, was coming all the way up to northern Manitoba to watch me," Fee said. "I was very excited, I had touched base with a few other schools, a couple of Ivy Leagues, but the allure and draw of the New York City area was a massive draw. A guy from a city of 7,000 people all of a sudden going to seven million-plus. So it was definitely a step outside the norm, but that was the biggest draw, getting outside the comfort zone."

That first step came in 2002 when Fee suited up for the Valiants for the first time in the Playland Ice Casino. Fee's rookie season at Manhattanville was just the fourth season in Valiant men's hockey history, but the team was picking up momentum quickly. After going 8-17-1 in its debut campaign in 1999-2000, the Valiants posted back-to-back winning seasons in each of the next two years and would receive its first-ever national ranking in the 2001-02 season, just three years into the program's existence.

Fee joined a team that continued to develop at a rapid pace, as he played in 20 games as a rookie in the 2002-03. That year, the Valiants won a program-high 18 games and finished the year ranked No. 15 in the nation in the U.S. College Hockey Online (USCHO) Division III poll.

"It was surreal to have that kind of success so soon," Fee said. "I didn't quite understand the ranking process, I didn't know the weight of it, but then when guys started talking about it you realize how many other teams there are. You know, it's not like there's only 30 teams total, so to be nationally ranked for multiple weeks in a row was quite surreal. It's still something I think about when I talk about it to this day."
 

Fee went on to play in 37 games for the Valiants as a defenseman over his four years at college. Manhattanville continued to find success on the ice, making the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history in 2005 in Fee's junior year. The team won 21 games that season, still the program record for most in a single year, while finishing ranked No. 2 in that year's final USCHO poll.

As a defender, Fee finished his collegiate tenure with eight points, handing out seven assists while scoring one goal in his freshman season. While everyone always remembers their first, Fee's lone collegiate score carried a little more weight.

"My one and only goal in my collegiate history came as a breakaway from a defenseman, that was quite fun," Fee said when recounting his favorite memories of his time with Manhattanville. "That game was shortly after the passing of a good friend and was quite an emotional time for me, so that one sticks out the most."
 

Fee also took full advantage of the neighboring New York City during his time at Manhattanville, a further culture shock coming from the farmlands of Dauphin.

"Just going to the school and going to Yankee Stadium in the first week of college. Going to Madison Square Garden up in the 400 level, it was all things you never thought about. I went to the Winnipeg Jets arena just once as a kid, and then getting to go to those two arenas and stadiums was quite surreal."

As it turned out, Fee would be spending a lot of time at Madison Square Garden during and after college. As a senior, he took an internship with the New York Rangers. He played in one final collegiate game in the 2005-06 season—"Everyone had gotten suspended so I actually had to come back at play the final game of the season, which was quite fun," Fee laughed—his journey into the National Hockey League began through that internship opportunity.

"During the NHL lockout in 2004 and 2005, Pat Boller came from the Rangers to be an assistant coach with us at Manhattanville," Fee said. "He helped me get an internship and from there I stayed with the team and worked four years with the Rangers. I then moved on to Edmonton, Charlotte, Buffalo, then here in Florida. It was a quick transition from school. Because of the recruiting process and the way the U.S. visa system works, I finished four years of school and was able to get a visa that enabled me to stay on with the Rangers and prove to myself that I was worthy for them to provide a permanent visa for me."

Fee began his coaching career in the role of video coach with the Rangers, going on to hold the same position with the Edmonton Oilers from 2009 to 2016. He then moved to joined the staff of the Charlotte Checkers, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Florida Panthers, for four years before returning to the NHL in 2020 as video coach with the Buffalo Sabres.

Two years later, Fee made one more move as he joined the Florida Panthers as an assistant on head coach Paul Maurice's staff in 2022. Since Fee's arrival, the Panthers have made three-straight Stanley Cup Finals appearances, defeating the Edmonton Oilers in each of the last two years to capture the first championships in the team's 32-year history.

"Winning the Stanley Cups, that's just the cherry on top, there's nothing better than that. If I had known it was so much fun, I would have done it earlier!", Fee laughed.

Fee and Maurice first worked together in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey for Team Europe. Maurice was serving as an assistant coach while Fee served as a video assistant. While that experience set the stage for a reunion between the two six years later when Maruice was named the franchise's 18^th head coach, the World Cup experience was far from a day at the park.

"It was wild and very, very stressful, I have gray hair for a reason," Fee said. "I met Paul Maurice at the World Cup in 2016, had never worked with him, had never used the video system used at that tournament. So I had to take all of these wildly different personalities and technological abilities and mold them into an eight game series that lasted three weeks. To take all of that and come out with some success was incredible."

Fee served on the staff of Team Sweden this past year in the inaugural 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, another opportunity that Fee was extremely grateful for, even with the strains that came alongside with it.

"Team Sweden was equally as stressful as Team Europe because I get all polished and honed and ready to go, and then I had everything off and then I don't know what they're saying for the next three hours in Swedish," Fee said, laughing.

While his coaching journey has taken him across North America and the globe, Fee remains thankful of his time as a Valiant that made it all possible.

"I wouldn't be where I am today without Manhattanville." Fee said. "It has springboarded me to a level that where I come from, the small town background, I didn't know what to expect what I came to New York. But I realized the vast scope of what I could do and it allowed me to grasp on to what was available to me and to run with it."

Now, as the second-straight championship parade at Fort Lauderdale Beach came to a close and the Florida Panthers head into an offseason with more celebration to come, Fee reflected on how much of his success and journey came as a result of connections and conversations he made along the way, a message he hoped to pass along to today's Valiants.

"Do everything and anything you can. Meet people, talk to people, don't stay in your hockey circle. Talk to the soccer people, talk to the drama people. You will get a wealth of knowledge from every single person you meet at that school. If you can draw on some aspect of their life and apply it to your life, you will grow."
 
Special thanks to Adelyn Biedenbach, Vice President of Communications for the Florida Panthers, for coordinating interview access with Myles Fee for this piece.

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