A Long, Winding Road Trade Has Reunited Chiefs’ Reich With His Old Coach

Stay in the game long enough and the road that takes you away circles back.

Consider Chad Reich, who went through his Western Hockey League initiation as a tentative 16-year-old with the Moose Jaw Warriors.

Four seasons and three teams later, Reich will find himself on Saturday night back on the same ice as the Moose Jaw Warriors, only this time he’s skating with the Spokane Chiefs.

Reich started with Mike Babcock in Moose Jaw.

He’s finishing with Babcock in Spokane.

That’s more than enough to rouse Reich’s attention heading into the Moose Jaw-Spokane game in the Arena, 24 hours after the Chiefs entertain the Prince George Cougars tonight.

But the trade that brought Reich here last month will soon take him full circle on another, more personal plane.

The 20-year-old forward has come half a continent from Craik, Saskatchewan, while a friend and distant relative from the same hometown has made it with a nearby rival.

Jeremy Reich is a 17-year-old left winger with the Seattle Thunderbirds.

The Reich cousins, Chad and Jeremy, might find themselves drawing for the puck when Seattle visits Spokane for the last time in the regular season on March 14. Or they may match up when the Chiefs close the regular season in Seattle on March 16.

“We’re sitting out here in the western States playing hockey, close to each other, while our families are back home, how many hours away? It’s kind of ironic,” Reich said. “Growing up in the same town, living a couple of blocks away from each other, we’re close.

“Our families are close. In the summers we play hockey together, see each other around. People are laughing back home.

Jeremy’s sister is getting married in the middle of April. If we end up meeting in the playoffs, whoever wins will probably be there for the wedding.”

And the other will sneak in through a side door?

Seattle meets Spokane for bragging rights in Craik.

“Like I said,” Reich said, “it’s a small town.”

Knowing there’s a plus/minus in hometowns as well as hockey, Reich (pronounced Reach) says he wouldn’t trade the experience of growing up where he did, with about 500 others - many of them relatives - about a 45-minute drive north of Moose Jaw.

“The rink was open all day and night, pretty much,” he said. “There’s lots of opportunity to get out and get going. The downside of a small town is that you have to leave young if you’re going to play hockey. I was 15 when I left for Moose Jaw to start playing (bantam and AAA midget hockey).

“Moose Jaw was only 45 minutes away and it was a totally different environment. The town I came from had 500 people. The school I went to had 800. That first semester was quite a change.

There are nearly two dozen Reiches listed in the Craik phone directory. How this one got to Spokane is connected to how he plays and who he is.

He’s more nerve than verve, or as Jay Stewart put it on the Chiefs radio broadcast Wednesday night, “I’ll bet people he plays against hate his guts.”

There is a healing factor whenever Reich lands with a new team.

When he joined Medicine Hat he wasn’t particularly fond of defenseman Kirk Dewaele, now a teammate in Spokane.

“I remembered Kirk from when he played in Lethbridge and Calgary,” Reich said. “I didn’t like playing against the guy too much and I’m sure he felt the same about me. We hooked up together in Medicine Hat, went to Edmonton together (in last spring’s WHL expansion draft) and three days after I was traded here, he was traded to Spokane as well.

“We’ve developed a friendship this year.”

There was also a brief healing process with John Cirjak here.

“Cirj and I fought here last year (when Reich was with Medicine Hat),” he said. “It wasn’t much of a fight. I think we both just fell over. I got here and we laughed about it. You forget about those things.”

Reich’s strength, Babcock likes to say, is getting in people’s faces.

“I brought my game,” Reich agreed. “That’s stirring the pot a little bit, as they say, agitating, getting someone off their game. If I can play sound defensively and help out in the offensive end I’ve done my job. I’ll accept any role that Mike gives me down the stretch.”

Reich came with the same objective as any undrafted veteran.

“Hopefully we can make a good run in the playoffs and I can open an eye or two and maybe get a tryout somewhere (in professional hockey),” he said. “If not, I’ll have to look at the other option of getting an education. There are a lot of good college hockey programs in Canada now. You can get an education and still play. We’ll wait and see.”

Reich says the Chiefs will learn to put the Arena and its fans to better use as the team matures down the stretch.

“I’ve played in Spokane on a Saturday night with other teams,” he said. “You come in the end of a trip and you can’t wait to get out. They score a couple of quick goals and the fans get into it.

“This is a great facility, probably the best in the league. I thought when I came here that Spokane would be a great city to play in and it’s definitely met my expectations. This team is better than its (28-27-4) record. It doesn’t feel like a middle-of-the-division kind of team. We feel we have the makings of a champion.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos