Growing up, most Canadian athlete’s dream of being the next Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby, and Dakoda Shepley was no different.
He played hockey for nine-and-a-half years before an injury ended that dream but started a new one.
“In grade 10 I broke my hand fighting so I went to go see a surgeon, who ended up giving me a 30-minute lecture on why I should be playing football instead,” Shepley explained to Sporting News. “At the time I was around 6-foot-2, 260 pounds, so I was a big kid, too big to be playing hockey that’s for sure.
“He was giving me this whole spiel about how I could get school paid for and play [football] professionally, so I just dropped hockey cold-turkey.”
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From there it was love at first snap.
As a newbie to the sport, Shepley didn’t have much prior knowledge outside of the basics. Luckily for him, his big frame made him a perfect fit for the offensive line, a position he wound up flourishing in.
He grew up in Windsor, Ontario — just five minutes south of Detroit — where most high school football players dream to get recruited into the NCAA. And Shepley was no different.
After getting some interest from various Division 2, 3 and even a few D1 Double A schools, Shepley ultimately decided to head cross country to the University of British Columbia
“My primary focus was going to the NCAA,” Shepley said. “I visited a bunch of schools, did the whole process, but came to the conclusion that UBC was the fit for me.”
The move turned out to be a great one for the offensive line prospect, whose four years culminated in a Canada West all-star appearance at right tackle and a Vanier Cup win for UBC.
Shepley’s play has him ranked as one of the CFL’s top prospects but he has his sights set even higher — to potentially make an NFL roster.
His original plan to get noticed was to start training immediately on the west coast and hope to land in one of the NFL’s regional combines. When the league announced it wouldn’t be holding those this year, panic mode set in and the offensive lineman had to figure out the next course of action.
Growing up in Windsor would turn out be yet another blessing for Shepley though. There’s an NFL rule that states if a prospect went to high school within 50 miles of an NCAA school’s facility, he can attend that team’s pro day. The only caveat was he needed to be specifically requested by at least two NFL teams.
“My whole plan of action was to train as hard as I could,” Shepley said. “I knew I had some of the tools to test well already, I just needed to work on those in the months leading up to the Pro Day.
“I needed to get as fit as I could, as quick as I could and execute come Pro Day, and that’s what I did. I needed to get my name out there, and it ended up working out”
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When team’s got whiff of the 6-foot-4, 305-pound lineman, it was mission accomplished. Shepley ended up working out for scouts at the Eastern Michigan University pro day and immediately boosted his stock with testing numbers that put him right up there with his NCAA counterparts.
He posted a 5.05 40-yard dash, 31 reps of 225 pounds on bench press, a 4.64 second shuttle time and 9-foot-3 broad jump. All of those numbers would have ranked inside the top 10 for all linemen at the NFL Combine.
“With the NFL, CFL, football in general that’s where I shine best — my explosiveness and my quickness getting out of the hole, out of my stance — and I think given a season under my belt with training, proper technique and coaching it can only get better from there.”
Since that pro day in March, it’s been a whirlwind of a process for the former Thunderbird, talking to NFL teams and simply trying to get his name out there as much as possible.
“There’s been good feedback from all of them and I’m getting good reviews on my film,” Shepley said. “They haven’t seen me over the last four years like most of the guys in the draft, so it’s been more of just getting to know me as a person, if I’m the kind of guy they want to be around really.”
Shepley’s film shows a quick, athletic lineman capable of taking over an entire side of the line — traits that were certain to catch the NFL’s eye.
To get to that level though, studying other successful lineman was key. Finding comparisons, setting benchmarks off of them and even learning techniques directly from them were some of the ways Shepley grew into the lineman he is now.
“First time I put a helmet and pads on was Grade 9 and I didn’t know anything about the game or the rules, so when I did start watching football it was 2009, the same year that T.J. Lang got drafted,” Shepley said. “I just remember looking up offensive lines and it was always Green Bay’s.
“I identified with T.J. Just from a body-type standpoint, we were kind of the same. And as it turns out this past combine training, with the gym I’ve been going through, I was training with T.J., who was a regular there. From two days a week of punching the bag, no pads, no cleats, you learn a lot based off technique. I’m a visual learner, so seeing him work was pretty huge for me.”
Another NFL lineman who was a huge inspiration for Shepley was countryman Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff.
Duvernay-Tardiff played college football at McGill college in Quebec and was a 2014 sixth-round pick of the Kansas City Chiefs. He has started as the team’s right guard in 31 games since then and inked a five-year, $42.5 million deal with the team in 2017.
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“I remember when he was in the draft process for the NFL. Someone on my team pulled up his highlight tape on HUDL and I watched it religiously,” Shepley said. “Even to this day I’ll pull it up just to compare myself, see how I stacked up.
“When I made my highlight tape I looked at his highlight tape in order to made mine the same as his play-wise. I said, ‘If he can make it with that highlight tape I can make it with mine.’”
For Shepley and other Canadian prospects, seeing someone like Duvernay-Tardiff not only make it as a draft pick in the NFL, but also succeed, is a massive boost and something to model success and preparation after.
“He was a big inspiration for me, especially coming from Canada. I think he was 6-foot-4, 315 pounds for his pro day, so I said, ‘you know what, I’m 6-foot-4, I’m going to be 315 pounds. I can be this guy.’ I tried to model myself off him as much as I could. All the guys coming out of Canada have been a really good frame of reference for me to try to get to that level.”
But whether it’s as a late-round pick, an undrafted free agent deal or even being a top pick in the CFL, Shepley will take what he can get to play the game of football.
He may not be the next big hockey star like he thought as a kid, but it appears the next Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff or T.J. Lang might just be in the cards.