Inkerman Hound has Scouts Salivating

Slater Koekkoek left 'the Station' at 14 to play for Notre Dame. One lucky OHL team is about to draft him and bring him back closer to home, reports Don Campbell.

By Don Campbell, The Ottawa CitizenApril 29, 2010

Slater Koekkoek likes to tell the running joke out on the Prairie, in tiny Wilcox, Sask., the one about if your dog ever runs away, you can watch him run for three days straight.

By the same token, that would mean people in Wilcox could see the Ontario Hockey League general managers and scouts flocking to the rural community all winter from about the time their plane landed 41 kilometres north in Regina.

Koekkoek, who left home in Inkerman Station at 14 to chase his dream at the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame with the famed Hounds, was a one-man economic stimulus package this past winter in and around the town of 300 as OHL clubs broke travel budgets and wore a path to Wilcox to see first-hand just what everyone was talking about.

And when each scout came back and told his general manager what he had just witnessed, often the GM had to go see for himself. The scouts liked his 16 goals and 43 points in 44 regular-season games this year with the Hounds. They also like that he enjoys mixing it up.

OHL clubs took a final look-see last week in Levis, Que., watching Koekkoek (pronounced Coo-Coo) lead the Hounds to the national midget hockey championship, while capturing both tournament MVP honours and the award as top defenceman.

Saturday morning, one lucky OHL club, possibly even Belleville with the second pick in the OHL priority selection, will punch Koekkoek's name into the computer and bring him back closer to home.

Even if Belleville passes, the wait won't be long for the almost 6-3, 190-pound two-way defenceman.

"I will be honoured to get picked by any team," said Koekkoek, still basking in the afterglow of the national championship and ready to rise early Saturday to follow along on the Internet. "Any place in the (OHL) I've been to, I liked. I'm not sure what is going to happen. As a kid, I always went to 67's games and dreamed of playing for them, but that's likely not going to happen. I'm not 100-per-cent sure where I will end up."

Koekkoek's early selection also means that, for the second straight year, the best junior prospect in Eastern Ontario has not played his all-important minor midget year locally. Just like Alan Quine and Cody Ceci a year earlier (Quine was in Toronto and Ceci was in Peterborough), Koekkoek, who turned 16 in February, looked past the Ottawa District Minor Hockey Association.

The move worked out well, but Inkerman and the surrounding area, where going to Winchester is a trip into the city, remains a big part of Koekkoek.

In many ways, he is everything Paul Brandt sings about in the chorus of Small Towns and Big Dreams:

Cause that's where I come from

That's who I am

Hard workin' and God Blessed

Yes sir thank-you ma'am

The best things around that I have ever seen

Come from small towns and big dreams"

Koekkoek is all that.

His father, Brian, was too busy working the family farm to get anywhere in hockey and instead found a career with Hydro One. His mother, Karen, works as a registered nurse.

Canada Post might say the family lives in Mountain, but make no mistake, home is Inkerman, where Koekkoek grew up in the country and often walked a mile (or 1.6 kilometres) to the Inkerman Public School. Later, he took a bus to Nationview Public in Mountain and was always near the top of his class.

It doesn't take the bright lights of a big city to impress Koekkoek, and his new home town compares favourably to downtown Inkerman. "I'd say the two are quite similar," he said. "Wilcox has two stop signs -- that's it. And one paved road. And Wilcox just got a brand new restaurant, and that's big. The Wilcox Inn ... like a hotel and restaurant. Inkerman just has the town store. So there's not much going on either place ... but they're still great places to be."

Koekkoek grew up playing minor hockey with the Upper Canada Cyclones and the Rideau-St. Lawrence Kings. It was after playing bantam at minor-bantam age that it seemed hockey on the local front wasn't going to be everything he wanted.

That was the summer before AAA hockey came into Eastern Ontario and kept players tied to their respective districts, with no chance to transfer to more competitive programs.

So Koekkoek did some homework on his own and pegged Notre Dame as a possible destination. It helped that he had just played against Notre Dame's bantam team at a tournament in Hamilton.

"He had just finished Grade 8 and he told us, 'I'm going to (Notre Dame) and if you don't sign the papers, it means you are holding me back,' and that was just about it," Karen said. "We said to ourselves, 'If he's that adamant, we better see what this is all about.'"

Koekkoek narrowed his choices to either Notre Dame, or Sidney Crosby's prep school, Shattuck-St. Mary's in Minnesota, where Crosby spent 2002-03 before joining Rimouski in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Koekkoek and family were planning to visit both schools until he got to Notre Dame and made his decision virtually on the spot.

While the youngster was sold from the minute he got there, his mother wasn't so sure.

"There's really only one subdivision," Karen said. "It was quite a shock for me. I shook my head as we pulled away from Wilcox, not knowing if I could leave him there.

"They say 300 people live there and they all go to all the games. I think they all either work at the college or have something to do with the hockey club, but I didn't know what to think."

Fifty years earlier, Koekkoek's grandfather, Bill Sherwood, left Winchester to chase his junior hockey dream in first Brockville, then St. Catharines, only to return home. It doesn't appear the grandson will have to give up on his hockey dream and come home any time soon.

The move west gave Koekkoek a chance to play against older players. He played his first year at Notre Dame as a bantam, then moved up as a minor midget to midget, meaning he was competing against 16- and 17-years-olds. And while it's maybe not the wild, wild west in Saskatchewan arenas, Koekkoek was not playing the same brand of hockey he would have been in Ontario.

"The boys out west are big and he got to play a different game," Karen said. "And you don't get thrown out if you do fight. I'm not sure I was too happy about that part of it."

Her son, on the other hand, has thrived on it.

"I saw the team and saw how they looked, and I just made a decision to come out here and get the experience," Koekkoek said. "I had mixed feelings when I left, but I was so excited to get out here and get started. And once you meet the people, it's really something. All the guys out here are in the same situation and we all bonded. There's no time to be homesick."

dcampbell@thecitizen.canwest.com

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