Hockey career stretches into work life for Day

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This article was published 24/02/2020 (2231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Riley Day knows what his time with the Brandon Wheat Kings meant to him then, and he knows what it means to him now.

The 34-year-old local business owner is grateful for all the ways his time with the Western Hockey League club have helped him since the season and a half he spent with the club in 2005 to 2006.

“I was fortunate enough to be a person who got to play for my hometown team with my friends and family watching,” Day said. “I was very lucky to have the opportunities I did, whether it was playing junior or this business. I’m very fortunate to be in the situation I’m in today because of friends, family, the community taking you in whether it was from being with the Wheat Kings or using that a bit in business where when you got to the door and people knew who you are, and that turns a cold call into a warm call.

“I’m fortunate for what I have today because of those leaps and steps and the situations I’ve had from playing with the Wheat Kings.”

Day, who was born and raised in Brandon, started to skate around age five, often at the nearby Westridge Community Centre in the southwest corner of the city.

He started playing hockey soon after.

“I really fell in love with the game at a young age,” Day said.

Naturally, he had the full support of parents Bob and Heather, who were always there to give him rides and watch games despite their own busy lives.

“It’s not easy putting kids through hockey nowadays with the costs of equipment,” Day said. “It’s nice now to see that and know what it takes. They were always there for me whether it was driving to the rink in the middle of nowhere or Regina to a weekend hockey tournament. There was always one of them there.”

His father also coached him for a couple of years.

Day, who has two younger brothers, Spencer and Kolby, always played on local rep teams growing up, and didn’t skate at the AA level until he was in bantam, when he was one of just three first-year players that made the team. A growth spurt in peewee certainly helped.

“I was a foot taller than everyone,” Day said with a laugh. “Things got competitive at 14 in my first year of bantam.”

Day had another change that year as well, shifting from forward back to defence.

Growing up in a Western Hockey League city, he definitely had an awareness of the WHL and the Wheat Kings, but admits he didn’t know much else.

That changed quickly after he was selected 38th overall by the Medicine Hat Tigers in 2000, the same year the Wheat Kings picked his future Brandon teammates Eric Fehr and Ryan Stone.

“You don’t really understand what goes into it, the dedication it takes just to be in the league or what all it entails,” Day said. “After my 14-year-old year and getting drafted and spending my year out at camp, and really getting to know what it takes and what the league is really about, whether it’s the coaching staff or the rink or the living arrangements, that all got drilled into my mind.”

He also had to face the prospect of moving away from Brandon.

“I was really excited but really nervous about leaving home,” Day said. “I was a bit of a home body growing up and love being at home but I was really excited for the experience and go do something most people don’t get a chance to do.”

Day made his WHL debut in Moose Jaw against the Warriors on Feb. 25, 2001 as a 15-year-old on a pairing with future longtime National Hockey League player Jay Bouwmeester. Day didn’t make the Tigers as a 16-year-old in the 2001-02 season — he did appear in three WHL games — spending the majority of the year with the under-18 Wheat Kings instead.

But Day did earn a spot as a 17-year-old in the 2002-03 season, playing 70 games on a Medicine Hat team that went 29-34-2-7 and lost in the conference semifinals in the playoffs.

He admitted that rookie season wasn’t easy, at least initially. It helped that his billet family — a former hockey player who served as a police officer, his wife and their two young children — made him feel comfortable after his parents returned to Brandon.

“They helped me adapt to things as best as I could,” Day said. “You’re homesick obviously. Anyone who says they aren’t homesick is lying to you because you’re at home for the first 15 years of your life and you leave your friends and your family behind. But after a handful of games you start getting comfortable and make new friends on the team. You adapt to what you’re doing, that’s your new home.”

On the ice, Day played alongside future NHLer Cam Barker, who was also a rookie. But on and off the ice, he was especially helped by overage captain Ben Thomson, who ensured the young players were included in everything, and assistant coach Doug Lidster, who looked after the blue-line.

