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Seth Jarvis has only been playing professional hockey for the Carolina Hurricanes for five years, but his fan club has been around for over 15.
His childhood friends, a group of 24-year-old guys aptly dubbed the ‘good ol’ Canadian boys,’ made headlines last year when they packed themselves into one of their mom’s minivans and drove 30 hours from their hometown of Winnipeg to see Jarvis play in the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament in Boston. Their flight to the game had been cancelled, but they were determined to make it.
“We knew if that was us in that position, it would mean a lot to us having all our friends there,” Jarvis’ friend Lucas Humble said. “So we just kind of put ourselves in his shoes and hoped that if we made it there, it would make the moment a little bit more special for him.”
And while those slightly unhinged 60 total hours of driving may have been the first headline for the friends, it underscores the years of camaraderie that’s led to the ironclad bond the guys have today.
When you ask how long they’ve been friends, though, the answer is a shrug.
“Honestly, I think the answer changes every single time someone asks,” friend Sloan Tremblay explains. “Like, it’s one of those friendships that you can’t pinpoint a date; you just don’t remember not being friends.”
Part of the group grew up as neighbors and were friends by the time they were six or seven (or maybe it was eight, they’re not totally sure), but the group really solidified by playing hockey together and going to the same high school. They’ve all been on a team with Jarvis at some point.
Summers were spent like you’d imagine a wholesome group of teenage guys would spend it: biking between each other’s houses, drinking Slurpees, playing endless rounds of Marco Polo in the pool and playing mini sticks, an indoor hockey game, in their parents’ basements.
“Mini sticks is a core memory,” Humble says. “Some people’s parents had like beater basements where you could just shoot pucks at the walls and hit people into the wall so those games would get pretty intense. Definitely some surprise we still stayed friends after those games.”
But they did, and since their first infamous road trip, the friends have continued to make an effort to see their buddy Jarvis.
They had tickets to visit him in Raleigh during the NHL’s nearly three-week break for the Olympics in February, but then the superstar made the Canadian hockey team last minute. While the group could afford a trip to Raleigh, flying to Milan was out of the question on their budget, so they got to work.
“We reached out to probably 20 or 30 companies to see if we could make content in exchange for a trip, and some Instagram accounts were posting our picture saying things like ‘we have got to get Jarvy’s boys to Milan!’” Humble recounts. One of the girlfriends in the group reached out to Air Canada directly, too.
And then the call came. The airline would fly them to see their friend play on the world stage.
“We started to freak out [that] it could actually happen,” he adds. “It was honestly so amazing and I don’t think we would’ve had any Olympic experience without [Air Canada].”
Aside from that brief break for international airtravel, the roadtrip hasn’t stopped. In March, they hopped back in the car for a 14 hour trip to see the Hurricanes in Calgary. And most recently, Ticketmaster sponsored a trip to Raleigh (luckily, they got to fly for this one, too) to catch one of the round two Stanley Cup playoff games in early May.
Yes, they have jobs, they’re not bums just chasing the coattails of their friend. But they do say they have bosses who are empathetic with all their time off requests.
Commenters on their Instagram posts regularly seem both a little sad that they don’t have the same type of friends and elated that this type of friendship exists, running an emotional gamut from “the friendship of this crew gives us hope for humanity” to “everyone needs that type of friendship!!!!” to the more sobering “man I don’t have 1 friend as close as these 5 he’s got.”
And to be fair, the type of friendship ‘Jarvy’ and the good ‘ol Canadian boys have is somewhat of an anomaly in today’s world. In 2021, a study found that only one in four men reported having more than six close friends. Worse: as many as one in seven men said they had no close friendships at all. The situation has only gotten more dire since then, with the Surgeon General declaring a loneliness epidemic in 2023.
It’s bleak out there, which might be why it seems hockey fans and brands have become such avid fans of the friendship.
Fanatics, a platform to connect sports fans, has sent the crew Canes’ gear, which the guys say will relieve the need for Jarvis’ mom to outfit them. While in Raleigh, they drilled fans on Jarvis trivia, giving away a $500 gift card to a fan thanks to Ticketmaster, and the NHL has used their reels to promote upcoming games. During the Olympics, Team Canada went all in on highlighting their friendship, so much so that the NHL media team surmised that the friends may have been more popular than the athlete himself.
And that’s not to mention the brands engaging with them on social, ranging from Tim Hortons to Nerds candy to Canadian fashion brand Roots.
Jarvis has said in previous interviews that “they’re a special group,” and that to the crew he’s not a NHL superstar, he’s just the kid and best friend they grew up with. That means they treat him like “an idiot” at times, and publicly rib him, like any good friend would, for things like having hairy toes or having candy in his bathroom, but Jarvis has said that’s why he loves them so much.
Each friend plays a role in the group. Lucas Fry is “the dad” who keeps the guys (mostly) in check, Bryan Hanna’s the planner, Tremblay is the self-appointed jester. Noah Wagner, another member of the group, says he’s the friend that shows up, goes with the flow and generally makes folks smile.
“What’s so nice about this group is that everyone can be theirselves, and everyone appreciates those unique personalities that we bring,” says Hanna of why their friendship works.
“We bug each other a lot, but we all know we can be our, like, truest self in really any moment and I think it’s a pretty special feeling to have and pretty rare,” adds Fry.
Despite knowing each other for over 15 years, they’ve continued to learn new things about each other on the road.
“Humble is a weirdo who knows every fact about insects and bugs,” Hanna laughs, “while Noah is a gross eater and Fry doesn’t like to spend money.”
The Winnipeg-based guys see each other multiple times a week, saying it’s rare for there to be a time where at least two of them aren’t together. They admit they spend what most would call an obnoxious amount of time together. Various girlfriends have gotten annoyed by it, but the guys stand by prioritizing the friendship, going so far as to say they’re more of a brotherhood at this point and will be friends for life.
Jarvis lives over 1,600 miles from the rest of the group, so they don’t get to see him much. And he’s not the greatest at texting the guys say, but that doesn’t really matter when you’ve got a friendship like theirs.
“We could go, let’s say six months, without seeing Seth,” explains Fry. “But as soon as we do see him we just pick up right where you left off and it’s like we’re kids again, hanging out in one of our backyards, swimming and drinking a Slurpee.”