Shaun Newman Podcast - #8 - Brad Cruikshank

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

Brad Cruikshank is a former Pro Hockey Player. Originally from Kelowna, BC he played his midget AAA in Calgary eventually winning a Max Cup. He would play Junior A with the Calgary Royals and participate in a Viking Cup. His pro career would see him play for Toledo, Fayetteville, Pensacol, Motor City and overseas in the British Elite league. With over 100 career fights Brads career has a very interesting perspective. We discuss all this and more during the podcast.

Okay, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I have Brad Krukshank in studios with me. He's a proud husband, father of four boys, and as I was just saying off here, I'd love to start listing up all of his accomplishments in hockey, but he's been everywhere. So I think I'm just going to let him do the talking for the most part and see where it leads us.

I guess, why don't we go back? You originally from Kelowna. Now we're sitting in Lloyd Minster for those people who are listening. everywhere right now. We're in the beautiful, lovely, it's at least sun is shining today and the snow's almost gone, but you're originally from Kona, so how about we go back? You must miss the mountains, I assume, now. Yeah, I love Klona, and I still do. We try and get out there as much as we can, but it's one of the most beautiful places in Canada, I'm sure. If not the world. If not the world. Yeah. It is pretty sweet, and I was lucky enough to grow up there, man.

It was a good place to grow up and be a kid, for sure. And so does your family still live back there, Shank? My dad's there with my stepmom, and I got a couple stepbrothers there. But other than that, and all my family's kind of spread throughout BC a little bit. Ocean Falls, my mom and stepdad. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. On the way up to Alaska, pretty much, Prince Rupert, I guess.

It's on the mainland, but it's kind of in between Prince Rupert and Vancouver Island. they own a, well, they had a fishing charter, a little camp out of there, and they've been there for quite some time, but it's beautiful out there too. Yeah. So I was just at my, a kid's birthday party. You can imagine 15 little kids run around scummed. They're having a grand old time. And then the dad's huddled together, and we got talking about our kids playing hockey and when they're going to start playing hockey. So going back to, like, your career in hockey is quite impressive.

So do you remember when you started playing and was you're in a little community or was, you know, or like was the rink open all the time, that kind of thing? Like, do you remember how you got your start or was it a later start? It was probably about three or four, I think, is when I started skating on the ponds. I remember we used to live on an acreage just kind of on the edge of Kelowna. Yeah. Which is now kind of in the middle of it. Middle of it, yeah, it expanded, yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of strange. But, yeah, I grew up on Acridge for the first four years until I was four anyways. So I remember skating on the ponds there before we moved right into the city. And then I played my minor hockey, yeah, in Colonna until Pee We anyways, until I left. They're a little bigger town, so we didn't get to wheel into the rink like you would need them or Marwain or whatever whenever you want after school. I was thinking Dad used to take us in Helmon. We used to go flood the ice with him. And while he was flooding by hand, we'd skate the ice, right?

And so we were always just on the rink. So I was just curious if you remember doing anything, maybe not to that extent, but if you were just on the ice all the time or... Yeah, no, I wish it had to have been like that. Like, I see all these small towns, and they're pretty lucky to have that, to be honest. And we definitely didn't have it in Colonna, but we were on the ice all the time. And back then, it was freezing in the winters. Like the lakes would still freeze, the ponds.

Nowadays, I don't think they can, I don't think they skate on the ponds or outdoor rinks that are very much at all, right, unless they get a really cold winter. But we used to skate on Okinawagon Lake. No kidding. Like right out by the bridge, right almost in the middle of the lake. And you wouldn't get that. Who needs an open rink when you got water everywhere? Yeah.

Or ice everywhere, I should say. Yeah, no, it was an unreal place to grow up. And the hockey was always good. I remember I was just trying to refresh my memory. the other day with my, my oldest son, we were talking about how it worked. And when you get to, or back then, right from Adam, they had Adam AAA teams out there. So, I mean, if you can make it, you Adam AAA, Pee-Wy-Triple-A. So the hockey was good.

Like, I was going back over some of the names I played against when I was a kid just from old, like, tournament programs and stuff. And coming across names like Scott Gomez. and I just missed Paul Correa and guys like that, but just lots of guys that played in the show at some point or played professional hockey have come through that area. That Vernon-Colona Kamloops area is just thick. A hockey. On bed.

Yep, big time. They're always good teams, good hockey. Excuse me. Camloops is always a powerhouse, right? And that's right from the Blazers. They've always been, had a good program. Strong program. Yeah, and those were our big rivals.

But, yeah, I was trying to remember the other day just what it was like. And, yeah, we never had to do the long trips or anything like that. Because out there, everything's so close, right? Here, we're constantly traveling for kids hockey at Adam and Pue Age. It's just a lot different than when I was a kid. You say Adam AAA, like in Lloyd we have Tier 1. Is that comparable? or yep yep but the tier one team's here i think you probably you get at least two or three

maybe four if there's enough kids right there you would just make one team so they just you just have one top team yep one top team i'm not sure what the uh what the the the how the whole tiering went if it was double a then a after that and then house league i think i'm pretty sure that's that's how it worked But yeah, I just, I had a picture of an old jacket that said right on the sleeve, Adam, AAA. And I just thought it was funny because it's not like that out here now. No, it's not at all, no, no. But, yeah, no, it was good hockey. Yeah.

And so then you move on to Calgary. And we were just talking a little bit of it off air. Like, you win a max cup out there, which is, well, that's midget. Midget, AAA for people who don't know. That's, what, top 25 team? I shouldn't say top, but 25 very, very good teams from all over the world come into Calgary and compete for the Max Cup, which is going like, it's been around for a long time. 30, 40 years?

Yeah. Long time. So to win that is quite the feat. Maybe you want to just shed some light on that. And you're saying you went to junior and then came back. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So from Colonna, I actually moved to Quinnell for a year, played my first year, Pee,

there because my mom and dad kind of split up and so yeah I headed up there for a year and it was a different place Quinnell BC I don't even know if you're familiar with it at all you're looking at me it's right by Prince George in between Prince George and Williams Lake different place I only lasted there a year and then I then I moved to Calgary played my minor Bannum so it would have been Bannum minor AA Okay. I think that's how they did it in Calgary at the time. And then I went straight from, instead of playing my second year, Abanam, my major Bannam year,

I just went to Junior A and ended up at 15, yeah, yeah, which was, you know, in hindsight now, I understand why the people around me and I understand why we went that route, but in hindsight, looking back now, you know, probably was a little quick, especially for where I was at maturity-wise, just at that point in my life. It may have been a little too much. So the first two years of junior, you know, I didn't play a ton. You know, I was a 15, 16-year-old, and that's valuable development time. Absolutely.

Valuable. And, yeah, it was a bit of a struggle. and as much as I enjoyed it, it just, yeah, it just, it was tough. So I ended up coming back my 17-year-old year and finished that season, Midget AAA. And then the following season, I think it was my 18, my last year midget eligibility. I played that full season and that was the year we won the max. So was it just going back to playing junior and then, was it your choice to go back to Midget then? Were you just, or?

Yeah, mine and my families. I was living with my aunt and all. at the time. Yeah. And, yeah, it was all of our decisions, basically. And I don't know the answer to this, so you probably do. When you leave a junior A team like that, can you just walk? I just say, it ain't for me.

I'm going to go play midget and then just walk over to the midget team. And if they got room, they just slide you on. More or less, yeah, if they have room and can accommodate, then, yeah. And it worked out that they did for us or for me. And it ended up being a great season. I ended up playing with two guys that, that had NCAA Division I scholarship later on after their junior. So play with two really skilled guys and had lots of success that year.

The Max tournament, we just tore that thing up our line. I think we all finished above 25 points in that tournament. And how many games do you play? Yeah, like eight. Yeah, like holy crap. Yeah, Andrew Wong and Jay Hamill. Yeah. I haven't said those names in a long time.

but man that was a long time ago 1996 i believe it was 96 96 yeah and we played another calgary team in the final which was cool so the saddle dome was was was rocking it was awesome there was 10,000 people in there at midget like that's a you know it's pretty pretty amazing at midget try at any age yeah right like uh i mean don't get me wrong you played some high-end hockey but for most guys they don't never get to see a thousand people in the building so for 10,000 to come out to a midget game like that must have been uh yeah it was pretty amazing wouldn't have been hard to get up for something like that no no it was not uh not hard to get motivated for that one that's for sure and then to win it the party after must have been uh yeah it was a good time it was a good time

i wish i was a couple years older but no it was good and yeah it was an experience that i'll definitely never forget and you know a couple years ago coaching with the the midget triple a team here we were able to go back and made it to the finals and we were playing the the calgary flames and it was 20 years ago to that day that you'd won that calgary flames right it was the flames you played with yeah and there was a couple of my teammates that were on the coaching staff for them at the time really uh yeah oh that must been a pretty cool uh yeah it was a neat experience i didn't expect to see i didn't expect to to run into them so it was kind of a bonus or whatever and yeah it was just a it was a neat experience and it was fun to go there and watch the you know the the kids we had at the time

here with lloyd go through it and what a team that was that that 2000 group of kids tie smith and all them that they were they were an unreal group so it's too bad we didn't end up winning it but we end up losing i think two one in the finals but pretty pretty neat experience and the max tournament is got to be one of the yeah it is it is first class it's you got teams from europe you got teams from the states, teams from all over the place, and, I mean, it's invite only, so they are most of the top teams in midget. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's something, yeah, I never even got close to it. I played our midget team won our league that year, but I don't even think, like, you were talking, like, you had Adam Tripp-A, like all growing up in Lloyd, I think, until I was well done my minor hockey. Like, all we had was double A. no we played in the rural hockey league right the fort max the grand prairies you want to talk about travel that was travel no kidding and there was a lot of good hockey players in there um but now that they got triple a here in lloyd like it's really changed uh the landscape because we used to you know i talked

on previous podcast about like clark mcarthur and those guys and like him going and playing strathcone or banum year right because strathcone had triple a so we all went there and the next year i think We all went to Fort Saskatch for trials. Everybody tried getting to the next tier, but the next tier wasn't a Lloyd. Now, the cool thing is is Lloyd has that, right? Like, well, they've had it for quite some time now. But anytime you get to keep local talent sitting here for everybody to watch, right? Like, you talk, Ty Smith, like, I got to go watch him that year.

And I remember thinking, because he would have been how old at the time? 15? Yeah, 16 tops. 16. Yeah, 15, 16. And he looked like an 18-year-old out there, right? Like, he was big, but smart and could really move. It was impressive to watch him play.

And anytime you can have your local kids stick around like that, it's pretty cool. Yeah, and it's, they're definitely, like, this area is rich with hockey too, man, and good hockey. Like, there is a lot of good hockey players around here that come through this area that leave prematurely right before midget, whether it's to go to an academy or whatever, join another Midgett AAA program. but there's definitely a lot of kids leaving Lloyd and it's, you know, kind of unfortunate, but you can't blame them either, right? They've got their own journey to do. Yeah, to go down.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, parents just want the best for their kids. So I understand why it happens and why it goes down. But this area should be able to feel the competitive Midget AAA team every year just off the local kids here. I think they still, you know, they're allowed to grab from around the surrounding area. And we had a few kids that year, Ashton Oaks and, you know, a few other kids from the Marwain area, Franklin, Zane Franklin. Yeah, Franklin, yeah. But for the most part, yeah, that was a pretty local team.

