For Ben Stafford, it was the kind of hockey moment that young players dream about: scoring the game-winning goal in Game 4 of the 2005 Calder Cup Final, which clinched the championship for the AHL's Philadelphia Phantoms. But even at the height of his hockey career, Stafford knew his dream was over.
The 27-year-old celebrated with teammates who would go on to significant careers at the next level, having played center behind future NHL stars Mike Richards, Jeff Carter and Patrick Sharp in that postseason. Stafford would take a different path, one that diverged sharply from the road he had journeyed from childhood games on Minnesota's frozen lakes to pro hockey. Within the next few years, Stafford would enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps, ship out to Iraq and never return to his hockey career.
"Growing up in Minnesota, that's all we did in the winter. I loved it. I still love it. I wanted to take it as far as it could go, and I'd say coming out of college, undrafted, I had a better professional career than I thought I was going to have," said Stafford, who played in the AHL from 2001 to '05, with a pit stop with the ECHL's Trenton Titans. "I didn't expect it to be a career -- like, a long-term, life career. Sometimes I wish I'd played another couple of years. But looking back, I think it was the right move to make the transition away from hockey into medicine and eventually into the military."
Stafford, who was pre-med at Yale, was on a path to practicing medicine for the military when he left hockey. He got into Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He got engaged to his wife, Ali, a food blogger and author, during the 2004-05 season. They wanted to put down some roots, and Stafford decided that it was time to start a career in medicine.
Not every hockey player has that clarity of purpose or a sense of when to leave the sport. The lure of the game is stronger than the desire to start a life separate from hockey. Stafford admits that he felt that pull, too.
"I had something pretty clearly defined, and I had a path there that I laid the groundwork for years in advance. I wasn't a blue-chip NHL draft pick. But it was even hard for me because of the attraction of the game, the camaraderie," said Stafford, who is now sales leader for onshore wind at GE Renewable Energy. "It's a full-time job, right? It's pretty consuming. So it's not easy to kind of think about the future. They want to keep working on their game, and they want to keep playing."
But Stafford soon felt something else compelling him. He made his decision to enlist in the Marine Corps in summer 2006. "I was watching what was going on in Iraq. That was a tough year in Iraq for U.S. troops. I wanted to get into the fight," he said before pausing. "Maybe that's too strong [a phrase], but I wanted to go sooner rather than later."
The switch flipped for him to enlist, but not without support from Ali, which Stafford said was vital in his decision-making.
"Joining the military is a tough discussion to have publicly. It's something that's very personal, and it affects a lot of people. I can't say enough about military families. On Veterans Day, people say, 'Thank you for your service,' and I genuinely appreciate that. But I can't talk enough about the support that service members have from their family and from their friends, and they're the ones that deal with the downstream effects of military life," he said.
Among his supporters were former Phantoms teammates and Philadelphia Flyers personnel, including AHL coach John Stevens, who wrote an endorsement letter to the Marines for Stafford. "He was a hard worker and perfect teammate and aptly nicknamed the 'golden citizen' because he did everything right," Stevens said when Stafford retired.
There were concerns, too. Former Flyers goalie Antero Niittymaki was one of Stafford's closest friends, and he told the Delaware County Daily Times in 2008: "You don't want to see anybody going to Iraq because it's a pretty dangerous place, but when it's a friend of yours, it's tough. We talked about it a lot, but it's what he wants to do. It's his thing. He likes it. I am a little worried. You don't know what's going on over there or what's happening. But you have to deal with it and hope everything goes well."
Stafford was an infantry officer, leading a command of a platoon of about 40 Marines and sailors in Iraq, just south of Fallujah, from 2008 to '09. That was his first deployment. He was based at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County. Then he was a company executive officer, a second in command overseeing 180-to-200 Marines on Navy ships. "We trained foreign militaries in the Middle East," he said, citing Jordan, Kuwait and Indonesia. He finished as an instructor in the infantry officer course at Quantico, in Virginia.
As is the case for many who join the Armed Forces, Stafford says there's perception, and then there's reality.
"It's hard to prepare for the realities and the rigor of a combat deployment, right?" Stafford said. "That said, I felt incredibly well-prepared by the Marine Corps. I had people that were just back from that area [who] instructed me, and we trained for months and months."
Stafford says his experiences realigned his perspectives.
"I would just say that it gave me perspective on life and just how lucky we are," he said.
He offered an example: There's a photo of Stafford and his wife that hangs near their bedroom. Their children have painted around it. He called it "cliché" but admitted that it moves him every time he sees it. "It just says, 'Every day is a gift.' That perspective is what was driven home for me," he said.
As easy as it is for Stafford to extol the virtues of enlisting, it's equally difficult for him to talk about the aftereffects for some who do.
"This is kind of a tough subject. I was fortunate to serve and be safe, both physically and emotionally. There are things that all service members, regardless of their capacity, have to deal with and some struggle with," he said, adding that he keeps the Marines with whom he served in his thoughts.
Stafford is now a father of four children -- three daughters and one son -- who watch him play hockey on Sunday nights and have fallen for the sport themselves, both as players and as fans. Rather than jumping back to medicine, he joined GE's junior officer leadership program after his service was completed. He started his current role as North American sales leader for onshore wind in July 2019.
"There's a healthy network of veterans within GE. That was very attractive because they could understand where I was coming from and help with the transition," Stafford said.
As a hockey player and a Marine, Stafford has considered the intersection between sports and the military. Take, for example, when soldiers are honored at games. "I think there are a lot of people that want to thank veterans generally, so I'm in favor of it. It's a citizen military. We pull from the citizenry, and then service members go back to become regular citizens as veterans. So it's important to keep that in people's minds," he said.
But he has considered a larger question about the two most prominent jobs in his past: the contrast between being part of a hockey team and being part of the Corps.
"I would say the camaraderie certainly is very similar, and the physicality of it also for me, as an infantry officer and the infantry space, is very physical, so that was something that made sense to me," he said. "I learned things from hockey, like consistency. I saw players succeed not because they were the fastest skater or the quickest stickhandler, but they did it right every time. That is arguably rarer than being a very fast skater. So that consistency -- and not getting complacent -- is incredibly important in the military as well."
The biggest shared value, Stafford said, is respect. How you earn it. How you maintain it. How working closely with someone on a daily basis reveals character, on the ice or in service of one's country.
"You know, people talk about military leadership a lot and leading by example. In the military, we talk about respect. You can get respect in the military by your position or your rank and then also from your person, from your actions and what you do," he said. "There's a similarity there to hockey as well. In an 82-game season and in a four-round playoff, you are going to get to know each other very well. And you can't fake the funk with the people that you're with day to day."