Matt Henry works to carve out his own path

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This article was published 15/02/2024 (577 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Matt Henry brings an utterly unique skill set to the Brandon Wheat Kings, and as it turns out, has redefined the meaning of work ethic for the club.

Henry, whose chiselled six-foot, 215-pound frame reflects the time he’s spent in the gym, is the first Wheat King in memory to also work part-time when his schedule allows.

The 19-year-old forward said his need to do a little extra is simple.

“I hate sitting around, for starters,” Henry said. “I take pride in it. You need to have a backup plan. School is not really my thing and that’s OK, you can still make a great living and I’ve done pretty well for myself so far just getting started.

“Every day you learn something new, which I really enjoy with this work. There’s nothing you can’t learn. It’s endless learning and you make lots of memories and put yourself in situations where you have to be a thinker and be smart and safe.”

The Wheat Kings visit the Moose Jaw Warriors in Western Hockey League action tonight at 7 p.m., and then host the Calgary Hitmen on Friday.

Henry got his first job at 16 while he was playing in North Battleford. He began helping out at the farm of his billets, and when the season ended and he returned home to Prince Albert, he found a job there.

At 17, he began work with a landscaping company.

“It was lots of labour, lots of hands-on work,” Henry said.

In his rookie season in Brandon a year ago, Henry became the first Wheat King in memory to hold down a part-time job as he helped out at a farm near the city.

“They had me teaching little girls how to ride horses and just the basics,” Henry said. “They helped me out a little bit, too. I’m not the best fit, but I’m a guy who helps out.”

This winter, he’s worked with a local construction company when his schedule allows and when they have stuff for him to do.

“I enjoy it,” Henry said. “It’s nice getting up early in the morning and then you come to the rink and workout and skate and get on with your day.”

Assistant coach Mark Derlago has never seen anything like it.

“This is a first for me, a guy who had a job,” Derlago said with a chuckle. “There are guys who go to school, but for someone to get up at 5 a.m., put the work boots on and then come to the rink and have the same amount of energy and work ethic here, it says a lot about him.”

COMEBACK

After last season ended, Henry essentially retired from hockey. He didn’t skate after he left Brandon, instead helping at his friend’s farm as they prepared for seeding and earning his 1A licence which allowed him to drive bigger trucks. He began working for a concrete company the day his licence arrived.

“It was a lot of things,” Henry said of his time away from the rink. “Sometimes you kind of lose the love for something and you don’t know if it’s yours, and if you want to go back to it. I took seven months off. I didn’t skate, but I worked out and was working mostly every day.

“One day, I woke up and thought ‘I should go back.’ Honestly the main part of it was I saw the boys playing and I saw guys fighting and made me itch a little bit so I had to get back to it.”

After missing training camp, the pre-season and the first week of the season, Henry returned to Brandon on Sept. 30.

“I missed the boys,” Henry said. “I got back on that Saturday, had a day off on Sunday, skated twice Monday, skated twice Tuesday and played Wednesday. It was intense.”

Derlago said he was certainly welcomed back his teammates.

“Guys like having him around,” Derlago said. “He’s a great teammate, he brings a lot of energy to the room, on the ice and on the bench especially. He keeps everyone on their toes. He’s a pretty vocal guy and the excitement he brought back was huge.”

The fact he even found a spot in the WHL beat the odds. The undrafted free agent was cut by his hometown U18 AAA Prince Albert AAA Mintos at age 15, so he headed to the Battlefords Stars program and played there.

He made the jump to the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League at age 17 with the Battlefords North Stars, putting up four goals, 12 assists and an impressive 216 penalty minutes in 52 games during the 2021-22 season. Henry was quickly listed by Brandon that October.

He then became an ultra-rare undrafted player who made his league debut at 18.

Brandon assistant coach Del Pedrick said his personality has made him a popular teammate.

“He’s a team-first guy,” Pedrick said. “Our guys rely on him for lots of energy, and he brings lots of energy daily. He’s a pretty happy-go-lucky guy who has an intensity metre that goes beyond most other guys. I think that rubs off on people.

“He has a pretty positive outlook on things and I think guys generally care about him, and he really cares about his teammates.”

PLAYING A ROLE

If you’ve followed the Wheat Kings the past two seasons, there aren’t many surprises in Henry’s game. In 84 outings, he has two goals, one assist and 219 penalty minutes, and has emerged as the league’s top heavyweight in an era when not many remain.

“I love every guy on this team,” Henry said. “I’m willing to bleed for these guys. Obviously, now I’m trying to change my role — I’ve been taking too many minor penalties — and help the team that way. If they need energy, I go out and lay a couple of hits, and if a fight presents itself, then it does. That’s what I’m willing to do.

“If I see a guy get hit dirty or a cheap shot, I’m going to be right in that guy’s face because I love my guys and I want to take care of all of them.”

It’s certainly earned Henry — who was nicknamed Hank the Tank — the enduring affection of the Wheat Kings faithful, but it comes at a cost.

A common refrain among professional hockey enforcers is the fear of getting hurt is secondary to the fear of getting embarrassed by one lucky or unseen punch: That uncertainty makes the job taxing mentally and emotionally. Henry understands the anxiety.

