Hanlon takes a walk down memory lane

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2011 (5282 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Returning to the Keystone Centre triggers old memories for many former Brandon Wheat Kings.

Glen Hanlon perhaps has older memories than anyone of the building where he played his junior hockey.

“I went to school here at Neelin and I would be coming back to my home on 21st Street and this was a hole and I’d watch this place be built,” recalls the 54-year-old Brandon native, who played goal for the Wheat Kings from 1974-77 before beginning a lengthy National Hockey League career. “I don’t know how I could get in here at the time, but once they put the seats in, I would just sit up in that corner right there (motioning to the northwest corner of the stands) and just watch forever, what seemed to me like forever, this thing being completed.”

Having spent countless hours of his youth at the old Wheat City and Manex arenas and finally the Keystone Centre, Hanlon went on to become one of the greatest goaltenders in Wheat Kings’ history, setting team records that still stand in both games and minutes played.

Now an assistant coach with the WHL’s Vancouver Giants, he returned to the Keystone Centre as a coach for the first time on Wednesday, although after visiting his parents earlier in the day, he said any nostalgia that he felt had very little to do with coaching here last night.

“There’s lots of things running through my mind that aren’t really related to hockey, to be quite honest with you,” he admitted.

A 14-year NHL veteran, Hanlon turned to coaching after retiring as a player, spending four years as the Washington Capitals’ head coach.

Hanlon also plied his trade around the world, including stints as the bench boss for the Belarusian and Slovakian national teams.

It’s an unlikely resume for an assistant coach in junior hockey —many of his peers have only dreamed of things Hanlon has already accomplished — but he said an incident when his son was eight years old made him see that it was time to put family above career advancement.

“I’d taken this job in Slovakia. We were all set to go, and my son just related to us that he was not too keen on going,” Hanlon said. “Normally people in our situation, that doesn’t happen at eight. It normally happens when they start to become 12, 13, teenagers and start getting into high school and things. I went anyway and this last year, there was no way I was going back.

“It’s interesting. My son started hockey — he was about 19 months when we had him on skates and geez he was a good little skater — and things were really great and once we started moving around, all of a sudden he said he hated hockey. He didn’t dislike it, he hated it. And the moment I came home, he started playing again. So sometimes our families suffer or we almost have a blind eye; we likely know what’s going on, but we always justify it somehow and this time there was no justifying it and it’s the best I’ve ever felt. I love what I’m doing.”

Hanlon, who began his NHL career with the Vancouver Canucks and lives near the Giants’ practice facility in Ladner, B.C., got wind that the WHL club was looking for an assistant and threw his hat in the ring. It took some doing to convince Giants’ owner Ron Toigo and head coach Don Hay that a former NHL bench boss really wanted to ride the bus as a WHL assistant, but it’s turned out to be an ideal fit all around.

“I don’t think I could really live without being in hockey because it’s my life and it’s my love and it’s my passion,” said Hanlon, who will take over head coaching duties while Hay is with Canada’s national junior team. “So being able to now balance family and hockey, it’s unbelievable.”

» rhenders@brandonsun.com