Phaneuf was a little kid when he watched Wayne and the Oilers win back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1987 and ’88. Well, he was never actually little. Despite the fact that neither mom, Amber, nor dad, Paul, measure taller than five-foot-five, Phaneuf weighed in at 10.6 pounds at birth and he didn’t stop growing. Young Dion was hockey-obsessed, and it was Amber, a figure skater who represented PEI at the Canada Games, who taught him to skate at three on the backyard rink Paul made, and signed him up for power skating at four. Phaneuf played in the backyard until his cheeks froze, emulating his idols on the Oilers. “It was so contagious in the city, that feeling when they were winning,” he says of the team he watched win three Cups before he turned six. “That’s when my dream started.”
He wore No. 2 because his grandpa, Ron MacArthur, sported it when he played in PEI for the Summerside Aces. MacArthur’s Aces sweater still hangs above Phaneuf’s bed in his childhood home in Edmonton, which is just as he left it: Trophies everywhere, NHL pennants hanging on the walls along with some of his own sweaters. And Grandpa’s is how MacArthur left it. Before it was placed on the wall, Amber took it to the dry cleaners with instructions from her oldest son: “Tell them not to take the blood stains out of it.” Phaneuf was about seven years old, then. The guy known for open-ice hits and punishing opponents in front of his net has always been a bit of a bruiser, it seems.
At age eight, Phaneuf had a pro-like setup in the family basement. Under the stairs, he had a locker with his No. 2 on the outside and his gear hanging on the inside, and a work area where he’d curve his blades. The rest of the basement was used as a shooting gallery. “He was famous for breaking the windows and the lights,” Amber says, turning to her husband. “Eh, Paul? He broke a lot of lights.”