ALUMNI PROFILE: DALE McMULLIN
(Courtesy of Perry Bergson, The Brandon Sun) — Dale McMullin left a remarkable career legacy in the record book of the Brandon Wheat Kings.
Now 63 and living in Cranbrook, B.C., he is sixth in franchise history in career goals with 168, fourth in career assists with 250, sixth in career points with 418 and seventh in career regular season games played with 309.
McMullin said it’s special, adding he doesn’t think about the numbers he put up from 1971 to 1976 very often.
“It’s something that I can be pretty proud of in the era I came through,” McMullin said. “In today’s game with the way I played, it would have been a way better fit than what I came through. But to put up the numbers that I did in that era is something that I’m very proud of.”
McMullin grew up in Procter, B.C., a small community of about 150 people located 35 kilometres northeast of Nelson. He was on skates around age three, and he would either spend time on a rink his father Gilbert made or sometimes on parts of Kootenay Lake when it would freeze over.
“I always had a desire to have a stick in my hand with a tennis ball or puck at the end of it,” he said.
McMullin’s father and mother Betty were instrumental in allowing him and his older brother Doug to follow their passion when they played minor hockey in Nelson and beyond.
“I think every spare nickel or spare piece of change they had was all about myself and my brother having access to the sport,” McMullin said. “They did everything they could and obviously sacrificing stuff they could have had as parents and things they could have done on their own by themselves. They put it all into their two kids.”
Doug, who is four years older than Dale, would end up playing a key role in his younger brother’s hockey journey in Manitoba, well beyond the sibling rivalry that made both better.
“It allowed me an opportunity to play at the junior level,” McMullin said. “I just had that drive and desire in me that I wanted to be a hockey player in some way, shape or form, even though I was a bit undersized.”
Doug attended Wheat Kings camp as an 18-year-old, and after he was released joined the Portage Terriers in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League for the 1969-70 season.
He went to Brandon’s camp again the next fall, and Dale followed him to Manitoba as a 15-year-old. Doug was cut, and instead of returning to Portage decided to go home.
Dale stayed, joining the Trimac midget team in Brandon that was coached and managed by Ken Foster. He also practised with the Wheat Kings at times, and got into his first Western Canadian Hockey League game in that 1970-71 season in Estevan against the powerhouse Bruins.
“It wasn’t a great experience,” he chuckled.
At 16 he joined the team for what would prove to be a highly productive five-season career. The 1971-72 edition of the Wheat Kings featured a talented crew including four forwards who scored 40 or more goals in Ron Chipperfield, Robbie Neale, Glen Mikkelsen and Don McLaughlin.
“It was overwhelming for sure,” McMullin said. “But I think at that age and that time you’re kind of in the moment. You’re a little bit of deer in the headlights but you somehow have to determine the path to get better and work my way up the lineup, which I eventually did.”
McMullin posted 12 goals and 12 assists in 59 games in his 16-year-old season, solid production for a true rookie in the league.
He believes he has the city to thank in part for his increased production every year.
“I think in Brandon, whether it be street hockey or at the outdoor community centres, we would practise in the afternoon, get home to your billets and have dinner, and you’re back out on the community ice for an hour or two hours,” McMullin said. “We literally breathed it every day, and even in school you were still thinking about hockey, and away from the practice facility you were still thinking hockey and watching it on TV and trying to emulate the players at the pro level.
“You would go to the community centres for extra ice time to try and emulate what they did and try different things. I think that’s what’s lost in the game nowadays.”
In what would become arguably the most rugged era in hockey history, the small forward — “five-foot nine and 165 or 170 pounds soaking wet” —did what was needed to succeed. That included never leaving himself vulnerable, always thinking his way around the ice and reading and reacting to what was around him.
“I had to be quick and jump into the holes,” McMullin said. “Later in my junior career I played with Robbie Neale (and Mikkelsen), and when I played with Chipperfield and (Rick) Blight we had one of the best lines in junior hockey. At that time, you better be able to move out there at my size because some games in some rinks on the road it was survival.”
He missed a month in his 18-year-old season with a broken jaw, and still piled up 100 points with 35 goals and 64 assists in 48 games.
“I got opportunities to play with good people,” McMullin said. “Each year I got better but I think it was through determination I had and not taking no for an answer even though I was undersized and the game at that time was all about size.”
During his time in Brandon, the team moved from the cramped Manex to the shiny new building next door, the Keystone Centre. McMullin said the former had its advantages.
“In some ways you look back and thank God that it was the home rink instead of an opposition barn,” McMullin said with a laugh. “People were right on top of you. As a home player, it was fun that way, but I’m sure it could have been pretty intimidating for teams coming in there. As old barns go, that was old. I don’t know if there are any around like it anymore.”
