"He makes it look effortless on the ice, but Duncan Keith had to overcome a lot of big-body prejudice to get to where he is today.

"It's been a long climb," his dad Dave said from the family home in Penticton. "He was always an especially little hockey player, a small kid all the way through."

It wasn't until he turned 17 and made the Penticton Panthers, scoring 18 goals as a rookie D-man and earning a scholarship to Michigan State, that all those endless hours practising, the twice-weekly early-morning power-skating sessions and figure skating lessons that he kept attending until he was 10, back in Fort Frances, Ont., paid off.

As a Panthers teammate of Keith's put it : "Duncan was a small guy, all skin and bones."

"But Duncan was one of the smoothest skaters I've ever skated with," said Mike Prpich, who now plays pro in the Austrian League. "Some of the [Panthers] veterans told me, 'Just try to hit that guy,' and he could turn on a dime and make you look foolish.""