Examiner.com: Meet the Ams — Tyler Schmidt
By Rene Ferran | Examiner.com
This week, we’ve chosen to feature overage defenseman Tyler Schmidt, one of the Americans’ stalwarts during their rise to the top of the U.S. Division.
Schmidt has played in 250 career games for the team, fourth on the franchise’s all-time list. If all goes well, he could be passing Jarrett Toll’s franchise-high 274 right around Thanksgiving weekend — Tri-City has back-to-back home games against Kootenay and Portland, which would be perfect timing for this Ams lifer to reach this milestone.
“It’s nice to be able to play in one town for five years,” Schmidt said.
As for where it started …
First hockey team Park City West Wildcats in his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
“I was probably 3 or 4. My dad was the coach. My brother was 5 and was on the team, and I started playing on the team.”
Favorite hockey moment Game 72 of the 2007-08 season against the Spokane Chiefs, when the Americans clinched the Scotty Munro Trophy for the WHL’s best regular-season record.
“The sheer feeling in the rink, just how loud it was. Just to see all the excitement on everyone’s faces is a picture you carry with you the rest of your life.”
Childhood hero The team’s all-time leader in penalty minutes by a defenseman (484) said he didn’t really have one, but one player he liked watching was (surprise!) Hall of Fame D-man Scott Stevens.
What’s playing on his IPod? “I don’t have an IPod.” How about the CD player in the car? “Country music, some hip-hop and rap … anything really.”
Anything? Even opera? “Hey, that little girl from ‘America’s Got Talent’ is pretty good.”
Favorite sports movie Happy Gilmore.
“Does that count as a sports movie? I just like watching him try to skate around on the ice. He can’t do anything out there.”
What he wants to be when he grows up “I’d love to get a degree in business and open my own hunting and fishing lodge.”
If not for hockey, he’d be playing … “I would honestly just fish. That’s a sport to me.”
Indeed, Schmidt and his father, Mike, have entered several walleye tournaments. Schmidt won the kids division of a Falcon Lake tournament (his prize — a 14-foot aluminum Lund) and as a team, father and son placed fourth in a tournament with 150 boats entered, winning $3,500.
“Just having to go out there every day, be on the water, being in nature, figuring out what the fish want, the thrill of the catch — that’s what I like about fishing.”
