 The first time Nick Pastujov ever saw snow, he 
was five years old. As a kid from Bradenton, Fla., 
snow was a foreign concept to him.
 Sure, it existed on TV where kids would build 
snowmen and have snowball fights, but to him, it 
was more of an illusion. Movies were the closest 
he ever got to it. Then he got his chance.
 For the Silver Sticks International Tournament 
over Christmas, Nick traveled to Michigan, 
and there he saw it: the powdery white flakes. 
Naturally, when he got back to Florida, he told 
everyone about his encounter, especially his 
younger brother, Mike.
 So when Mike was eligible for the same 
tournament the next year, he had certain 
expectations. It would be his turn to see snow 
now. But when his flight touched down at Detroit 
Metropolitan Airport and the pilot announced 
the weather conditions, reality hit hard — it was 
warmer in Detroit than Florida. Snow would be 
hard to find.
 Unfortunately for Mike, the Pastujovs didn’t 
hunt for snow like one of his teammates’ family 
had. When the tournament was over, and the 
Pastujovs were headed back to the airport, Mike 
let his feelings show. He started to bawl.
 He cried out to his mom, Janis. His only 
opportunity to see snow was gone. Wasted. It was 
so unfair Nick had seen snow before him.
 At five years old, Mike could never have 
dreamed all the chances he’d have in the years 
to come. He and Nick had no idea hockey would 
eventually lead them to Michigan. Hockey hadn’t 
yet cemented its place in their lives.
 In fact, it was just a few years before the great 
snow encounter that the Pastujovs had learned 
to skate.
 Hockey was still new to Florida when Nick was 
born — there wasn’t even a rink nearby his home. 
All that changed when he was three, though, and 
a rink was built at the next highway exit.
 When Nick and Mike’s dad, Gueorgui (George), 
heard the news, he was overjoyed.
 Born and raised in Russia, hockey was 
everything to him. George knew he’d never be 
able to teach his sons football. Or baseball. Or 
even basketball. But he could share hockey with 
them. And so, as soon as the rink was finished, 
the family toured it, and George signed Nick up 
for lessons.
 At just three years old, Nick didn’t have much 
say in the matter. Even if he had been old enough, 
it’s unlikely his opinion would’ve mattered. 
George wanted his sons to play hockey.
 “Looking back, I have to take responsibility,” 
George said, laughing. “I pushed them as a parent 
more towards hockey than anything else. Now 
I’m laughing but I was, they didn’t have much 
choice. Basically, ‘That’s what you’re doing guys, 
you’re playing hockey.’ … At the beginning, I 
didn’t really give them many choices.”
 The next year, when Mike turned three, he 
joined his brother at skating lessons. Unlike their 
father, Nick and Mike didn’t fall in love with 
hockey instantly. In fact, it was the total opposite 
reaction — they hated skating.
 Outside of lessons, they’d attend open skates 
with their dad. Sometimes their grandpa, or their 
cousin when he was in town, would join. On the 
ice, the brothers weren’t shy about showing how 
they felt about skating. They’d scream. They’d 
cry. They didn’t want anything to do with it — to 
the point where grandpa had to intervene.
 “My grandpa would be up in the stands yelling 
at him to take me off the ice and stop, and my dad 
wouldn’t stop,” Nick said. “He kept us out there. 
At this point, I’m obviously glad he did.”
 Eventually, the brothers warmed up to skating, 
and the next step was getting hockey sticks in 

