An MSU hockey player, his immigrant father and 'The Mighty Ducks'

Butrus Ghafari doesn’t recall how old he was, but he will never forget the feeling.

His team had won a peewee youth hockey tournament, and Ghafari joined his teammates at center ice to accept their trophies.

His father, Sejaan, approached. The younger Ghafari was expecting a warm embrace. Instead, his father ripped the hardware out of his hands and told him he hadn’t played up to par.

The photo still hangs on their basement wall in West Bloomfield. A dozen or so smiling hockey players, proudly displaying trophies. At the end of the line, Ghafari, trophy-less and pouting.

“I was mad,” Ghafari said. “He doesn’t care if you score five goals and win if you didn’t work hard. Score zero goals, your team loses and you worked your butt off, then he is going to be happy with me. That’s what he cares about. That’s the kind of personality he has.”

It’s not hard to see where that work ethic and attitude comes from. Sejaan Ghafari arrived in the U.S. from Lebanon unable to speak English and with barely a penny to his name. He built a business, a life and a family.

“Seeing my dad come from nothing drives me,” Butrus Ghafari said.

The freshman defenseman on the Michigan State University hockey team was outside the Spartan locker room deep inside the bowels of Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. The Spartans had lost 4-1 to Western Michigan, the team Ghafari originally committed to in high school, in the opening round of the Great Lakes Invitational. That night, though, he was looking forward to the meeting with his old man.

“I worked hard and gave it my all tonight,” he said.

Coming to America

“Nothing is given to you in this life,” Sejaan Ghafari said repetitively the morning of the game.

He was talking about his own journey as much as his son’s.

Sejaan Ghafari’s story began on a modest tobacco farm in southern Lebanon. On Dec. 13, 1987, at the age of 22, he boarded a plane for America, driven by a determination to succeed and a civil war ravaging the “old country.”

“That was a special day,” he said with a smile, sitting in his office at one of the four Exxon gas stations he owns and operates in the Detroit area. He also owns two Tim Horton’s.

Although he didn’t have very much money or a future secured when he boarded that plane, he knew in his heart it was the right move. It was also his father’s dying wish to see his whole family make it to safety to Detroit, following a brother who had gone there for medical school.

“I struggled with the decision to move (to the U.S.),” he said. “I was comfortable with what I was doing, but it was too dangerous.”

More than 250,000 people were killed in the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. Sejaan, who is a Christian, said it was too risky even to travel from his hometown to the capital city of Beirut on the coast, where he’d attended college.

It pained him to leave his family and his business, but it was time to find his “American dream.”

'This is hockey'

The Ghafaris didn’t know anything about the game of hockey in the beginning. Even with all of the successes of the Red Wings right down the street, Sejaan Ghafari says he never paid a bit of attention.

A Disney video changed that.

“What is hockey?” He asked his sons after they begged him to let them play. His oldest son, Saleem, and Butrus sat him down and said, “Watch this.”

“They put in the movie ‘Mighty Ducks,’” he laughed. “They said, ‘This is hockey.’”

“The Mighty Ducks” features a ragtag group of kids playing peewee hockey. In the film, they’re inexperienced and wore hand-me-down equipment, which would soon be a reality for the Ghafari boys.

Sejaan made a few phone calls and got his sons signed up on one condition: Give 110 percent at all times. That’s the golden rule in this household.

Butrus Ghafari wasn’t a natural on the ice. He had to learn from scratch, but he couldn’t wait to get to the rink, even if that meant wearing Saleem’s sweaty pads from an earlier practice. He took his father’s words to heart. He was there to work.

He skated with the forwards and defensemen and tried his hand as a goaltender. His father lovingly referred to him as “Sponge Bob.”

“He was as tall as he was wide,” Sejaan Ghafari said with a chuckle. “Butrus was a happy child as long as you fed him.”

Ghafari thought only “fat kids” played in the net. Plus, he thought he looked an awful lot like Goldberg, the goalie from the Mighty Ducks movie.

It didn’t take long until his skating was just too good to waste minding the net. Soon he was skating, hitting and scoring goals.

“I remember a coach telling me once that ‘this kid is going to be special,’” his father recalled.

He applied himself and It started paying dividends. The junior leagues were taking notice.

Coming to MSU

Ghafari was left out of the lineup in the final two MSU games before the winter break. He said he was dealing with an illness, but would’ve played if the coach had put him in. He wants to be on the ice, especially in East Lansing.

He loves MSU and wearing the Spartan helmet on his jersey. It’s a source of pride. It also proves his commitment.

When Ghafari was 12 years old, he came to a summer camp at Munn Arena. From the moment he set foot in the building, he wanted to be a Spartan. On the day he signed, he posted a photo on social media. It was him as a boy standing next to MSU’s late head coach, Ron Mason.

“(MSU) liked me and invited me on a visit,” he said. “Being my dream school, it was a pretty easy decision.

