Millions of children around the world dream of one day playing professional sports for their favorite team. But only a select few ever actually manage to make that dream into a reality, such is the difficulty of becoming a professional athlete. In Canada, overwhelmingly, the sport kids grow up wanting to play the most is hockey, which is basically a religion in the Great White North.

Daniel LaCosta was one such Canadian child who dreamed of playing hockey at the highest level one day: The NHL. But there was a side to this dream that he never anticipated and because of that, he had a complicated relationship with the sport for a very long time. 

That complicated relationship is a cautionary tale to all those who share the same dream. But before we get there, we need to go to the beginning of LaCosta’s NHL journey. You see, he was a goaltender and a native of Labrador City, Newfoundland, who slowly worked his way up the levels to the point where he was noticed by NHL scouts. 

That notice eventually led to him being drafted in the third round of the 2004 Entry Draft by the Columbus Blue Jackets. “My family was with me,” LaCosta recalled. “It was in Raleigh, North Carolina. We were sitting there and back then, there were nine rounds. The first day, instead of now, where it’s the first round, back then, it was the first three rounds. So we showed up early. I was one of the last picks in the third round. 

“It was just a really long day in a hot arena. I just remember, you’re starting to wonder whether or not you’re gonna go that day or have to wait till the next day. There was a lot of excitement to get picked. It’s a childhood dream to hear your name called like that. 

“But I remember just feeling a lot of relief too, ’cause you’re just sitting there the whole day and there’s some anxiety wondering about whether or not you’re gonna get picked and where you’re gonna go. Getting your name called towards the end of the first day was probably mostly relief and then celebration.”

Looking back on the relief and celebration, did LaCosta know, or have an inkling, that he would be Columbus-bound? 

“I mean, (for) most of the year, (when) you’re heading into your draft year, I didn’t have a great underage season in junior,” LaCosta explained. “So that was a year, not my draft year, but the year before it. So, I knew I kind of had to have a good start to the year to get myself back on the radar and get myself an opportunity. 

“Played pretty well and was just starting to get some attention throughout the course of the year, was on some of the Central Scouting lists and stuff like that. Got invited to The NHL Combine, which, at that point, I felt was not like a slam dunk that you were gonna get drafted, but it was a pretty good indication that there was at least enough interest from enough teams that warranted you going there to do the testing and all the interviews and all that stuff. 

“I probably wound up interviewing with about 15 to 20 teams. Honestly, most of them went really well, except for Columbus, where I remember leaving there feeling like there was probably no chance that the Blue Jackets were gonna draft me. They were grilling me pretty good in there. But sure enough, I think the goalie coach must’ve liked the way I played and liked my answers to some of the tough questions that were going on in the meeting. 

“I remember my agents were sitting in front of me (at the Draft). As it was building up to the pick where Columbus picked me, they were looking back and telling me, saying that they thought it was gonna be Columbus. And sure enough, it was. They had a really good relationship with the goalie coach in Columbus at the time, Rick Wamsley. I think they just had a hunch that they were gonna take me. 

“So, they wound up picking me and I kind of went around where I thought I would. I knew I was probably gonna be anywhere between the third to fifth (rounds). It’s hard to say, right? Like, you get to that point, it’s whatever the teams are looking for, whether it’s depth in goal or different positions. It wound up working out great. It was a great experience being part of the organization for as long as I was.”

A great experience, at first. But once the honeymoon phase was over, things changed quickly. 

“When you’re coming up through minor hockey and junior and fortunate enough to get drafted to Columbus and The NHL and be a part of their system, for the most part, you have tunnel vision on, not just making it to The League and playing a couple of games, it’s more,” LaCosta explained. “You wanna have a lengthy career, right? 

“So, when everything worked out, I did get some games and things like that. While I was up there, I played pretty well and probably felt like I would’ve maybe warranted an extra game or two before getting sent down. 

“But I was called up on emergency, so I knew that it was a matter of time (before) I was gonna get sent back to the minors. To be quite honest, when I was sent back, I didn’t handle it very well, personally. I didn’t play as well as I could and probably didn’t work as hard as I could have afterwards. 

“Not that long after, within a couple of years, I was back playing University hockey in Canada, right? You felt like you were so close to making it and it was one of those things, at the time, I guess I looked at it more through the lens of what I fell short of versus what I actually accomplished. 

“I mean, just to get to The League itself is a big accomplishment and something that most hockey players don’t get to do. But that was never really my goal, right? My goal was to stay there for a long time and have a great career. For the longest time, after I was there, I didn’t probably look at it with as much pride as I probably should have now, in retrospect.”

A quick glance at LaCosta’s numbers shows that he made his NHL Debut on the road, on March 25, 2008, in relief, against the Nashville Predators. Then, the following season, 2008-09, he again came on in relief, on October 18, 2008, again on the road and again against Nashville. 

LaCosta eventually was given the chance to start on February 7, 2009, at home, against the San Jose Sharks. He stopped 28 of the 30 shots he faced in Columbus’ 3-2 overtime victory, his first win in The NHL. Three days later, on February 10th, he started at home against the Colorado Avalanche and stopped all 31 shots he faced for his first NHL shutout. That wound up being the last time he ever appeared in an NHL game.

“You go up and felt like I did everything I could with the opportunity I got while I was there,” LaCosta said. “But then, in hindsight, looking back on it, when I got sent down, instead of using that as motivation to get back to The League, I probably had a bit of the ‘poor me’ and just didn’t handle it in a very mature way and didn’t play very good when I went back down. And then I never got the opportunity to be there again.”

After a couple more seasons at hockey’s lower levels and after a couple of concussions, LaCosta was advised by doctors to “seriously consider life after playing.”

“The doctor who did it, we found out that when I had the CT scan, I have a cyst on my brain that I wasn’t aware of, which made me more susceptible to brain hemorrhage and bleeding and things like that,” LaCosta said. “I didn’t know about (it previously). I went my whole career and I had no idea that it was there. I was born with it. 

“Basically, (the Doctor) was saying, ‘I’m not gonna clear you to play for the rest of the year and if I was you, I would seriously consider life after playing.’ It’s obviously not news that you wanna hear, but at that stage of my life, I was already starting to think about life after hockey.”

“It was devastating,” LaCosta recalled. “Like it’s a big part of your identity, pretty much your whole identity, actually, for me at that point in my life. So you’re kind of thinking about what’s next. And I mean, the good news was, not long after that happened, my wife told me that she was pregnant with our son. (We have two kids now). 

“So that made it a little bit easier to wrap my head around…My teammates were great to me for the rest of that season, to kind of support me and I helped coach the team and stuff. But it was a weird transition. 

“I think everything kind of worked out the way it was supposed to. It was uncomfortable and it was challenging at the time, but I wound up transitioning into a career in finance not too long after that and starting my family here in New Brunswick, Canada.”

From being a hockey player to a career in finance. That’s not the typical response you hear. Many times, you hear players go into coaching, or scouting, or some other type of job that keeps them around the game.

“It’s a good point,” LaCosta said. “I definitely thought about that when I went to University. I did an undergrad in business, a Master’s Degree in business and then I majored in Finance. I majored in finance because, when I came to University, after I played professionally for four years and was under contract with the Blue Jackets, felt like I probably should have came to school with a little more cash in my jeans than I did. 

“That’s nobody’s fault but mine. I really had very little financial literacy, didn’t understand it and I wanted to get better at it. Initially, I started taking more finance classes, not because I wanted to have a career in finance; at the time, it was more just, I wanted to get a better understanding of it, personally, to just help with my life. 

“Then, the more I studied it, the more interested I got. A lot of the alumni of the university team here had great careers in the industry and I just got more and more interested in it. I think it attracts a certain personality type, too. There’s a lot of ex-athletes in the wealth management and finance industry, who they’re kind of Type A and they’re competitive. 

“There was just a lot of things that appealed to me about it. But it kind of happened organically, to be honest. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I came back to University. I just wanted to give myself some options outside of hockey and it just evolved into a passion and having a career in the wealth management industry.”

That passion has taken LaCosta on a whole different journey, with the added bonus that he now has a different outlook on how his hockey career unfolded. 

“I definitely have a broad sector of clients. But I would say that I specialize in entrepreneurs, like self-employed business owners who don’t have a pension that build up a bunch of equity in their business and sell it and then need a lot of planning support with respect to how to do that. And then, what to do when they get the money to live the lifestyle they wanna live and legacy planning for their family and that sort of stuff. 

“That’s kind of my target audience. But like, I mean, we have clients that are just regular people who worked civil servant sort of jobs, who were very frugal and squirreled some money away, or people who got an inheritance or something. There’s a broad range for sure. And we do have some institutional-type clients that are foundations and things like that, too. 

“I kind of made a conscientious effort to shy away from the hockey talk over the course of my (finance) career. In hindsight, it was kind of dumb that I did that, but, at the time, it was more like I was using the hockey talk a lot as a crutch when I started my career because my skill level (in finance) was very low. 

“I didn’t feel like I had a ton of value that I could add with expertise and things like that to give to clients because I was so new. I would fall back on the hockey talk as a relationship-building thing. 

“Then, as I got better and have more skill and advice to bring to the table, I almost never talked about (hockey), to be honest, unless they asked me. And that was very rare. I’m about 13 years into my (finance) career now and far removed from playing. It (hockey) doesn’t come up a ton anymore.”

It’s always curious when somebody makes the “conscientious” decision not to talk about a part of their life. And as we know, LaCosta had a complicated view of how his hockey journey played out. But, with time, it appears that there has been a thaw in the relationship between him and the sport he grew up playing.

“I’m very much proud of the career I had,” LaCosta explained. “It wasn’t what I drew up, but the game was very good to me. I got so much out of the sport. I wound up living a great life and meeting so many people and learning so many valuable lessons that have helped me in my career after hockey. 

“I’ve got to travel the world…By the grace of G-d, I was pretty good at hockey and had some opportunities to go do some different things and have some exciting experiences. I’ve got no regrets. I mean, there’s mistakes I probably would’ve made along the way, but those are all learning lessons and it’s helped shape who I am today. 

“I’m very proud of it…I’m not boastful of the career I had, but also, I look at it objectively…It was still a great experience that I’m proud of and I look back on it, mostly, very fondly.

“At this point in my life, I’m obviously very, very happy and proud that I got to that point. It was an amazing experience and just didn’t really work out the way I envisioned when I was a little kid, I guess.”