Obstacles couldn’t stop Derlago from living dream

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This article was published 14/09/2018 (2820 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mark Derlago was never given anything in his hockey career.

He was too small and his unusual skating stride meant he was never drafted into the Western Hockey League. And after a devastating injury nearly ended his career almost before it began, the Brandonite who would one day serve as captain of his hometown Wheat Kings found a way to overcome obstacles again.

“Those first couple of days in the hospital, everything is running through your head,” Derlago said of the days after he suffered a potentially career-ending injury. “The doctors aren’t going to lie to you; they can’t say you’ll be fine and everything’s good. They’ll tell you the worst that could happen just because that’s how they have to cover themselves. They’re not going to sugarcoat anything. Once I got out of there and started feeling kind of normal, I didn’t doubt that I would play hockey ever again. I knew I would.”

Now 32, Derlago has enjoyed a tremendous 12-year professional hockey career, with the last eight spent in Europe and Asia.

He started to skate around age two or three, something he thinks took place at a family gathering in Beulah, where his father Steve grew up.

Derlago came of age on the ice at the nearby Westridge Community Centre, heading over after school at nearby Linden Lanes with his older brothers. Jeff is six years older, and Trevor is three years older.

“I don’t remember too many battles,” Derlago said with a laugh. “Obviously there were but I was the little one all the time so I think I was the one getting picked on or beaten up. I don’t remember winning many battles.”

Derlago said his parents Steve, who passed away on Jan. 4, and his mother Arlene, always thought that trying to keep up with older kids left a mark on him.

“I had to get tough and keep up,” he said.

Around age five or six he began to play minor hockey, and said he’s still friends with those teammates, because once you start in an age group, teams seldom change too much. He could always score, and still can, but he had hurdles in front of a potential junior career.

“Bantam was when I started to realize that maybe I could play hockey in junior, and then you just go from there,” Derlago said. “Growing up I was always a little guy who was four inches smaller than all the guys. At that time it wasn’t a big man’s game but this guy is too small and probably 30 pounds too light and not a good skater. When you’re small, you have to be a good skater.”

The youngster was a student of the game, spending as much time as he could playing, watching and learning. Derlago attended a lot of Wheat Kings games as a youngster with his dad and brothers.

“They were it for me,” Derlago said. “You hear about John Tavares signing in Toronto and he always wanted to be a Maple Leaf. Maybe it was a better goal but I always wanted to be a Wheat King.

“At one point it was ‘There’s no way I’ll ever play for the Wheat Kings.’ It seemed pretty lofty. When you live in Brandon, you maybe put them on a pedestal a little bit and think that’s the top team there is.”

There was also a family connection.

Derlago’s uncle Billy is one of the finest players in franchise history, piling up 437 regular season points in 209 games, most of which came in a three-year stretch from 1975 to 1978. He went on to play 555 games in the National Hockey League.

“When I became a teenager I realized how big of a deal he was,” Derlago said. “I knew he was playing in the NHL when I was growing up but I didn’t really get a grasp of it because I never really saw him around too much. He was always busy with that, but I knew he was a big deal from hearing parents talking.

“I got nicknamed Billy at a pretty young age and my brother did too maybe.”

Even with those bloodlines, Derlago wasn’t selected in the 2001 Western Hockey League bantam draft. He had enjoyed a good season in bantam, but had no real expectations that he would be picked. No teams spoke to him in advance of the draft, which can be a pretty good indication.

Derlago watched teammates get drafted, but was philosophical about it.

“They say that for every draft, it’s really not the end of the world,” Derlago said. “I really believed that. It’s one day and you’re on a list. I think that winter I got listed by the Wheat Kings.”

Kelly McCrimmon, who was the team’s general manager at the time, gave him the news one day after practice. Derlago was shocked and very, very excited.

“It was a pretty happy day,” Derlago said. “I’ve never been drafted but I feel like it’s got to be something like that.”

Derlago finally hit his growth spurt in bantam — he now stands six feet tall and weighs around 200 pounds — and that put him on the fast track.

He didn’t make the club as a 16-year-old, instead tearing up the Manitoba AAA Midget Hockey League with the midget Wheat Kings, scoring 48 goals and earning 49 assists on a line with Brock Trotter and Joey Moggach.

Derlago made the Wheat Kings as a 17-year-old, even though he didn’t think he had a great camp. It was a message delivered to him by head coach Mike Kelly, but McCrimmon saw something in him.

He played 65 games, scoring eight goals and adding 20 assists, in the 2003-04 season and won the team’s rookie of the year honour.

“You’re in a bit of awe once you’re in the dressing room with these guys who just last year you were pretty big fans of,” Derlago said. “They’re only a year older but Ryan Stone and Eric Fehr and Lance Monych and these guys … I’m pretty quiet starting out in the dressing room with them. Once the year went on, you’re teammates with them and you get comfortable with them. It was a pretty solid year.”

Derlago said the team’s leaders did a tremendous job of helping him along as he adjusted to a bigger, faster, stronger brand of the game.

More was expected of him in his 18-year-old season, but it wasn’t to be.

In Brandon’s last pre-season game, there was a scrum in Brandon’s end in the second period and he had his head down by the boards. He was hit by Regina Pats forward Jordan McGillivray — who was assessed a major and a three-game suspension — and Derlago next remembers lying on the ice.

