Alumni Check In: Stories with Dan Hodgson

“The year we won the cup, we were playing in Prince Albert, and Wendel was out there running around like Wendel can, and nobody really wanted to go against him that night because you could see he was kind of hotter than usual. So I ended up running into him behind their net, and I was captain of the team. So I thought, ‘Well, what the hell? Just to do it just because somebody should.’ So he and I ended up getting into it, fighting, of all people, me and Wendel, behind the net, and we ended up laughing about that during the World Juniors.”

When asked who won the scrap, Hodgson replied with a laugh, “He was pretty strong, let me put it to you like that.”

I also asked Hodgson which captaincy meant more to him, Team Canada or the Prince Albert Raiders. He said that both are special in their own right.

“They both pretty much for me hold it the same weight for different reasons. Those three years that I spent in Prince Albert, going from last to middle of the road to the top of the mountain and how we did it and how we climbed, for me to be there and to turn into the leader really, really meant a lot to me. And then with Team Canada, of course, the same year, to wear that ‘C’, anytime you put on a Canadian jersey, of course, it’s special. Then to be a captain of the whole team, that’s another feeling.”

That isn’t the only story from the World Juniors Hodgson shared.

Hodgson holds the unique distinction of being the only man to captain both Team Canada at the World Juniors and his regular team to a Memorial Cup Championship in the same year. Hodgson had 5G-2A-7P in seven games at the World Juniors, two more points than the aforementioned Wendel Clark, but his poise as a leader had a minor slip-up when raising the championship.

While on the air with CBC, Hodgson let out an F-bomb live on national TV that his teammates, like Raiders General Manager Curtis Hunt, still have a laugh about to this day. Hodgson explained how it happened.

“Jeff Jackson, who’s now the president of the Oilers, was behind me with a Coca-Cola, and I was just getting bestowed with all the praise, and just as I was about to say thank you, [Jackson] poured the Coca-Cola on my head, which caught me off guard. Then I said, ‘thank you, f***!’. The F-bomb came out. The ‘thank you’ was for the congratulations on winning, and then the F-bomb was for the Coca-Cola hitting my head. So it was a kind of a double-edged sword there, but if you heard as many F-bombs as I heard in Prince Albert under Terry Simpson, I think you’d understand.”

Of course, we couldn’t tell Dan Hodgson stories without getting into some stories including Terry Simpson. During his jersey retirement speech, Hodgson called Simpson a ‘father figure’ during his time in Prince Albert, and despite some tough lessons along the way Hodgson has nothing but respect and fond memories of his time playing under Simpson.

Not only did Hodgson captain Canada to World Junior gold and the Raiders to a Memorial Cup in the same year, but he did it with Simpson as his head coach during both tournaments. During the tournament, Hodgson said that the usual Terry Simpson he saw in Prince Albert was a little different coaching Canada.

“There was a little bit of a shift, I think, because there always has to be. You don’t know everybody as well as you do on your own club team in Prince Albert. He’s got different coaches with him, too, from the Quebec League and Ontario League. It was a little bit different, but it was still Simso at the end of the day, how he ran the team, the structure and what he wanted, and running it with a firm grip. I think that’s one of his biggest traits that he always had, how he ran the team. Very firm and everybody knew exactly what they’re supposed to be doing, and if you fell out of line any which way, he’d be there to straighten it out.”

While Simpson was a father figure to Hodgson while in Prince Albert, there was someone else in Prince Albert who was that mother figure to him. That was Lila Henry, the mother of former Saskatoon Blade and New York Islander Dale Henry, from here in Prince Albert.

Hodgson had supportive parents before coming to Prince Albert, they even lived separately at one point, so one could support the family in Fort Vermillion while the other moved with Hodgson to Edmonton during his bantam hockey years. All that said, Hodgson spent his years growing from a young boy into a man in Prince Albert, and the influence of the Henry family was important to him in those years.

“I really had a great relationship with the Henry family. Of course, playing against Dale, and then in the summer times when Dale was back home in Prince Albert, back from Saskatoon, we would end up golfing quite a bit together and thus became great friends away from the rink. I spent a lot of time down at Dale’s place with Lila, even when he wasn’t around, I’d show up and if Dale wasn’t around back then, no cell phones you know, so I would just show up and so he wasn’t around, so I would just hang out with her and shoot the s*** a little bit and talk about this and that. She always was so nice, she would always give me a good tuning in if she thought something was up for this or that, and I really appreciated that, and I really appreciated our time together for sure.”

Two years since his #16 was raised to the rafters and 31 years after his playing time as a Raider had ended, Hodgson still has a lot of love for the city and rink that he helped make a legend. With so many teams moving into bigger centres, Hodgson was happy to have his jersey retirement happen in the Art Hauser Centre.

He still remembers the first time he set foot in the old Communiplex to cheer on the Raiders before his career even started.

“I really, I love that rink. I always did from the first time I set foot in it, watching the Raiders when they were on their way to winning their last Centennial Cup, I was in there to watch, and that was my first taste of it and the first taste of how the fans were and how much they loved the team. That really gave me a good feeling coming in there, knowing that if we gave it our all, they’d seen that we were, that they would be fully behind us. It’s such a great rink, back then it was the Communiplex, and anytime we would say the name the Communiplex around the league to other players on other teams and stuff, they always had a story involved with it, which kind of made us feel good as players, because nobody really liked coming to Prince Albert, especially in the middle of November or early January when it’s minus 30 and they knew they were in for a rough night. All I have is great memories out of that rink. It was the perfect size and Prince Albert was the perfect place for me at that time.”

While the stats and the stories are more than enough to solidify the legend of Dan Hodgson, I can say that after getting a chance to talk to him I understand the legend even more. There are so many more stories to tell from our half-hour conversation, but we can save those for another day.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com

by Nick Nielsen

Alumni Check In: Stories with Dan Hodgson

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