Icy Relations -- Kamloops Star David Wilkie Returns Home With The Memory Of A Stormy Thunderbird Season
With dozens of NHL scouts dissecting his every pivot and point shot in the Memorial Cup, it is clear David Wilkie has made a name for himself with the Kamloops Blazers.
But at one time, Wilkie wanted more than anything to be with the Seattle Thunderbirds.
And for a time, he was. A straight-A student at Mariner High School in Everett, he turned down 100 colleges, including Harvard and Yale, to play for the Thunderbirds. They worked hard to get him, emphasizing his talent and intelligence.
But the hometown story went wrong, ending during the 1990-91 season in confusion and conflict involving the team, the player and the player's father.
Wilkie, a defenseman, has emerged as one of the best players (ranked 11th by the NHL's central scouting bureau) in junior hockey. He's a certain first-round pick in the June draft. The Thunderbirds, who face Kamloops in a Memorial Cup matchup on Thursday, lack a player of his caliber.
How did the best junior player produced in the Northwest get away?
"Things just didn't work out with the T-birds," said Wilkie, hesitating to find the right words. "I had higher expectations than the team did."
Playing time became an issue. Peter Anholt, Thunderbird coach and general manager, used Wilkie as a fill-in.
"Seattle committed to playing time, and it didn't occur," said Carlos Sosa, a Tukwila attorney who became Wilkie's agent after Wilkie left the Thunderbirds.
Sosa, who has represented the team in several legal cases and is close to most team officials, admitted he was not privy to the agreement by which Wilkie came to play for Seattle. "However, I've been told that is what happened," he said, "by both sides."
Anholt denied there was any agreement about playing time.
Wilkie started the 1990-91 season with the Thunderbirds. But in November of that season, he injured a knee. "David waited and waited to come back from it," Anholt said. "He did not want to go back in our lineup."
David's mother, Wanda Wilkie, remembers it differently. She said her son went through therapy faithfully, once getting trapped in a December snowstorm and taking 10 hours to get back home.
"When he told Peter he was ready to come back," she said, "Peter told him, `Don't hurry. I don't need you.' "
Wanda Wilkie said, "David was thrilled to be a T-bird. He only asked to play and was told he would."
David Wilkie, now 17, always has wanted to play. He was a Seattle Mariners fan in his early years, when the family lived in Seattle the first time, before his father's job as a computer salesman took them to California, Minnesota and finally to Edmonds.
"Then he saw the U.S. team beat the Russians in the 1980 Olympics and that turned him to hockey," Wanda said. "He found an old broken hockey stick and he was set for life. He used to watch Hockey Night in Canada . . . in French."
Anholt recalls having high hopes for Wilkie with the Thunderbirds. But when things didn't work out, he simply dropped Wilkie from Seattle's protected list, allowing Kamloops to pick him up with no obligation to Seattle.
Anholt says Wilkie indicated he was going to go to college.
"We can't just use up a slot to protect ourselves in case David Wilkie changes his mind," Anholt said.
Still, failing to protect him, he said, "was probably a mistake."
"He probably had some worth, at least," Anholt said. "He may be a first-round pick, but I don't think that's a sure bet. Despite his potential, he's got a long ways to go, too."
It was not a mistake for Wilkie to stop playing at home, Anholt says.
"It was a lot better for him to get away from here, away from his dad. He had to grow up, to mature. To stay at home for his junior career would not have done him any good. We did not realize how tough that would be on him when we signed him."
Wilkie's father, John, could not be interviewed. He is hospitalized in the critical care unit at Everett General because of a strep infection.
"David is a good kid, but his father is a good kid, but his father isa pain," said Anholt, speaking before Wilkie become ill a few weeks ago. "He's hockey's version of a Little League parent. He thinks his son is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I understand how parents feel that way, but it was extra tough played out here at home. It was not a fit the way it should have been and we were as sorry as anyone it did not work out here."
Wanda Wilkie said, "John does not butt in, but if you ask his opinion, you will get an honest answer whether it is pleasing to you or not. Our role as parents was merely one of support for David, who made his own decisions."
Sosa said John Wilkie "gets a bad rap."
"He has had a lot of influence in David's life," Sosa said. "But as proof of John's lack of interference, he and Wanda have only been in Kamloops twice to see him play this season. That is a not a controlling father, nor was John ever. All the significant decisions, to play in Seattle, to leave, to sign with Kamloops, were made by David."
David confirmed that, and agreed his decision to join the Thunderbirds in the first place might not have been the best one. "When I think back on last season, maybe I did feel too much pressure playing at home. I felt like I was in the middle of a major disagreement with the team telling me one thing and my dad another. But it has all worked out for the best."
Indeed.
First came the decision not to return to the Omaha Lancers of the U.S. Junior League, with whom he finished last season. "Their best player was taken in the 12th round of the NHL draft last year," Wanda Wilkie said. Then came the decision to join Kamloops instead of going back to school. David had won a scholarship to Choate, the Connecticut prep school the Kennedy brothers attended.
"We had our eyes on David since he was a Pee Wee (age 11)," said Bob Brown, Blazer general manager. "We played him, but we brought him along slowly as we do all our younger players."
Brown thought Kamloops had signed a solid right-wing prospect. But David asked to play defense because the Blazers started the season without their two best defenders - Darryl Sydor, the seventh player taken in the 1990 NHL draft, by Los Angeles, and Scott Niedermeyer, the third player taken last year, by New Jersey.
When they returned from NHL teams, Wilkie kept playing. "He held his own," Brown said. "He started slowly, but he kept improving. Now? He's one of the best passers in the league. He plays that transition game and he jumps into an attacking play as fast as anyone."
Wilkie has jumped into Kamloops life, too. He is taking courses at Caribou College and getting A's, of course. He has spent some time with youngsters in the British Columbia town.
"One boy became especially close to him," Wanda said, "a little guy with leukemia and awaiting a bone-marrow transplant. . . He wrote us a letter saying he isn't afraid to die any more because he has a big, strong friend like David."
The NHL is very interested in the little boy's "big, strong friend." Because of his skills and his frame - he has gone from 175 pounds with Seattle to 6 feet 3, 210 - NHL people are willing to overlook an unorthodox, knock-kneed skating style.
"A couple of scouts have come to me with suggestions for improvement, especially my skating," David Wilkie said. "But my style of play was my own, just developed over time. I don't know if intelligence has anything to do with it. It's not like I'm out there calculating angles and speeds and all. It is more that I see a play developing and move accordingly. To me, it's just hockey. I love it and I'm really happy it has worked out at last."