For McMullin, the move into the Keystone was like night and day, where everything was new and clean.
“Almost like it was yesterday, I can smell the new cement everywhere in the rink,” McMullin said. “It was brand new and pretty special for a kid like myself that never grew up with too much to end up playing in it at a young age. It’s still a great junior building, even by today’s standards. It was something I’ll never forget.”
In his 19-year-old season, McMullin led Team Canada in scoring at the world junior championship with eight points in five games as Canada captured silver in a tournament staged in Winnipeg and Brandon. It was a remarkable feat for McMullin on a roster the included Bryan Trottier, Mel Bridgman, Brian Sutter and his Wheat Kings teammate Blight.
“It was pretty special when I look back on it,” said McMullin, who noted that a World Hockey Association team comprised of Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, J.C. Tremblay and others played eight games against them before the season began as a tuneup.
McMullin was selected in the seventh round of two drafts in 1975: He chosen by the Atlanta Flames in the National Hockey League and the Phoenix Roadrunners in the WHA.
“I never did make that next step but it’s something that nobody can take away from you,” McMullin said.
He played his overage season with the Wheat Kings in 1975-76, piling up a career-best 130 points in 72 games on 56 goals and 74 assists. The next wave of talent that would carry the Wheat Kings to greatness had arrived by then with Bill Derlago, Dave Semenko and Ray Allison joining the team.
“With Dave Semenko, if we had him two or three years prior we would have been a different hockey team,” McMullin said. “We needed bigger guys in the lineup …He was just one of those players in that era, if you had one of those true types like that, you would get a lot of space out there that you might not have had otherwise.”
After graduating from Brandon, McMullin played in the old Central and Western International hockey leagues in the 1976-77 season for what proved to be the start of a three-year professional career.
McMullin was putting up terrific numbers in the WIHL with the Spokane Flyers and received a callup by the WHA’s Edmonton Oilers to join his former Brandon teammate Chipperfield as they auditioned left-wingers for his line.
McMullin would play one game against the Indianapolis Racers, putting two shots on net but not earning any points.
“Things didn’t work out,” McMullin said. “I guess you could say it was a cup of coffee. I was right on the doorstep of getting in but I just wasn’t good enough obviously.”
After one more season with the Tucson Rustlers in the old Pacific Hockey League in the 1978-79, McMullin moved to Cranbrook, B.C., to play senior hockey with the Royals. They won an Allan Cup — the Canadian senior AAA hockey championship — in 1982.
McMullin was given a job with a dairy distributor, working three 12-hour days per week, but ended up staying there for 20 years, long after he retired from hockey after the 1984-85 season.
It’s lucky he did. He shared a lottery win with his co-workers in 2001, and was basically semi-retired in his late forties.
His son Cody played in the WHL for parts of four seasons from 2002-03 to 2005-06, and while his younger son Brady had already left hockey, it got McMullin back into the game.
He started scouting for the Red Deer Rebels in 2002, and spent nine seasons with the club before being hired by the Regina Pats as their head scout in 2011-12.
Now in his seventh season, he works with his former Brandon teammate John Paddock, who is the vice president of hockey operations and general manager with the Pats. He said that’s part of what makes his time in the WHL so special.
“It’s experiences and the people you meet,” McMullin said. “Working with John now in Regina after like 40 years, it’s like we were teammates yesterday. There are a lot of people in the game and what you take from the league is the friendships. They’re friendships forever. There’s just that bond within hockey teams.”
McMullin likes that his current job keeps him busy and that he gets to work with terrific people in the Pats organization. He also enjoys the challenge of putting something together and trying to project what youngsters will turn into in the future.
He’s also had to adjust as the game has utterly transformed in recent years to a more European model of finesse and blinding speed that would have favoured his style as a junior player.
“The contact has been taken out of the game,” McMullin said. “It’s more about your stick on the ice separating people from the puck than running over people. If you hit hard now it’s normally a head contact penalty but the kids are bigger, and especially at the pro level, the way they skate from top to bottom, it’s more about the skill end of things.”
McMullin said hockey has been very, very good to him, although he concedes the game has been important to him since he was a youngster.
“Growing up with my grandparents and my dad, we’d listen to it on the radio all the time and then we finally got a black-and-white TV and when there was a chance to watch a game on TV, you did it,” McMullin said. “It’s no different today. I just have an interest in it. There will come a day, like anything, after playing and making a living from it, I’ll have to walk away from it.
“I’m not there yet.”
