Audette’s big decision pays off in long run

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This article was published 16/03/2020 (2220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was the summer of 1993 and Gary Audette had a big decision to make.

Now 49, the Winnipegger who spent three seasons with the Brandon Wheat Kings from 1988 to 1991 was deciding what his next move would be in life.

Audette spent the 1992-93 season with the minor pro Dallas Freeze in the old Central Hockey League, and he put up 50 points in 60 games on a team with another former Wheat King, Jason Taylor of Oak Lake. That was enough to get him a contract offer for another year, but it proved to be the end of the line for the hockey career of Audette, who married his wife Marilyn at 20.

She spent half the season with him in Dallas and they enjoyed it, but after they returned to Winnipeg following the season, they discovered she was pregnant with daughter Megan.

At the ripe old age of 21, Audette realized it wasn’t the life he wanted for his family.

“We weren’t making a lot of money down in Dallas,” Audette said. “We were broke. There was not a lot of money and I made a tough decision. We decided that we were going to be a family and I decided it was time to focus on our marriage and my first child. I looked at the guys I was playing with — 30-year-old guys who were all single and all broke — and I just thought to myself that is not how I’m going to be raising my family … I look back now, 30 years later, and I made the right decision because I have three excellent girls, my wife and two daughters.”

Fortunately, Audette had some opportunities awaiting him in Winnipeg for his family, which grew to include youngest daughter Brianne.

He’s spent his career in the construction industry, and now helps manage Westgate Enterprises, which specializes in new home excavation.

“One of the things that helped me was the success that I did have in Brandon and playing in Brandon, a lot of people knew who I was and there was no doubt I had some breaks in life because of people I know through hockey,” Audette said. “I’ve been fortunate that way. I’ve had a good career.”

It was a hockey career that began in his backyard and on the road in front of his family’s house in St. Boniface. He started to skate around age four or five, playing road hockey with his buddies as well.

“It was hockey every day,” Audette said. “After school it was out to the rink. Dad had a rink for us in the backyard and we would play every night.”

He began to play organized hockey when he was around seven or eight but it started to get competitive for Audette at age 12 when he earned a spot in the St. Boniface Saints program.

“If you were a Winnipeg boy and you got to play for the Saints, that was pretty good,” Audette said. “That’s where it all started I guess, at age 12.”

Audette’s mother Lucille and father Al were a big part of his hockey career, a fact he didn’t completely recognize until later.

“My mom and dad were both hard workers but we weren’t an overly wealthy family,” Audette said. “Hockey was expensive to play and I never realized it at the time. I had tape, I had new sticks, I had new equipment — I never had hand-me-down equipment, my mom and dad were excellent that way — and growing up I never saw that. When you’re a young guy you don’t think of the cost and now I look back and see how much my mom and dad sacrificed so that I could play hockey. I had the greatest opportunities: My mom and dad never held me back.”

He noted his parents and sister Carol were always coming to tournaments to support him as well.

Audette became a devoted lacrosse player too. The sport wasn’t very big at the time so there were no other youth leagues other than in high school. As a result, by age 15, Audette was playing in the men’s league.

In one major instance, the two sports crossed.

Audette received more than a hockey education at his first Wheat Kings camp; he was also tagged with the nickname that would stick with him by Wheat Kings trainer Craig Heisinger

“Zinger was really good with me,” said Audette, who noted he also played lacrosse against Heisinger in Winnipeg. “He gave me my nickname that all my buddies and guys at work still call me, Audy. That’s something pretty special to me.”

Audette always played centre growing up, adding with a chuckle that he was a small guy and there was no way he was going to play defence in that era.

He knew about the Western Hockey League — despite the departure of the Winnipeg Monarchs in 1977 — because of the Wheat Kings.

“I was one of those kids who it was hockey, hockey, hockey,” Audette said, adding it was something he shared with his friends. “We knew about Brandon. There were these guys I watched play hockey (in the National Hockey League) like Brian Propp, Ray Ferraro and Ron Hextall, and these were all guys who played out of Brandon. I didn’t get a chance to go watch the Wheat Kings when I was young but ever since I got protected by them when I was 13, I went to camp and that was always the goal, that one day I would play for the Wheat Kings.”

After the youngster joined Brandon, Heisinger got Audette an autographed Propp hockey card that he still has.

Audette was actually listed by the New Westminster Bruins when he was playing in the Mac’s Tournament in Vancouver when he was 12. But in the tumultuous second incarnation of the Bruins — who had been the Nanaimo Islanders and would later become the Tri-City Americans — Audette was dropped and quickly picked up by Brandon at 13.

He played his bantam and midget years with the Saints, including on the 1984-85 Saints bantam team that was ranked No. 1 in the nation and won the Purolator Cup. That squad had more than a dozen players protected by WHL organizations, including Audette’s future Brandon teammate Dwayne Newman.

In his 16-year-old season in 1987-88, Audette exploded for an incredible 38 goals and 47 assists in just 40 games with the Saints in the Manitoba Midget Hockey League as they won the championship. Audette finished second in league scoring behind Foxwarren’s Pat Falloon of the Yellowhead Chiefs, who put up an astronomical 143 points in 52 games.

“When you’re playing against and with guys like that and putting up pretty decent numbers, for sure that helped me get to Brandon that next year,” Audette said.

He made the Wheat Kings the following fall, playing 71 games and contributing 33 points in the 1988-89 season. Audette remembers it as a year of transition.

