Ready to reap their reward
Memorial Cup has farm flavour
Faceoffs, linematching and puck possession aren’t the ties that bind at the 98th Memorial Cup. It’s farming. Red Deer Rebels boss Brent Sutter still runs a cattle ranch, same as brothers Darryl and Brian. London’s Dale Hunter and his family have a huge operation in Ontario. Rouyn-Noranda skipper Gilles Bouchard grew up on a farm in Quebec and Brandon’s Kelly McCrimmon runs the “Wheat Kings,” for crying out loud.
“We talked about soybeans and wheat and canola,” Sutter said. “We had the whole she-bang going.”
This won’t only be a week and a half of premier major junior hockey puck-chasing.
It’s a bleeding agricultural showcase, too.
And how perfect an industry public relations boon is it that two of Canada’s most robust hockey families — the Sutters of Viking, Alta., and the Hunters of Oil Springs, Ont. — clash once more in the opener Friday at Red Deer’s Enmax Centrium?
Knights-Rebels is truly the Battle of the Barns.
And for two hard-working men raised to never surrender a square inch of valuable space to anyone else, Dale Hunter is willing to concede one advantage to Brent Sutter. Cattle ranchers work harder. “That’s year-round,” the Knights coach said. “For us (on the cash crop side), we’re off in the winter. For cattle, they’re still eating — and doing something else, too.”
Yes, breeding and making manure.
Sutter chose to praise the collective might of all the good folk who toil over God’s green earth.
“They’re both busy (cattle and cash cropper),” he said, “and neither one of them get enough credit. You wouldn’t have food on your table if it wasn’t for either one of them.”
That quote should definitely be on a bumper sticker for pickup trucks.
There are still plenty of Hunters and Sutters involved in hockey, but the entire dynamic has changed. There is a push for kids today to get that big-city experience with training, facilities and money to make it in the game rather than spending countless hours on a frozen pond or icy slough.
It’s the classic tug of war between new-age specialization and oldfashioned methods.
“We both grew up the same kind of way,” Dale Hunter said. “We played hockey, but we also had to do chores. When you get both going, you have a work ethic and that’s what Brent has.”
The Hunters and Sutters try to instil those values in their children — and by extension, their players.
“You’ve got to work and get your hands dirty (on a farm),” Brent Sutter said. “You’re working different hours. I guess everyone has a theory. If you’re working in the oil and gas industry, they’re going to talk about lots of comparisons. I know, deep down, the way the Hunter family was raised and I know the way the Sutter family was raised.
“I know the work ethic both families had to put in to strive and be successful in the farming and agriculture industry. It gets bred in you.”