Yeah. Wow, heck. Yeah, I consider Marwain local. So I'm my home-on kid, right? Yeah. And grew up just outside of Lloyd. That's the same kind of area you're pulling from, right? Like there's a lot of local talent just laying in the weeds for you pretty much.

Yeah. No, and that's the best time that I tell these, and while I was telling those kids that year, a lot, just slow down and exactly. Remember this because, A, it's going to go fast, and B,

you ain't going to get to do it again. Yeah. And C, most kids don't get to have a year like that where they get to experience things like that. Winning in general in hockey is, it's hard. You know, it's winning a championship doesn't come any day at any level.

It doesn't matter what level you play at it. It's hard to do. And in the big picture, most people don't do it. Yeah. Most people that play hockey don't win a championship, right? And it's hard to win, man. It's hard to win. I played with guys that played for 10 to 15 years professionally that, you know,

never made it out of the first couple rounds of playoffs. let alone win a championship. That's got to be frustrating. I went through a long lull in my career where we were a bad hockey team or we just didn't win a whole lot. And that's, it's tough to keep a positive mindset

when you're doing that. It's the way it goes for most. That's the, yeah, it is. I didn't win for, it took me, you know,

once I left junior and after the midgett win, after the midget triple A. Yeah. Man, it must have been almost 12, 15 years before I want to

again after that midget triple a win going so long you wonder if you're ever going to get back there yeah it just shows how hard it is championships don't come they don't come every day that's for sure yeah well let's get back to it then talk about uh maybe i know we were talking you you go back you play your your midget you win a max cup and then the year after that you go back to playing junior a correct yep yeah i finished ended up going back to to junior and finishing my last couple years. It might even have been three years. Yeah, I think it was three years. My 18, yeah, 19 overage year. Yeah, had some success, but not as a, not as a team. We never won anything being with the Royals. I think we got out of the first round of the playoffs once, even though we had good teams

and we had some future NHELors, but the AJ was pretty competitive back then. At some point, you tried out for the dub, didn't you? Yeah. Played a little bit. bit that was right in the middle of my mid come before i came back to midget yeah uh oh before you came back to midget yeah so you went from junior a and then went up to the up to the dub for a little bit and then came back to midget yeah yeah man i took the long road yeah it is is a tough go and the dub's not for everyone and again that did i have the skill and toughness to play in that league absolutely but at that stage of my life i had a lot going on and um yeah i wasn't always concentrated on hockey first and foremost and if you're going to play in the western

league you got to be ready to bring your a game you can't be freezing up in the middle of games and and uh you just you can't afford to take a night off because it's just it is that competitive trying to make those teams and there's so many good players out there and and yeah so I played a few games with the hitman and then after the max uh my rights were were moved uh to emminton i believe so I played a couple games that at the end of that match uh was that the ice yeah emitting ice yeah because they were the ice and then they left and now they're back as the uh oil kings yeah yeah so played a little bit there and then lethbridge at the start of the next season and then ended up going back to junior a after being in lethbridge for for a couple

months and then yeah just finished out my junior in calgary and you were saying more of a comfortable fit like when you talk about the dub was it the stress of like how much of a grind plus all the talent chasing you to get in those lineups like and was there and you noticed there was a noticeable difference i guess what i'm trying to get at when you played junior a just in uh um, talent pool maybe versus, yeah, for sure.

It was definitely more competitive, tougher. Everything about it was, was tougher. The coaches were tougher. We had, oh, what's his name?

Maxwell, Dennis Maxwell. Okay. I think it's Dennis Maxwell. He coached the, the hurricanes for a long time back in the 90s. And he was a big, tough old school.

I think he played in the, the show. I think he was a bit of a tough, guy or whatever but he he was hard to to play for and that's just what it was like everything was back then it was old school right they didn't care about your feelings or her or anything to uh not on that side of things they they just wanted you to come out and and play hockey and and yeah it was just it was tough it was stressful and just at the point and that I was at in my life I just wasn't mentally strong enough, I guess, to cope with it.

Yeah, that's, I can attest. I wasn't, if you've been listening to this, you've heard me talk many a time about being told that I was just talking to Harlan Lessig on the last one about going to kindersling, and them telling me I was four inches too short, and if I was four inches taller, I'd be on the team, and it almost broke me to the point where I was like,

I don't even know if I want to play hockey anymore. Right. Well, you can tell where my mental toughness was at the time, right like you got to be able to take things on the chin and keep on on moving is what you're talking about yeah and that's not every kid not every kid at especially a young age like that can handle some of the things that are said and thrown at them yep and hockey's still like that to a certain degree right it's a tough sport yeah i mean any any sport is tough um hockey is it's it's tough mentally and and physically right it's emotionally too there's a there's a there's a

lot to it. What do you think of them moving hitting further away from the young kids? Because I think they're at Bannum now, right? Yeah. They've moved it all the way to Bannum. I've heard rumors, and I don't know, they're just rumors, but I've heard them talking about pushing it just to the elite team, so now if you only play AAA, you're in hitting and anything below that or maybe double A below that, now you get no hitting and talking about kids leaving the sport because essentially the body contact pushes them away from it. It's too rough of a game, that kind of thing. And so participation is down, and I'm quoting that.

And so do you think there's a benefit to the game moving away from hitting, or do you think it should be the opposite way? I've heard the argument where kids at a younger age should get to just feel a little bit of a bump. It's definitely a sticky topic, right? It's tough and it's really, I mean, I don't know. That's a tough one to answer. Maybe, you know, keeping hitting in at the pee-wee level wouldn't be such a bad idea maybe for the elite level of pee-wee. Just kind of like you're saying with Bannam.

And honestly, I'm totally fine with Bantam going to no contact for House League or Citi. league right and that why not like if actually i agree right what's the point of having it down let let the kids learn and only and get the fundamentals on their own before you add in another roadblock of some kid trying to knock your block off there's such a size difference between a lot of the kids now too right so and there always was uh but now it just seems more so than ever there just seems to be a lot more big kids um i definitely wasn't drinking the kool-lade obviously Heck, neither were you, because what are you, 5-9? Yeah, 5-10, right?

Like, you're in my standards, you're big, but by the NHL hockey standards, you're a small guy. Yeah, and it's tough sport for a small guy, but, I mean, once you learn your edgework and your body positioning and, you know, how to wiggle out of hits and be prepared for them, that's the biggest thing, is knowing how to take a hit and be prepared for it. being able to see it out of the corner of your eye in advance. Yeah. But, yeah, I'm good with hitting, staying in at peewee in the elite levels. And I'm also good with it coming out at certain levels too, right?

Whatever level that is. Yeah, and maybe that is a thing. I would not be surprised to see open ice hitting gone from hockey altogether at some point in the next decade or two. Well, the way it's moving, it's coming quick. There's lots of guys pushing for it behind the scenes, and you wouldn't believe how many of those guys are ex-NHL tough guys. Really? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't want to quote anyone on air, but... Why are they pushing so hard for it, do you think? I don't know, maybe because they have money tied up in that lawsuit against the NHL or they're expecting. I don't know. I don't know. It's funny that it's those guys, right? And I don't see that, you know, hitting altogether is the culprit.

I think it has a lot to do with the equipment. Shoulder pads. Like, they're massive nowadays, right? And I mean, that seems to be the most common reason for concussion is shoulder to jaw. Yeah. And those massive shoulder pads. And the game you'd talk, it's getting a little bigger. It seems like it's getting faster, right?

I was just talking to Harland about rule changes they've implemented. Well, it was my midget year where they took out the red line up until that point you can do the two ice pass. No kid even remembers that now, right? Right. That's so far gone. But that used to slow the game up because now you can't, you know, now you can make that pass. You can make the far blue line pass. You can do that chip play and then chase down the D-Man.

And while I'm a D-Man and I'm a small D-Man, I don't. all about that, right? Like, that's what guys are trying to do. But, yeah, well, it's interesting that behind the scenes, that's where it's getting pushed by. I always just grew up playing with hitting and enjoying the hitting part of it, right? Yep. I'm a small guy, and I like to hit. I just got to go about it a different way than most.

Right. And even, to be honest, when I was in Peewee in BC, there was no hitting. Even back then. when we came to Calgary for a peewee tournament, my second year of peewee, there was hitting in Calgary. And you never had hitting before? Not in BC, yep. Really?

In BC, Peewee was already a non-contact when I was playing, yep. Interesting. Yeah, so we would come, we came to Calgary for a tournament. And had to get readjusted. Oh, yeah, that was awesome, though. We loved it. Yeah, right? Yeah.

A bunch of Peewee kids coming in and haven't never been able to hit before. That's funny that they would do it in a province but not kind of mandate or take the data from it and then go, you know what, that actually proved well in BC we should mandate it across everywhere and see maybe they have been doing that. Maybe they did that. Yeah. I don't know because hitting was pulled out of Alberta and Peeway after BC for sure. So maybe they, I don't know, maybe they realized it worked or whatever they wanted to do. on the phone, right? Track them down. Track them down. Well, I wanted to buggy too. We talked about Max Cup and then the Viking Cup because I don't even, maybe you could tell the folks what the

Viking Cup is because I'm pretty sure the Viking Cup is no more. Yeah, yeah, the Viking Cup is dissolved now. It's gone. I think they stopped somewhere around 2006. Yeah, I think it was 2006 and it used to be hosted in cameras. Correct. Right? And it used to be the top junior age kids in a, well, you played in it. They would make an all-star team from the Alberta Junior Hockey League, BC Junior

Hockey League, Manitoba, S.J. And then there was a Czech Republic was there. Yeah. And then the under 18 U.S. team, who we ultimately ended up losing. Like, holy crap, right? They were good. And I bet you a lot of those guys off that roster, the under the U-18 American team.

Well, I quick, I didn't look at the Americans. I was just looking across seas who came over because I was kind of curious. Yep. And like Hasick played in it. Yep. Peter Klemah for old Euler fans, right? Oly Yokinen, Tuka Rask, Henrik Lungquist, right? So there was some giant names go through that thing.

Absolutely. Yeah, it was probably one of the. of the best tournaments I've, I've ever played in. It was fun. It was great. And we, we had a powerhouse team. We were good. We ended up beating the U.S. and the round robin and overtime and going six and O'n'O into the final. So we were pumped. We were ready riding a high. And then we ended up losing, I think, four three to, to the U.S. to the U.S. You remember who played on that AJ team with you? Would have been Barnes, would have been the, Stu Barnes? Well, Ryan Barnes.

Played for Lloyd at the time, the Blazers. He was my roommate, actually. Yeah. What was it? Sorry, what was the formula? Because it was over like a three-week period, wasn't it? Two-week period? No, just one week.

Oh, it was one week? Yeah. Oh, I must have read that wrong. I could swear it said longer. So it was just one week. The year we were there, yeah. They throw you up in a hotel and then that's... No, we billeted with cameras.

The AJ, Yeah, I'm not sure what the other teams did, but our team, we billeted with people right in the Camerals community. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, it was a great experience. We had awesome billets, and as I'm sure everybody did, but yeah, it was a fantastic experience. Gord Thibodeau was one of our coaches. Jeff Christensen, who ended up coaching.

He was the head coach of Cameros at the time. ended up coaching in the head coach of Colonna Rockets, and now he's in the American League. He might even be in the NHL now. Gary Van Harroway, I think, was a part of it. We had awesome coaches and just a great team. Great experience. The community was awesome.

Camer was a great place. The people there were awesome. Yeah, it was a good tournament, man. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, you're going against an entire country's under 18 team. That's why it was so impressive, right? Like, yeah, we had 20-year-olds, right?

