TAMPA, Fla. — Brandon Hagel had just finished getting showered and changed at the Blackhawks practice facility on March 18.

The then-23-year-old winger was packed and ready for the team’s charter flight to Minnesota that afternoon.

That’s when a Blackhawks exec pulled him aside.

“Come with me.”

Hagel was caught off guard. He didn’t think he was getting sent down — not after racking up 21 goals in 55 games in his first full NHL season. The NHL trade deadline was four days away, of course, and there had been rumors, but they had died down. His coach, Derek King, and biggest star teammate, Patrick Kane, had publicly said they wanted him there.

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“I thought to myself, ‘There’s no shot,'” Hagel says now.

What Hagel didn’t know was that since Kyle Davidson had taken over as general manager on March 1, he had been fielding calls from GMs like Tampa Bay’s Julien BriseBois, inquiring if the forward was available. Once Davidson decided, early on, the team was going to a full rebuild, Hagel was in play. For a heavy price.

In the elevator with the exec, Hagel asked if he’d been traded. The exec didn’t say a word, just gave a little shrug, as if to say, “I don’t want to give you the news.”

“I kind of knew then,” Hagel says.

When Hagel got upstairs and entered Davidson’s office, it was obvious. The entire staff was there.

“We’re trading you,” Hagel remembers Davidson saying. “You’ll have a good chance to win the Cup.”

But they couldn’t tell Hagel where. Not yet, as the deal was being finalized and other players were being notified. The Blackhawks staff thanked him for everything. Hagel did the same, appreciating how Chicago gave him his first NHL shot after the Sabres — who drafted him in the sixth round in 2016 — never signed him.

Hagel’s mind was racing. He was stressed. And he was alone. His teammates had already headed to the airport. He didn’t get to say goodbye. He grabbed his hockey bag, walked to his car and drove to his two-bedroom apartment in Old Town. His girlfriend, Gabby, was waiting.

Hagel’s first call was to his father, Dwayne. Dwayne could hear the cracking in his son’s voice. The pauses. Like he was trying not to cry.

“It still gets me,” Dwayne says, choking up himself. “He said, ‘Dad, I’ve been traded. But I don’t know where.’ My heart just fell for him. He didn’t want to go. He loved Chicago. He said he was OK, but I knew it was hard on him.”

Hagel, packing his life up at his apartment, found out 90 minutes later he was headed to Tampa to join the two-time defending champion Lightning. The undersized underdog from the tiny town of Morinville, Alberta, was part of a blockbuster deal, with the Blackhawks acquiring two first-round picks and two rostered players, Taylor Raddysh and Boris Katchouk.

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Davidson gave him a heads up, then BriseBois called to tell him how excited they were. “Just play your game,” BriseBois told him.

Then came the welcome wagon. A text from captain Steven Stamkos. Victor Hedman. Ryan McDonagh. Owner Jeff Vinik called him, too. Former Lightning center Tyler Johnson, Hagel’s teammate in Chicago, texted him:

“You’re going to love it.”

By 6 a.m. the next day, he was on a flight to Tampa. He played that night.

One year later, Hagel’s view of the deal has changed dramatically. He’s a key cog on a top line with Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point and has been one of the best players on a team pushing for a fourth straight trip to the Stanley Cup Final, with 22 goals and 46 points in 54 games.

“He wouldn’t change it for the world,” Dwayne says. “To be honest, Chicago is a dumpster fire. I don’t think you could script it this good, one year later. He couldn’t even imagine this was possible.”

If the price the Lightning paid surprised many, that especially included Hagel.

And Hagel admits he felt pressure in his first few months with the team to try to live up to it.

“It was probably one of the biggest costs of the deadline,” Hagel says. “You think you want to perform like that. I was never a first-rounder. I don’t want to say they put me in a spot, but I was never in a place where I had expectations from people on the outside, like, ‘What is he going to do?’ Is he going to continue to score? Blah blah. I’ve always started on the fourth line and worked my way up.

“That type of story.”

The player the @TBLightning gave up two 1st round picks and two prospects for – @Bhags9 – wasn’t drafted in bantam. The Sabres didn’t tender him. How did he get here? On a serendipitous scouting trip + a small-town kid who “finds a way to prove you wrong.”

— Joe Smith (@JoeSmithNHL) March 24, 2022

Hagel grew up in a small Albertan town just an hour outside Edmonton. As much as he loved the game — he had a poster of idol Alex Ovechkin on his bedroom wall — he didn’t know if his career would be more than the mini-stick and street hockey battles he had with his brother, Tyler.

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Hagel wasn’t picked in the bantam draft and planned to play one more year in junior A, then maybe go to school. But Shaun Sutter, a scout for the Red Deer Rebels in the WHL, found himself on a serendipitous scouting trip to Drayton Valley. Sutter, the nephew of former NHL coach Brent Sutter, was there to see a trade target to help the team’s Memorial Cup run. But it was Hagel who caught his eye. By the time the second period was over, Sutter had made a number of calls: to Brent, Hagel’s agent and to a former coach. Sutter would later joke Hagel reminded him of Justin Bieber — wiry, with a lot of spunk. He wanted to bring Hagel in as a walk-on. Five days later, Hagel signed.

“It was sort of a big coup,” Sutter says. “It wasn’t like we were sneaking him out in the middle of the night, but it was kind of the equivalent.”

The Sabres drafted Hagel in the sixth round eight months later, but they eventually decided not to sign him to an entry-level deal. The fact Buffalo went through a regime change didn’t help, nor did Hagel’s thumb injury, which sidelined him during the 2017-18 season. Still, it was a kick-in-the-gut moment. Hagel called his father and considered going to his backup plan of attending school and becoming a teacher.

“At one point, he did think of classes and stuff,” Dwayne says. “But he wasn’t done with hockey yet. I knew he wanted to keep going. It was a tough pill to swallow. He won’t say it, but everyone that kind of looked at him in the past, he wants to show them.

“But he’s had this his whole life. Never got drafted in bantam. Didn’t get signed by Buffalo. Never got a sniff at Team Canada. Always started on the fourth line. No one would take a chance on him.”

Well, the Sutters did. And so did the Blackhawks.

Hagel remembers when then-Chicago GM Stan Bowman came to visit him in Red Deer. It was after Buffalo decided to pass, and with Hagel on his way to a 41-goal season, there were many NHL teams showing interest.

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“(Bowman) came early, maybe 15 games in, basically told me, ‘I know there will be a lot of teams that are going to try to sign you, but we wanted to be the first,'” Hagel says. “I’m like, ‘I’ve heard that story before.’

“But two days later, my agent called me and we went from there.”

Hagel played 67 games for Chicago’s AHL team, Rockford, in 2018-19 and 2019-20, making his NHL debut on March 11, 2020. He got his first real shot the following season, which is when teams like Tampa Bay really started to take notice.

BriseBois has been known to make bold deadline moves over the years to try to push his team over the top.

There was his acquisitions of Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman at the 2020 deadline. BriseBois gave up a first-rounder in the David Savard deal in 2021. The Lightning have had a penchant for giving up their first-round picks in deals, and BriseBois was prepared to again.

They had lost some quality forecheckers in Goodrow, Coleman and Yanni Gourde, and that’s an area where BriseBois felt Hagel really stood out. They had plenty of chances to see Hagel up close, as the Blackhawks were in Tampa Bay’s division during the COVID-19-impacted schedule in 2020. They played eight times.

“He’s a player that all of us noticed,” BriseBois says. “A competitive player, he fit the mold of the type of player that would be a really good fit for our style of play. And he had a really good contract.”

BriseBois’ famous line is that in adding to his team, he looks at the player, the person and the contract, and Hagel checked all the boxes.

“He was on our radar early,” BriseBois says. “But at that point, I didn’t expect the Blackhawks would be out — didn’t expect them to be sellers that early in the season.”

Davidson took over for Bowman on March 1, 2022. BriseBois made a call to let Davidson know he was interested in Hagel if he ever thought about trading him.

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Once Davidson and the Blackhawks brass decided they were going into full rebuild mode, they had to consider everything.

