Adult meeting with Hawerchuk was special

Jets legend passed away too soon at age 57

Dale Hawerchuk on a Jets all-time all-star team poster.

    I admit I had a misplaced fear that my adult meeting with Dale Hawerchuk wouldn’t go well.
    Way back when Hawerchuk was skating through his rookie season with the Winnipeg Jets in the 1981-82 season, I first met Hawerchuk at an autograph session that was held at the Athletes World sports store in Winnipeg. At the time, I was five-years-old, and I can’t remember anything about that meeting except for vivid memories of being inside that sports store.

    I received an autograph wood mini stick, which I still have to this day.

    Throughout most of the 1980s, my family lived in Winnipeg outside of one-year move to Regina for the 1982-83 school year and a two-year move to Edmonton starting in the summer of 1989.

    Due to being located in Winnipeg, Hawerchuk was my favourite NHL player, and he was the first athlete hero I had during my childhood years.
    I had the opportunity to see numerous Jets games in my youth, and I have lots of good memories watching Hawerchuk live in action.

A Dale Hawerchuk card from 1989.

    As I grew up, I continued to keep tabs on Hawerchuk’s playing career including his days with the Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues and Philadelphia Flyers. I kept tabs on his life after his playing days were finished.

    It was cool to see him have a number of good seasons as the head coach and director of hockey operations for the OHL’s Barrie Colts over nine campaigns starting in 2010 and running through to 2019.

    He took a leave up absence from the Colts to battle stomach cancer before the start of the 2019-20 season. Hawerchuk was given a clean bill a health in April, but the stomach cancer returned and he passed away from his battle with the disease last Tuesday.

    On Dec. 2, 2006, I got to interview Hawerchuk for a story in the Medicine Hat News. He was in town for an oldtimers’ game that was played at the Kinplex.

    At the time, I was in my best years working as a sports reporter for the News, and the outlet’s sports department was really kick butt. That was a time where I was in really good spirits.

    Leading up to the interview, I had talked to a few friends who mentioned they had disappointing experiences when as adults they met their sports heroes they looked up to as children.
    Before I headed out to the Kinplex to see Hawerchuk that day, one thought that ran through my head was, “Please don’t let this encounter suck.”

    During that game, Hawerchuk made some fancy plays. You could tell that at one time he did play hockey at its highest level.

A Dale Hawerchuk rookie card.

    Right when the game ended, I happened to be in the hallway where the players came off the ice.

    When Hawerchuk came off the ice, I think he might he might have thought he should have known me from somewhere. He actually immediately came over to shake my hand and went out of his way to be personable.

    The next part of the ice breaker was mentioning I lived in Winnipeg through most of the 1980s. Hawerchuk went on and on talking about city and how fond he was of it.

    It was crazy how much he knew about the city. He knew about the neighbourhood I lived, and talked about some of the businesses he had shopped at in my neighbourhood.

    He mentioned how cool it was that no matter where he went on the oldtimers’ circuit he always met people who lived in Winnipeg and always got to see Jets fans.

    I told him I wanted to interview him for the paper, and I said I had some time and that he could shower up first if he wanted to. As there wasn’t a Sunday edition of the paper to file for, I was hoping to do the interview in a more relaxed setting.
    Hawerchuk showered up and gave me all the time that I needed. I remember the interview went great. Actually, it was just an overall great visit.

    When that interview happened, the first version of the Jets had moved out of Winnipeg 10 years previous and the current version of the Jets were still another five years off from moving to the Manitoba capital from Atlanta, Georgia.

A Dale Hawerchuk card from 1987.

    Naturally, Hawerchuk campaigned that Winnipeg is a great hockey town and the NHL needed to back there.

    When the visit wrapped up, I got him to sign my poster of the Winnipeg Jets all-time all-stars.

    That visit helped to restore the childhood faith in the hockey hero. Hawerchuk lived up to the hero expectations.

    Over the years leading up to that visit, I met people in hockey and outside of the sports who knew Hawerchuk. All of them said he was a genuinely nice person, and he was a real quiet guy too.

    He was the superstar who enjoyed being out of the spotlight and his downtime, but he always wanted to be good and genuine.

    On the ice, the fact that Hawerchuk was a key member in helping the QMJHL’s Cornwall Royals win Memorial Cup titles in 1980 and 1981 as major junior hockey champions or that he played in 1,188 regular season games piling up 518 goals, 891 assists for 1,409 points are a small part of his story.

    The same goes with Hawerchuk playing for Canada and winning the draw that allowed Wayne Gretzky to set up Mario Lemieux for the goal that won the 1987 Canada Cup tournament in the final two minutes of the event’s deciding game.

    The outpouring of tributes that have poured in for him over the past week showed the 57 years he lived on this world were meaningful ones.
    Many sympathies were passed on to Hawerchuk’s wife, Crystal, the couple’s children in sons Eric and Ben and daughter Alexis.

A display of Dale Hawerchuk memorabilia.

    Even if you just had one memorable visit with Hawerchuk, you realized the world just lost one of its great good guys.

    That fact he had a positive influence on so many lives should definitely be celebrated.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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