Like, I was a 21-year-old. Yeah. But, yeah, you're drawn from your entire country. Like, that was your U-18 development program. That was the best team they could put together. And so it was pretty impressive that, you know, we could even stay with them. Honestly, it's too bad that isn't still going, right? Like, that's an impressive feat to put a tournament on like that

and have it in Camrose, Alberta. Yep. Right? Like, that's pretty good. Awesome and awesome for the scouts. You know, what an easy place. There's a lot of scouts in this area, right? Yeah.

A lot of scouts between the Mets and Kentucky in this freaking area. Yeah, and that place was just a lot of guys moved on from that tournament, that's for sure. Now, you go back to the Royals, right? You're playing junior for the Royals at the time. Yep. And you talk about losing in the first round, and then the day after you lose in the first round, you get a phone call and you head south. Yeah.

I honestly had never really even heard of the East Coast League or Central Hockey League or West Coast Hockey League. I didn't know anything about those minor leagues. All as I knew was NHL and American League. Yeah, and two days after, not even, the next day after we lost out to Camrose and it was right at the end of February. I got a call from a guy named Todd Gordon. He was the head coach of the Toledo Storm in the East Coast League. I was like, where the heck is this? Okay, Ohio, sure, right on.

Didn't even need a passport. That was in 2000. Yeah. I think, 99 or 2000. Had your birth certificate and when you went? Didn't even need that. Just needed my driver's license. Went to the airport.

Oh, shit, really? That's it. Holy crap, how time to change. Yep. I think, yeah, that's it. Driver's license and a bag of clothes and a hockey bag, jumped on an airplane and landed in Detroit to like two in the afternoon. The goalie who was under contract at the time with Tampa, he was hurt.

He picked me up at the airport. He's smoking cigarettes the whole way back to the rink. We're driving straight to the rink because there's a game that night and I was barely going to make it there in time for warm up. I had no idea what to step in, like what is going on or what the rink looks like. You know, am I even playing tonight? Well, you don't have an iPhone at this point. Definitely don't have an iPhone.

You can't be sitting there in the past and your seat, Googling everything going, oh, this sewer plane and oh, that's who they got and whatever. Like, you're going there blind. Going there blind. Yeah, it was pretty intimidating. I'm not going to lie, especially when he picked me up and he's smoking darts. And it's just, I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't expecting that.

But what a great experience that was, though. First game, old rink, just a little, I don't know, 5,000 seat rink. Stuff to the rafters, even though Toledo was out of the playoffs at that point. But we were playing Peoria Riverman. They were huge, massive team. We had to walk through the concourse in our home rink in Toledo there. So I go there, get ready for warm up. and it's the first time putting on a helmet without a visor,

and they got warm-up jerseys, and we walk through the concourse, and you walk out into the stands, and you literally walk through the stands down to the bench, and then onto the ice. They have a tunnel for their team that comes out and everything, so the fans can't and glass around their bench, but our bench was literally a chain behind us.

No glass or anything. It was a chain in the fans sitting right with you, right on the bench, literally. It was unreal. I ended up scoring that. game though so that was pretty exciting that would have been a confidence booster yeah it was it was pretty awesome i'm glad i did i just tapped in a puck sitting on the goal line but hey whatever so did you have to like did you have to sign a contract or yep yeah so you like yeah i think it was for 425 bucks a week

or whatever the minimum was at the time hey i'll if you haven't listened to me in harland talk i'll say until the cows come home. You did way better than I ever did. My first and only contract was a hundred and fifty euro a month. So four hundred twenty-five bucks sounds pretty decent right now. Yeah, no, hey, I was 21 years old and I was pretty excited. So yeah, living on my, uh, living with a guy from Ontario, Jeff White, I think his name was. Uh, we lived in some dingy little apartment and how long were you down there for? Just six weeks. Six weeks. Yeah, finish off the season, did a couple golf tournaments. And then they were out of the playoffs before I even went down there.

Yeah. I think how it originally got linked up is I had a guy that was out of Calgary that was a scout for Tampa. And he had watched me play for a long time. And yeah, he's the one that I think tip them off. Yeah. And, you know, I ended up staying in their system with that. that coach. Geez, for the next four years, I think I played for Todd.

So that all came out, you know, just off of that one scout, making a recommendation. And, yeah, I ended up playing for that coach for the next five years. Well, where do you go after there? So you go from Toledo? Toledo came home for the summer and then went to, with that coach. So that same coach from Toledo knew he was going somewhere for a year. And then to somewhere else after that back in the Tampa Bay organization.

So I didn't resign in Toledo on his strict instructions. And I followed him to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the Central League, which was a really tough league. Tough like we're talking fighting? Are we talking? Scrapping. Lots of scrap. And every team was like four to eight guys deep. Oh, guys, you could just throw out.

The heavy weight division. Yeah. It was fun, but it got old. So I should preface. I assume most people who tune into this, kind of know your background a little bit, right? And all the stuff that's been on Facebook in the last day since I put out that I was having you on, it was pretty crazy.

Lots of guys sharing in, commenting and whatever else. And I went down the rabbit hole of looking at your fights, right? And I mentioned earlier you're only 5, 10, like you're not this giant of a guy. But if you go on YouTube and watch you, you fight heavyweight after heavyweight after heavyweight. I should have brought this up way back at the beginning. Like in midget through junior into the dub, now you're down in Toledo.

Like, have you been fighting this entire time? Yeah, not so much like a midget. And obviously there's not a ton of fighting a midget, right? But I was definitely a bit of a hothead in midget, but I was producing. I put up some pretty decent numbers. And even in junior, you know, I scored 40 goals the last year and had 20 fights or whatever, right? The year before, I think I fought about 25 times and had roughly 20 goals. So I had been doing it, yeah, since junior.

And you know what? I kind of think I did it to myself, right? Once you get a name for yourself. Yeah, it's hard. Like, I don't know if I want to use the word pigeonholed, but once you get in that role and people expect that of you or that's tied to your name, it is extremely hard to shake. At least it was back then.

It was. Well, it isn't the same game anymore. No, it's totally different now. You name, you go to a junior game, and I know there's guys who still like to fight, but like, how many fights do you even see, right? At a junior A game, right? I'm or higher. I mean, you still see, it's still there a little bit, but that used to be just a part of it, right?

You used to go to a game and you expect to see one to three fights a game, right? Something. Yeah, absolutely. And so I could see how your name gets mixed up with, he likes to throw that. And so when they got a guy and they need to change the momentum and say, hey, go see if Shank wants to go around with you. All right. And then while I know how most of us are on the ice, I shouldn't say most of us, I only, my fighting career lasted about three games a year.

I had five or six in my illustrious junior A career, but I could see how a guy comes and then they're having a bad game. Well, let's go shake it up. Shank, we'll throw them down with you for sure, right? And as a young guy, you're not going to back down because that's not what young guys do, right? And so away you go. And then, I mean, then 20 years go by and you're known for it. Right.

Yeah, it's almost the fish. cycle. As much as I love doing it when I was younger, you know, in my early days, it's a rush, man, when you're doing it in front of, you know, anywhere from a thousand to 10,000 people. It's pretty exciting or, you know, can be a pretty good feeling. So that's kind of where that comes from. But it's, yeah, it's hard to get out of and it's, it's hard to shake that role after you get stuck in it. Did you have some good fans that were just going nuts when you'd go or chatting your name? Yeah.

Yeah. England's was like that quite a bit, right? Yeah, the fans are pretty interactive. Europe's different than everywhere else, right? They have that soccer mentality. Standing up waving flags and, you know. Everybody's into it. Some of the rinks you go into, they don't sit, right?

Like we played in France and Ruan or whatever. Those people, I swear to God, they didn't sit the whole game. game like they just stand standing four thousand people stand and waving flags but it sounds like there's a hundred thousand people in the little rink right yeah so you go to fayetteville and you mention that this is kind of where they or maybe this was jamie telling me that where they kind of change your role into that that guy who is willing to drop the minutes i think i was looking at your hockey db and like you had a couple seasons there where your 300 plus penalty minutes that kind of thing like that's a yeah that's a load yeah then that's primarily what i did in fayetteville for sure

yeah so you're a lot of scrapping so you said it's a tough league so you're is that one fight a night then well you can have up to three who you ever have three in a night uh i don't know if i did that year i would have had a couple for sure but i've done it a couple times it's is that just a little bit of uh just a little bit of hatred between two guys yeah right like you You get round one in and somebody knocks the other guy down and we're going to settle this right now. Yep. Yeah, it definitely happens like that. Or line brawls and if you're the first guy fighting, you get to stay in the game and it's a heated game,

well, you're probably going to go again, right? We've had some good rivalries down there, especially playing in the coast because you're playing teams in your division up to 12 times. And it's different from junior or midget or whatever, right? when you got grown men playing against each other 14 times in a year by the time playoffs are done or 20 times in a year by the time because we play the teams in our division in the coast 12 times and that's not including exhibition games yeah that's a grind man yeah or playoffs and so by that 12th time you play that team something's probably happened in between a few times right yeah you stubbed your toe on somebody and right

and uttered you're going to die the next game kind of thing. Yep, and so yeah, that role just kind of followed me for the first bit, especially when I was in the States. Yeah, I don't know how you would have got out of it at that time without looking like a coward. Yeah. And just stopping, fighting altogether. But, I mean, before every game, you can go into the dressing room

when you get there two hours before and they have the media package, right? Yeah. So the first thing you do is flip it open and see who's playing for their team that night and who's a scratch and who's a knot and all their stats are in there and everything. So there's no getting away from it. Once you're in that role, every guy on every team knows who you are when you come into their building that night or whatever, right? Yeah, well, I mean, the same thing used to happen when I played in Drieden, right?

We had Larry Wintoniac, who's an assistant coach here in Kinderzley. But at the time he was coaching there, he's been around. around the Junior A league's a lot, pretty much all his life. And he used to be very professional like that. Print us off, their stats, they're everything. So we had to read through it before each game, and it's no different, right? You'd look to see who was scratched who was playing. And that time, I was still using wood sticks, which I loved, you know, as a small guy,

I always got to use it in front of the net. I get harassed now because of how I like to use my stick on the ice. But back then, that was the only way I could keep the big guy away from me. No doubt. Or away from the net, right? Was using that little thing and a nice wood stick never breaks. Nope. I know.

Our kids are using wood shafts in lacrosse now. Oh, really? Same concept, though. Yeah. They're heavier and harder. Yeah. And they don't break. And they don't break.

No, not even on a guy's arm. No. Yeah. No, it's a... Yeah, it was an interesting time those years. It was tough as much as I love doing it. It's a tough role to do and it's grinding. Like it mentally and emotionally, it's harder than anyone could ever imagine.

Who is maybe like, I don't know, your most memorable fight or the guy that you're just like, I don't want to do this. Like this guy is a monster or something along that lines. Because, I mean, I don't know how many fights you had in your career, but you had a lot. Yeah, probably, I don't know, some. Well, with Junior are the ones that maybe aren't on. officially listed or whatever. I think I had over 100,

over 100 fights on Drop Your Gloves.com or whatever it's called. I haven't checked it in a while, but I don't think the junior ones are on there, but all in all, it would have easily been over, going low at 140, 150. Yeah.

Even, yeah, that's a lot. So who, no, that's a crazy amount. I'm talking, I had like, I probably count them on both hands, right?

I probably had 10 to 20, I mean, but I was never, I was never a good fighter. That's a good thing. I guess so. It's a tough role, man, and it's not for everybody, and it's not for guys that are probably my size. Yeah, well, I just saw, there was a video show of you fighting, uh, how do you say his last name?

