We spoke with the Rangers captain about how he found a way to blend hockey and art in a unique way.
Jacob Trouba has a look of bewilderment in his eyes. We meet at Harper’s Gallery, in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, for his “Landing My Mark” exhibition opening. Trouba emanates self-assurance, but this is unfamiliar territory. The New York Rangers captain isn’t fazed by thousands of people watching his every move on the ice, but he never imagined his artwork would be up for public consumption.
“I didn’t set out to have a gallery show when I started,” Trouba, 30, says. “This is the first time people have viewed them in person — the first showing [outside of] friends and family at our apartment. I was never out to sell art. That was never the goal.”
Three summers ago, Trouba set out to find an offseason hobby. He doesn’t watch television, and, as he says now, “I suck at golf.” Michael Geschwer, a friend since Trouba had been traded from Winnipeg to New York in 2019, invited Trouba to his art studio. “I said, ‘I’ll go for three days and give it a try,” Trouba says. Initially, Trouba’s goal was to paint something his wife, Dr. Kelly Tyson-Trouba, would want hanging on their apartment walls. “Because it was impossible,” Trouba says, flashing a grin. “There was no way I could have painted something that she would’ve let me hang in the house. So, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna do it.’”
At Geschwer’s studio, Trouba didn’t know what to do with the paintbrush in his hand. He tried painting Kelly and their dog. “I wanted to go home. I was horrible,” he says, adding, “I was very close to being like, ‘This just isn’t for me.’”
Then, Trouba remembered who he was. He had made his name on the ice as a relentlessly physical defenseman, selflessly launching his body to inflict punishing hits in pursuit of something greater. A couple of weeks later at Geschwer’s studio, Trouba realized he had overlooked his favorite tool for self-expression: His body.
Trouba suited up in his hockey gear, doused in oil and acrylic paint, and launched himself onto a wall-length canvas. “Leap Of Faith,” Trouba’s first painting, was born.
“I remember stepping back and looking at it, like, Whoa, this is awesome. I can do something with this,” Trouba says. “You make marks, and then you figure it out. You can change them. Nothing’s permanent. I think that was when I was like, so I can make this line, I can fix it, or do something else? It’s not there forever. You want it to be done quickly, and it just doesn’t happen quickly. So, [I had to] get over that hurdle of this isn’t going to be done today, tomorrow, or this week; this is going to be months.”
Trouba’s hockey career was already a testament to his dedication to seeing something through, no matter how long it takes. Trouba rooted his identity in hockey as a kid in Rochester, Michigan, and excelled for one season at the University of Michigan before the Winnipeg Jets snagged him ninth overall in the 2012 NHL Entry Draft.
Anyone could have seen Jacob Trouba, NHL star, coming.
Nobody saw Jacob Trouba, the artist, coming.
Trouba never drew attention to it. His teammates didn’t grasp it until a Trouba painting was auctioned during New York Rangers Casino Night in February. The same month, Trouba custom painted the backplate of Rangers goaltender Jonathan Quick’s mask for the 2024 NHL Stadium Series. Slowly, Trouba invited friends and family to the studio and opened up to them, which he describes as “nerve-wracking,” but they encouraged him to keep sharing his art.
