Where Are They Now: Glowa dominated despite size

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This article was published 24/01/2017 (3357 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The impact a coach can have on a young hockey player is hard to overstate.

A good example in Brandon Wheat Kings history comes in the guise of a young defenceman named Kelly Glowa.

“Les Jackson, bless his heart, was the only who saw that a five-foot-nine guy in that era could probably play,” Glowa said. “After training camp he came up to me and said ‘Do you want to be a Wheat King?’ I said ‘Absolutely.’ He said ‘Would you do whatever it takes,’ and I said ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Then you’re not going to be a defenceman, you’re going to be a centre.’ That’s how that came about.”

Jackson’s instincts proved to be pretty good.

Glowa, playing forward, scored 182 goals and added 242 assists in 219 games. His 424 points rank him fifth in career scoring in Brandon history.

The McCreary-born, Alonsa-raised Glowa moved to the Yukon and later Fort St. John, B.C., as a youngster. Because Glowa still had family in Manitoba, he came home every summer to go to the Dunc McCallum hockey school.

Brandon listed him, and after he spent his 16-year-old season with the Brandon Travellers of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, he joined the Wheat Kings for the 1980-81 season.

Now 53, Glowa admits that first season was a challenge, something he said his parents Ed and Judy helped him with at the time. Glowa said his father called him the human Zamboni for the first two months because he was sliding somewhere on the ice after getting hit.

“By Christmas I found my legs and found my position and things just kind of took off,” Glowa said.

He would score 45 goals and add 58 assists in his 17-year-old season, but he’s quick to credit a pair of talented linemates who also protected him on the ice. He skated with Steve Patrick, the father of current Wheat King Nolan Patrick, and Carl Mokosak.

Glowa admits with a chuckle that he wasn’t the quietest guy on the ice, and Patrick and Mokosak were invaluable to him.

“It was a very good line,” Glowa said. “Those two guys were so big and so strong. For a small guy like me stuck in the middle, it was nice to have two twin towers.”

He said his training as a defenceman proved to be a tremendous help as well.

“As a defenceman, you see the game differently,” Glowa said. “You see the whole picture. As a forward, you’re in the hunt, you’re in the middle of everything, so I felt that I saw the game a little better as a forward because I was a defenceman. And they knew I was a defenceman so on the power-play they started throwing me back on defence, so I started playing power play a lot.”

Glowa also had a tremendous shot, with a quick release that Andy Murray called a “half-slap-clap,” which fell somewhere between a slapshot and snapshot with a lightning-fast release.

His offensive output grew to 59 goals and 137 points in his 18-year-old year, but it was his 19-year-old season that proved to be one for the ages.

In 68 games in 1982-83, Glowa scored 71 goals and added 92 assists for 163 points. In Wheat King single season records, the points and assists are fifth and the goals are ninth.

He chose to spend his overage season with EHC Dübendorf in Switzerland, a spot that Murray helped him land. After scoring 66 goals in 41 games, Glowa returned to Brandon to pile up 21 points in seven games at the end of the season, and 27 more points in 12 playoff games.

“It was a great opportunity to be able to play pro and then come back home and play with a bunch of your friends again, like Brent Jessiman, Jim Agnew, the Wells brothers,” he said.

After graduating from Brandon, Glowa spent a dozen games in the American Hockey League, but found he didn’t enjoy it. He returned to Europe, where he would carve out a successful 19-year professional career mainly in Switzerland but with stops in Slovenia, Austria, the United Kingdom and Japan.

His offensive flair never deserted him. He was good for nearly a goal per game in all but three seasons, and only once didn’t average more than a point per game. He owns five league scoring titles and was top goal scorer three times.

“In life you have to be blessed with something and I think God blessed me with the talent to be a goal scorer,” Glowa said. “I was very grateful for that. It was a passion that I worked on. It wasn’t just something that you accepted; every day when I’d come home in the off-season — now it’s a standard thing that guys work out all the time — I would work out in the off-season. When I would go back to Switzerland, guys would be just getting into shape and I was full-tilt on. So I attribute it to all my hard work that I put in to have the opportunity to put up those points.”

Glowa said he loved the chance to play on the big ice, although he said it was a more difficult period to be away from home in the pre-Internet era. A call home cost him five francs per minute.

Glowa married his wife Lauren (nee Enns), who he met in high school in Brandon, early in his European career.

The couple’s three daughters, Kirsten, Paige and Morgan, were all born while he was playing, an experience that he said drew the family closer together because the girls didn’t always have English-speaking friends.

“For me, the most success any guy has is his family,” Glowa said. “If it wasn’t for my family, I would never have been as successful.”

Glowa’s best chance to find work in the National Hockey League came with the Dallas Stars, but with Paige about to be born, Glowa decided to stay home with his family and then returned to Europe the next season.

“I hate to say it but hockey is always a passion but my family is more important than hockey,” Glowa said. “So I turned that opportunity down and then signed a big three-year deal in a town in Switzerland. It was just a blessing all around.”

He said he now thinks that everything worked out like it did for a reason. Still, Glowa’s timing couldn’t have been worse. The rough-and-tumble ’80s were part of the big-forward, small-goalie era. Now it’s completely reversed.

“It would have been a golden opportunity (in today’s NHL) to give this a shot but that’s the way life is,” Glowa said. “I wouldn’t change a thing. You battled in a different era and it was a grind battling against the bigger players. I felt like I put up the numbers but the NHL saw something different.”

Glowa retired after the 2001-02 season, which he played for HC Sierre, a team he spent eight seasons with over three decades. It was the family’s favourite city — Kirsten was born there — but after that final season Glowa knew it was over.

“We just felt it was time to give them an opportunity instead of just chasing dad all the time,” Glowa said. “So then we got our kids into hockey and soccer and fastball, and gave them an opportunity to have their lives flourish.”

There was never any question of returning anywhere but to Brandon. The family spent every off-season here, with the kids going to Riverheights School.

Glowa admits he had no idea what he was going to do after hockey, but the friends he had made in Brandon gave him invaluable guidance and opportunities. He bought a piece of Source of Sports, which he sold recently, but he stills calls it a place where he can hang his work hat.

While Glowa stopped being paid for hockey, he never really stopped playing. He has competed for Allan Cup senior AAA championships and now plays for the Boissevain Border Kings in the Tigers Hills Hockey League. At 53, he’s 15th in league scoring with 27 points in 16 games.

“You can have your ups and downs, life is never perfect,” Glowa said. “But when you hit that ice and the skate cracks that first crack of the ice, everything is gone. You live in that moment and life is amazing. Don’t get me wrong; I get beat up out there and the young guys really lay into me about being an older gentleman.”

His contributions as a Wheat King have certainly never been forgotten in the 33 years since he last skated with the team. He was among the 50 players selected for the ballot for Brandon’s WHL Dream Team — which is now closed — an honour that touched him.

“I’m just blessed,” Glowa said. “To be in that crew for an individual who hasn’t been drafted, I’m very fortunate. There are so many wonderful, talented hockey players to go through that Wheat King door. If I’m in the top 50, I got very lucky.”

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