Jeff Lawson grew up around Wheat Kings

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This article was published 18/04/2024 (744 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jeff Lawson’s childhood is inextricably tied to the Brandon Wheat Kings.

Lawson, 61, played one season with the team, but as the son of former player, coach and executive Glen Lawson, he grew up around the Wheat Kings.

“My brother (Brad) and I, early on in our lives, were rink rats,” Lawson said. “I remember going to the Wheat City Arena and picking up pucks at the end of practice. I remember one time going on the ice and Butch Deadmarsh fired a puck and boom, right in the head, and it split me open for stitches.

“I remember going to Sandy Lake and waterskiing with Juha Widing. I remember Bob Fitchner before he coached me at Brandon University. I remember Bobby Ash and the stories of Bryan and Dennis Hextall.

“We were neighbours with Dunc McCallum and their family on Madison Crescent in Brandon. I remember going into Dunc’s basement and pulling out his old Northland hockey stick, his pattern from Pittsburgh and taking a couple of sticks upstairs and him saying, ‘Jeff, you take those home,’ and I remember sleeping with those sticks.”

All that added up to a fierce determination to play for the Western Hockey League club one day, and long before the draft started, he was listed by the club at age 13.

When the family lived in Green Acres, he skated at the East End rink, and after they purchased Clark’s Poultry Farm, he shifted to the North End Community Centre. In organized hockey, he remembers playing seven games one weekend.

He was 15 when the greatest team in the club’s WHL history took the ice, the legendary 1978-79 Wheat Kings. While he missed some games because he was playing himself, he has fond memories of watching them.

“Dad had slowed down in the organization by that time, but we were still involved emotionally and as a fan watching Gillen, Propp, Allison, even before that with Hanlon, Semenko, Dale McMullin,” Lawson said. “It was unbelievable. I was talking the other night about the old battles with New West and Dirk Graham and Semenko up on the stage battling off the ice, and the battles they used to have with Portland, and talking again about New West, Brad Maxwell.

“Those memories are vivid.”

He said his family’s relationship with the team’s head coach, McCallum, made it that much more personal.

Lawson played his first game with the team a year later when he was 16 with a pair of rugged customers. It was an 11-3 victory over the visiting Lethbridge Broncos on Feb. 16, 1980.

“I was on a line with Boris Fistric and Donny Gillen,” Lawson said. “I was thinking ‘I’m out with Boris Fistric and Donny Gillen, I can pretty well do anything I want.’ I got an assist that game and was pretty happy.

“I was also pretty happy at the time to know we were the first family to have the first and second generation ever to play for the Wheat Kings. A year later Hexy (Ron Hextall) was playing so that would have been the second one. I’m pretty proud of that.”

Lawson spent the bulk of the 1979-80 season with the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Brandon Travellers, where he had 17 goals, 22 assists and 101 penalty minutes in 48 games. The Travellers were essentially a feeder team for the Wheat Kings, and in their final season of existence.

“Obviously you grow up with that dream. It was special just knowing the legacy Dad left and I was trying to fill in there. It was special. At the time, in hindsight, the team was in a little tougher situation. The economics at the time were tough. It was 1979-80 when interest rates were 22 per cent. “I remember one Christmas we got a roll of sock tape. We didn’t expect anything else but times were tough for Jack Brockest and the ownership group back then.”– Jeff Lawson

In previous seasons, McCallum’s Wheat Kings were so loaded the Travellers had more veterans who were stuck at the MJHL level. The logjam had released, however, and Lawson’s young teammates included Brad Wells and Kelly Glowa.

Remember, that was still in the teeth of the Broad Street Bullies era during a less civilized period in the game’s history.

“I think we were the three 16-year-olds on the team that year, and no other team had any 16-year-olds,” Lawson said. “No way. Dauphin was all full of 20-year-olds … It was men playing with kids back then. The guys in the MJ were probably tougher than the guys in the WHL but didn’t have the skill level to play, so it was just a war every night and we had this young team that was trying to play at a higher level and we would just get waxed.”

The Wheat Kings and Travellers went to camp together, and players would actually move up and down between the clubs, so they knew each other fairly well. In addition, their dressing rooms were next door to each other.

On the ice, Lawson had to find his way in junior hockey.

“I always considered myself a player who played on both sides of the ice,” Lawson said. “As every kid had the opportunity to be a little better than their average teammate as they grow up and that’s how you get in the position to play junior, you soon realize there are a lot of good players around you.

“When I’m 16 and playing for the Travellers, I made the all-star team that year. I think I had 12 goals before Christmas, and scored two after that. It dropped me down to earth and was a little humbling.

“Coming into the Wheat Kings, it’s a lesson, too. There are a lot of good players, so it was realizing it was a lot of body contact, playing a harder game up and down the wing.”

Lawson earned a full-time spot with the Wheat Kings in his 17-year-old season in 1980-81. In 72 games, he had eight goals, 13 assists and 128 penalty minutes.

“Obviously you grow up with that dream,” Lawson said. “It was special just knowing the legacy Dad left and I was trying to fill in there. It was special. At the time, in hindsight, the team was in a little tougher situation. The economics at the time were tough. It was 1979-80 when interest rates were 22 per cent.

“I remember one Christmas we got a roll of sock tape. We didn’t expect anything else but times were tough for Jack Brockest and the ownership group back then.”

He said since it was the WHL, ice time was hard to come by. He said that helped crystallize the final pieces of who he became as a player.

“I was the glue guy,” Lawson said. “I was the culture man in the dressing room. I was always a leader as kid and I tried to carry that on. I did that in Winnipeg and Regina. I was more of a power forward.”

After all the buildup of growing up inside the Wheat Kings organization, it proved to be a disappointment. He butted heads with the coach and ultimately asked out.

“I struggled a little bit with the coaching of the individual at the time, Les Jackson,” Lawson said. “We didn’t really click so at that time I asked to be traded, and at the time in 1980, you didn’t do that.”

He was dealt to the Winnipeg Warriors on Aug. 26, 1981 for overager Andy Ristau and a player to be named later, which proved to be a steal for Winnipeg. Ristau, a six-foot-five, 240-pound behemoth who had 394 career penalty minutes in 160 WHL games, was released by Brandon and played that season in the MJHL with the Fort Garry Blues.

Lawson, meanwhile, spent the 1981-82 and 1982-83 seasons playing out of the old Winnipeg Arena as a member of the Warriors. McCallum returned as Brandon coach in the 1981-82 season and they chatted in Winnipeg Arena one night.

“He said ‘Jeff, I’m trading back for you. You’re coming back,’” Lawson recalled. “My dad said ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jeff. It’s too hard to play at home. Stay where you are.’ “I had to tell Dunc ‘I’m going to stay where I am.’ I still remember that conversation.”

But that didn’t mean everything was perfect in Winnipeg. Lawson vividly recalls the youthful crowds that came to games.

“The Jets were on the other side of the arena, so it was tough to draw because everyone is comparing you to a Jets game and it’s the same type of entertainment,” Lawson said. “But it was the value we brought because the ticket prices were so much different.

“What we would find is they would have family night every Friday, and we played a lot of Fridays, so you would have parents drop kids off at the door and go to the movie theatre or out to supper at Chi-Chi’s on the Polo Park lot.

“Two-and-a-half hours later they were picking the kids up, so it was a scream fest every Friday night. Lots of hotdogs, lots of pop, lots of screaming. The kids screamed through the game, it didn’t matter if you scored or were winning or got beat. There were a lot of empty seats and young crowd.”

Lawson was dealt to the Regina Pats during the 1983-84 season, which proved to be the final season for the Warriors in Winnipeg prior an off-season move to Moose Jaw.

“That was a tough move because I was the captain in Winnipeg at the time but I went to team in Regina that had just tremendous chemistry,” Lawson said. “Some of my best friends today are still from my junior days. Brad Wells here, Kelly Glowa in Cochrane, Todd Lumbard in Regina, Bobby Lowes. Bobby and I played together in Regina and he was in my wedding party.”

Lombard’s junior days ended after that season, and he finished his four-year WHL career with 281 regular season and playoff games played, with 45 goals, 66 assists and 508 penalty minutes.

The next fall, he had a tryout contract in the Washington Capitals organization with the Fort Wayne Comets in the old International Hockey League.

“I didn’t have a great camp, and mentally I was probably not in a good position,” Lawson said. “I didn’t want to be there. At that time, I realized it was maybe time to change direction a bit. Just looking at the depth chart, I wasn’t feeling it. I realized I needed to think about coming back to the farm, but I also knew I wanted to extend my education.”

He entered Brandon University as a mature student, joining the Bobcats for the 1985-86 season and being named the team’s most inspirational player. His run as a Bobcat lasted just a year, however, as he also became more involved in the farm, and that effectively signalled the end of his hockey career.

The online database eliteprospects.com has him playing the 1986-87 season with the University of Alberta but that’s another guy mistakenly attached to his profile.

The good news was he got out of the game without any significant injuries.

“I was 100 per cent,” Lawson said of his health when he retired. “A couple of scars but other than I was great.”

The two brothers bought Clark’s Poultry from their father in 1990. Jeff, who is married to Kathy, has two children, son Turner and daughter Madison, sold his portion of the business to Brad in 2007 and moved to Kelowna. Brad sold the business to a multinational company in 2023.

Jeff now owns an engineering firm based in Kelowna, B.C., with both of his kids working alongside him, with Turner on the construction side and Madison co-ordinating the compamy’s Calgary operations.

Jeff said hockey played an integral role in developing him as a person.

“There are so many lessons,” Lawson said. “One is that you only get out what you put in. Also, relationships build lives. The more you have around you — at times your life isn’t going to be easy and at times you’re going to go through some adversity — and if you have good people around you who have your back, recognize them and stay with them.

“It’s the same thing with the culture in the dressing room. Sometimes we make light of the term ‘going to war’ in hockey or football, but once in a while it feels like you’re going to war, and it builds relationships that you never forget. It’s adversity, chemistry, team play, discipline and that’s the things I’ve carried into my life.”

Many of the younger generations of Lawsons were in the crowd at the Victoria Inn on March 14 when Glen became one of the inaugural inductees into the Wheat Kings’ new Hall of Fame. Jeff said it was meaningful to the entire family.

“It was very gratifying,” Lawson said. “I think probably in reflection, having my brother and my sister (Jana) there and my mom (Eileen), but to also see their kids and their kids’ kids. He had great grandkids in the room, and some of them are going to be old enough to remember that. It’s not every often you get to see a legacy night for your great grandfather.

“It’s not on a big stage in Toronto or New York but it means something to our family and it means something to him and my mom.”

Even after the Lawsons stopped having a direct relationship with the team, they were still involved. When Kelly McCrimmon hired Lowes as the head coach of the team for the 1992-93 season, Lowes moved in with Jeff’s family for the first year as he and his wife Shelley looked for a house in Brandon.

More than 40 years after skating for the club, he’s still happy he had the opportunity.

“I’m very proud when people say ‘Oh, you’re from Brandon, do you know the Wheat Kings?’ and I say ‘Ya, I used to be one,’” Lawson said. “I’m very proud of what the organization has done. It’s a long history. I couldn’t be prouder of being associated.”

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