“I certainly wasn’t actively trying to trade him, no,” Davidson says. “But like I said … he’s a desirable player. We liked him. All the fans loved him. I understand that, and any team he ended up on, the fans would love him there too. Teams around the league really found value in his style of play. It came up organically.”

Agent Allain Roy says there were several teams who were interested in Hagel around the deadline, and that likely kept the price pretty high.

Did what the Blackhawks initially wanted make BriseBois pause?

“No,” BriseBois says. “I thought they were realistic. I had a good idea of what I thought he’d be worth to us, and the two weren’t far apart.”

BriseBois says there weren’t prolonged negotiations. The deal came together pretty quickly, with Tampa Bay adding prospects Raddysh and Katchouk, both forwards who had played in the NHL that season.

The Blackhawks seemed to be selling high.

“I guess in a way, but that’s who Brandon Hagel is,” Davidson says. “I don’t necessarily see it as this was a peak he wasn’t going to be able to sustain. What we saw was who Brandon was, and that’s a very desirable player, very useful player to any team in the league, so that’s why we were able to get good value for him.”

The more the Lightning have gotten to know Hagel, the more they like him.

“He’s a funny guy. He’s got his own slang,” says defenseman Mikhail Sergachev. “It’s like normal American slang, with some Canadian too. And his chirps are probably the funniest. It’s like the other night with (Wild forward) Ryan Reaves. I think he was like, ‘I’m going to f— you up.’ Or, ‘Shut up Reaves.’ He doesn’t back down.

Sergachev laughs:  “And that’s fine. I’m not going to fight (Reaves).”

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Hagel says he’s shy until he gets to know you, and it took him some time after the trade to feel comfortable. The team was very welcoming, inviting him to a golf tournament on his first off day in town. The text messages from new teammates were helpful.  They wanted him to fit in right away, but Hagel didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. “I wanted to pick and choose my spots,” he says. “I think as the playoffs went on, you’re in the room with the guys, it brings you so much closer.”

Hagel scored just four goals in 22 regular-season games with Tampa Bay after the trade, and you could tell he was pressing. But he started to come into his own during the playoffs, when he joined a shutdown line with Anthony Cirelli and Alex Killorn.

“That gave me more confidence. I felt I had a purpose,” Hagel says. “I knew what my role was. I honestly think that helped me as a player. I had a job. Those guys had been there all year long. It was going to take some time, I don’t care who you are. I’m not going to come in and take over a Stanley Cup champion team. It’s not the reality. It was frustrating (not scoring). I wouldn’t lie about that. But I couldn’t be happier where I am now.”

Hagel is settling in on and off the ice. He arrived in Tampa a month before camp to get settled into a two-bedroom apartment. He’s started to hang things on walls, including a photo of Edmonton (where he is from) and Chicago (where Gabby grew up).

“It’s feeling like home,” Hagel says.

Hagel’s dressing room stall is right next to Kucherov’s. The experience of playing with Patrick Kane in Chicago helps Hagel understand and adapt to Kucherov. And, as Lightning color analyst Brian Engblom points out, Hagel is far from a passenger on that top line. He can be a driver.

“He’s been one of their best players,” Engblom says.

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Kucherov and Point admire Hagel’s work ethic, his drive on the forecheck and in the corners. They say he has underrated skill, too. You have to have strong hockey sense to play with those types of stars, and Hagel has it.

“My role in both places (in Chicago and Tampa Bay) was to never not play my game,” Hagel says. “I believe I have the ability to make plays and if I can get the puck back for those guys, I’ll go after it. I do everything possible to benefit those guys. They’re superstars and I don’t think I’m close to that level. But if they need someone to play with them, and I happen to fit, it’s worked out well.”

Hagel has one year left on his contract before becoming a restricted free agent, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s a player the Lightning try to lock in long-term. BriseBois has indicated that’s something they’ll eventually explore, and Hagel says he’d love to make that happen.

“He loved Chicago and Chicago loved him,” Dwayne Hagel says. “Now it’s bye, bye Chicago, welcome Tampa. You couldn’t have scripted this.”

(Top photo: Chase Agnello-Dean / NHLI via Getty Images)