Michael Pezzetta, NHL Player.

Those aren’t words I ever thought I’d put together in a sentence, but the possibility first became realistic to me in training camp when Pezzetta appeared to be among the only players with the Montreal Canadiens playing like this opportunity was life and death to him

The notion of him graduating was easy to dismiss when Canadiens coach Dominique Ducharme assessed Pezzetta’s game by saying that for a guy who wasn’t really an option for a roster spot, he was still impressing. But it was harder to ignore the notion of Pezzetta getting a look when the Canadiens shot out to a 2-8 start while he was turned the confidence he showed at camp into an excellent start with the AHL’s Laval Rocket.

Here’s a player who understands exactly what he is and stays true to himself — a six-foot-one, 216-pound crasher; an energy guy who took the long road to arrive at his desired destination.

Pezzetta was drafted by the Canadiens 160th overall in 2016. He racked up more than twice as many penalty minutes as he did points over his OHL career with Sudbury and Sarnia, toiled in the AHL for three full seasons, even did a small stint in the ECHL with Maine and never gave up on the idea he might one day lace ’em up in the best league in the world and in its most notorious arena.

On Tuesday, in a 3-0 win over the Detroit Red Wings, that dream came true. Pezzetta made a tangible impact on the game over just 8:31 of ice-time in his NHL debut. He registered a couple of shots on net and a team-leading five hits, he forechecked and backchecked with authority, he would’ve have finished with a point or two had Jake Evans or Alex Belzile finished excellent chances he set for them, and he did it all in front of his parents, his girlfriend, 27 other family members and friends and a rink full of Canadiens supporters at the Bell Centre.

Pezzetta brought a few others to the game, too: his doubters, who he kept in mind prior to jumping onto the ice for his solo rookie lap.

The mullet- and mustache-wearing 23-year-old had a word for them after the game.

“There was a lot of times when people would sit there and tell me I wasn’t good enough and tell me that, ‘you’re never going to make it,’” said Pezzetta. “Teammates, coaches, you can hear them talking about your game in practice or this or that, and that pushed me every single day to be better and make sure that skills that I had that weren’t where they needed to be — I made them be good enough to make the jump to this level. So, for all those people that didn’t believe in me and thought I couldn’t do it: well, here I am now.”

So long as the Toronto native keeps doing what brought him here, it’ll be hard to bet against him.