“I always wanted to be at this place.”

Coming home and telling his family was the best part. The same aunts, uncles and cousins who were concerned about Ghafari leaving home at 16 to play junior hockey in the USHL in North Dakota and Illinois now knew it was worth it.

Hockey chauffeur

Sejaan Ghafari worked a number of jobs after arriving in America. He was a district manager for a hair salon and even started his own small company shipping cars and parts to the Middle East. He was making good money.

Then the Gulf War in the ‘90s all but shut down his car hauling business overnight. He was back to square one. He wanted to be his own boss, but he was also missing something else in his life.

And it came to him in a dream.

“It’s actually a funny story,” he said, and began telling the tale of meeting his wife, Nada.

He had a dream about a childhood friend in Lebanon and began wondering what she was doing with her life. Was she married? Dating? Did she have a family?

His grandmother got the answers for him, and they were the answers Sejaan wanted to hear.

“I told my grandma that I wanted her to get me her number,” he smiled. “The first phone call lasted four hours and that was it. We got married in June of 1992.”

With a new bride and a growing family, he opened his first franchise in the gas station business.

He worked seven days a week and barely had time for his three sons. He thought of it as the sacrifice he would have to make to achieve his dreams.

At one point, he owned nine stations. Not too shabby for a guy who once walked around with a Lebanese-to-English dictionary in one hand and an English-to-Lebanese translator in the other. But the demands of family life could not be ignored for long.

Thanks to the Mighty Ducks, Sejaan was at a crossroads.

“The kids were growing up and needed a lot of my time,” he said. “I sold a few of the stations and started focusing on my kids. I remember Saleem being born and next thing you know he was 5 years old.

“Life has more to offer than just work. I wanted to watch my kids grow up.”

He became a self-proclaimed “hockey chauffer.”

In the family

Butrus Ghafari is a bit of a jokester.

He doesn’t have any facial hair despite being 20. He doesn’t even need to shave, yet every man in his family can sprout a beard, even the teenagers. When his teammates at MSU grow “playoff beards,” Ghafari is relegated to the dollar store to buy a fake mustache.

He just wants to fit in – and poke a little fun at himself. He’s humble.

Numerous ankle surgeries and a broken jaw derailed his career in juniors. He toyed with the thought of heading to the Ontario Hockey League, but his dad squashed that dream. If he’d have gone to the OHL, he would’ve lost all college eligibility.

Education is a necessity. And Ghafari knows it.

He dreams of making it to the NHL but realizes dreams take time.

“Just walking in every day seeing my name above my stall and the jersey with the Spartan head just makes me smile,” Ghafari said. “I don’t think I will never not be excited to walk in this rink and see the Spartan head. It motivates me every day to keep getting better.”

Ghafari wears No. 44 in honor of former Spartan and Hobey Baker finalist Torey Krug. He loves the way Krug plays the game and tries to model his own game after it. Ghafari calls himself a stay-at-home defenseman and is always trying to make smart, heads-up plays on the ice.

MSU head coach Tom Anastos said Ghafari has been everything the coaching staff expected since recruiting him.

“Butrus is a hard-working kid, physically strong and a good teammate,” Anastos said. “He plays to his strengths. He has made a nice transition to Division I college hockey and is competing hard every day. He is having a great freshman year.”

Being a smart D-man does not always look sexy on the stat sheet. Ghafari only has one assist through 16 games for the 4-15-1 Spartans. It has been a rough start for the team, but Ghafari said he is confident things will turn around soon. He hopes the turnaround starts with him.

At the GLI in Detroit, the winning didn’t start for the Spartans. After the lopsided loss to WMU, the Spartans fell 5-4 in overtime to the rival Michigan Wolverines. MSU followed that up with back-to-back losses at Wisconsin, in which Ghafari was once again left off the active roster.

The tournament in Detroit was the closest Ghafari has played to home in more than four years. At least 60 friends and family were jammed into section 125 to watch Ghafari take on the Broncos that Thursday night.

“It’s good to see so many people that I haven’t seen in years,” he said.

Before the game, Ghafari said, he smiled and made eye contact with his family. One person who never took his eyes off him all night was his father.

His son is doing what he loves. He is working hard, having fun and getting a great education.

“We are so proud of Butrus,” he said.

His son is living out his American dream.

It runs in the family.

Contact Cody Tucker at (517) 377-1070 or cjtucker@lsj.com and follow him on Twitter @sewyopoke.

If you go

WHO: Michigan (8-11-1, 1-5) vs. Michigan State (4-15-1, 0-6)

WHAT: Big Ten hockey

WHEN: 6:30 p.m. ​ Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Friday at Yost Ice Arena in Ann Arbor & Saturday at Munn Arena in East Lansing

2017: These two rivals met in the third-place game at the Great Lakes Invitational in Detroit Dec. 30. The Wolverines edged MSU 5-4 in overtime.