Ndurr? Yep. Ndurr, and then I watched one the other day of McMorrel. Yeah, like those two guys were monsters. Monsters. Yeah. I don't know about McMurral. I don't know if he played in the show.

I don't think. A little bit. Did he play a little cup of coffee? Yeah. Yeah. the American League for a long time. Yeah. Like he was big.

Massive. And every time you got up, he just, he just throw, it never caught you. It didn't look like he caught you with anything. But he had so much, like, length. And every time he caught you with even a graze, there was so much weight behind it,

and push you back to the ground. Totally. Like, I could just, I can't imagine going, okay, I'm going to fight this big bohemath heavy weight, right? And then you fight Nadur, and he is, I looked his stats up. He's from, I think, Nigeria. Yep.

And he was 6 foot four or 6 foot two. and 240 some pounds and like a monster monster right he played for the rangers for a bit yeah he had 65 games in the show with uh what did it say i think five goals nine points something yeah yeah or 100 hundred hundred five now i'm gonna look him up because i uh he's tough i know that he was a big man like when he comes on the video screen and if you haven't seen this fight look him up n d u r versus brad kirk shak you look that up and he comes on the screen you're like you're going to bite that guy? Yeah, not much fun.

I was 32 at the time. Yeah, what was your wife saying in the stands? Yeah, she probably didn't like that one too much. I kind of feel sorry for her at point seven to watch some of the shit that happened. It's all part of it. Well, I mean, it's just you get thrown in that role and then you come up against the next team. I mean, it's kind of like a notch in your belt though. Yeah, I never really.

got to start playing hockey again until I did go to Europe. I just didn't know I was going to the toughest league in Europe. I should have been a little more aware as the internet was fully fired up by then. Britain is the toughest league in Europe? The UK league is tough, yeah. It's even now is starting to change a little bit, but it's still one of the last professional leagues that's, you know, fairly physical. McGrathen was just over there.

Really? A year or two ago, West Garth. Yeah. All those guys were playing over there. Guy from the Ice Guardians documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that being filmed is when we're doing him on ice is in Belfast in the Elite League in the UK. Yeah, no kidding.

Yeah. Okay, Ruman Nudder. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Yeah. And it's 6'22. Ways in at 244. Right. So I can just imagine what it was.

Probably 264 at the later. end of his days. He is from Nigeria. And in the NHL, he played 69 games, two goals, three assists, five points, and had 137 penalty minutes. And I mean, that's just, and then he also played AHL for

a lot. There's 70 games right there, right? Like, well, two, three, four, five full seasons in HAL. He was a big boy when he got, by the time he got to you, you were facing a weathered vet. Yeah. Yeah. Two weathered vets. Just won a lot

bigger and stronger. Yeah. So let's talk about you go, then you go from, you go from Fayetteville, and then you go to Pensacola, I think, right? Yep. What better place to go. Yeah, it was unreal, man. Like, for the listeners, if you don't know where Pensacola is, that's Florida.

That's about as close to the coast as you can get. Actually, it's pretty much the coast. It is. It is. Almost in water. Yep. Pensacola, Florida. We were on the Gulf of Mexico.

By noon every day after practice. I don't think I ever told you this, but my roommate in Ontario, my junior roommate, he actually played for, well, they were, where were they win ice pilots when you played? Yeah. And they were the ice flyers now, I believe. Yep. And he won with them, what was that, 2013, I think. Yep.

And was a rookie of the year with him his first year. I think he played two years with him. Yep. Right? SPS. SPS. Yeah, SPS, Southern Pro. Yeah.

Jordan Trong had a On a Vancouver over there Yeah Yeah Sick place Lucky guy Win a championship When he signed there

He was sending me photos of their place They had a condo And I'm probably Just reminding you of it Conno's right on the beach Right on the Gulf of Mexico So why the heck did you ever leave there? Yeah I know

I don't know Well there was a bit of a change at the helm Going on So the coach I played for Toledo Fayetteville And then three years in Pensacola with him. The reason why I mostly left was just development.

I wasn't, we were in the Tampa Bay system. Pensacola was? Pensacola was, yep. They were their East Coast League affiliate, but at the time, Tampa Bay had a split affiliation with Springfield in the American League. Okay. And that's it.

So they only had 10 spots in the American League. So our team in the East Coast League There was only four of us the last year There might have only been three of us the last year That were not under contract with Tampa at the time Like there were all guys that had signed big deals already And a lot of them never played in the NHL But that's just how many guys

They didn't have a spot for so they had to play in the coast And those guys were happy because they were making big money And in the coast You didn't have to pay for your place or anything In the American League, when you go up there, you got to pay for your own housing and stuff. So guys were some of the European guys that knew they weren't going to play in the show, but it signed a deal. We're much happier to play down on the coast than up in the American League because at the end of the day, they'd make more money.

Yeah, absolutely. I should have asked that, too. So what was the, like, how much money were you making at this point in time? In the coast? In the coast. Not much. Not much. Like 600 bucks a week, probably, 700 bucks a week?

2400 bucks a month something like that but you don't pay for anything right no you're you're living zero bills zero bills even food you got to pay for food yeah but you get so much so many deals at restaurants and free but yes you do pay for your food yeah but i mean as far as living expenses go minimal and all the travel you're doing with the team anyways yeah you can you can get by and go on with some you're not doing it for the money let's put it that way right like the the coast was never about the money. The East Coast League was about still making the NHL. Yeah, how was, how were the fans in Pensacola? Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Great rink and it seats about 8,500 people at the time. We were averaging 6,000. Like it was a decent then. Awesome place to play. Yeah. And just walk around your shorts. Like,

I'm just jealous. Come to the rink in shorts. Is this not the best time in Lloyd right now? The spring is out. The snow was melting. We're crazy, stupid Canadians. We think we can walk around in shorts and it's zero or in the states it's 32 right but it feels like it kid down there you probably walk around that's 20 above every day and yeah like got chilly in December January just with the wind yeah and everything but you're i mean chili is jeans in a sweater yeah but by march you're right back out on the beach and in pensacola uh this is something maybe the team never thought about or whatever when they were picking desksum destinations, but that is spring break, like central between Pensacola Beach and Destin.

That's where all the college kids come from around the country over an entire month because all the schools stagger. All the divisions within the NCAA stagger their spring break. So you've got a nonstop wave of parties down there. So sure enough, our end of our season, all three years I was there. All three years we were there. We had no success. We just shit the bed in the playoffs every year,

and it was literally because our guys couldn't stay focused. Chasing the extracurricular. Yep. Yeah, it was unreal. Yeah, we had lots of young guys, young single guys or whatever, so those guys would just be animals. Couldn't rain it in, right? And that's that team

Shit 2013 would have been Only the second time They've won A championship in that city Over 20 years of hockey or whatever It's been there And it's always been easy for them to recruit good teams

Because it's a beautiful place Yeah So they have good teams Don't kid yourself But you look at their records And you know they So what the heck is Vag is done then Right

because they are the ultimate nine life and they've never had a problem. Well, I think it's like that all year though, right? So maybe they just get used to it. I don't know. They had an East Coast League team in Vegas. I'm not sure how they did or whatever. I've never really looked it up, but I'm sure those guys would have struggled too, right? Yeah.

And there's a difference between the East Coast and the NHL in that regards to you're going to have guys that just, I mean, there's not as much. accountability from the team looking down on you in the East Coast League compared to an NHL team when they're paying you a million bucks or whatever right yeah I've always heard the biggest change from going from like the dub junior A that kind of thing and then going down and playing East Coast or the Central or anything like that is the nightlife and having to rein that side of things in is that at all true yep for sure I could see how lots of guys struggle with it

I was fortunate enough that I was married young. So my wife was, she was with me the whole time. So I never had a chance to get in trouble. She kind of kept me in line and made sure I didn't do anything. Too stupid? Too stupid. There's definitely a couple, a couple stupid moments, but nothing that got me into trouble with the law.

What's the worst, or maybe not the worst, but what's one of the, you don't even have to throw out names by any means, but you have to have stories then from Pensacola, spring break, guys being dumb, getting sat, canned, I don't know, like there must be something that pops out in your brain. Craziest thing that I probably saw happen in Pensacola, and there was a lot that happened, but for one night of drama,

our team went out to the bar across the street from the rink after a game. It was in March. two of our guys that just didn't get along too well one of them made a comment to the other one about his something about his wife and the one guy grabbed a beer bottle and didn't smash it on his head he had the beer bottle in his hand and he smushed it on his forehead and broke it like but hit him that hard push the bottle that hard into his forehead. Cut him open. A waitress ended up getting some flying glass in her eye.

We didn't find that out till the next morning. So the cops had those two donkeys out on the street arrested or in cuffs. I just happened to be the guy standing or come out of the bar first to the cops. And they knew I was with the team. And the cop asked me for our coach's number. So sure enough, I dial it. Hey Gordo This guy here

It wants to talk to you Pass the phone over Cop Has a long conversation with our coach Somehow the two guys in handcuffs That just bottled each other Are allowed to go home So the one goes to the hospital

To get stitched up The other one goes to our trainer's house To get his hand stitched up Needless to say Two hours later Somehow the rest of us Are back out on the beach Because why not?

Yeah, why not? We live on a skinny little couple mile width of island. If you Google Pensacola Beach, you'll get a feel for it. We're all at a bar rate by the big beach ball. So if you do Google it, you'll see the big beach ball there on the main beach. And there's a little bar in there. And the rest of us went into there.

Sure enough, one of those guys showed up a couple hours later. It's about three in the morning. Yeah. That's where you were living? Well, not that exact spot, but that's strip? Yeah. He ain't kidding, folks. That is a strip of what looks like less than, I don't know, a couple football fields wide of beach.

Yeah, it's surrounded by water. Holy crap. It's a gorgeous place. Anyway, so we end up out at this little bar on the beach. here's the beach ball we lived in one of the big buildings right beside it and the two guys that the incident happened with they ended up making their way back

after going and getting all sewed up they make their way back to that to the bar where we all are sure enough shit kicks off again between the same two guys yeah the same two guys yeah and the one guy wasn't liked by many of us So a few of us may have got involved in it as well a little bit,

but it was a gong show, full out gong show. And the same cops ended up out at that one. Like just by, I don't know how it happened, but I think it was a complete fluke. But the same cop that asked me for my phone to call my coach the first time. Asked for it again. Ask for it again. This time we pretty much got our hands all spread out on the car.

and even my wife has got her hands out on the car and they're patting her down and all they were really mad that cop was screaming about how it brings his kids to the games and what a great bunch of role models we were and oh anyways we called their uh yeah we called our coach and we got driven home or went home that night and uh i'm not sure what the other two guys ended up to and one of them I think got taken away, but one of them wasn't there in the morning, let's put it that way. Yeah.

For our team meeting at 9 o'clock the next day, which I don't even know how he made it to that. Yeah, one of the guys was gone, already gone. I'm sure he was flying out like literally that same day. And yeah, that was probably one of the crazier stories. Yeah, I left out a lot of the dirty details, but you get the picture. Yeah, you can get the picture.

picture of what went on that night. That's the first time I've seen teammates bottle each other, and I haven't seen it since. So probably a good thing. Probably a good thing. Probably a good thing. But that's... I can just imagine being the coach. Getting a phone call, you're like, okay, that was stupid, right?

All right. They're going to go home. They're going to sleep this off. We'll talk about it in the morning. And then two hours goes by, and the same cop calls you on the same phone. I got the same two guys again. Oops. Yeah.