their hands. Once that happened, Nick and Mike 
were sold.
 If they weren’t at the rink practicing, they were 
in the street. They’d throw pucks against the 
house until it was so dark outside they couldn’t 
see anything.
 If street hockey wasn’t a viable option, they 
moved things indoors. In the designated play 
area — a space between two of the bedrooms 
in the family’s home — Nick and Mike played 
mini sticks. They played with their friends. They 
played with their youngest brother, Sasha, when 
he was born. And every once in a while, Janis 
came home from work and saw her mother in the 
net, blocking her grandsons’ shots.
 While hockey was the priority, it was far from 
the only thing the brothers did together. Janis 
and George would take them to the YMCA and 
they’d play basketball or soccer or go swimming. 
But there was one other activity Nick and Mike 
tried, their mother’s passion — dance.
 It was a bargaining tool. Her sons could spend 
all the time they wanted at the rink playing 
hockey with their dad, if she could have them at 
the dance studio where she taught lessons. Plus, 
it was convenient after-school care. So Nick and 
Mike took ballet. They didn’t enjoy it, but it kept 
them flexible. Once they ventured beyond ballet, 
they discovered an affinity for hip-hop.
 “I don’t remember ever being any good at it, 
but I remember my buddy picked the song,” Nick 
said. “It was the basketball song from the first 
High School Musical. That’s what we did our 
recital to. Thankfully, we outgrew that. I kind of 
wish I was better at it now.”
 Added Mike: “I mean, I don’t regret it. It’s 
different. People made fun of me for it, but I 
thought it was cool.”
 Eventually they hung up their dancing shoes 
and laced up their hockey skates. Holidays were 
spent at the rink or traveling to tournaments.
 Like the year the Pastujovs spent Thanksgiving 
in Niagara Falls, Ontario at a tiny little buffet 
place. These trips provided the perfect 
opportunity for bonding over long car rides and 
seeing the world outside of Florida.
 The only holiday hockey didn’t affect was 
Halloween, and in the Pastujov household it 
became a rite of passage.
 The family had a huge bin brimming with 
costumes. Every year when October rolled 
around, Mike would search through it. The 
bin had exactly what you’d expect for a family 
with three sons. There’s Batman, Spiderman, 
Frankenstein, Dracula, Power Rangers. The list 
goes on.
 The decision of what costume to pick was 
never difficult for Mike. He was just whatever his 
brother was the year before.
 Usually, Mike didn’t want to copy Nick. Like 
all brothers, they competed against each other. 
Not just in hockey, in everything. When Nick got 
Velcro shoes, Mike seized his opportunity to be 
the first one to learn how to tie shoes. And rather 
than copying his older brother’s style, Mike was 
the one giving Nick tips on how to dress and pick 
clothes that complimented each other.
 “I never had too good of style,” Nick said. 
“There’d be times where I’d get dressed for 
church or Christmas dinner, something like that, 
and he’d make me go change and he’d pick out a 
different outfit for me.”
 Growing up, Nick and Mike were inseparable.
 That changed in seventh grade when a coach 
from a program in Michigan approached George 
and Janis about the possibility of Nick joining the 
team and moving. Ultimately, they weren’t quite 
ready to let Nick go. But the next year, Mike and 
Nick’s team started to fall apart. It was the only 
triple-A program in Florida. If they wanted to 
continue playing hockey, it was going to involve 
relocating.
 This time, when Honeybaked Hockey — a 

different club team than the previous year — 
approached the family, Janis was willing to 
entertain the idea. They took a visit to Michigan 
to get a better feel for what life for Nick would 
be like if he moved. Leaving Florida would mean 
he’d have to get a billet family.
 “He really wanted to do it,” Janis said. “I used 
to say I put on my big-girl pants and let him 
go do what he wanted to do. As long as he was 
happy it was fine. We would come up for all the 
tournaments and everything.”
 So, he went.
 While Nick was in Michigan adjusting to living 
with a new family, Mike was adjusting to life 
without his older brother. The distance was good 
for Nick and Mike’s relationship, too — it helped 
them build a more mature, deeper bond. Being 
close despite separation proved that the brotherly 
connection wasn’t just because of hockey or 
proximity, but because they chose to be.
 Ultimately, the separation didn’t last longer than 
a year. Mike occasionally traveled up to play with 
Honeybaked during Nick’s first year. In many 
ways, Nick was the family guinea pig. When 
Janis and George saw Nick’s billeting experience, 
letting Mike do the same was an easier decision. 
So, the following year, Mike moved to Michigan.
 For Mike, the jump from one state to another 
was less jarring because he had Nick to turn to. 
He’d ask for advice on feeling comfortable asking 
his billet parents for something. Or getting along 
with his billet siblings. Or learning to take no for 
an answer.
 Plus, there was the added benefit of seeing 
snow whenever he wanted.
 While they lived with different billet families, 
Nick and Mike were reunited in every other 
sense. They played on the same team, most of the 
time on the same line. Every practice, they saw 
each other. Sometimes on the weekends, Nick 
would go visit Mike at his billet family, or Mike 
would go to Nick’s.
 “I saw him every day pretty much,” Mike said. 
“It wasn’t bad, but it was always weird saying 
bye to him at the rink and then going home to 
different houses. That was kind of strange.”
 Two years after moving to Michigan, the 
brothers had a defining moment. After a long 
season, their Honeybaked team found itself 
playing for the 2013 USA Hockey Tier 1 U14 
National Championship game. With under one 
minute remaining, Honeybaked was trailing by a 
goal to Shattuck St. Mary’s.
 After Honeybaked pulled its goaltender, an 
extra attacker skated on — Mike. He joined the 
attack alongside Nick, who was already on the 
ice. Moving back and forth across the blueline, 
Nick acted as a bumper to keep the puck in 
the zone. He swung the puck back into traffic. 
Positioned at the front of the goal, near the edge 
of the crease with his stick readied was Mike. 
When the puck came his way, he tapped it in.
 Raising his arms in celebration and a 
combination of running and jumping on skates, 
Mike made his way towards Nick. When the 
distance got close enough, Nick launched himself 
onto his brother.
 ***
 It was Mike who was by Nick’s side when he got 
drafted.
 That day started the exact opposite of how a 
normal day for Nick would go. Anxious about his 
chances, he didn’t want to be anywhere near a 
TV. He didn’t even want to have cell reception. 
And so he and Mike ended up on a deep sea 
fishing boat off the coast of Miami. Back on land, 
George and Janis watched and waited, hoping for 
their son’s name to be called.
 Just as the seventh round was starting, the boat 
was docking and Nick’s phone was regaining 
reception. By this point, he’d given up hope of 
being drafted, resigning to the optimism that 
there’s always next year. Then out of nowhere, 

