Steen rebuilding his life in Sweden

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/02/2022 (1038 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

His name and number still hang from the rafters at Canada Life Centre, but Thomas Steen says he’s never felt more distant from the Winnipeg Jets — both figuratively and now literally — as their long-term relationship took an unexpected turn shortly after he was inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame.

“I have a lot of questions about a lot of things, but no answers,” the 61-year-old told me Friday in a telephone chat from Sweden. 

Here’s what is known. Steen, who played his entire 950 game NHL career with the Jets between 1981 and 1995 and holds a number of 1.0-era records, found himself on the unemployment line in the summer of 2020, just months after an emotional ceremony at the downtown rink in which he and former teammate Randy Carlyle were honoured.

His contract with True North, in which he was involved in part-time amateur scouting for the Manitoba Moose and alumni relations for the Jets, had expired. And it wasn’t going to be renewed.

Sources within the organization say COVID-19 was the primary culprit. The league, of course, had come to a screeching halt in March 2020 as the global pandemic hit, and it wasn’t clear where things were headed. Steen’s position was one of the casualties, his workload essentially drying up. Nothing personal. Just an unfortunate piece of business.

“I spent 40 years in Winnipeg. I had my kids there and everything. I was planning to stay there,” said Steen, who served a term (2010 to 2014) as a city councillor for Elmwood-East Kildonan.

He was far from the only one dealt a curveball. You’ll recall chairman and team co-owner Mark Chipman telling reporters “they work when we work” with regards to hundreds of part-time arena/game-day positions that were suddenly eliminated. The organization quickly reversed course and decided employees would at least be paid for shifts that had already been scheduled.

Steen says he never heard personally from anyone at True North about the end of his tenure, which also included working with their youth hockey academy and Camp Manitou. It left him feeling like a bit of an outsider.

“It just feels now like they don’t even know me,” he said.

Shortly after receiving the news, Steen packed up his things and headed to California where his girlfriend, Brenda, is a firefighter in the city of Hollister. For the first time in ages, he polished up his resume — which included previous scouting gigs for Minnesota, Anaheim and Phoenix — and started contacting other NHL teams.

The result was rather humbling.

“I asked all of them. Nobody was hiring,” said Steen. The pandemic-paused NHL season ultimately resumed later that summer in the hub cities of Toronto and Edmonton, but teams were looking to find ways to downsize in the wake of massive financial losses and an uncertain future. It was much the same story for the truncated 2021 campaign, played in mostly empty buildings.

Steen believes a 2014 arrest for a domestic assault charge that was eventually stayed by the Crown may have also played a factor in getting the cold shoulder from potential employers. He always denied any wrongdoing for the alleged incident, which was reported to have been alcohol-fuelled at a Winnipeg restaurant.

Steen realized he’d likely have to expand his horizons if he wanted to stay in the game of hockey. And a series of life events, including some poor investments on his part, meant he couldn’t just put up his feet and live off his savings.

“I had to work. So I went to work,” he said.

Which brings us to the present day, and the city of Sundsvall back in his home country of Sweden where I caught up with Steen on Friday. He’d just got off the ice following his final session of the day with a group of high-school kids. They are the future of IF Sundsvall Hockey, a men’s team that plays in Hockeyettan, considered the third-tier of hockey in the country. Steen is the youth hockey supervisor, while son, Alex, is the manager of the program.

“He’s my boss,” Steen says with a laugh of his Winnipeg-born boy, who retired following the 2020 season after playing 1,018 regular-season games with Toronto and St. Louis.

Although it had been a number of years since he hit the ice in a meaningful way — Steen had become quite comfortable wearing suits instead of skates — it didn’t take long to feel familiar.

“It came back pretty quickly. When I first got here I saw the players and knew there was a lot of work. I got here last July 31, started working Aug. 1, and have had about four days off since,” said Steen. “It’s not the elite league. It’s something different. I’ve never been at this level, so I’m learning things. There’s a lot of growing pains, but we’re enjoying it.”

Unfortunately, all this distance means he hasn’t seen his two youngest children for the past eight months, as they remain back in Winnipeg with their mother. His girlfriend is thousands of miles away, too, fighting wildfires in California.

“One day at a time,” is how Steen describes his current situation and philosophy.

To be clear, Steen isn’t angry with True North. Just disappointed at how it ended. He applauds them for the steps they’ve taken to honour former teammate Dale Hawerchuk, who died of a cancer in 2020. A statue at True North Square, to be erected this summer, is among a number of projects in the works.

“Dale was a really good Jet. He deserves it, that’s for sure. He was a great teammate. Great to everybody,” said Steen.

The Jets are now out of sight, and mostly out of mind for Steen, who will occasionally watch a game on television or read up on the latest developments. He admits being surprised both by the departure of long-time coach Paul Maurice and by how much they’ve struggled this season.

“I don’t really think about it now. I just try to survive each day,” he said. “I don’t really have a feel for what’s going on. I would just be guessing like everybody else. I have no insight on that.”

Not anymore, he doesn’t.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg