Karen Casey tells the story best.
After moving up to the Fort Myers area from the Florida Keys, Karen’s son, Seamus, had his first playdate with new neighbor Gavin Brindley. Both members of families that passed a love for hockey down to them, the two played mini sticks together for the first time when they were five years old.
“We had some nets set up in the garage, and they were playing with them,” Karen told The Daily. “Seamus comes in, and he throws down his little stick, and says, ‘Well, that didn’t go so well.’
“I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘He’s gone, he left.’ ”
After the pair bickered over who won or something equally inconsequential, Brindley decided that he’d had enough. He left all alone, walking back through the neighborhood to his house.
“They were like an old married couple,” Seamus’s dad, Steve, joked as Karen finished up the story. “They’d squabble and then it would be over immediately.”
But that unfortunate first playdate wouldn’t end the pair’s relationship. Just like an old married couple, they still had plenty of time left to spend together. And now that they’re playing together on the Michigan hockey team, that squabbling hasn’t slowed in the slightest.
“(Brindley) likes to make things up on the spot,” Seamus said Dec. 15 in response to some of Brindley’s comments about him from the day before. “He used to call me the Ginsu Chef, like you go to hibachi, and how they chop, he compared my stickhandling to that. But I just remember skating circles around him.”
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Approximately two years after that inaugural playdate, the pair saw their first time on the ice together. As two hockey players in a state that wasn’t exactly huge on the sport, they needed to start their own team. So when the boys were seven years old, Brindley’s dad, Ryan — who grew up in Ontario and moved south to play for the ECHL’s Florida Everblades — started a team with Steve.
From its conception, the boys’ team turned heads. Seamus and Gavin, both playing defense at the time, starred. As they traveled hours to find other teams to play against, the pair consistently shined, a beam of hockey talent from Florida.
“When they were eight, I got asked to take them to coach (their) team in Toronto at a big tournament,” Ryan told The Daily. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re eight years old and I’m gonna take them on a plane?’ I knew they were pretty good, but I didn’t know, comparatively.”
Against the elevated level of competition, Seamus and Gavin dazzled once again. Ryan recounted how the pair would get the puck in their own defensive zone and take it end-to-end to score. Though they both played as defenseman, their offensive talent beamed from a young age.
“They played in this big tournament, and they did really well,” Ryan said. “At the end, I just thought, ‘Man, these are the best kids.’ ”
Soon, the team that Steve and Ryan formed together morphed into that age group’s Florida Alliance squad, where the pair spent much of its time in AAA hockey. Though the Alliance organization had existed prior, the Brindleys and Caseys came in and established themselves as the organization’s premier team.
And just like they excelled against the best of the best in Toronto, Seamus and Gavin excelled once again. Despite not having as large a pool of hockey players to draw from — with the next-nearest rink over two hours away — the Alliance ingrained themselves in the national landscape, consistently ranked as a top-three team in the country.
“That little group we put together, we called it the Southern Edge Academy,” Steve said. “There was a lot of talent down there at the time, and I really think (Gavin and Seamus are) blazing a path for a lot of kids that are coming out of that area.”
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The duo split up for the first time when they were 12, as Seamus traveled north to join Detroit’s Compuware hockey program. After a few years playing apart, Seamus began to look towards what he wanted to do after junior hockey. While he played for Compuware, Michigan got its first look at him.
Due to Compuware’s injuries at the time, though, the Wolverines’ scouts didn’t get to watch Seamus play as a defenseman. At the forward position instead, Seamus made an immediate impression on his future team, scoring a hat trick in his first showing in front of Michigan’s recruiters. Soon after, he joined then-Compuware coach Chris Tamer — who played for the Wolverines in college — for a visit to Ann Arbor.
After falling in love with Michigan on his visit, Seamus committed when he was just 14 years old.
For Gavin, it took a bit longer to reach Michigan. Remaining with the Alliance for the rest of his AAA days before moving on to the USHL’s Tri-City Storm for juniors, Gavin left his commitment open for a few more years.
Though the OHL’s Sarnia Sting drafted both Gavin and Seamus in 2020, setting the stage for a potential reunion, both chose college hockey as the next step instead of a Canadian major junior team. And between Seamus convincing him, the prospect of a reunion with then-assistant coach Brandon Naurato — who Gavin had worked with previously — and a campus visit where he too fell in love, Gavin chose Michigan in August 2021.
Even as they played apart for the first time, the duo always seemed to find its way back together. Whether it was Seamus returning to the Alliance for his final AAA years or Gavin joining Seamus on the U.S. National Team Development Program team, the duo continued to play together in all sorts of settings. From that period, Karen recounted a memory of when they went to the Youth Olympic games together.
“Only 17 kids from the country went,” Karen said. “Most states only had one kid. We had two from the same rink. That didn’t happen anywhere else in the country.”
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Jenna Hickey/Daily. Buy this photo.
Together once again at Michigan, the lessons they’ve learned at all the different stops along the way are clear. Gavin’s roots as a defenseman are shown in his willingness to sacrifice his body to block a shot, even as a forward. On the other side, Seamus’s past versatility has made him incredibly hard to stop, as he was graded the top offensive defenseman in the entire NCAA in the first half of the season.
But easily the most palpable piece of their game that has translated to the college level is their chemistry. It’s evident whenever the pair is on the ice together, finding each other with no-look passes and for goal celebrations. They are constantly connected on both ends, seemingly always knowing right where the other is.
“We have hundreds and hundreds of hours on the ice together,” Gavin told The Daily. “It’s natural. It’s inevitable that it was gonna happen. When we’re on the ice together, we’re better.”
And just like they’re better together on the ice, Gavin and Seamus are better together off it. They’re lifelong friends, roommates and teammates, who find each other every step of the way. Whether it’s with the Wolverines or the USA World Junior team, they’re always together, ready to poke fun at one another. With how many different teams they’ve played on, how many different ways they’ve been thrown together, it’s almost like there’s an invisible string binding them to each other.
“We just can’t get rid of each other,” Seamus joked after both were selected to USA Hockey’s World Junior selection camp.
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Together, Seamus and Gavin have become beacons of hockey success in a region which has often lacked it. As younger Florida Alliance teams reach the same peaks as the pair once did, as Gavin’s younger brother follows in their footsteps, the mark that they have left on their community together is undeniable.
“All these kids are looking up to them, and they always take the time,” Ryan said. “… When they walk in the rinks, they’re kinda like mini celebrities for the hockey community here.”
Now, should Michigan make it there, Gavin and Seamus could play on the biggest stage in college hockey in front of that community. This year’s Frozen Four takes place in Tampa, a fitting two hours north of the duo’s home rink.
If the Wolverines get there, the pair will presumably reflect on what it means to be back there, what it’s like having played together for so long.
And all those years after that first playdate, they’ll probably smile, think back through the years and crack another joke about the kid they first remember as a five-year-old playing mini sticks.