he got a text welcoming him to the New York 
Islanders. He’d been drafted, 193rd overall.
 Right by his side when everything was 
unfolding was Mike, and he couldn’t have been 
prouder of his older brother.
 Through the years, they’ve shared countless 
other moments, good and bad.
 Like the time they both sustained shoulder 
injuries that required surgery. Mike had his 
during his U17 year with the USNTDP, and Nick 
during the summer before his freshman year. 
When they needed someone who understood 
the process of being injured — the pains of being 
sidelined from hockey and rehabilitation — they 
didn’t have to look far.
 When they arrived at Michigan, Nick and Mike 
faced a similar setback. In their respective first 
games at the University, neither of them even 
laced up their skates. Instead, they remained 
in their suits and watched from a section of 
the press box designated for the non-dressing 
Wolverines.
 Having experienced the disappointment 
of being scratched the year before, Nick gave 
Mike tips and suggestions on how to handle the 
situation. It made Mike’s transition to college 
hockey a lot less like the fish-out-of-water 
experience it is for some players. He had Nick to 
guide him.
 Five years after their big goal for Honeybaked, 
the Pastujovs combined in another monumental 
moment — the Frozen Four.
 Nick assisted Mike’s late tying goal that 
breathed life into the Wolverines against Notre 
Dame.
 “That was probably the coolest hockey 
moment we’ve had,” Nick said. “ … We knew we 
had to score. … It’s tough to describe just how 
elated and happy (Mike’s goal) made me. Being 
able to see him (celebrate) and just be right 
behind him was awesome.”
 Nick is set to graduate this semester, which 
means his days on campus and his games 
dressed in a maize and blue sweater are 
fleeting. But that means the clock’s running 
out on something else, too — the brothers’ 
time together. This is likely the last year the 
Pastujovs will be on the ice, on the same line, 
together.
 Next season, when Mike enters the offensive 
zone along the boards, Nick won’t be trailing 
behind, knowing his brother will eventually 
cut back and feed him the puck if he gets there 
in time. There won’t be a Pastujov celebratory 
hug when Nick nets a goal off a pass from Mike, 
or vice versa, the way there was last weekend 
when the brothers combined for two goals 
against No. 6 Penn State.
 The most noticeable difference will be the 
back of Mike’s jersey. He’ll no longer be “M. 
Pastujov.” For the first time in three years, he’ll 
get to just be “Pastujov.”
 It’s undeniable that hockey has contributed 
a lot to the bond Nick and Mike have, but it’s 
not solely because of the sport. Their years 
together at Michigan have proved that. They’ve 
lived together — by choice — the last two years. 
Sometimes they cook together. Mike prefers 
grilling while Nick sticks to the basics like pasta 
and pesto. They’ll watch TV together. On 
Sundays, it’s football. Occasionally, they’ll play 
it, and sometimes throw a ball in the stands of 
Yost Ice Arena during warm-up time. When the 
weather allows it, they’ll play golf.
 Beyond their hockey dreams, they’ve got a 
dream as brothers to own a lake house. In the 
northern part of Michigan, where they could 
bring their families when they’re older.
 And through all the hockey, dance recitals 
and fashion advice there’s something glaringly 
obvious about the brothers’ bond. Mike and 
Nick are much more than brothers.
 They’re best friends.

Photos courtesy of the Pastujov Family | Design by Jack Silberman

Sports
8 — Friday, January 24, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MOLLY SHEA
Daily Sports Writer