“It was huge,” Audette said. “There were two sides to it. There was the hockey side of it, going from living at home and playing hockey to going to the western league and you’re living with billets. I was very fortunate because I had great billets all three years I was Brandon. Not everybody always had that but I had very good families I lived with.”

He remembers arriving back in Brandon early in the morning and sometimes heading to class without getting any sleep other than on the bus.

There was also a better level of play on the ice for the 17-year-old.

“Everybody is good, the first line, the second line, the third line. You have to work hard every shift,” Audette said. “You don’t just get the success or easy breaks. You have to work for it at that level. That’s the next step, learning the game because if you’re going to play competitive professional hockey, it starts right there for sure.”

That 1988-89 Brandon team was full of character players such as Kevin Cheveldayoff, Jeff Odgers, Cam Brown and Bob Woods. Audette, who was listed in the media guide that year as five-foot-seven and 160 pounds, said toughness was a prerequisite.

“I wasn’t a fighter but I remember very early on, Chevy taking me aside in practice and teaching me ‘You better protect yourself,” Audette said. “I remember Chevy and Odgy and Brownie, that was a big thing. We didn’t score a lot of goals, but there was a lot of fighting and a lot of tough hockey. I remember those guys helping me out big time to adjust and to be able to learn that physical toughness and mental toughness.”

He said an impressive thing about that team (25-43-4) was that though they didn’t win a lot, they seldom were blown out of games.

“We were always competing,” Audette said. “We were a very tough team.”

The team also had a young new assistant coach behind the bench by the name of Kelly McCrimmon. Audette said the young coach helped him as he struggled with the transition from always winning in Winnipeg to mostly losing in Brandon.

“I think he tried to help that first year to get through things and stay in there,” Audette said. “In hindsight, Kelly took over (as general manager) the next year and that helped me even more.”

Despite the lask of team success on the ice, Audette was always pleasantly surprised by the reaction of the team’s supporters off the ice.

“Even though we didn’t have a lot of winning success, the fans were always great in Brandon,” Audette said. “They were there every night and I remember that we used to do a lot of functions on the weekend like Sunday breakfasts with the fans and it was great. The fans always acknowledged us and always supported us, even during the rough times.”

Audette played 62 games in the 1989-90 season, earning 42 points on 19 goals and 23 assists, playing the most with winger Kevin Schmalz. He said having a consistent linemate was a boon for him, but the team still went 28-38-6 and missed the playoffs again.

He was soon to get another taste of winning, but it wouldn’t come in Brandon or in hockey.

Audette was a member of Manitoba’s junior lacrosse team in 1990, and received permission from McCrimmon to attend nationals, which would cost him Wheat Kings’ training camp.

“We ended up winning it,” said Audette, who led the national tournament with 16 goals as part of a team that was inducted into the Manitoba Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2014. “We were the first Manitoba team to win nationals. Even though I was focusing on lacrosse that summer before hockey, that really gave me a lot of confidence and physical strength that helped me a lot.”

The numbers back that up, with Audette collecting 25 goals and 20 assists in 52 games in the 1990-91 campaign with Brandon. Unfortunately, Audette hurt his knee in November and lost more than two months. Coincidentally, his linemate Schmalz broke his leg the same week and the Wheat Kings went 19-51-2 to miss the post-season again.

After the season ended, Audette and McCrimmon talked about the centreman’s future as he prepared for his overage year. With 10 potential overagers returning, Audette was left unprotected in the expansion draft and claimed by the Tacoma Rockets for the 1991-92 season.

He played a month and a half there, scoring four goals and adding a pair of helpers in 13 games, but was cut adrift by the expansion club as they reduced from five overagers to the league limit of three. He returned to Winnipeg for a couple of weeks, and then joined the Kelowna Spartans of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League for head coach John Olver.

It proved to be a great fit, as he piled up 79 points in 39 games.

“It was really good,” Audette said. “We ended up winning our division and I experienced some playoff hockey. In the three years in Brandon, I never had one playoff game, so that was a little bit of a disappointment, but I got to experience that when I got to Kelowna so that was great.”

Following the season, Olver helped him get a tryout in Dallas, leading to that one final season in the pro ranks.

Audette may ultimately have been a victim of his era. His smooth skating and offensive ability in a smaller package wouldn’t be out of place at all in today’s game.

“I look at the game today and it’s totally changed,” Audette said. “There’s no clutching and grabbing. In our time there in the ’80s, it was all about hooking and holding and hitting, and when you look at today’s game, and it’s not like that at all. Touch a guy and you’re in the penalty box. It’s hard to believe that the game has come this far. You look at the game today, and man, it’s so fast.”

After he retired, Audette played a few years of senior hockey with Ste. Anne in the Hanover league. He always appreciated what years in the game taught him.

“It’s hard work and the mental side of things,” Audette said. “It’s toughness, and if things don’t go well, you can’t give up. You have to get up and keep going. I look back at all the things I learned through hockey and every day at the rink skating with guys and meeting new people. Those are lessons you take every day into life. Life is not always easy, but if you keep working hard and keeping going at it, you’ll eventually have success. That’s one thing I took from my playing days for sure.”

All these years later, Audette said it isn’t playing with Tacoma or Kelowna or Dallas that people remember. They always bring up his Wheat Kings past, and while the team didn’t win much while he was there, Audette is happy that people know he was part of the organization.

“Thirty years later, I still have guys who come to me and acknowledge that I played for the Brandon Wheat Kings,” Audette said. “I think that’s an honour. I’m amazed that people remember what we did 30 years ago playing in Brandon. It’s an honour that guys remember you from way back then.

“I’m really proud of that.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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