'She always found a way': Behind Jordan Greenway's success is a mother who did whatever it took

Every person in every hockey family remembers the car rides — early-risers in the minivan for 6 a.m. practice, late nights following a game. It’s a time made for questions on the game, and on life.

For Shannon Sullivan, mom of Minnesota Wild forward Jordan Greenway, those questions were sometimes harder than most.

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“One of the things (Jordan and his brother JD) would always talk about when they were younger, back and forth in the car rides from games, was their biological father. Why isn’t he here or what have you,” Shannon recalled in a recent interview. “When they got older — 10, 11, 12 — those questions went away because they just knew he wasn’t going to be around.

“Those car rides and those conversations, whether they be about their father or the game, it made them understand my world as a single mom, and it made them understand the struggles that I had.”

Jordan Greenway may share the same last name as his biological father, but that’s where the relationship ends. When Jordan was 3, his dad walked away from the family, leaving Shannon to raise two toddlers in Jordan and his younger brother JD, 14 months and 11 days Jordan’s junior.

Hard as it was, if anyone was up for the task of being a young, single mom, it was Shannon.

“It’s never easy, you know, growing up with a single mom, but that’s the thing about my mom, she made it work,” Jordan said. “She always found a way. All of the sports we wanted to play, or whatever, she always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. She really allowed me to chase my dreams.”

Those car rides were pivotal for Shannon and her family, often trekking back and forth from their hometown of Potsdam, N.Y., to various cities throughout Canada for hockey tournaments. After the game was over they’d load up the car and head home in an effort to save money on overnight hotel stays.

Whether it was Shannon in the driver’s seat or any number of relatives quick to help — aunts, uncles, grandma and grandpa — Jordan and JD learned about hockey and life from that backseat.

“I was never ashamed of (our situation), and I explained it to them,” Shannon said. “I think that’s why my boys are so strong today. I guess I take credit for that because Jordan saw the struggles I went through and those car rides were part of that motivation to help him move forward.”

Still just 21, Jordan is embarking on what promises to be a bright NHL career. At 20, Shannon was pregnant with that same kid whose dreams are coming to fruition.

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Then a student at Canton College (finishing her bachelor’s degree at Clarkson University after JD was born), Shannon was thrilled to become a mom. She already had the multitasking quality down, waiting tables at a local restaurant and bartending in the evenings to make additional income, all while trying to balance college classes and pregnancy.

On Feb. 16, 1997, she gave birth to seven-pound, eight-ounce baby Jordan.

“All throughout my pregnancy I was so excited, and then he finally came into the world and it was so amazing,” she said. “I loved being a mom from the instant it happened.”

Shannon grew up in a hockey-crazed family. Her three brothers played growing up and the entire family attended local Clarkson and St. Lawrence hockey games on the weekends.

Jordan had a surplus of energy from the get-go and by age 3, he was on the ice with a mix of hand-me-down pads and new hockey sticks — a thought that still makes Shannon cringe remembering how often those sticks broke.

“We always took hand-me-downs, and to this day we still take hand-me-downs. … But I worked and eventually owned my own business for eight years and we did what we had to do,” she said. “When we traveled, we brought our lunches. We didn’t eat out like all the other hockey families every single weekend, so we did little things to save money, but at the same time my boys were never without. They had everything. I think my biggest expense would have been those sticks because they broke every other game.”

But the cost was worth it. By age 7, Jordan’s abilities were being recognized.

It was during those Canadian hockey tournaments that Shannon realized Jordan had an immeasurable amount of hockey talent. The family began getting approached by coaches for travel teams, and there were often whispers of how gifted and skilled Jordan was.

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“You don’t really think that your son is going to go to the NHL,” Shannon said. “It’s just not something that happens often here (in Potsdam). It’s not something that entered my mind. I thought, ‘Oh, great, I have a gifted kid. Maybe he’ll do well and go to college. Maybe he’ll go to St. Lawrence or Clarkson,’ but the NHL never entered my mind until he brought up going to a prep school. That’s when I sat back and said OK, he’s looking to make this his life and that’s how that started.”

Shannon put the onus of finding a preparatory school on Jordan. She also told him that if she was going to pay for prep school, he would need to work hard and earn a college scholarship if this continued to be the path he wanted to pursue.

That path led him to a noted hockey factory in Faribault, Minn.

“I went through the research, gave her the layout, took a visit to Shattuck-St. Mary’s, and she made it happen,” said Jordan, who at 13 made the move to play at Shattuck. “It wasn’t easy going so far away from home at a young age. It was pretty hard at first, but its what I wanted to do. It’s what I signed up for (and) once I got into a routine and started playing hockey and everything, all those things went away.”

Fears might have disappeared for Jordan, but tears for Shannon took a little bit longer to clear out.

“I’ll tell you, the first year he was there, I cried a lot,” Shannon says now with a laugh. “I cried a lot because No. 1, I missed him, and No. 2 I didn’t know what was going on over there. Was he getting meals? Was he having fun? All the normal worrying a mom does.”

Shannon and her kids, which now included a younger sister, Maria, made it to plenty of games in Minnesota to ease the angst of missing her eldest. She continued a mix of flights and road trips to watch Jordan play when he moved to Plymouth, Mich., to suit up at USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. He earned gold with Team USA three times (2014 U-17 Hockey Challenge, 2015 U-18 Championships, 2017 World Junior Championships), earning even more attention, leading to fulfillment of his mom’s college wish with a Division-I scholarship to Boston University.

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In three years and 112 games at BU, Jordan scored 28 goals and totaled 92 points along with 192 penalty minutes as Shannon looked on with pride.

“Things just kept happening the right way for Jordan,” Shannon said. “He worked so hard to get to each next level. It was and has been really awesome to see.”

Shannon remembers the first time she had to literally look up to her Jordan, who now towers over most NHL competition at 6-6, 226 pounds.

It was during his timem at Shattuck when the 6-foot Shannon had to reach up to give her son a kiss on the cheek.

But Shannon admits she’s always looked up to Jordan in a way.

“I used to call him the little man of the house,” she said. “He’s very protective of JD, his sister and myself. We are an extremely close family and Jordan, if I had to say, he would be the man of the family. He’s the glue that holds the family together besides myself.”

That protective behavior is why Shannon and Jordan agreed it was best for Shannon to stay home and cheer on Jordan from afar while he was with Team USA in PyeongChang, South Korea, at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games. Jordan had one goal in five games during his Olympic debut, with the U.S. finishing seventh.

“The reason he did not want me there was because I would be by myself and he didn’t want me in a foreign country by myself being shuttled back and forth to the arena,” she said. “I’m OK with that too, so we decided I would stay here, and we watched everything on TV.

“Having my son in the Olympics was a very surreal time for me. I think when I first saw him on TV is when it first hit me that, holy cow, my son is in the Olympics. It’s almost like it’s unreal. It’s a very exciting thing for him. It’s awesome.”

The only thing that could top that excitement was an NHL debut, which came 34 days later on March 27. The Wild’s second-round draft pick, 50th overall, in 2015 signed an entry-level contract on March 26 after forgoing his senior year at BU and slotted in to the lineup right away against one the league’s best squads in the Nashville Predators.

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“That was scary because the Predators are this crazy good team, so I was scared for him because it was his first (NHL) game,” Shannon said. “But it was one of the best games I’ve attended in his hockey career.”

Shannon and JD were in the crowd, cheering Minnesota and Jordan on in what ended up as a 2-1 shootout loss at Bridgestone Arena. Jordan suited up for six games during the regular season, tallying one assist against the San Jose Sharks on April 7. He played in all five of the Wild’s postseason games against the Winnipeg Jets, recording his first NHL goal in Game 3 in Minnesota’s lone playoff victory.

But Shannon knows the best is yet to come. Like any mom who has been through the car rides, the highs and lows and ups and downs, the single mom couldn’t have scripted a better life for Jordan — or herself.

“It’s very exciting. I would not have expected this in my wildest dreams for this to happen,” she said. “This has been an amazing year and watching him, I’ve watched every single game on TV and I’m one of the proudest moms in the world, for sure.”

And Jordan is not one to lose perspective about his biggest fan.

“She’s always been my No. 1 supporter, and she did a great job always finding a way to make things work,” he said. “I think it gave me a lot of motivation growing up just seeing all the hard work that my mom and family put in to helping us out. It gave me the sense to work hard and showed me what I had to do to make it to the next level.

“(Making it to the NHL) is a way of paying them back.”

(Top image: Jordan Greenway and mother Shannon Sullivan. Courtesy Shannon Sullivan)

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