“That first year was such a blur,” Day said. “You’re so excited to play every game and so excited to be there and get to play in front of a big crowd every night and you get to have fun. You get to do what you love every day.”

It was a feeling he shared with a lot of his teammates.

“We had such a young team that we all worked together,” Day said. “We worked as a unit and helped each other and really bought into being a brotherhood. With how tight that team was that year, moving into the following year was the reason why we won.”

The Tigers, which included Chris St. Jacques, Darren Reid, Clarke McArthur, Stefan Meyer and Ryan Hollweg, went 40-20-9-3 in the 2003-04 season, the second best record in the league. The Tigers beat the Swift Current Broncos, Brandon, the Red Deer Rebels and the expansion Everett Silvertips to win the league title, losing just four games along the way in the playoffs.

After posting 19 points and 134 penalty minutes in his rookie season, Day played 61 games in his second season in a slightly reduced role after Medicine Hat brought in more blue-liners.

He earned four points and 154 penalty minutes.

“You have to accept the role that you’ve been given and accept the time that you have and make the best you can of it,” Day said. “That’s what a lot of guys on the team got. They just bought in and understood what the end goal was.”

He said the team’s success came from its ability to rely on its entire lineup.

Late in the fourth game of their sweep in the league final on May 5, 2004, with the Tigers up 4-2 on the Silvertips, Day asked an assistant coach if he could run to the dressing room. He returned with his camera, and took it out on the ice as the Tigers celebrated their WHL title.

“It’s a crazy feeling and one that I’ll always remember,” Day said.

It didn’t go as well in the Memorial Cup, where the Tigers went 1-2 and lost in the semifinal of an event won by the host Kelowna Rockets.

“The level of pressure on a young kid goes to a whole new level,” Day said. “You don’t want to make a mistake because you know you’re on national television and you know your friends and family are watching at home. You don’t want to do anything wrong.”

Day’s 19-year-old season would be one of upheaval.

On Nov. 28, 2004, the Tigers were visiting Vancouver and Day was checked by a Giants player. He didn’t feel right after the hit but didn’t discover until he received an MRI that he had a three-inch laceration of his kidney, a potentially life-threatening issue if not dealt with correctly.

“Being away from the rink and not being around the guys was probably the hardest thing for me,” said Day, who returned to Brandon to recuperate. He wasn’t allowed to raise his blood pressure, so his activity was extremely limited as he recovered.

Day wasn’t close to returning to the ice — in fact he was still in Brandon — when a second bomb dropped on his 19-year-old season on Jan. 5, 2005.

“The general manager (Mike Moore) phoned me and said I have some good news and some bad news,” Day said. “The bad news is that you’ve been traded. The good news is that you’re staying home.”

The Wheat Kings sent the rights to Medicine Hat product Kevin Undershute and a fourth-round pick in the 2006 draft for Day. (The Tigers selected goalie Jeffery Pelletier, who never played in the league.)

Wheat Kings general manager Kelly McCrimmon called Day soon after to reassure him that he wouldn’t be rushed into the lineup.

“The patience they had with me during that time helped me,” Day said. “I had the best doctors, training staff, getting back into the gym, getting back skating again, that whole process was first class.”

He had assistant coaches Brad Wells and Dwayne Gylywoychuk working with him, as did local fitness guru Jim Frederickson.

“It was one of the worst times you can have as a hockey player going through that process but one of the best times being traded and coming home,” Day said. “You get to be at home every night and play with your friends and play in front of your family every night.”

Still, his actual on-ice debut would have to wait. An impatient Day would visit McCrimmon’s office telling him he was ready to play, but until the doctor signed off on his return, it wasn’t going to happen.

The big day finally came on Feb. 23, 2005 in a 7-3 victory over the visiting Regina Pats. Day said it wasn’t difficult to begin anew at home.

