Huskies’ Off the Leash Luncheon returns

The University of Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey team held its annual Off the Leash Luncheon on Thursday at Prairieland Park.

After being unable to hold the event last year due to COVID-19, the luncheon was back for its 12th edition, this time featuring Huskies head coach Mike Babcock and four-time Stanley Cup champion Ken Holland.

The two-hour event had hundreds of people in attendance as Babcock and Holland shared stories of their successes and lesser-known adventures.

Holland revealed he nearly became a vacuum salesman instead of a leading hockey executive in the National Hockey League.

With his playing days coming to an end, Holland wasn’t left with many career options as he needed to provide for his young family. His mother answered an advertisement in the local Vernon newspaper and had Holland all set up to sell vacuums — even lining up his first few sales.

Luckily, Holland got a call offering him a job as a scout for the Detroit Red Wings, for whom he would work for more than 30 years.

“Obviously Ken Holland and I are friends for a long time. We did a lot of winning together. It was really good of him when I called him to come do this for us,” Babcock said following the lunch. “Obviously, I didn’t want to be up there by myself as the coach.”

Babcock touched on a few of his coaching highlights throughout the years, which included a player-coaching role for the Whitley Warriors in England in 1987.

He revealed his secret to success was getting the players to agree to going out for late nights on Sundays after important weekend games rather than before or during the weekend.

Shannon Chinn, the university’s new chief athletics officer, was floored at the reception and turnout, not knowing what to expect with COVID still making planning uncertain leading up to Thursday’s lunch.

“I’m absolutely blown away actually being here today and seeing what the actual production is and how much goes into it. It’s a phenomenal event,” she said.

With most university athletics programs being decimated by COVID, Chinn couldn’t overstate how important it is to see events like the Off the Leash Luncheon make a return.

“These are the types of things we need to do to support our student-athletes,” she said. “Financially it was hard, we lost a lot of staff in the meantime, but I think the hardest part was for our coaches and our student-athletes to have a whole year of no competition.”

Babcock bluntly said fundraising events not only keep the team on the ice, but they also keep the No. 2-ranked Huskies competing for national championships.

“Without the partnership we have with the business community, hockey Huskies doesn’t go,” he said. “That’s how important it is.”

Former Chicago Blackhawks player Patrick Sharp was advertised as the luncheon guest in the months leading up to Thursday, but he wasn’t in attendance, forcing Holland to fill in.

Sharp is a former teammate of Kyle Beach and was a member of the 2010 Blackhawks team that was fined $2 million last week by the NHL after Beach confronted the team about an alleged sexual assault by former video coach Brad Aldrich.

Aldrich’s name was removed from the Stanley Cup on Wednesday.