Hockey takes Wiebe a long way from dugout

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This article was published 03/03/2020 (2246 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shayne Wiebe couldn’t have dreamed of all the far-flung places hockey would take him.

Now 30, the Brandonite played a season and a half with his hometown Wheat Kings in the Western Hockey League from 2009 to 2011, which included a chance to skate in the Memorial Cup at the Keystone Centre.

Hockey later led to professional opportunities in Eastern Canada, the United States and Europe.

“It’s something you don’t ever really think about until you’re done,” Wiebe said. “It’s experience I definitely am proud of for sure. It kind of went all over the place, almost all over North America and then ended up across the pond too. All the experiences I had are things I definitely wouldn’t trade in.”

Wiebe started skating on a rink in his yard in Brandon around age three, but actually began playing hockey at age four in Salmon Arm, B.C., when his family — father Murray, mother Annette and younger brother Bryden — spent two years there.

When they returned to Manitoba, the Wiebes had an acreage about 10 miles south of the city.

“We had a dugout,” Wiebe said. “Dad would auger a hole in the ice and flood it with its own water. He welded us together nets so it was actually kind of cool.”

The dugout was located a distance from the house so Shayne and Bryden would throw on their skates in the house and take the snowmobile over.

“We would get off the bus from school and put our skates on and head down there by ourselves,” Wiebe said. “They would come get us when dinner was ready essentially.”

He played minor hockey in Brandon, but suited up for the Southwest Cougars in peewee for Hockey Manitoba’s Directors Cup because the location of the acreage put him in their catchment area.

The family, which flipped houses, moved into Brandon prior to Wiebe playing bantam, so he changed over to the AAA Wheat Kings.

In minor hockey, Wiebe alternated between playing defence and forward, moving up front for good in bantam.

He also had a spell in net, but his buddy Kyle Hamm put the brakes on that pretty quickly.

“He was the only kid who could raise the puck when we were five or six and he hit me right in the shoulder with the puck,” Wiebe said with a chuckle. “I came off crying and told my dad I didn’t want to be a goalie anymore.”

The family had season tickets to the Wheat Kings when he was about 12 so Wiebe definitely had a strong awareness of the WHL.

He certainly knew about the bantam draft when his year came around in 2005, spending the day in class at Vincent Massey that day.

“I remember still that I was sitting in graphic design class on the computers,” Wiebe said. “There was another guy sitting in there too (his friend Mark Schneider) and we just kept updating the page to see what had happened. For a young guy I wasn’t too overly worried about it because I didn’t end up going until the eighth round and Schneider didn’t go. He got picked up after by Kamloops and we both ended up there together.

“It’s two later guys who ended up having pretty decent careers in the WHL. There’s so much more development that still happens after the bantam draft. You shouldn’t put too much pressure on yourself for something like that.”

The Kamloops Blazers had chosen Wiebe with the 146th overall choice. The pair attended camps at 15 and 16, but had bigger games to play close to home in the spring of 2007. The U18 Wheat Kings hosted the 2007 western regionals, falling 4-3 in the final to the eventual two-time national champion Prince Albert Mintos.

By then, both Wiebe and Schneider had already made their WHL debuts, a 5-2 win over the Kelowna Rockets on Jan. 5, 2007.

Their paths continued to be intertwined that fall when they each made the Blazers squad as 17-year-olds for the 2007-08 season.

“I always had the same approach,” Wiebe said. “You control what you can control and work as hard as you can work and then everything falls into place after that. You don’t really worry about what other guys are doing or what’s going on around you.”

In 66 games in his rookie campaign, Wiebe scored nine goals and added eight assists with 59 penalty minutes. Despite the many changes that came with moving away from home to play hockey, Wiebe said it went OK.

“For some reason it didn’t really bother me too much,” Wiebe said. “I focused on the hockey but it’s definitely nerve racking at the start. Usually the guys are pretty good and they make it a pretty easy transition.”

He said longtime athletic therapist Colin (Toledo) Robinson also did a lot to make young players feel comfortable.

It didn’t hurt to have Schneider there as well.

“It made a world of difference,” Wiebe said. “It made it an easy transition because the two of us could always talk about things if something came up.”

Wiebe said the biggest change came in his role, which was greatly diminished from his minor hockey years when he always led his teams.

Everything changed in his second year, and Wiebe’s career took off. In 72 games, he scored 32 goals and added 33 assists with 92 penalty minutes.

“You get that opportunity to play a different role and it’s kind of making the most of it,” Wiebe said.

He also got his first chance to play in Brandon, a 5-2 loss on Feb. 22, 2008.

“That was pretty cool actually,” Wiebe said. “It was exciting to play in front of family and friends. I never really got the opportunity being so far away.”

That would change. On Dec. 13, 2009, the Wheat Kings acquired the 19-year-old sniper for 17-year-old forward Jordan DePape as Brandon added firepower for the 2010 Memorial Cup.

Wiebe would be rejoining his buddy Schneider, who Brandon had acquired on Oct. 14, 2008 for a draft pick.

“I was not expecting to get traded back home, especially in the Memorial Cup year,” Wiebe said. “I was pretty excited about that for sure. I never really thought I would have enjoyed playing at home but actually I really enjoyed playing at home all the time.”

Prior to the deal, he thought the chance to live and play away from home would be more fun.

Wiebe walked into the Wheat Kings dressing room knowing most of the team — he had played alongside Matt Calvert in minor hockey — and quickly thrived.

“It was a pretty smooth transition to come into that room,” Wiebe said. “Schneids was back too so I played with him again. It was good.”

Wiebe played on a line with deadline pickup Brent Raedeke and Mark Stone as the Wheat Kings went 50-18-1-3, finishing first in the East Division. They would ultimately fall in five games in the Eastern Conference final to the Calgary Hitmen, who would win the league’s regular season and playoff championships.

“We definitely didn’t want it to seem like we were given anything to get there,” Wiebe said of the disappointing playoff loss. “It’s never a great feeling when something like that happens but I felt like everybody came with a good head on their shoulders for the tournament.”

The playoff loss came on April 23, with the Memorial Cup kicking off on May 14. The Wheat Kings all went home for nearly a week before regrouping for the national tournament, which would feature Calgary, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League champion Moncton Wildcats and the Ontario Hockey League powerhouse Windsor Spitfires.

“For me, and I think a lot of guys, it just ramps up your intensity,” Wiebe said. “It gives you more excitement, I never felt any more pressure but you were always ready.”

But at the same time, there was no mistaking the Memorial Cup was in town.

“The city just embraced it so well,” Wiebe said. “The support we had was phenomenal. It just kept pushing you.”

Brandon lost to Windsor and Calgary in the round-robin, but thanks to a 4-0 shutout of Moncton, they advanced to the semifinal.

The Hitmen had won five of the last six games between the clubs, but Brandon held a 4-3 lead late in the third period when Misha Fisenko tied the game for Calgary, sending it to overtime.

Three minutes 16 seconds into the extra frame, Brandon’s Jay Fehr sent a shot at the net that eluded Calgary netminder Martin Jones, sending Brandon to the final.

“I remember him coming across the ice and putting it on net and seeing it hit the back of the net through the five-hole,” Wiebe said. “Before I could even get over the boards I remember half our team was already over the boards. You obviously couldn’t hear anything in the rink. It was pretty fun to be a part of that.”

The tournament certainly didn’t end the way Brandon hoped, with Windsor’s Taylor Hall and Adam Henrique both contributing three points in a 9-1 victory over the hosts with a lineup that would send nine players to the National Hockey League.

Wiebe said that’s not the game Brandon fans choose to remember.

“Anyone I talk to about it never talks about that,” Wiebe said. “It’s always about the semifinal game. That team (Windsor) had an insane amount of talent on it for sure.

“Obviously that final game wasn’t very good but everyone that I ever talk to about it, they never had any bad things to say about the tournament. They were all super happy for us.”

Wiebe returned for his overage season in the 2010-11 season, and beyond incredible personal success, had another terrific bit of news. On Sept. 24, 2010, he was named the team’s 54th captain in its WHL tenure.

“It was a pretty big honour, especially in front of your hometown,” Wiebe said. “That makes it even a bit more special. Most of the teams I played on I ended up being in a leadership role in some way, even if I didn’t have a letter. In Kamloops I had an ‘A’ before I got traded. I just kept doing the same things that I always did. It definitely meant a lot.”

The hard-hitting Wiebe tried to lead by example, adding he spoke up when something needed to be said.

The season also worked out on the ice, where Wiebe scored a career-high 44 goals in 72 games, with 21 assists and 60 penalty minutes. He was again with Stone, and a revolving cast of centres until overager Matt MacKay arrived in a deal with the Vancouver Giants.

“Look where he is now, and he’s doing the same thing there,” Wiebe said of Stone. “I would be able to take off with my speed and know that the puck is probably going to be somewhere in and around my stick. I think it was pretty rare for (Stone) not to give me one or two breakaway passes a game that year.”

On April 4, 2011, Wiebe’s junior career came to an end in Winnipeg after a 7-5 quarterfinal series loss to the Medicine Hat Tigers.

“It was pretty tough because it was something you were used to for the past three or four years,” Wiebe said. “You know that there are bigger changes coming. You get comfortable playing in the league. You know that you’re going from the top and having to start back at the bottom again. It’s an adjustment for sure.”

In the fall of 2011, Wiebe went to camp with the Winnipeg Jets, who had just returned to the Manitoba capital. He had a good camp, but along with many, many others was sent to the American Hockey League’s St. John’s IceCaps.

He played just 12 games there before Christmas, and the organization wanted to alter his one-way deal to send him to the ECHL. As a result, Wiebe headed to Fredericton to join the University of New Brunswick Reds.

He scored five goals and added seven assists in 11 games, but it wasn’t a great fit.

“I enjoyed Fredericton and I got to meet some really good people,” Wiebe said. “It was a good experience but it just wasn’t for me.”

Wiebe played 25 games with the AHL’s Connecticut Whale and 12 games with the ECHL’s Greenville Road Warriors in the 2012-13 season, and then made a big decision. He signed in Olten, Switzerland, where he would spend the next three seasons in the second level Swiss League.

“It was just kind of how my year went the year before I left,” Wiebe said. “It was the (NHL) lockout year so I ended going down to the East Coast for 12 games and then the lockout ended so I went back up. I ended up by the New Year that year establishing myself better about what kind of player I was going to be and then ended up tearing my ACL.”

He figured it would be tough to come back without an NHL contract and decided to head to Europe instead.

“I thought I would go to Europe and see what kind of opportunity I could get there,” Wiebe said. “It kind of took off from there.”

Wiebe’s offensive touch returned in the 2013-14 campaign as he notched 21 goals and 28 assists in 41 games to lead the team in scoring.

He enjoyed the involvement of the rabid fans and the entire community with the team. But Olten, a town of 18,000 located west of Zurich near the German border, posed another challenge.

There were few English speakers there, with a Swiss German dialect used instead.

“I was OK,” Wiebe said of learning the language. “I could order myself things at restaurants and stuff, but understanding people talking was a hard thing, even by the time I left.”

After three years in Switzerland, Wiebe was in contract talks with a German team, but they suddenly went bankrupt and he was without a place to play in July, which is very late.

He found an opportunity for the 2016-17 season in the newly formed Alps Hockey League, which had teams in Italy, Slovenia and Austria. In 35 games with the Pusteral/Val Pusteria Wolves in Bruneck, Italy, he scored 28 goals and added 20 assists.

“It always takes a few weeks or a month to settle in and start feeling comfortable,” Wiebe said. “No matter where you go, if it’s new it always ends up like that, or at least that’s my experience. You need to have that patience a little bit to get into your routine, like where you go for groceries and things like that.”

Following that season, it was time to call it quits after five-and-a-half pro seasons.

“I just wasn’t finding the excitement to go to the rink anymore,” Wiebe said. “I had been away from home and friends and family pretty much for 10 years.”

He said if something had come up that made financial sense, he would have considered it, but he was set on coming home.

Wiebe figured he could get work doing carpentry when he returned because both his father and his uncle own construction businesses. He worked with his dad’s company for about a year and debated whether to go into firefighting or find work with Manitoba Hydro.

He chose the latter in April 2018. Wiebe, who has a girlfriend but no children, is now in the second level of the four-year apprenticeship to become a journeyman power line technician.

Hockey helped in the transition.

“There are just so many life skills that you learn from playing hockey, whether it be to work or play with other people or the discipline aspect of things or the respect aspect,” Wiebe said. “The list goes on and on … There’s so much you learn from team sports and it helps you so much in your life.”

Nine years after he last pulled on a Wheat Kings jersey, Wiebe remains grateful for what he considers an incredible break.

“There are definitely not a lot of guys who get the opportunity to play at home in the league and some people can’t, depending on where they’re from,” Wiebe said. “It’s a great experience to be able to play in front of your family and friends on such a regular basis. How lucky you are to be able to do that is pretty special.”

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