Keith Tkachuk was in his hometown. He was with wife Chantal and daughter Taryn. He was about to watch 19-year-old Brady Tkachuk, his youngest son, make his NHL debut against the Bruins at TD Garden.

He felt terrible.

“Put it this way — I wanted to throw up before the game,” said Keith Tkachuk. “You’re excited, but you’re sick to your stomach. It’s out of your control. It’s not like he’s five years old and you’re taking him to the rink. He’s a big boy now playing big-boy hockey in the best league in the world. You get more stressed and nervous watching your child play than when I played.”

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Pragmatism often fogs the lens through which parents view their children. Grandparents, on the other hand, usually have no such filter. Joy is too powerful to blur.

“It’s something that’s beyond explaining,” said Gerry Tkachuk, Brady’s grandmother and Keith’s mother. “You cannot believe it. Even when Keith made it, we couldn’t believe he made it. Not that we didn’t have faith, but we never expected that. Now, to see the boys, it’s incredible. We’re so lucky.”

On Oct. 8, 19-year-old Brady became the third member of his family to join the NHL, following 46-year-old father Keith and 20-year-old brother Matthew.

When the concentric family circles expand, other names enter the hockey discussion: uncle Tom Fitzgerald, the ex-Bruin and current New Jersey assistant general manager; uncle Scott Fitzgerald, an amateur scout for the Bruins; uncle Bryan Fitzgerald, who played at UMass Amherst; and cousins Ryan and Casey Fitzgerald, currently playing for Providence (AHL) and Boston College.

The other side of the family tree has NHL branches too: ex-Bruin Jimmy Hayes and younger brother Kevin, now on a one-year deal with the Rangers.

Somehow, the collision of the Fitzgerald and McNeil families of Charlestown produced five NHL first-round picks: Tom Fitzgerald (No. 17 by the Islanders, 1986), Keith Tkachuk (No. 19, Winnipeg, 1990), Kevin Hayes (No. 24, Chicago, 2010), Matthew Tkachuk (No. 6, Calgary, 2016), and Brady Tkachuk (No. 4, Ottawa, 2018).

But the most extraordinary thing about the Fitzgeralds and the McNeils, families with dockworking and firefighting in their bones, is how ordinary they are.

Center of the family

If you picture the family like a line, the Fitzgeralds are the centers. Casey and Ryan Fitzgerald, along with younger brothers Jack and Brendan, are flanked by first cousins on both wings: Matthew and Brady Tkachuk on one side, Jimmy and Kevin Hayes on the other.

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The first of the Fitzgeralds to put a serious blade onto ice was Tom, a schoolboy star at Austin Prep before committing to Providence College. Like most boys of his generation, Tom and younger brothers Scott and Bryan played other sports such as soccer, football, and baseball before the rinks sunk their teeth into the Fitzgeralds.

For Tom Fitzgerald Sr., his boys’ love of hockey engaged him with the sport to a deeper degree.

The son of Charlestown’s George and Mary Fitzgerald worked on the docks. His father was also a longshoreman. Hockey was the family’s recreation.

Like many young couples in Charlestown in the 1960s, Tom and Sharon Fitzgerald followed Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins. Tom, their first son, was born in Charlestown in 1968, two years before the Bruins rampaged to the Stanley Cup.

In 1971, the Fitzgeralds moved to Billerica. Sharon worked as a part-time nurse at Tewksbury Hospital. As young Tom progressed through his childhood career, Tom the elder became more involved with Billerica Youth Hockey. The man without a hockey background taught himself to become a coach.

“He knew just as much about coaching hockey,” cracked Tom Fitzgerald of his father’s start behind the bench, “as one of those fat guys who’d yell at me at the Garden.”

George and Mary’s other child followed hockey too. Daughter Gerry had the Bruins bug just as bad.

“We always had season tickets to the Bruins,” Gerry Tkachuk said. “I was probably seven years old starting at a hockey game. The Original Six — that’s when I was going to hockey games.”

Tom Fitzgerald would not be the only family member with Charlestown roots to advance to the NHL.

A natural athlete

Gerry and John Tkachuk, a firefighter in the Boston Fire Department, settled in Medford, where they raised Kevin, Keith, and Mary Kay. Charlestown’s pull has never waned.

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“We’re both Townies,” Gerry said of her and her husband. “We’ve probably lived in Medford for 40 years. But we still say Charlestown’s our home.”

It did not take long for Keith, their younger son, to flex his athletic muscles. Hockey, baseball, and football came easily to Keith. The natural athlete starred at Malden Catholic before attending Boston University for one season.

Over a 1,201-game NHL career, Tkachuk scored and checked and bulled his way into America’s Greatest Generation alongside Massachusetts peers such as Tony Amonte, Bill Guerin, and Jeremy Roenick. For his mother, just making the BU roster, to say nothing of the 538 goals her son scored in the NHL, was a feather in the family cap.

“When he got the scholarship, we never anticipated him making the pros. Or even thought that,” recalled Gerry Tkachuk. “When he got a full scholarship to BU, we thought we were way ahead of the game.”

Keith’s genes were amplified one generation later. Matthew went 13 picks earlier than his dad. Two years later, Brady bested brother and father by going fourth overall. Like their old man, Matthew and Brady are rambunctious players with thunderous shoulders and sharp elbows.

A similar transference of bloodlines took place between Tom Fitzgerald and Ryan, his oldest son. Tom served as Nashville’s original captain because of his smarts and work ethic as much as his skill. Ryan, a second-year pro, projects to be a bottom-six NHL wing because of his processing power.

There is also an active third hockey branch of the family tree, even if one generation didn’t make it onto the ice.

The Brothers Hayes

Jim McNeil, Sharon’s brother, had an important job at Christmas. When the extended crew gathered at the Fitzgeralds’ Billerica home, he was Santa Claus. It took some time before Sharon’s boys figured out that Uncle Jimmy was playing the role.

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Another important task for Jim and wife Joanne was to be parents to Shelagh. Their daughter, cousin of Tom, Scott, and Bryan Fitzgerald, would marry Kevin Hayes and settle in Dorchester. Kevin and Shelagh are parents to Jimmy and Kevin Hayes, who both starred at Nobles and BC before starting their pro careers.

Jimmy, signed by Pittsburgh on July 1, is currently in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, the Penguins’ AHL affiliate. After signing a one-year extension with the Rangers, Kevin will be an unrestricted free agent at year’s end, making him a candidate to be moved before the deadline. Both BC boys, curiously, are playing for Rhode Island natives who attended Boston University: Clark Donatelli and David Quinn.

Jimmy and Kevin Hayes are regular summertime visitors to York, Maine, where the extended family gathers in a rented house. This summer, the crew bypassed Maine in favor of Cape Cod to attend Jimmy’s wedding.

Sharon Fitzgerald, great-aunt to Jimmy and Kevin, does not have an answer to why the hockey genes in her family are so robust. But she thinks about something her husband Tom, who died in 2015, used to say: Hockey is a game. It is supposed to be fun.

For the Fitzgeralds, Tkachuks, and Hayeses, there are few places more fun than the rink.

(Top photo of, left to right, Jimmy Hayes, Brady Tkachuk, Matthew Tkachuk and Kevin Hayes: USA TODAY Sports)

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