Life in Two Worlds by Ted Nolan

Author:Ted Nolan [Nolan, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

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There were a lot of great times during those three Memorial Cup runs with the Greyhounds. But maybe my favourite happened not during our eventual win but in our third game in Seattle the previous year, when a penalty-killing goal won the game for us. And not because it was the winning goal, but because of who scored it: Rick Kowalsky.

Rick, a right winger, had been a thirteenth- or fourteenth-round draft pick for the Hounds a few years earlier. He started out the first year on our farm team. The management wasn’t convinced of his potential, but I just loved his attitude. He was a guy who played with passion and all-out effort. In his second year, we brought him up, and he got better and better, but he still wasn’t our star player. In Rick’s third year on the team, we were having a management meeting and I said I wanted to appoint him as team captain. Someone dropped a glass on the floor—everyone looked shocked. Finally, one of the scouts said what everyone was obviously thinking: Rick wasn’t good enough. But the scout hadn’t seen what I’d seen. He hadn’t seen how Rick supported the rest of the players, how he went out of his way to help those who were struggling, how he had been there for Chris Simon, even in the toughest times. Rick was a player with heart. A player who understood that a team was a family, and when a family member gets in trouble, you’re going to be there for them. In other words, Rick was the kind of guy who knew intuitively how to lead.

I made him captain.

To this day, Rick is one of the best team captains I’ve ever seen. And certainly during the 1991–92 season, he became an important member of the team. But in our 1992 Memorial Cup run, Rick finally had a moment to really shine. He scored the deciding goal in each of our first three wins, including a penalty-killing breakaway that gave us the by into the finals. When Rick scored that goal, I was screaming with joy for our team, but also for Rick. He got the glory he deserved.

Rick would spend just one more year in the OHL. The 1993–94 season would mark the beginning of an eleven-season stretch in the minors. As a player, he was never quite able to break into the NHL, but he ended up with a long and continuing coaching career in the minors and for three seasons with the New Jersey Devils.

Perhaps one of the reasons the memory of Rick’s performance is so special to me is that as the years have unfolded, I have seen an interesting parallel in our careers. Rick might have started out as a player, but that seemed to be only a way station for him, the starting point on the route to his true calling. Coaching was what he was meant to do. Rick eventually found a real home behind the bench.

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