Not good. Not good. Good for us, though. Good for stories later on. Absolutely. So then you, okay, so you spend all your time of Pets Col. You decide that you need to go somewhere else. You end up in Detroit?

Yep. I'm not wrong on this. It was the United Hockey League? Correct. Which is no more. No more. What the heck is the United Hockey League similar to? East Coast League, Central League.

Same kind of thing, right? Like they all kind of now joined a little bit, right? Yeah, yeah, a lot of the teams that have played in the Central League or the United League over the years are a part of the East Coast League now. East Coast League has taken over and pretty much grabbed all the good teams. Everybody else, the smaller market teams will go to the SPHL. But yeah, it was the United League at that time. So that was a pretty big shock to the system. It was out of their Colorado, we were kind of deciding to go to Colorado Eagles.

and they were at the time one of the best minor league teams to go to. But Detroit was an expansion team, and Gary Younger was the coach. Gary Younger, like we're talking the guy who used to be, like, no, actually Iron Man, right? Sorry, that's what I was going to get to. He held the record for most games dressed consecutively in the NHL. I don't think he holds it anymore.

Actually, I know he doesn't. I know that record was broke after him. Cogliano, I think, or someone has it now. Yeah. But he was that original NHL Iron Man, yeah. I think he was like 900 consecutive games. Something like that, yep. Yeah, like.

He was old school. Yeah, like that's anyone who's played hockey. Hell, anyone who's played any sport. Screw that. That can do it consecutive. Yeah, and just not pick up a Nick and just, you know, like a wear on a guy. And, okay, I got to sit a couple out here and get the flu even, right? Special breed.

Yeah. And a little bit of luck. And a little bit of luck. A little bit of luck for sure. But yeah, he was, he used to practice with us. Like, but he would just put chin pads on. Yeah. Have his track suit on.

And when we would do any three on three or any game type stuff, he, he would jump right in and just start playing. And that's the way they, when they played in the 70s, 80s. That's the way they played. They just played like systems, huh? What do you mean system? like he had no on that side of things for coaching and stuff

he had no answers for the other teams we had no systems we did it all in-house within our groups yep within our captains kind of organized it

and we made sure we had stuff you know structure for that year but when he was when he was coaching it's not a knock against scary at all

it's just the type of guy yeah totally when they played They just played. When we came in between periods, he would be reading the newspaper or a Bible. He was a born-again Christian. So that's just the way he was, right? Whereas most coaches now would be going through their clips on their iPad.

Oh, my God. Yeah. You know, dissecting everything and coming up with answers in between periods. So is it the first – did you just play there one year? Yeah, just one year. So the one year you play there is the NHLLLL year there, year then, right? 0405. Yeah.

And you, I wrote it on the little bio of this, but you said you played with Chris Chalios, Darien Hatcher, right? Yeah. Like, if you followed anything in the NHL for any amount of time, Chris Chalios was, I was getting, like, that guy played until he was 44, 45, summer rate in that ballpark?

In the NHL and they kept playing in the American League. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Right? And Dary and Hatcher, up until they made the rule changes, it was the one guy you didn't want to stand in front of the net with. He was a behemoth. Yeah.

And then you'd mentioned Sean Avery came in there, who, well, we all remember him with Marty Broder there. Yeah. Well, it's not the other day, but towards the end of his career with the Rangers, right? Yep. He is the ultimate agitator. Yep. He's special. Yep.

And then Brian Smolenski was there as well. Yeah. Who was probably one of the best third, fourth line guys in the NHL. He was a long time, right? Penley Kill guy. Yeah. Meat and potatoes. Yeah.

Meat and potatoes guy. He was probably the most down to earth them all, obviously. He's just the way he was. So what was it like playing in Detroit with a bunch of current in H.S.? They weren't X at that time, right? It's a lockout. So they're all just sitting on the sidelines. Oh, yeah, they were all current.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. It caused a lot of controversy for sure. Really? Yeah. Yeah. They took a lot of heat.

The very first game we played. with them in the lineup. It was just Darian and Chris. We were playing in Flint. I don't know if you ever heard of Flint, Michigan. I've heard of Flint, Michigan. Tough place. Yeah, okay.

Just a little rink. I think about five, six thousand seater. But it was there, you could not get a seat for warm up. And when those guys stepped on the ace, man, there was signs everywhere, people hanging over the glass, the whole warm up. like in their ear you scabs just ripping on them for playing what they didn't know at the time was these guys had made a deal with our owner that no one loses their job yeah if we're going to come play

you can't anyone and um you know they were donating their paychecks to some sort of charity I can't remember exactly how that all worked, but I know they all were, except for Avery. He was the only one that signed his own deal. That's a whole long story. So those three guys ended up. Shanker, we got nothing but time here.

Those three guys didn't want to play anywhere out of Michigan, those three older guys. Yeah, you're talking Hatcher, Chelyos, and Smolensky. So they would play road games, but only to Flint, Michigan, or Kalamazoo, places that were Muskegon, an hour, hour and a half, two hours away, Port Huron, that's it. They weren't going to go to Danbury. They weren't going to go to Kansas City, 16 hours on the bus.

It just wasn't going to happen, right? Avery, though, he signed his deal to play the full-meal deal. He was getting paid differently than those guys. He had signing bonuses that those guys didn't. He was younger at the time, though, right? From Chelly Olson Hatcher and them. Yeah. But then he ended up not honoring that.

He ended up playing the year, but he wouldn't make the far trips. And that was partly because of, he wouldn't go to Danbury. They were, if you ever look up Danbury Thrashers and look up their roster, look up their roster in whatever the year that was, 2004, 2005, that's one of the toughest teams. They had Ndur, they had Trevor Sen, they had Mike Rupp. Dave McIsaac, Brad Winfield. I could go on, like Marasty.

They had honestly like 10 heavyweights and Avery was supposed to go there. Anyone go? Last minute he ditched out because Chellios and them signed with us and him and Chellios are tight and he wanted to live at Chellio's house. Oh. Yeah. So he kind of screwed Danbury over and the owner of Danbury who, Gerard Gallant, I think is his name.

You can look him up. he went to jail after that because he owns a... Isn't Gerg Glant a coach? Well, oh yeah, maybe I'm getting my... Their last name is Glant. It's Galant. It could be wrong. But if you look it up, there's a documentary on the Danbury Thrashers.

Danbury Thrashers, I'll have to check that up. Trashers. It's a trash can as a logo. He owns a waste disposal. And his 19-year-old son, and so this is the Danbury Trashers in the United League. his this guy's 19 year old son was their GM he used to wear like big baggy foo jeans and big baggy hoodie and the sure enough the very first game we were playing there uh we ended up getting a quick lead on them and he's hanging across the rink out of their

little press box it was a really small rink only a two or three thousand seat rink and he's hanging out basically signaling to his bench time to get going let's start scrap in here and that's exactly what happened was lime brawl after line brawl after that but that's just the gong show that that league was at the time and it was insane and avery would not go there you would not go there because that owner told them if you come back here with motor city or any other team you will not walk out of this building and i pretty much guarantee you that would happened had he had he shown up they were probably the craziest team i've ever seen i'm gonna guess you had to throw down a couple times in that rank then yep yeah it definitely it definitely happened

at some point i'm sure that i don't i can't remember who i ended up scrapping but i remember being a part of a line brawl that night actually yeah not a fun place to play so what was skating with like challenge like okay So everybody knows Sean Avery. I mean, you could talk about his contract if you want. Yeah, I don't know enough about it. I know he was making pretty good money, though, playing in the United League for that year.

But, yeah, they were all awesome guys. You know, Avery was all right guy. He's just different, right? He didn't really give a shit about me or anyone else. And I got no problem saying that. It was just a paycheck. and passing some time for him. But the other guys were awesome.

Smolensky was awesome. Hatcher, Jalios, they were great Draper. Chris Draper skated with us all year. Yeah, Chris Draper was supposed to play. Supposed to play. But then something came up, right? He was in the middle of getting his green card. Yeah.

And had he signed a visa, because he's Canadian, and he hadn't got his green card yet. So basically if he had signed a, a visa to play with Motor City, it would have jeopardized that. So unfortunately, we didn't get him for the year, but at least we had the other guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were unreal. And both, Cellios owned Chelly's Chili Bar.

Yeah. Darien Hatcher owned a pub. It was like a three-story pub, real nice, five blocks from our condos from where we were living. Chellios's bar, we would leave there, and he would have an H-2 Hummer limousine ready to go. And that's how we'd fire home once a month. We'd probably go there and party and get a little out home. So we got a little taste of what it was like to play in the show. To play in the show.

Just the life. That's the biggest difference, right, from the lifestyle changes a little bit. Yeah, instead of rolling in the taxi, you're rolling in and whatever you want, pretty much. Yeah. Instead of taking a sleeper bus to Kansas City for 16 hours, you're flying on a private yet. It's pretty much the way she goes. Yeah. We once had a bus that broke down on the way from Detroit to Kansas City. Good thing we went two days before. We sat in a garage for 10 hours waiting for this sleeper bus to get fixed and then continued on. So we ended up spending like a

total of 26 hours on this thing. Oh my God. Wow. You're talking to the ultimate minor league, and all I did was bus everywhere. In college, when I was playing Div 3, we were in upstate Wisconsin, and we had to go across the lakes up and around and back down to Adrian, and it was like a 10-hour bus ride. And I remember our bus breaking down in the middle of Michigan, in the middle of winter, right? Fun. Fun, right?

On a 10-hour ride back home after getting our absolute asses kicked, because they were the best in our league by a long shot. Yep. And I got, I had a headache. I'd heard their goal horn so many times, right? And then to sit on a bus riding home, thinking about what you're doing with your life. And then for the bus to croak,

it was just like a cherry on top to the way the night I've been going. Salt in the wound. No doubt. Yeah, a few of those for sure. So you've got to tell me, I've been waiting all hour and 14 minutes to ask about Kid Rock. Because you got, you got Kid Rock down. What is that about?

that was cellios like that guy knows everybody everybody but him and him and kid rock were real tight so much so that when he came in the room we weren't allowed to call him kid or kid rock it was bobby i don't know he hang out a few times i the only thing i have to show for it is a couple pictures um but yeah he used to come down to our dressing room after the games once in a while and hang out and he came to Hatchers. The only time I saw him sing for free, we went to Hatchers bar one night as a team, and we were all upstairs,

and then all of a sudden, Chellios just kept on him and kept on him, and the place started filling up, so you could tell the locals around that area had been getting word that he was there. And all of a sudden that pub had 1,000 people in there, and he got up on stage, and ended up busting a couple songs.

Yeah, it was pretty surreal. Pretty unreal. Yeah, it was pretty unreal. I mean, because at that time, that's kid rock in his pretty much his height of his career, right? In his hometown, yeah. And in his hometown. Crazy.

Yeah, it was pretty neat. Pretty neat. John Cusack was at our game one time. Just hanging out, my wife, and one of the other wives went up to him to get a picture, and he wasn't the most polite of guys. I mean, they were pretty good. good looking girls i couldn't understand why he would be like that but i guess he's a bit of a

prick or something so i don't fucking know maybe we should edit that part out oh no john kuzak if you're listening you can come rebuttal it here on the sean newman podcast right like john's probably got better things to do than to listen to my yeah he's probably not listening to this isn't it's and if he is and it gets his uh tail failures in a roughly can he can give me a call yeah now so you go from Detroit. You play there one year in a league that only last two, I think. Yeah, at that time, yeah. And then, so you go from playing with Cellios and Hatcher and Avery and all these guys, and then all of a sudden you're overseas? What was the, what was the mindset and heading

to Britain, well, Britain is where you end up? Yeah, yeah, I just, honestly, I got a phone call from a guy I played with in Pensacola, and he just said I signed over here and do you want to talk to the coach? coach. It was in a place called Basingstoke. Yeah. South England. A 45-minute train ride from London. It's actually a beautiful little town.

