Ex- NHLer Brule hopes to play in Olympics
Once a rising star in NHL, Brule now finds peace in seeing the world through sport
Gilbert Brule is staring out a taxi that’s motoring its way through the endless streets of Shanghai.
The night before, his Kunlun Red Star team had dropped a 2- 1 decision to Dynamo Riga in a KHL regular- season game. The day before that he’d enjoyed a relaxing 12- hour journey from Helsinki to Shanghai. The day before that, he was suiting up for Canada at the Karjala Cup in the Finnish capital, a gig that served as an audition for the Canadian Olympic team.
So you can excuse the kid from North Van, who’s now the 30- year- old man from North Van, if he’s reflecting on his situation these days; pondering the events that have brought him to the other side of the world where he’s playing hockey for Mike Keenan in Shanghai. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way for Brule. His career, which now takes him to places you can only find on a Risk board, was meant to be played as a star in the NHL.
But through it all — through the trials, tribulations and travel, lots and lots of travel — he’s made peace with what was and what might have been. Hockey has taken him to parts of the world he never would have seen. It’s enriched his life and his purpose. In the end, he’s used the game instead of letting the game use him.
All in all, that’s not a bad tradeoff. The little bit of Croatian he’s picked up along the way? That’s just a bonus.
“I’m looking out the window ( of the taxi) and I can’t believe I’m playing in China,” Brule says over the phone. “Coming over here humbled me quite a bit. I’ve played in some small towns people never heard of, but it’s helped me grow and learn about the world and myself.
“I’m trying not to overthink things, trying not to take it too seriously. I think that hurt me in the past. Just being able to travel to these places has been so much fun and I’ve met so many new people. It’s opened me up to a whole new world.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote there are no second acts in American life, but he didn’t say anything about a third or fourth act, which is where Brule now finds himself. Once mentioned in the same breath as Sidney Crosby, he’s morphed from wunderkind, to injury- plagued bust, to NHL journeyman, to itinerant KHLer.
But he might also be saving his best work for the last act. With the Winter Olympics set for Pyeong Chang in February, Brule has emerged as a serious candidate for the Canadian team coached by our old friend Willie Desjardins. At the Karjala Cup, which concluded on Sunday, Brule scored twice in the three games while playing on what amounted to Canada’s first line with Wojtek Woltski. True, Canada went a disappointing 1- 2, finishing fourth in the six- team tournament, but Brule was one of the bright spots on the team.
“Everything I heard back was positive ( from Desjardins and Canadian GM Sean Burke), but I don’t want to make any assumptions,” said Brule. “I’m just trying to think positive. But to be an Olympic athlete would be a lifechanging experience.”
And this is a subject on which he can speak with some authority.
Brule had burned through three NHL teams and the Zurich Lions when he, theoretically at least, retired from hockey in January of 2014. He’d come into the NHL as the sixth overall pick in the 2005 draft from the Vancouver Giants, a dazzling combination of skill and competitiveness before he ran into a series of injuries, personal setbacks that included a fractured relationship with his father and disappointments. At 28, he was regarded as one of the larger busts in recent draft history and his NHL career was thought to be over.
But his story was just beginning.
Brule would sign with Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg in the KHL, before spending two seasons in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. After a season with Nizhnekamsk, he started this campaign in Chelyabinsk where he was buried on the third line. At an early meeting with Kunlun, he began chatting with a couple of pals on Red Star, Woltski and Jesse Blacker, who advised that life in Shanghai with Keenan was pretty good.
Brule requested a trade. He was summarily dealt to Kunlun, which technically should be playing out of Beijing, where he’s produced nine goals and 22 points in 29 games this season.
“It all happened pretty fast,” Brule says.
“I like it here. It’s my first time in China and it’s a whole new world, but ( Shanghai) is amazing. There’s so much to do here. Ideally I’d like to spend a couple of years here, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”
No, given his circumstances, that’s a good policy. There will be one more Olympic trial for Brule at the Channel One Cup in Moscow in mid- December before his place on the Canadian team is decided. Beyond that, well, life as an import in the KHL comes with few guarantees.
Kunlun may be based in Shanghai again next year or they may move back to Beijing where a new home is in the plans. Keenan, who’s helped rejuvenate Brule’s career in the KHL, may stick around or he may be gone. Red Star has been plodding along at 12- 11- 7 despite a decent roster and, in a shocking development, it seems Keenan’s methods don’t always play well with his bosses in China.
But through his own long, strange trip, Brule has learned to keep the focus tight, to invest his energy in those things he can control. He has a job to do in Shanghai. If things go according to plan, he’ll have another job in South Korea in a few months. This much he knows.
The future, as always, will tell its own story.
“It’s been very cool playing hockey all over the world,” said Brule. “I’ve got a lot of air miles.”
And a little bit more out of the experience.