“I’ll be honest, there is,” Henry said. “It’s more so because you’re always thinking about who you’re playing, who they’ve got, how he fights. I’m on the hockey fights app every day watching guys and seeing what they do, and even up on the upper level, seeing how they’re getting the better of guys.

“Sometimes you ponder and think and it stays in your head, and it eats away at a guy. You just have to learn to deal with it.”

When he does fight, his ability to throw with either hand sets him apart, as does his strength. While the results can be brutal, Henry doesn’t dislike the guys he fights.

“If a guy is willing to square up with me and go toe-to-toe for something he did or if his team needs one or I need one, and he gives me that, I won’t hate you,” Henry said. “I respect you. I’m the kind of guy if we fight on the ice, we can go have dinner after the game or whatever. I don’t hold any grudges.”

As he thinks about it, however, it turns out that’s not entirely true. There is one instance when a fight really bothers him.

“In my last fight I got jumped, so I was mad,” Henry said. “It’s disrespectful jumping a guy when he’s not looking. If you square up with me and want to make it fair, whatever goes down, goes down. I’m OK with that.”

The highly skilled Derlago never played the enforcer role, but in his time with the Wheat Kings, he skated on a line one season with Andrew Clark and Ryan Reaves. The latter has made a good living in the National Hockey League with his fists and physicality.

“He contributed offensively, but he did a lot more just making space for us on the ice,” Derlago said. “He would get in on the forecheck and nobody wanted near that puck. I think Reaver only had one or two fights that year because nobody wanted to fight him either. He knew that as well and used it against the guys.

“He was the perfect guy to play with for guys like us because he created so much space but I don’t think it’s an easy role to play because every night you might get someone challenging you and might have guys trying to get under your skin and take penalties on you.”

TINKERING

One of Henry’s challenges has been reining in his emotions. He has taken some bad penalties during the past couple of seasons, and understands why that can’t continue.

“It’s been a struggle since I don’t know how old, probably since I was first born,” Henry said of his fiery temper. “That’s just the kind of guy I am. I play with a lot of fire. My heart is on my sleeve and when I see a teammate get hit, it’s so hard not to just lose it.

“It bothers me so much when I see one of our guys — if they are taking advantage of us or a cheap hit — I don’t like and I’m going to say something about it.”

He added, “It’s one of those things now where I can’t really do that and I understand that, but at the same time I have a role to play, too.”

Pedrick agrees, saying the staff wants Henry to use his abundant energy a little differently.

“I don’t think there is an an on-off switch, because once it’s on, it’s one way and going,” Pedrick said. “I guess from our coaching standpoint, we’re trying to get him to channel his energy and his aggressiveness into productive ways that help the team, getting in on the forecheck, finishing your checks. We’re really trying to push him into being a better player, picking pucks off the wall and contributing to our overall game so we can push him to more minutes per night.

“That’s his challenge, and that’s where we’re trying to focus his energies.”

Henry has been suspended five times in his career for a total of 19 games, with the eight-game ban he received on Jan. 13 the longest in recent Wheat Kings history.

As a result, Henry got lit up on social media. While one source of the bile has come from fans of a team with a long history of enforcers — if irony was ice cream, we’d need a lot more cake and cones — the online abuse was vicious.

He takes it in stride.

“I enjoy all that stuff,” Henry said. “It makes me giggle because if they’re not talking about you, you’re not doing something right. They can chirp all they want because they’re sitting behind a screen watching me play and I’m the one wearing the jersey. That’s all I care about.”

Pedrick isn’t as relaxed about it. He said the coaching staff should probably spend more with Henry talking about it, because they do discuss it in the coaches office. He encourages the players to ignore social media entirely.

“The unfortunate thing is any dummy can type on a keyboard or peck away on your phone and make any statement online with zero accountability,” Pedrick said. “We try and remind Matt what’s important is what we as an organization, his teammates and his coaches, feel about him and what he brings every day.”

MOVING FORWARD

Hockey continues to make glacial progress to becoming a kinder, gentler sport based entirely on speed and skill, and if that day ever arrives, the Matt Henrys of the world will fade away from the game for good.

Since Henry was born in 2004, he was several decades too late for the Broad Street Bullies era in the National Hockey League, and the age of the enforcers that stretched into the early 2000s. Was he simply born 50 or 60 years too late?

“I sometimes wonder that, too, but I’m in the right spot,” Henry said with a chuckle.

Derlago isn’t so sure.

“He plays that way,” Derlago said. “He’s a bit of throwback the way he gets in on the forecheck and hits. I haven’t seen a guy who fights like that in many years. He’s got that killer instinct when the gloves come off. You don’t see it very often so maybe he’s a bit out of his time here.”

Brandon fans who enjoy his unique skill set may want to see as many of the team’s upcoming games as they can.

Henry is entering his overage season next fall, and with the Wheat Kings potentially returning forwards Nolan Flamand and Rylen Roersma and defencemen Luke Shipley and Andrei Maliavan, a spot in Brandon might be hard to come by.

At the same time, Henry is looking to the next level to carry on his hockey career for a while before returning to work for good.

“I’m hoping to keep playing,” Henry said. “Hopefully someone gives me a shot in the pros, which is my goal. I love this organization and love the coaches and am hoping the teams are looking at me. I think I’m ready. I think I’m strong enough, I think I’m big enough.

“Obviously I have to work on my skills but at the same time I have to work on other things and play my role to the best of my abilities.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson