Undrafted Pokey Reddick worked his way up to the big leagues

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/02/2022 (1297 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A weekly series in honour of Black History Month, Taylor Allen highlights incredible accomplishments made by Black athletes and coaches in Manitoba.

Eldon (Pokey) Reddick remembers sitting in the crowd at the Winnipeg Arena envisioning what it’d be like to stand between the pipes at the NHL level.

Reddick, who played for four different WHL teams before wrapping up his junior career with the Brandon Wheat Kings, took in a Winnipeg Jets game on Maroons Road the night before he faced shots from the city’s old junior team, the Winnipeg Warriors.

“I think it was the year Dale Hawerchuk got drafted. I remember thinking ‘Man, if I could make it to this, this would be the top of the hill. This is the crème de la crème,’” Reddick, now 57 and living in Las Vegas, told the Free Press.

Despite going undrafted, Reddick still found a way to make it. Reddick went from admiring Hawerchuk to playing behind him as the Jets offered the Halifax-born, Toronto-raised goaltender his first NHL contract.

But Reddick’s first day in the big leagues certainly didn’t feel like the crème de la crème.

“The first time I went to training camp, I was trying to get into the rink and I couldn’t get in… The security guard wasn’t going to let me in no matter what I said or who I was,” said Reddick, one of only two Black goalies in the NHL at the time, with Edmonton Oilers netminder Grant Fuhr being the other.

“People would say ‘Oh, you were just too young’ and I know that’s not the real reason, but it is what it is. You had to pass the security guard to go down the steps and around to the locker room and I couldn’t get in. So I said, ‘Do me a favour sir. Can you call (general manager) John Ferguson and he can come and vouch for me? I’m not here looking for an autograph, I’m here trying to try out.’ So, Ferguson ran down and lit the guy up. You don’t even want to know the words he used.”

Reddick didn’t want to go into detail, but situations like this were a common occurrence throughout his career. Unless a teammate was around to see Reddick get mistreated, no one would ever hear about it.

“Sometimes you just have to carry them within. Back in the day, you had enough issues trying to stay in the league, nevermind bringing all of this to the forefront,” Reddick said.

“… Anytime I went somewhere it was tough, unless I went with the guys… If the bus left at 5:30, I liked to go at 4:30, but I knew that wasn’t going to work so I had to go on the bus at 5:30 and adjust my routine to that. It is what it is. It’s not a big deal to me. Hopefully it’s a lot easier for the kids now which I think it is. Every year it should get a lot easier, and we’re not just talking Black hockey players, we’re talking about hockey players that aren’t the norm.”

Progress has been made, but there’s still a long way to go. Just last month there was an incident in the ECHL where a player made a racist gesture at Jordan Subban, the younger brother of P.K. Subban. To stomp out this behaviour, Reddick said it’s important for hockey, and all sports for that matter, to have members of the BIPOC community at all levels.

“The more people like us in the sport, other people like us get to see ‘OK, I can play this game,”’ said Reddick.

After three seasons with the Frankfurt Lions in Germany, Reddick closed out his 19-year professional career in 2003 with a brief stint with the Fort Wayne Komets of the United Hockey League — a team he had played for numerous times in the past when they were in the International Hockey League (IHL). Shortly after retiring, Reddick put down roots in Las Vegas, a city he fell in love with when he suited up for the IHL’s Las Vegas Thunder from 1994-96.

The Sin City’s been lucky to have him, with Reddick playing a pivotal role in the sport’s growth in the area. He coached AAA hockey for years, continues to offer private lessons to up and comers, and in 2019, he co-started the hockey program at Faith Lutheran Middle School & High School — the only high school hockey team in the state of Nevada.

Reddick didn’t have any Black hockey coaches growing up, so it’s been fulfilling for him to fill that void for the current generation. But it’s been even more fulfilling to hear about the impact he’s had on players of all backgrounds.

“You get satisfaction when a kid comes back and goes ‘Hey coach, thanks so much.’ I’ll run into a police officer, or a paramedic, or a firefighter and I either coached them or their brother or something. I’ve probably sent out 25-30 kids to Div. I scholarships and a lot of them end up coming back home and they’re really good in the community,” said Reddick. “That’s probably the most satisfying thing I get out of coaching.”

Reddick stepped away from the high school program to spend some more time with family. He and his wife Jana do quite a bit of travelling to Boston to visit their 17-year-old daughter Zoe, an aspiring professional ballerina, who attends a private school there. Zoe is the youngest of four children as there’s also Bryce, a 32-year-old who plays for the ECHL’s Greenville Swamp Rabbits, Jenna, 28, who works in investing, and 30-year-old Matthew Vorce, an actor and writer in Los Angeles who happens to be dating one of the most successful musicians on the planet, Billie Eilish.

“We have two bodyguards sit outside the house when she’s here. I wouldn’t even want to be that famous… I’m not a social media guy at all, but Matt told me about how many millions of followers she has. It’s crazy. But she’s the most down to earth person you’ll ever meet,” said Reddick.

“All she does is laugh. But I guess you can laugh when you have that kind of money.”

Reddick played for 15 professional teams across five different leagues in his career. He played in 117 games with the Jets between 1986-89, and was well known for the goaltending duo he formed with Daniel Berthiaume that was given the nickname ‘Pokey and the Bandit.’ Reddick ended up getting traded to the Oilers where he spent the majority of the time in the minors, but he was on the team’s playoff roster in 1990, making him a Stanley Cup champion.

“I got a cup there so I’m never gonna have anything bad to say about Edmonton,” he said. “Some guys play for 20 years and don’t get it. I got mine and I was out.”

Reddick played 13 total games in Edmonton before falling out of the league until 1993-94 when he played a pair of contests for the Florida Panthers. Reddick went 46-58-16 in his NHL career with a 3.71 goals-against average and .873 save percentage. His most successful year as a pro came in Fort Wayne in 1993 when Reddick and the Komets made hockey history by going a perfect 12-0 in the playoffs en route to winning the IHL’s Turner Cup.

But even with all the stops on his career, there’s just something about that city on the Prairies.

“Winnipeg is always going to have a big part of my heart… To me, if people ask me questions about my career, I say I played for Winnipeg… It’s a great city, man. It’s just cold. If you could turn the heater up there, you guys would be golden.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31