Great people. Tiny little old school rink only seats a couple thousand people. But what a place. It was great experience. Great people. My wife and I fell in love with the place and ended up staying there for three years. I didn't even know they had hockey over there at the time.

I literally didn't even know. But at the time they were, that league was 10 imports at that time. And those imports had to have played in the East Coast League, American League or NHL in North America at the time to get over there. Even so. And the only reason that I would qualify to go there, because I played in the United League and that didn't count. They were trying to keep the caliber.

Keep the caliber up. So that was the guidelines or the rules at the time. And I got lucky enough because my grandpa or my grandma on my mom's side, she was born in England. So I was able to get what's called an ancestry stamp. Yeah. I remember looking into that when I went. Yeah.

Because my ancestry comes from Britain. So, yeah, there was, I know what you're talking about there. Right, yeah. Which is, well, I don't know. You should have, well, maybe. I don't know. I went and played, at the time I went and played, well, my wife was, or my girlfriend at the time was getting her master's in, at St. Lawrence was upstate New York,

right below Ottawa. And I don't know. If I wasn't dating anyone, I probably wouldn't have come back, right? But at the time, I knew it was either you come back and, and, you'd, get this going the right direction or you're a single hockey player. She wasn't coming over to Europe and I don't blame her, right? It wasn't, yeah, you never know.

It's for some and not for others. That's right. And maybe in eight years I would have been making the league minimum and had some stories under my belt there were more stories than I had. But, yeah, I was making a 150 year old a month and I was having a great time doing it because nothing beats that lifestyle.

Right, nothing. No. But at the same time, no, at the same time, no, at the same time I came back and now I've played while we've played. I didn't mention this either. Like you got to play your, I was thinking about it the other day. It's probably your last year of competitive hockey.

I think I got to, we won Alberta Bronze there with a SaaS team, right? Yep. We've been back now in Helmand. Hillamond, I've been back in Elamon. This is my eighth season. Crazy. Which is crazy. And up until this point, I've never played anywhere longer than four years, right?

So I've had the same defense partner for seven of them. I know. That's unreal. Right? Like, that doesn't translate into. to most things. No. And so I'm not disappointed I did what I did.

Well, now I got two kids. Yep. I've made a life back here at home and everything else, right? So I'm not disappointed in my choice as one a iota. Nope, can't be. But it also helps that here in Canada, we love our hockey. We have senior hockey the way we do. Right.

And you get to keep playing. Having an opportunity to play. Play competitively, right? Totally. Yeah. All right. So you're over in Britain. I'm going to ask you this every single time.

What kind of contract are you signing there? Like, is it decent money or is it back to this $400 a week? No, it was better money then. Like we actually, at the end of the year, when it was all said and done, came home with a good chunk of change, right? It's not life-changing money or anything like that. But you're still playing hockey. Yeah, like you can make, you know, $1,500 a week.

Geez, that is? Canadian. Yeah. Right. And have no expenses. Yeah. Where did they, in Britain, what did they do with you? Did they put in a condo?

Yep. Yeah, we had, we always had condos or little, no, the one time we had a little mini house too. But yeah, it was mostly condos, yep. Yeah. I lived in a hotel. Yeah. They bought me a hotel room. Yep.

And I got to know the staff extremely well. Yeah. I saw that a few times. Yeah. So you're playing in a small little rink and what was the place called? Basingstoke. Basingstoke. What was like?

It was awesome. To be honest, that was for a little rink with not a ton of resources. Yeah. They did a phenomenal job of making players feel good about being there. it was just it was a different it's hard to explain just the community the people it was a different experience from from the states even Penscola was similar with a real tight you know booster club and people that you always see around and stuff but

where in Basingstoke it was all of them all the fans or you felt like you knew them kind of thing and yeah It's hard to explain. It's hard to explain. But, yeah, my wife and I loved it there. We ended up staying there for three years. We went through three owners, I think, in that time. That was, I don't even have enough time to get into all of those.

Yeah, all that pops in my mind is when they went through three owners is like Eugene Melnick or something, right? Like where it was just a crazy owner after crazy owner after crazy owner. It's basically in Basingstoke, the ice rink there. It's called Planet Ice. They own arenas all over the UK. Okay. Like public skating there is a big thing. Right?

They make good money. Those arenas survive and make good money off public skating. And so Planet Ice owned us. And basically, if somebody came forward and were like, you know what? I want to own a team. They wouldn't bat an eyelash about selling it off to a private guy that, you know, has more money that could do better things for it, right? But they'll always be there if, as a kind of a plan B.

Right, just to keep the hockey in the town. And that's how it works. So we had two owners in between the Planet Ice owners come in and think they could do it. And that failed miserably. The one guy was a real estate agent to by the end of it, realized that, you know, when you're shelling out, 15,000 bucks a week and salaries to your imports and all these bills and everything, you know, for apartments and vehicles and flights and it adds up fast. So he was stealing from his, he owned a letting agency, a rental agency. So he was stealing

on his land, or his tenants money. And instead of paying the rent to the landlords, he was putting it into the team. So he ended up getting busted and going tits up, so to speak. Planet Ice took back over and then they found another owner and the only part I really remember about this was a group of us older guys on the team at the time, the captains or whatever. We were up in the room and meeting with the Planet Ice people and them telling us about this Swedish guy that's coming in. He's got more money than anyone and sure enough, he can comes in he's got the long trench coat on the 10,000 pound watch and he's telling us like, you know, one of the first questions he asked us, which is super strange, but I remember him

asking us, how are you guys getting paid right now? Check or somebody said, well, sometimes we get cash and some guys are getting checks. And I remember him specifically saying, what's a check? Like I haven't dealt with the checks in years. He was this modern. guy that, you know, obviously, he was making fun of Planet Ice for paying guys with checks. Well, he lasted about three months before the gig was up on, was up on him, too. He ran out of cash real quick, but he was another shady dude trying to funnel money through a sports team. And I don't know, man, there was a million things that happened in between there of us not

getting paychecks and me and the coach going as far as going to the rink one morning before a game and taking all the equipment out of the dressing room, putting it in our cars, driving it back to our apartments and then calling the arena and saying, hey, you better call our owner and tell nobody's playing tonight until our three weeks and wages are paid. And because the guys don't even have sticks or anything. They don't, we took all the equipment out of the room, literally. So they could not play a game. just so the guys get paid, right?

And we ended up getting paid up and Planet Ice ended up taking over the team for the second time in my short stay there over three years. But with those comes another billion stories. But it was pretty interesting. All the things you don't hear about a guy playing overseas, right? Totally, man.

Like it's some of the stuff that happened was absolutely unbelievable. Like this owner, went out with an opposing team after a game one night and was buying them all drinks, gave their captain his big watch he had on his wrist. He got hammered and obviously he was being a bit of an idiot, but he had a lot of cash and his, and the guys on that team that were playing for the Cardiff Devils at the time,

when they finished that night of partying with our owner, all of them were calling and texting all the guys they knew on our team because they knew exactly what was going on. Oh, you guys hadn't been paid in three weeks? Oh, your owner is out with us, buying us drinks all night, gave Voth the watch. And, oh, man, unreal. Unreal. So that's when we took the equipment out.

That night after we heard he was out buying another team booze all night and giving them a watch and all this ridiculous stuff. Yeah, anyways, that was, yeah, that was one of the, Maybe not so nice moments in Basingstoke. Everything else from my time in Basingstoke was fantastic. Like I said, the community, the people there was something else, especially when you don't expect to go into that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we moved over there,

Jamie and I, so. Yeah. What I always ask about the fans. Well, maybe I should start off with the question. Are you a fan guy or are you a climate guy? So if you were to make a team or you could choose any team, would you want to have the building packed all the time, or would you like to walk into the rink in shorts?

It's kind of a Canada versus U.S. Right. Do you have a choice, of preference? Because you played and probably in both now. I'd rather have a full rank. Yeah, and it's funner to play in front of the fans. Yeah. I agree.

I'm a fan guy. So you're in Basingstoke. Yeah. What were the fans like? Awesome. Did they... Even though it was a tiny rink. Yeah, but you can have 400 fans.

seem like they're 2,000, right? Totally. And vice versa. You can have 15,000 fans be quiet as a church mouse. And there's nothing better than going into it, nodding them. He's got 10,000 people in the rink and shutting their building silent by the end of the night. By the end of the night, right? Yep, no, I'm, the crowd there was, they were fun.

Did they, did they have cool chance or anything that sticks out? Yeah, I can't remember exactly what the chance were, but they definitely would chant your name after a scrap. I was saying on... They would have full-on chance that the whole crowd would get into. I was saying on the last week's podcast, I can't remember the town in Finland.

We went there, and any time their team got on the power play, they'd start the slow clap from the far end. So as they're bringing the puck up the ice or doing the slow clap, just methodical, right? And then once they get it set up, then the clap just gets faster and faster.

And you get like, I called it 2,000 fans. Somewhere in that ballpark. But you get 2,000 fans and their clap goes from slow all the way anticipating. And then if it gets shot down, it starts all over in this wave form, wave and wave. And when they scored, it was like at the peak of the clap. And they were going so fast, then they score in the building and go nuts. As a player, it was like, you wouldn't be in a pose. I was like, man, that's kind of cool, right?

Totally. They score, right? Maybe they won just to see what happens, the building. The leg goes off the building. And, okay, maybe don't do that again. But it was still cool. Every time you took a penalty, we don't have anything. over in North America that I know of anything like that.

No. Like, do you remember anything like that? So, yeah, I do. I can't remember any exact specific chance or anything like that, but there's, there's, I know exactly what you mean. It's a, it's a totally different atmosphere over there. And it's definitely that soccer. Yeah.

Soccer mentality, right? Like I said earlier, you, you have some places where people literally don't sit down for the entire game. Yeah. And they got flags going. Have your league have the gold helmets? Nope, that's Germany. That's, and Finland.

Finland. And actually, it's probably all over the place now. Yeah. So for people who don't know, when they play, when the British teams play in the Champions League or whatever they have to abide by that. They have to abide by.

So what happens is the leading score of each individual team has to wear a gold helmet. So you can pick them out in the crowd. It's quite humorous to watch if you're a fan. You're like, the heck are they doing? But you can pick out the leading score of any team, right? Right.

I'm sure he loves that. No kidding, right? Like there's no hiding with a big old... Yeah. Like it wasn't hard enough already. Now you're putting a giant target on my head. Yeah, we never had to do that. Never had to do that.

No. No. Thank God. Let's talk about you were talking the Champions Cup. I'm thinking Continental Cup. Yeah. Continental Cup? Continental Cup.

Continental Cup champions league. Because you guys, you didn't win it, but you came awfully close. Bronze, yep. Yeah, bronze. Maybe, let's talk a little bit about that. Because honestly, I don't even know the whole how it all works, but I know it's built kind of on the same premise as soccer, right? Yep, absolutely.

With, like, in Europe, it doesn't matter if you're in Britain or if you're in Germany or, they all, like, winning the regular season is the big to do. Like, if you can win the regular season. So you're talking, like, most points, like the President's Trophy, In the NFL. The President's trophy in the NHL is the Stanley Cup over there to all of them. Most leagues are like that. Britain certainly was like that.

Playoffs is a big deal too, but just not as much. The playoff format in Britain is like the NCAA. It's a Frozen 4 kind of thing. Four teams make the final weekend. It's usually held in Nottingham. they have one of the bigger rinks. But the Continental Cup is the winner from the season. Total.

So all your presence trophy winners. Yes. Or head to the Continental Cup the next season. Right. But there will be guys on that team that didn't win the year before. Yeah. It's really kind of strange. It lags a year.

Yeah, it lags a year. And it's, I don't know how else would you do it, I guess. but unless you completely change the qualifying stages. But it's a great experience. It was awesome. So then you get to go to the Continental Cup because you were the highest point in the... We were league champions in Sheffield. In Sheffield.

Yeah. And so then you get to go from there into the Connellan Cup and play the top team out of Germany, the top team out of... All over. Who knows? There's like 40 teams or more than that. So where did you go? Who did you play?

So there's like 60 teams, I think. think that are compiled into it at the start of the year. Yeah. And the lowest, the lower teams play more rounds. Like we started, our first round was actually in round three because our country is ranked higher, higher than the other guys. Right. So we started off in the semifinal, basically.

In the first year, I took part in it. We won the league. So I'd gone from Basingstoke to Sheffield. Yeah. had enough of the switching owners and all the, I really didn't want to leave, or we didn't really want to leave bathing soak. We loved it there.

We had our first kid was born, and it was just a comfy place, but that's the business side of it, right? Sometimes you've just got to go. And so we ended up going to Sheffield. We won the league that year and the playoffs. But because we won the league, we qualified for the Continental Cup.

The first round for us was in Balzano, Italy. So I believe there was us, Balzano, a team from Croatia, and then a team from the Netherlands. So we ended up playing Balzano in the finals in their rink. They have a $5 million payroll. Five million dollar payroll? They had a big payroll. Okay.

Yeah. Do you know who, any idea of who the big guys were? I can't remember who had all been there at the time. Lane Olmner, he played, he played for Team Canada in the Spangler Cup a bunch of years. But they were good. They were good. Yeah.

And we ended up, we were short-handed. I think we were down to 12, 13 guys. We ended up beating them in a shootout in the final. In front of their home crowd. In front of their home crowd. Their GM walked out. was it the, no, sorry, their owner walked out on the ice and fired their GM on the ice. It's a huge screaming match rate, right at the end of the game, on the ice,

before we even shaking hands, those two were yelling at each other. I didn't find, I didn't know what the was going on. We saw. WWE style. Yeah, we ended up finding out after what actually happened. And that GM had been there for seven years or something like that. So he was, I guess it really wasn't a good thing they lost to us. Yeah, so we ended up winning that round and qualifying for the super final is what they called it.

What they call it. And three months later, we went to Grenoble in France. And we beat Grenoble. They were in the top French league. So then four teams there again? Four teams there again. There was Minsk. They play in the KHL.

Yeah. And then Red Bull, Salzburg Red Bull. in the Austrian league, the top Austrian league. Pierre Paget was their coach at the time. They had another big payroll. They're all decked out in the Red Bull gear. You see those guys, eh?

They flew from Austria to France, and their poor bus driver had to drive the bus from all the way from home to there, just so they could have their Red Bull bus with the big horns coming off the front of it and everything for the weekend. And then they fly back. and this poor bus driver has to drive it back through this. Wes helps again.

I'm sure he's getting paid hands. Oh, man. Oh, yeah, exactly. But that's how baby those guys were. I got to ask, how was the KHL team? It fast. Yeah. I think we ended up losing 6-2 to Minx because we lost in the fine,

or sorry, we lost our last game to Red Bull, the Austrian team there. We lost 6-2 as well. But, yeah, they were, they were faster than the, the Austrian team. You just always hear so much about the KHL, right? Yeah. Like guys going over there and it pays well and blah, blah, you've heard. Like, it's just

behind the NHL, it's probably the most talked about league in the world. Yeah. It's a KHL. Yeah, and I still, it's not even, it's not on the same. You can't even really compare it to the NHL. No, yeah. But it's good. Don't get me wrong. It's, it's,

it's a fast league. It's just not, maybe not as tough, right? The NHL is, yeah, they're not fighting, and it's still a tough league, right? You still have. Each team has eight lines of deep players who are exceptionally good, right? And I'd say eight lines because you've got four in the show and four in the HL, right? Like, that's pretty much how every team's built now. Yeah.

Your farm system has a full team of guys who can be called up and moving around. Yep, absolutely. And the stars, like even the stars are machines, some of them, right? Ovechkin's 6-3-240 guys like that running around and he plays physical too, right? He can just put the puck in the net. Have you ever seen a guy just sit in the same bloody spot

all the time? You know he's going to sit there. You know he's going to shoot from there. Everybody in the rink knows it's coming and he still puts a bar in and you're just like, because if you cheat on him, they'll... Wow, they got enough weapons, right? Totally.

Speaking of current business right now, Did you see that Hope he's not going to the White House? He declined. Well, they watched him win Stanley Cup, right? So then they get to go to the White House. And he just came out and said him and one other, and I'm spacing on who the other Washington Capitol is. There's two of them, I think.

He's Canadian. Yeah. So is it because of something that's happening in Canada? I think the quote I read on him is he just said that I think Trump, you know, goes against some things he believes very firmly in, and he prefer not to go. and so he's not going. Risky move.

Risky move. I get it. I think I get it. I think I get it too. The only thing I was thinking is if Canada had a White House, which we don't. But if we did. And our prime minister every year invited the Stanley Cup champs to come. Right now with half of Alberta or all of Alberta, Saskatchewan would they go?

And I go, I'd go to burn the place down probably. Right? Probably. There's not too many people that would go visit Trudeau. So I came from that standpoint, I can kind of get behind. I understand. Only thing I always said, like, White House is the White House. Yeah, you kind of got to look past your.

I just go like, man, are you ever going to get back there? Maybe you do. But then again, Trump might get him voted in again for another four. What happened to the last goalie that didn't go to the White House? Tim Thomas? Is Tim Thomas? Well, Tim Thomas. He was a little older than Holpe is right now.

Yeah, but it directly affected his relationships in the rest of the NHL. Yeah. I'm not saying that the whole career is going to even change at all or anything, but it's just a risky move. That's all. Rocking the boat. Yeah, you never know, man. I don't know.

Those NHL higher-ups are old school. So I don't know. Maybe it's not such a big deal. Maybe his owners or they, maybe the team came in and said, hey, you guys actually do have a proper right now to say no. or whatever. So we don't know, right? Well, I'll say this, from the news just watching on news.

When Tim Thomas did it, it was like, holy hell, he's going to do what? And now, to me, there's been so many national league sports figures across all sports, not go there now, then it's almost, you just maybe more of one in the line that just is something that's happening more and more. Just surprise it's a Canadian or another. nationality doing it. That's surprising. Maybe it's a good thing. I don't know.

Maybe it'll help get oil going again and up here. I don't know. You're talking to, we're two guys here who's stuck in the oil patch. It hasn't been all sunshine and roses here for a while. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe this will help.

Go Holby. Pipeline. How would your second year in the Continental Cup? Because you did do two, right? And was not the year with Sheffield, you got a bronze? It was the next year. No, the first year was Sheffield. Sheffield was the bronze.

The next year after, or I don't think it was the exact next year, maybe the year after that. But the next time I went was with Coventry. I played for three teams in the UK and the Elite League, Basingstoke, Beisen, Sheffield Steelers, and the Coventry blaze. So I went with Coventry. We won the league. And then went to the Continental Cup, but we just went to the first round in Ruan in France. We ended up losing in the final to the host team Ruan.

How were they? They were good, yeah. French, but good. Awesome crowd like that. Yeah, they had a good crowd. What the heck? Okay, so you go from playing. I think you've been over in Britain for, what's that, six years?

Yeah. Seven years? Seven years. You got a couple of kids by that time? Or just the one? Two at that time, yep. So is that what brings you back? Mostly, yeah, mainly.

Like, my wife and I kind of always said once we started to have kids. Yeah, and that time we had two. Yeah, it was once they were ready to go to school, let's, you know, that's probably when we're going to look at shutting her down. and Coden, my oldest son, he was going to school. He actually did a full year of school in England. They started three. Start at three? At three.

Yeah, and they go like three days a week and they have little uniforms. Did he enjoy it? Yep. Yep. Yeah, you enjoyed it. But we were, that was just the time, right? I knew that my guys were ready to go for school. It's time for time to get everything anchored down.

So what my body was falling apart too? What brought you to Loy? Border Kings, really, and employment. Yeah. You got to think I'm 32 at this time. Now I'm panicking a little bit because I'm in that spot that everybody always warned me I was going to be in just minus the NHL dollars that I was supposed to have, right?

Yeah. and yeah we just layman called me one day jody layman yeah just i see jody every uh once in yeah yeah he finished a year before me over overseas yeah yeah and he just called one day that last season that i was in coventry i was in feb said hey are you playing next year what he doing and I said yeah it's winding down and this will probably be my last year and so he just explained that the border kings were hosting the Allen Cup in 2011 and I came back that year that's my first year back yeah came and skated with you guys once right and then started my illustrious career with the home on hitman yeah why didn't you play that year with us so I came in uh what I got here when was that

probably December 20th, something like that. It was close to Christmas. Maybe a smidge before that. And I remember coming and skating with you guys once. Yeah. And I don't know why I didn't play, but basically it was implied that there was no room on the team anymore. But by that time you guys had, I don't know.

I didn't play on the team. You guys had a good team, right? And so I was once again a 5'7 little D-Man. And, you know, I'd come from playing some pro over in Europe, but I was a small little guy, and you guys were a big team that year. Yeah. And whether or not I could have helped, maybe, maybe I could have, right? But maybe it was for the best that I went out to Helmand.

And it's, for me, going out to Helmand is maybe one of the best things that ever happened. I mean, I got out there and reconnected with a lot of good people. No, no. And I've had a lot of good times out in Helmand. A lot of success, too. Well, except for the finals. seem to find a way. This is, you know, so last week I was talking with Harlan about, hey, we're going into game five while we lose game.

Right, right. It's just the way hockey goes. We hit a line you were talking back in the max tournament when you guys were unbelievable. I'm pretty sure that Knight Bailey-Zer line scored 98% of their goals. So what does any smart hockey team do? Shut down the top line. Pretty simple. They don't score.

And they still found ways to score, right? And that's how on fire they were. all through the finals, all through playoffs. They went through us and Wayne Rite, right? And so we've been to the finals now the last three straight years. One year with you, your first year you came. We had no business being there. Right.

Like we were, like you remember we were dressing like 12, 13 guys a game, right? Yeah. And, you know, we got to win the last game of the year in Provincials. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. And then the next year we get reverse swept. So I have three games to none. And then what no one ever likes to talk about, you get lose four straight.

That one hurt. We're a minute away. Minut away, up 2-1 in game form, way and right. Up 2-1, they find a way to squeak one in. I was on the ice for that. I almost cried. O. T-cums were all over again, and they find another C-N-I shot, and after that, it's just like the entire tide turned.

Yep. Right? And then this year, 190, we have a perfect regular season. That's unreal. Unreal. It was a lot of fun, and, you know, you've got to catch breaks to do that because there's a couple games we did not deserve. Right.

Getting to playoffs and make it to the finals again, And then it's just, you know, right? Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Well, I mean, at least we'll see how my next podcast goes because this week coming we get provincials again. We get Daysland, Moranville, Lethbridge. And so we play double A provincials here in Wainwright.

They're hosting again. Oh, right, okay. And so Thursday we play. Friday, Saturday. There's six teams in it. The top two we play each other for gold, third and fourth play for bronze. In Wainwright.

In Wainwright. Shit. I didn't think you guys were going to provincial this year. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, we may never get to go again, right? I think Hockey Alberta said that any Saskatchewan team out of our league. So if you don't know the Saskalty, you got seven Saskatchewan, seven Alberta.

And so the winner of the league goes to Hockey Alberta Provincials. But the way Saskatchewan works is anyone can go Saskatchewan Provincials. Right, you just declare it in the way you go. Yeah. And so what I believe has been said or communicated to our league is if any team after this year goes, because Meta Lake and Walberg both went Saskatchewan. So if any of those teams, any of the seven, goes Saskatchews next year, doesn't matter if you win league as a SAS team.

They won't let you come Alberta provincials, right? So this might be the last year for some time that a SaaS team gets to go. Right. And, I mean, it's provincials. It's a lot of fun. No doubt. Right? And a tournament format.

Yeah. very at this stage of my life there's very few times you get to go play in a tournament on a weekend and against that good of caliber right like yeah you're playing the best teams in alberta minus the schenuck league where their payroll is hundreds of thousands of dollars right yep yep there's some of those teams are shelling out some bucks yeah i know the year that we played in the the allen cup there some of those teams were like rosetown was unreal and they still are unreal You're still paying ungodly amounts from what I've been told. Yep.

Right? I don't know how the heck you survive doing that. I don't know. Somebody smarter than me knows how to do it, I guess. Yeah, they must have good support around town, and that means pocketbook support, right? Yeah, well, absolutely, right? They got high talent going there.

And they got guys that are traveling in, too, from, they're still bringing guys in from Calgary. and stuff I heard. So who brought you in to Lloyd then? Stanley. Stanley did. Yeah. Yeah.

Jody Lehman. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Jody gave me the call. But Stanley would have been coaching at the time. Yeah. Stanney, yeah, that's who I started talking to. And yeah, we just moved back to Calgary at the end of the year and moved here

July 1st, 2011. And kind of the rest is history. I had a job lined up. Yeah. I heard you're starting a new, starting something new up here. Trying to. Yeah, we're just kind of really in the early, early stages. Am I putting you under the gun?

Yeah, we don't have. A little bit, but no, that's, it's all good. We can cut this part out, is you like? No, it's, it's good, man. I want to, ultimately I would, you know, love to be teaching hockey, maybe in a different form than I am now. under the minor hockey with the minor hockey teams it's it's different to coach it's tough coaching kids right like I'm just I'm coaching my own kids right now and I don't know I can

just we're looking to start some private stuff and get a few groups going and teaching a little more intimate setting I guess smaller groups right six state kids kind of on the ice. Yeah. Instead of, it's a totally different thing when you're going out and you're taking kids and you're working on specific stuff that they want to work on. They're there on their own time, right?

Which is above and beyond their minor hockey commitments. That's just where I'd like to, I think I can make the most impact from the experiences that I've learned. That's just where I think it's kind of headed right now. Okay, cool. Well, I won't put you under the gun on it. When it gets up and going, you just let us know, and we'll give it a blast. I should blast out, and I'm going to apologize to Harlan here up until this point.

We're doing this Sunday instead of Tuesday night like we previously talked about because of complications on my hand. But tomorrow morning in the weekly bean, the little newspaper in Lloyd and Kinnersley-Musja, There's going to be a little blurbable about Bradley here and the podcast, which is cool. So I got a huge shout out to the Weekly Bean, which is cool. So I got to go pick a copy up tomorrow and see what it's going to look like because I was going to bring one in so we could take a look at her because it's the first one that's ever happened. Yeah, it should be. Thank you Weekly Bean. Yeah, absolutely.

It should be pretty cool. I had two before we end this. I got to always point out, I don't know if I'm getting better at this or I just get more long-winded. But we're closing on two hours. and that's a new record for me because usually it's about an hour. Wow, it started out at 45 minutes with Ken and then it just gets longer and longer and longer. So here we sit. I had read, I'm going back to your Motor City days, I had read a thing about Steve Shannon being suspended.

Is that in your time? Do you know anything about that? Oh, yeah. For offering money for guys going out to hurt players? Oh, yeah. How did you find that story? That is unbelievable. I do my homering.

And I meant to bring it up while we were talking about it, but we got sidetracked. But I got a note here to ask about it, whether it is true or not. Technically, he was the guy that brought the NHL guys in. So Gary Younger was our coach. We were 5 and 25 going into the first quarter of the season or whatever. This Shannon guy, what's his first name? Steve Shannon. Yeah, Steve Shannon.

That's right. Yeah. Okay, he was my coach for like three weeks. Yep. He, he, he, he, he, so I don't know how he got linked up with the cellios and the hatcher and stuff, but he basically must have come to our owner, um, who was a little slum lord at the time. This guy used to literally buy buildings, kick people out of them, renovate them and sell them to higher class. That's just the way he did his business. Anyways, he owned our hockey team.

Great guy. Yeah. Real good guy. he so Steve Shannon came in convinced this guy to take him on as a guy that's never coached past like Junior B in Detroit, Michigan because he would bring the NHL guys so we're 5 and 25 they fire Gary Younger actually they didn't fire them they moved him into a different position the Steve Shannon dude comes in the NHL guys come in. Everything's

lovely and good and first game we play I said was in Flint, Michigan. And that night they were extremely hard on Darian and Chelyos. Actually, no, Darian played on his own that night. And

after all that happened at the end of the game that our coach Steve Shannon came in and basically said next time we play these guys, I want this. this guy, this guy, and that guy, I want them not finish in the game. Yeah, like they're not going to finish the game. By the time, everything cooled down and we came back to Flint, like, right away.

It was probably within seven days. I think that was our very next game. We turned around, came right back to Flint, and not in the dressing room before the game. He basically just said, fuck it. Anyone that can knock Kurt curse this. I can't remember what is. His first name is, his last name is Kevin Kerr. Kevin Kerr.

Yeah, he's like the all-time, one of the minor pro gods of hockey for most points by a U.S. born guy, I think. This guy literally put a bounty on his head, and he was dead serious, dead serious. So whatever happened during the game, you can't do that. What he didn't know, what that coach didn't know was half the guys in our dressing room had played with the Kerr. Right. Yeah. And we don't have a clue who this coach is.

He just came because of the NHL guys, he was able to get them in somehow. So yeah, anyways, we ended up having, I can't remember who the guy was from, but he was an investigator. He came in and actually there was a group of investigators that came in. And it was the very next practice. And they pulled us all aside.

We all gave our testimonies. And the next day that, Steve Shannon was no longer our coach. I think he was the shortest pro coaching career in the history of pro coaching. Yeah, he never got another shot. Anyways, that was a legit story. Like, people have, I've been asked that before. Like, is anyone ever put a bounty on a guy before?

Well, I mean, we saw the coach of what it did for me when I was reading about it. Yeah. Is it gave me flashbacks of the coach from the Saints in, New Orleans Saints in NFL, Scott, Scott Peyton. Yeah. Somebody listening, I don't know if that's the right name, but the head coach, still the head coach, he got suspended for, it was like a season. Intentionally going after certain guys. Yeah.

Yep. And paying them, I think. Right, bonuses. Yeah. And so when I read this, I'm like, oh, my God. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy.

I'm glad I asked it because it's sitting there and I kind of forgot about it in the middle of there. So people are listening and are going to have to make it to the two-hour. to find just a gem. He was the only coach I've ever played for out of all 12 years. I played hockey professionally or semi-pro, whatever the heck you want to call it. Yeah, he played pro. He was the only guy that walked across the ice surface in between periods with a coffee in his hand and brought it onto the bench and sipped.

Could you imagine seeing an NHL coach standing on the coffee with a coffee with a Tim or on the bench with Tim Horton's coffee, right? It just doesn't, at that level, you just don't do it. And we just knew that the minute he did that even, right? So we knew that something was off with this guy. He only lasted a couple home games and then the... Yeah, and then the investigation happens. Yeah.

Okay, second question, and if you don't want to answer this one, I'll go to a different one. But there was a comment on Facebook by a guy. guy named Ryan Watt and he said I want to hear about

rhinoing guys outside Chicago Oh wow I don't even know I've I can imagine I can kind of see

yeah kind of maybe having a few beverages and bending over and running head first into someone's chest yeah I was pretty

good at that where's Chicago's yeah over overseas Wadi's from over there yeah he plays over and yeah

Him and both is, play with him and his brother, actually. Yeah, good one. Okay, finally, I'm a die-hard Oiler fans. We'll end on this because this week, the big news that broke was Bob Nicholson. You've seen, he's the president of the Oilers hockey ops, right? Have you seen his quotes on Tobias Ryder? Nope. You haven't seen that?

Oh, I did. I heard about it. I only heard about it because someone told me the other day. So they had, if you. You single them out pretty good, right? If you're not an Oilers fan, the Oilers are in the stinker. They got the best player in the world, but they're still stinking. Right.

And so they had a meeting or get-together lunch and whatever you want to call it with season ticket holders. So he is quoted as saying, Reader will not be signed by the Oilers next season. Reader was a player that other teams wanted. He came here for one year because wanted to play with Drysidl, who he played with on the German national team. He thought if he wasn't playing with Leland, he'd play with Connor. he'd score 15 to 16 goals and instead of making $2 million, he'd sign a $4 million,

four year deal at $3.5 million. Reader hasn't scored a goal. Reader has missed so many breakaways. Reader would have scored 10 or 12 goals. We'd probably be in the playoffs. Ouch. Poor reader.

And then, of course, the news outlets get a hold of this. It goes like wildfire. Right. And then, well, now Nixon's having to apologize. Rightfully so. I don't know why he would be caught saying that.

Right? Like the Oilers are a tire fire. You don't need to add fuel to it. Absolutely. Right? Time in a place. Absolutely. And Reader, yeah, you're not going to sign him again.

No, that's a pretty simple comment. But he goes, well, I haven't seen the video of it, right? It just heard the... Basically blamed... Their season on... On one guy. On one guy and not their star players, right? Right.

Yeah, I'm... Yeah, that's not professional. Not good at all. all really i mean i don't see how that's gonna how would that help a situation at all i i'm assuming he was probably just frustrated fired up and he probably left that building going what the hell did i just say you could say that 15 years ago and nobody would catch on or just the 100 people in the fan forum would have heard it yeah but think of how many uh snapchat twitter i don't know just the Billy, everybody's got a phone, right?

He didn't even walk out of that building before. Before it had blown up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not smart. No. But, oh, wow.

The Oilers, they're always entertaining group. Well, I really appreciate you hopping on. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I'm happy we got the players to hurt people at the end because that's not too many people get to experience something like that. No, no. Thank you very much for having me. It's all my pleasure.

Hopefully someday I'll be able to come back. Sounds good. Thanks, Frank. Right on, buddy. Hey, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. This coming week, we have Larry Wintoniac in studio. He is currently the assistant coach of the Kinderseley Clippers. He runs a gym in Kindersley and has quite the story coming from coaching all over the

SJ and whether it was Kindersley, LaRange. He's coached myself out in Darden, Ontario. Back in the day, he was Thunder Bay Coach. So we're going to chat to him a little bit about that. So look forward to next week and hope you guys tune in. Until then.