“I had played in the league for long enough that I understood what the pressure was like,” Day said. “I had experienced a championship, I had experienced the pressure at the Memorial Cup at a national level so coming home, I didn’t feel that … I just knew that I get to play in front of my friends and family and see them every night so I always really excited to go out and play. That might have elevated my game a little bit.”

It undeniably didn’t hurt that he was joining a Brandon team with Fehr, Stone, Lance Monych, Tim Konsorada and goaltender Tyler Plante. The Wheat Kings went 45-21-5-1 and beat the Moose Jaw Warriors, Calgary Hitmen and Prince Albert Raiders en route to a matchup in the finals against Kelowna that Brandon would lose in five games.

“I was fortunate to play with some really gifted players and be a big part of what happened that year,” Day said.

In the regular season, Day played 21 games with Medicine Hat and 13 with Brandon, accumulating 10 points and 70 penalty minutes. He played 23 games with Brandon in the playoffs, earning eight assists and 37 more minutes in the sin bin.

He returned for his overage season in 2005-06, with the added responsibility of wearing an “A” as an alternate captain.

Part of the six-foot-three, 220-pound defenceman’s role was protecting his teammates, a role he admits didn’t come naturally.

“I was never a really rough kid growing up,” Day said. “I was a bigger kid than everyone else but never fought on the ice until my first year of junior. With that being said, I accepted that role going into my second year and being that part of the puzzle as a tough, hard-to-play-against guy who was reliable and could fight and stick up for his teammates. That resonated through the rest of the career, where that’s what I did.

“I loved being the agitator that I was and loved being the guy that no one wanted to play against.”

In 61 games that year, Day scored six goals and added 19 assists while posting a career-high 191 penalty minutes. He admitted the leadership role was new to him, because every team he had played with before had gifted leaders and it wasn’t expected of him.

“I embraced it as much as I could, but looking back now, I didn’t really understand what it took to be that person,” Day said. “The team that year was full of young kids, and I got more minutes because I was an older guy, buy my role was still to take care of those younger kids and make sure they were comfortable playing every night.”

After finishing 30-32-6-4, the Wheat Kings were ousted in the quarterfinals by the Moose Jaw Warriors, with Day’s final game a 5-0 defeat on April 4, 2006 in Brandon.

“I remember standing on the ice — I was the last guy on the ice — knowing that’s it,” Day said. “So what’s your next step? What’s going to happen next year? There are always a million what-ifs in your mind and it’s heartbreaking. You know you can’t come back and be a junior hockey player anymore. Reality set in for me knowing I might have to start a new life or a real life.”

Day’s future was mapped out pretty quickly when he signed with the ECHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones. He spent 14 games with them and was dealt to the Fresno Falcons, earning five points and 152 penalty minutes in 50 games with the two clubs.

He said it was an eye-opening experience, playing with some much older guys and starting over without his parents or billets to lend a hand.

Day met some great people and enjoyed his time in pro hockey as older players showed him the ropes. After that season he signed for another year, but ultimately decided it was time to move on.

“It was a reality check that some of the older guys on the team were 35 or 40 and still doing it and in the spot where I was at 20,” Day said. “That wasn’t what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. It was a big choice for me to say I was going got be done and quit but there’s a right time for everybody in their life.”

Day, who is now the father of two girls, Kooper, 8, and Komrie, 2, spent a year at Brandon University studying business, with the thought that he could still go back to hockey if he wanted. Instead, he went into business with his brother Spencer, starting a sanitation company called Busy Bee Sanitary Supplies in 2009.

They started a mats and uniforms division in 2012 and have also begun a fire protection division in the newly named Progressive Sanitation, which is located at 372 Park Ave. E.

“We’ve grown from just being my brother and myself on staff 10 or 11 years ago to about 30 full-time people now,” Day said. “I still learn every day. It’s a whirlwind. I wouldn’t be here without my brother, he’s a good partner. We have such good staff. It’s like having a different family, it’s a tight-knit group.

“It’s really good people here.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson