Chartrand just can’t shake the hockey bug

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This article was published 28/04/2022 (1457 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Brad Chartrand retired from the NHL after the 2003-04 season, he envisioned a life away from the game.

The funny thing is, he’s never quite escaped the sport of his childhood — the one he played as a kid growing up in St. James before going on to earn a scholarship to an Ivy League school, a spot on Canada’s national team and finally on to a five-year career in the big leagues.

At 47, the former Winnipegger balances his work responsibilities as the CEO of DuraDerm Sport, a U.S.-based medical device company with the sometimes challenging logistics of a busy family life.

Chartrand and his wife, Elizabeth, have three children: sons Liam, 14, and Brandon, 13, and an eight-year-old daughter, Cathryn.

All three of his kids are competitive hockey and tennis players and Chartrand serves as the head coach of Liam’s Clifton Park Dynamo 14U AAA team.

How does he manage it all?

“You’re always thinking about business, right?” said Chartrand this week, from his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “I mean, there’s no 9-to-5 aspect of running a startup (company).

“The company is based in St. Louis. I travel to St. Louis at least every month and I run the company out of New York. My wife is an attorney and we just have very, very strict schedules. Obviously, the kids’ sports is at night and I do work during the day and I’ll do work when I get home from practice.”

On May 22 in Troy, N.Y., Chartrand will join other members of the 2022 class — including Bob Nystrom, Barry Melrose and fellow Manitoban Butch Goring — to be inducted into the New York State Hockey Hall of Fame.

A stellar four-year hockey career at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he earned a business degree before heading to the NHL, is a the biggest reason for the Hall-of-Fame honour.

“It’s pretty thrilling and (the Hall of Fame representative) did say that a lot of it is obviously about the playing career but a lot of it is what you do after that, too,” said Chartrand. “The coaching and the dedication to developing the youth game in New York is obviously a factor that went into that.”

Truth be told, Chartrand has never aspired to be a professional coach.

He went back to Cornell after retiring from the NHL to complete an MBA in 2008. After a career in medical device sales, he branched out into corporate marketing —joining DuraDerm Sport in 2018 and becoming its boss one year later.

In fact, he declined an offer from an old Team Canada and Los Angeles Kings bench boss, Andy Murray, to get a taste of what the coaching environment might be like when Murray was running the hockey program at Western Michigan University.

As the son of educators — his parents, Jeff and Cheryl Chartrand, are both retired teachers still living in Winnipeg — Chartrand has always been drawn to teaching the game to young players.

“I enjoy the youth hockey aspects — it’s kind of like a pay-it-forward-type of thing,” said Chartrand. “But it’s not what I want to do as a career…

“(But) if you want to make an impact on a kid’s life and if you want somebody to be the best they can be, you’ve got to put a lot into it. So, I take my job very seriously. I take the hockey very seriously and it’s just been fortunate I’ve been able to coach a bunch of great kids with great families along the way.”

Yet, even coaching Liam’s team of 2007-born players, Chartrand can’t shake his NHL connections entirely. One of the club’s forwards is Ryan Kowalsky, the son of Rick Kowalsky, currently an assistant coach with the New York Islanders’ AHL Bridgeport farm team.

Another forward, Daniel Tverdovsky, is the son of former NHL defenceman Oleg Tverdovsky, who played 713 games in the bigs between 1994 and 2007. Tverdovsky and Chartrand became friends when both were playing in Southern California — Tverdosky with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and Chartrand with the Kings.

Now, Tverdosky maintains homes in California and Saratoga Springs.

“We took a team to Russia (in 2018) and it was part of a cultural exchange program and that isn’t going to happen again anytime soon,” said Chartrand. “It was really one of those unique situations where Oleg and I become really good friends and he actually moved his sons out here to play hockey for our teams.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14