Bonar took different path to WHL

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This article was published 18/10/2016 (3516 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If anyone but the Brandon Wheat Kings had come calling, Dan Bonar would have enjoyed a stellar hockey career at Boston University.

Now 60 and the director of player personnel with the Calgary Hitmen, the Deloraine product was offered a scholarship when he was playing with the Portage Terriers of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. In his family, it wasn’t an offer to be taken lightly.

“I had a tough decision to make,” he remembers. “Brandon wanted me to come there and Boston University … my dad’s a doctor and all my siblings have degrees. It was Brandon. Had it been Regina or Saskatoon or somewhere like that, I probably would have went to Boston.”

Bonar played 211 regular season games over three years with the Wheat Kings, scoring 162 goals and adding 150 assists. He is currently one of 50 players who fans can vote for as the Wheat Kings and The Brandon Sun hold an online ballot to select the franchise’s all-time Dream Team.

Bonar would come in to watch Wheat King games with family and friends, and also listen to the playoffs on the radio as a child. But you can credit former Wheat King Bruce Bonk with pushing the youngster’s fandom up a notch.

“At the end of the season, he gave me a stick and I think I used that stick in 10-and-under all winter,” Bonar said. “My grandfather kept shaving it down because it was frayed at the bottom and before long it was only about an inch-thick blade.”

Bonar, who topped out at five-foot-eight, wasn’t able to earn a spot with the Wheat Kings at first.

As a result, he played his 16- and 17-year-old seasons with the Portage Terriers, winning the Centennial Cup in his rookie season in 1972-73. He has warm memories of his time on Portage la Prairie under head coach Murray (Muzz) McPherson.

“I was lucky to play on such an old team at 16, and play on the fourth line and be in and out of the lineup and learn humility,” he said. “Then to go on a playoff run where you’re a big part of it, that was special.”

He said the lustre isn’t what it used to be for preparing to play major junior in Junior A, although he notes former Terrier Nick Henry, now of the Regina Pats, is among the players following his career path.

Bonar finally earned a spot with the Wheat Kings at age 18 for the 1974-75 season, and hit the ground running, scoring 43 goals and adding 41 assists in 70 games. He credits his linemates Doug Murray of Brandon and Mike Bradbury of Minnedosa with being a huge help.

Murray was injured in Bonar’s second year, so he played with team captain Dale Parker and Murray Thomson, earning 44 goals and 59 assists.

Bill Derlago, Ray Allison and Dave Semenko all arrived that season and had tremendous impacts in very different ways.

“In my first year, we were kind of a mediocre team, not a good road team and not the bravest group,” he said. “But the next year you end up getting Semenko and I think the Wheat Kings were one team without Semenko and another with him. There’s a big difference.”

In his overage season, 1976-77, the Brian Propp line with Derlago and Ray Allison first formed, with Bonar on the ice with Thomson and Gord Kaluzniak. The power play that season featured the Propp line with Brad McCrimmon and Bonar on the blue-line, and Glen Hanlon behind them in the net.

Bonar notched 75 goals in 72 games and had 50 helpers.

The team lost just 10 games that season — and were upset in the playoffs — but the groundwork was laid.

“Brandon was on the right map with (head coach) Dunc McCallum,” Bonar said. “From the day that he came in there, that team was something else.”

After he graduated from the WHL, Bonar went on to the Fort Wayne Komets of the International Hockey League, where he was named league MVP and rookie of the year, earning a tryout with the Los Angeles Kings.

He played 169 regular season National Hockey League games there, with a serious arm injury — a break right at the elbow — essentially derailing his career.

He spent two more seasons in the minors after the injury, and had other opportunities, but with a young family — wife Sharon, daughter Ashley and son Andrew — he decided it was time to call it quits at age 28.

“I could go to Europe for five years and come back here and be in the same place that I am now,” he said. “I thought maybe it’s time. If I can’t play in the NHL, I didn’t want to play because that was the best league in the world, the most fun, and that’s where I wanted to be.”

He went for career counselling at UCLA after he retired, although his path led back to hockey. Bonar has served as a scout for the Hitmen since 2003, becoming head scout in 2011.

He was named to the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame as a player and a member of the 1972-73 Terriers, to the Terriers Hall of Fame, and is now part of the Wheat Kings’ Dream Team initiative.

“It means a lot,” he said. “When you grow up as a kid, and you go to school for your first grade in a town of 900, you have no idea that you’re going to be going to an NHL camp where there’s palm trees and the sun shines. You have no clue that’s going to happen.”

He’s grateful to all the people who helped him along the way on his hockey journey, adding there are just too many to name, including some of his junior teammates.

Bonar said he and Hanlon were close — they served as ushers at each other’s weddings — but don’t see as much of each other as they might like. It’s the same with others such as Murray.

There’s no mistaking the fact that Bonar misses those days, out on the ice playing with his friends.

“I have a good life now and I love my life, but there’s nothing quite like those five years of junior hockey and eight years of professional hockey,” Bonar said. “It’s the best life in the world. If you love it and it’s something you want to do, they pay you for it. It’s tremendous.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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