“I didn’t think anything of it too much,” Derlago said. “I knew something was wrong: I couldn’t move my neck side to side.”

Wheat Kings trainer Rob Stouffer quickly gave Derlago a bunch of tests and when everything was good, the teenager got up and skated off the ice. When he still couldn’t move his neck, Stouffer braced it and took him to the hospital.

They did a quick X-ray, braced him down in a bed and then airlifted him to Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre later that night with a halo neck brace on.

“I remember that airplane ride was the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever been part of,” he said.

Derlago still has the scars from where the bolts were screwed in as he wore the brace for the next 10 weeks.

He was in Winnipeg for four days with weights hanging off the back of his neck to try and line things up. Derlago had broken the C2 vertebrae in his neck, which is considered among the worst spinal cord injuries.

“I remember getting the halo off was probably one of the better days of my life,” he chuckles. “I could feel normal again.”

After his time in the halo, he wore a soft neck brace for several weeks, which he would ease on and off to get some movement. Stouffer worked with him every day to strengthen the muscles.

Derlago started practising a little bit in February or March in non-contact flow drills.

“It’s funny how excited you get just to go do a silly drill when you haven’t skated or think you might be done hockey,” Derlago said.

That June, he was cleared for everything, and his hockey career was back on track.

“I remember even playing ball that summer was kind of a test for me,” Derlago said. “Things that were kind of unexpected, when you would snap your neck around or just sliding head first were all good tests I thought for physical activity.

“The summer hockey was another test. I was pretty tentative going in early but after the initial couple of skates and contact, you kind of drive it out of your head and just play. I think I did that pretty well, driving it out of my head and realizing that everything would be fine.”

Derlago said he had a tremendous training camp and was just happy to be back around the game again. If he had any jitters left in the season opener, he got them out pretty quickly.

In a rough game against the Pats in which the teams combined for 170 minutes of penalties, Derlago got hit early and then ended up in a fight.

“It was like ‘OK, I’m back,” he said, laughing. “It was a good feeling to test it that first game.”

He certainly returned with a bang in the 2005-06 season, with 28 goals and 25 assists in 72 games. He admits there was a brief period where he had to overcome his fear.

In his overage year, Derlago was named captain in January 2007 after Teegan Moore was dealt to the Portland Winterhawks for Rob Klinkhammer.

“It’s not a goal to be a captain of a team — I just wanted to play for the team — but to wear a C on your hometown jersey was a huge honour and something I’ll always have,” Derlago said. “I just really appreciate the Wheat Kings and obviously Kelly McCrimmon for giving me the chance to wear that. It’s something I’m pretty proud of forever.”

Playing with Codey Burki and Juraj Simek to start the year, Derlago later skated with Andrew Clark and Ryan Reaves and scored a league-leading 46 times and added 35 assists in 72 games. In fact, after the injury, Derlago played 144 regular season games in a row.

His junior days ended when the Wheat Kings lost to the Calgary Hitmen in Game 6 of the 2007 Eastern Conference semifinals.

“It was tough because you know your junior career is over and you’re not a Wheat King anymore,” Derlago said. “I think I said at the time that I had been a Wheat King since novice 8 hockey. It was tough to leave that rink knowing it’s not in the next chapter, but it was also an exciting time seeing what would come next. It was bittersweet, exciting yet sad at the same time.”

He would move on to the Bakersfield Condors of the ECHL for the 2007-08 season — where he played with former Wheat Kings Tim Konsorada, Steven Later, Reagan Leslie and Jamie Hodson — and also played four games with the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League.

Derlago spent four seasons in the North American minors before heading to Germany in the 2011-12 season. He’s since played in South Korea, Denmark, Japan and the United Kingdom.

“I had four really solid years in the East Coast league and never really got that full-time job in the American league, which was a goal of mine at that time,” Derlago said. “It was time to go and try Europe and make a career over there. It’s obviously a very different career and very different lifestyle. Taking your family over there is a big decision. We just found the right fit. We had friends on a team and went for it.”

It’s an adventure he’s shared with his wife Jenna, who he married two weeks before they moved to Germany. They have two children, four-year-old Emery and one-year-old Finn.

This year he returned to the Esbjerg Energy, a team he last played for in the 2014-15 season.

“I don’t know how many years I have left now,” Derlago said. “We’re kind of year to year now. I try to say it’s my last year but my wife wants (me) to keep playing.”

Derlago laughs after he says that, adding that he still loves the game and enjoys getting in great shape. He said the biggest change is the increasing speed of the game but deadpans “You can’t lose your legs if you never had them.”

He’s starting to plan for the next thing, and hopes his career in the game will last after his playing days end.

“I’ve kind of dedicated my life to it and I wouldn’t want to just leave it,” he said. “I’ll make some phone calls this year and try to get involved somehow. I don’t what aspect but I definitely want to keep it part of my life. That will hopefully be the next step somewhere.”

Like all great journeys, it began with those first steps, in this case on the ice in Beulah, and years later in the Keystone Centre. Derlago remains grateful to the Wheat Kings and the opportunities he had with the gold sheaf across the chest of his jersey.

“I was always told too small and too slow and I would never make junior,” he said. “To have that come true and captain your hometown team is, I would say, a dream come true. Those are memories I look back on and just smile because they were probably the best days of your hockey-playing career.”

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