Green’s circle runs back through Spokane

On the Spokane Chiefs’ franchise timeline, the day – Jan. 26, 1990 – may still rank tops for trauma.

It’s the day they traded Travis Green, the hockey club’s all-time scoring leader at the time.

Fans embraced the deal as they would a porcupine wrapped in barbed wire. Bryan Maxwell, the Chiefs coach who engineered it with an eye to the long-term good, didn’t like it much himself. Green, from just over the border in Castlegar with an attachment to Spokane that went back to his childhood, pronounced himself “devastated” – and even today calls it “a sad day in my hockey career.”

Which he believes will make him a better coach in ways his 14-year National Hockey League career can’t.

The circle came full Friday night at the Arena with the presence of Green behind the bench – even if it was the visitors’ bench. The Portland Winter Hawks made their first appearance here since the club was sold last week to Bill Gallacher, who the Western Hockey League hopes will end the underfunded dysfunction that had turned what was once one of the league’s model franchises into an embarrassment. To that end, Gallacher hired NHL coaching veteran Mike Johnston to run the hockey operation as general manager and coach – and Green as his assistant.

So he’s back in the “Dub” – six-hour bus rides and all.

“But you get to watch a few movies now, at least,” he laughed.

And it was very much his choice, for surely he had enough connections to hook on as a third assistant or scout in the NHL, or an assistant at the minor league level. But among other things, a talk with former Chiefs coach – and more recently, Stanley Cup winner – Mike Babcock steered him back to junior.

“I’m just starting out as a coach and a part of that is that you need to learn how to teach,” Green allowed, “and there’s no better place than with these kids. And some coaches go to the minors just to learn the pro level. I’ve been there the past 17 years, so I didn’t think that’s what I needed.”

Part of that playing resume is 970 NHL games, the most of any Chiefs alum – a run that started with the New York Islanders and, he said, “a lucky break.”

Not so lucky for Ray Ferraro – a former Winter Hawk, as it happens, and a Trail Smoke Eater, too, for those whose local hockey histories go way back. He suffered a broken leg midway through the 1993 season. Green got the call-up from the AHL and never went back.

The bouncing puck eventually took Green to Anaheim, Phoenix, Toronto and Boston – and through a player’s evolution from goal scorer to “more of a checking, pain-in-the-ass guy,” not unlike the pitcher with a 98 mph fastball having to extend his career as a knuckleballer.

“I got to Phoenix (in 2000) and scored 25 goals, but the next year it didn’t go as well,” he said. “I got on a line with Brad May and Landon Wilson and I learned to play a little nastier and grittier. I learned to be a pro and do whatever it takes to stay in the league and the lineup. It’s hard work to be pro. Everyone talks commitment, but for some players – the bottom half – it’s harder than others.

“The funny thing is, I actually had more fun my last seven or eight years in the NHL than my first seven. I really learned to love the game.”

As much as he loves the game, Green loves its many lessons, too.

An important one was delivered that January day in 1990 when his 137 career goals – still fourth in Spokane history – were dealt to Medicine Hat for Mark Woolf and two other players. Maxwell worked on the trade knowing Green was a lock to stick in the pros the following year – and it was a keeper for the Chiefs, who would win the Memorial Cup in 1991 with Woolf as their No. 3 scorer. The GM in Medicine Hat at the time thought he’d connected, too.

That would be none other than Tim Speltz, who within a year would have the same job in Spokane.

“We got a great player, but it didn’t translate into success,” Speltz said Friday. “More than anything, our group (in Medicine Hat) just wasn’t ready to accept somebody who – I won’t say was better than them – was a key component.”

Green – who still put together a 60-goal season – lived through that awkward adjustment.

“I had a rough go of it,” he said. “I don’t think I played anywhere near the way I could. I missed people in Spokane. I missed friends. I didn’t handle it very well. But it helped prepare me for pro hockey a little, for how mentally strong you have to be. And so in the end, it wasn’t a bad thing.”

The memory will come in handy the first time he has to counsel a Winter Hawks player through a trade, or welcome a reluctant arrival.

You don’t make it around full circle without a trauma or two.