Rob Cook has seen plenty over 43 years as a bus driver navigating treacherous winter highways so the major junior Kingston Frontenacs can get to and from Ontario Hockey League road games.

But Cook, 66, who goes by “Cookie” and whose junior hockey passengers over the years included future NHL mainstays Marty McSorley, Kirk Muller, Sean Avery, Mike Zigomanis and even Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer for a brief spell, has never seen a player load up or help clean his bus quite the way Shane Wright did it. Cook still appreciates the extra time he got to spend at home with his wife, Donna, thanks to present-day Kraken forward Wright putting in elbow grease – and getting rid of fast-food grease – on the bus so he wouldn’t have to ahead of him turning it back over to his company.

“He’d make sure I was happy with it,” Cook said. “Because I would get heck from the bus washers when I got back if it wasn’t. I can describe Shane in two words: A ‘focused perfectionist’.”

Wright made plenty of friends and a lasting impact his three years in Kingston – two seasons bookended around a middle campaign canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic — to where fans donning Frontenacs jerseys were cheering for him from the stands during the Kraken’s recent road trip to Ontario. Those games in Toronto and Ottawa were Wright’s first NHL contests back in his native province since being drafted No. 4 overall by the Kraken in July 2022.

His talents were on display this past weekend at the Kraken Super Skills Showcase, as Wright dazzled the Climate Pledge Arena crowd in the Breakaway Challenge event by lifting a puck with his stick and doing a full spin around move ahead of firing it past a surprised netminder. Those who’ve known Wright since his junior hockey days say he also has the focus, drive and maturity to eventually harness his natural given skills into an above-average NHL talent.

Cook has kept tabs on Wright’s career since he left the Frontenacs, impressed by the early cleaning and packing help he’d given him his rookie Kingston campaign as an underage 15-year-old who didn’t even turn 16 until the season was half done.

“I liked to say he was 16 going on 25,” Cook said.

All Kingston rookies are assigned the mundane task of loading and unloading the bus with everybody else’s equipment and luggage.

“The first road trip of the year, I got the rookies together and showed them how to pack the bus because it’s got to be packed a certain way or it’s not all going to fit,” Cook said. “The model (of bus) we had when Shane would play was an MCI, so the compartments weren’t that high, but they were wider. So, it was four bags across and four on top. And you’d have to do that three times across and then you’ve also got your skater bags.

“And then, one day I went in the rink for a bit and came back out and Shane is unloading the front compartment. I said ‘Shane, what’s up?’ And he said: ‘Somebody put a goaltender bag in there by mistake and so they’ve got to get it out.’

“So, he pulled a whole bunch of bags out, got the goalie bag out, then repacked it because he had to do it the right way. He’d stand there and say ‘Come on guys! Cookie didn’t tell you to do it that way. Do it the way he said.’

“He was the boss man.”

Then, there was the matter of cleaning out the inside of the bus. Wright, even two years later as a team veteran and touted to as a can’t miss top NHL draft pick his final Kingston season in 2021-22, would spend extra time in the bus after trips making sure teammates hadn’t left a mess.

“They all have to clean it but he just did an exceptional job,” Cook said. “He’d start and he was focused. He had to do it a certain way. And then when they were all finished and they were all finished and the garbage off, he’d say ‘Well, Cookie, how’s that?’”

As for Wright, he merely shrugged when asked about his self-assigned role as the team’s bus cleaner.

“I just think everyone’s sharing that space – especially in junior when you’re on the bus a lot with those guys,” Wright said. “No one’s above anyone on the team. So, I just think keeping the space clean and doing your part to help is always important.”

Wright said he started doing the cleaning as a rookie, since all first-year players were expected to handle such duties. But even by his final Kingston season, just ahead of the Kraken drafting him, he was still “helping out with it” without anyone having to ask.

“You just put empty bottles or empty food containers in a garbage bag,” Wright said. “Not leave stuff on the floor. Not leave it a mess. Just take care of the space and you’ll respect everyone else.”

Cook was impressed by the overall way Wright handled himself throughout his Kingston tenure, which ended with a trade to a contending Windsor Spitfires team in January 2023 after he’d already played eight Kraken games earlier that season. From the very beginning, Cook remembers the fanfare greeting Wright because of his being granted special permission to debut in the OHL a year early at age 15.

“He’d come out of the rink and he’d be signing autographs for people,” Cook said. “But then, when you’d walk to the bus and all the other guys would be chatting with each other, Shane would come out, and he was focused on getting that bus loaded.

“Some guys would come out and they’d be lucky if their hockey bag landed anywhere within six feet of the bus. But with Shane, I’ve never seen anyone so focused.”

That focus is similar to what the Kraken have seen from Wright the past two summers as he headed off to train in Toronto with team fitness consultant Gary Roberts. Wright was tasked with loading his once slender teenage frame with muscle and gaining more skating explosiveness so he could compete against older, more seasoned pros.

And he did it with fervor and purpose, showing results his first full AHL season with Coachella Valley and then making this Kraken for good straight out of September camp.

Cook can appreciate focus; There have been a handful of fatal bus crashes in junior hockey over the years and he knows he can’t take his eyes off the late night, wintry highways even for a split second without putting his teenage passengers at risk. Those passengers were only a few years younger than Cook when he started driving the Kingston bus in 1981 and later would even come to include four editions of Team Sweden – including NHL stars such as Erik Karlsson, Victor Hedman and Jacob Markstrom – at the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships.

“When I started out I considered these guys on the team my brothers because I never really had any brothers of my own,” Cook said. “And then, 20 years later, I considered them my sons because I never had sons of my own. And now, I consider them my grandkids.”

And when one of those grandchildren takes a personal interest in cleaning his second home on wheels so he can get back to his primary one for the night, it’s a kindness that lingers. Among hundreds of players driven by Cook over the decades, Wright is already a star in his book.

“There aren’t many you come across quite like him, that’s for sure.”