Where Are They Now: Sasaki More Than Satisfied with Post-Hockey Career

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Wenatchee Wild alumnus Chad Sasaki has never let the setbacks define him.

A season spent half a continent from home, health challenges, a coaching change during his NCAA career at Colorado College and the COVID season of 2020-21 all impacted Sasaki’s life on and off the ice, but since finishing his playing career and moving into the realm of life and health performance coaching in Colorado Springs, he is as fulfilled as he ever has been.

Sasaki grew up in Cypress, California, a straight shot down Katella Avenue from Honda Center, the home of the Anaheim Ducks. It wasn’t Ducks hockey that was on TV in the Sasaki home, though – his parents became fans of Wayne Gretzky after his arrival in Los Angeles in 1988, meaning he got plenty of exposure to the crosstown Los Angeles Kings as a young fan. He started with roller hockey before picking up the sport on the ice.

“It’s definitely a different style of play,” said Sasaki. “I think it goes a long way in developing your skills – your feet and your hands. I know a lot of the guys who come from California or Florida, they transition well into ice (hockey) because they learn to play a very high-speed, high-caliber game. When you transition to the ice, it’s about building discipline and learning to play within a system, building a structure, which is relatively easy when you’ve got the foundational skill set – you can skate well, handle pucks well, shoot pucks well. As you get older, it’s building the mental game, and learning to step into a more structured role on a team.”

He excelled in two seasons of AAA hockey with the Anaheim Jr. Ducks, helping them win a California Amateur Hockey Association state title, and was recognized as one of the top 16-and-under defensemen in the North American Prospects Hockey League in 2014-15. After being selected in the United States Hockey League draft by the Sioux Falls Stampede, Sasaki went east the following season, making his junior debut for the Coulee Region Chill in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Living 1,600 miles from home in a city of 50,000 people and billeting for the first time was the first of a few adjustments to be made – fortunately, billet parents Andy and Tosha Palmer and the staff in the Chill organization gladly stepped in to help him feel comfortable in his new environment.

“It was definitely a lot to take in all at once. It was a huge change for a California boy to be traveling to tryout camp in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and then to move to a small city in Wisconsin,” said Sasaki. “It was kind of a whirlwind, in a lot of ways. It was a big adjustment,” said Sasaki. “It was not the easiest, adjusting to that sort of game. The game was much more physical, so the hockey adjustment was difficult at times. I’m really thankful for the people who were there at the time to make it an overall amazing experience.”

He was a regular in the Coulee Region lineup, playing 57 of the team’s 60 games that season. As a 5’7″, 150-pound forward, though, the skilled game of the British Columbia Hockey League was a better fit for Sasaki than the gritty style of the North American Hockey League. The move to Wenatchee was a welcome one, turning a two-point season for the Chill in 2015-16 into a 10-point campaign for Wenatchee the following year.

Sasaki’s time with Wenatchee also coincided with perhaps the greatest three-year run in Wild history – that 2016-17 club won the Ron Boileau Memorial Trophy as the BCHL’s regular-season champion, before making a run for the ages in 2018. The Wild won the Fred Page Cup as the league’s playoff champion before earning a Doyle Cup as Hockey Canada’s Junior “A” Pacific regional champion and a spot in the RBC Cup. Even the 2019 team played 18 games over three rugged series before dropping out of the BCHL playoffs in the league semifinals. In all, Sasaki played 58 postseason games – the equivalent of another entire junior season – in a Wild uniform.

“I got to experience it all,” said Sasaki. “Each year was its own thing – we were all going through different challenges, and we all accomplished different things. I experienced so much, with so many different guys. The championship run in the BCHL playoffs (in 2018), that we got to finish off at home with a win in front of the Wenatchee crowd, to feel the entire town get behind us and show up, and be waiting out front of Town Toyota Center when we got back from a bus trip, and to bring home a championship that the town had been waiting for, there’s nothing like being part of something that’s way bigger than you. We had such a tight group in that locker room. We loved being around each other, showing up and going to battle, supporting each other.”

30 of those postseason games came during that 2018 postseason run, after a year where Sasaki played in 57 of the team’s 58 regular-season contests and notched 36 points. He ramped it up even more the following season, earning “Iron Man” honors by appearing in all 58 Wenatchee games and churning out 42 points, including 15 goals.

“My 20-year-old year, my last year (with the Wild), it was a bit different group,” said Sasaki. “We lost a lot of our older, more experienced guys who went on to college, so it was a younger group with not quite as much playoff experience. Guys were learning how to embrace and step into their roles, and so for the older guys on the team, it was an opportunity to step into a big leadership role and be there for the younger guys and show them how it’s done in Wenatchee, show them what the standard is. We made another good run – there weren’t any regrets in that room, and those young guys picked up what they learned and took the program in a positive direction after that.”

Sasaki joined several fellow Wild alumni and other familiar faces on the Colorado College roster when his junior career ended in 2019. Defenseman Bryan Yoon played in Wenatchee the year before Sasaki moved to the Valley, while Troy Conzo and Brian Williams were teammates in Wenatchee in 2016-17. Others, like Jack Gates, were teammates in Anaheim and reunited with Sasaki when his college career began.

He was an everyday presence in the Tigers’ lineup as a freshman, stepping in for 31 games and picking up two points, including his first collegiate goal January 20, 2020 against Nebraska-Omaha. He excelled in the classroom throughout his career, carrying a 4.6 grade-point average at Servite High School in California before earning the Midwest Division’s Academic Achievement Award during his season in Coulee Region. Four years on the roster at Colorado College yielded four Distinguished Scholar-Athlete awards, the National Collegiate Hockey Conference’s highest academic award, reserved for those who achieve at least a 3.5 GPA for the full academic year.

“I always take pride in trying to be a well-rounded person as I can be,” said Sasaki. “I know that hockey doesn’t last forever, and I went in knowing that I wanted to apply myself as best I could in the classroom, and to study things that would help me down the road. That’s what I believe in, is giving your best and applying yourself in every area, and having an impact in multiple avenues in your life.”

The challenges began to emerge after that freshman season, though – the COVID season of 2020-21 altered everyday life for programs across the sport, and Mike Haviland was replaced by Kris Mayotte as head coach after Sasaki’s sophomore season. Various health issues also bubbled back to the surface during his career at Colorado College, including chronic allergies and asthma, as well as skin conditions. In the end, he made seven appearances in the Tigers’ lineup over his final three seasons in the sport.

“I was going through this process of deep healing, finding new avenues of improving myself, improving my health, taking control of my life,” said Sasaki. “All through college, finding holistic and natural approaches to healing, really going deep within myself and trying to become a better performer on the ice was really my motivation to going into all of this. When I look back now, that was really the start of the direction that I was meant to go in life, because I learned so much in that time about myself and health, performance and the power that we have to be in control of our lives and destiny. What I really want is to take all this experience that I’ve learned over my whole hockey career, and pour it into helping other people and showing people what’s possible for them and how to create a life that is truly meaningful and fulfilling, and impacts a lot of people.”

Sasaki graduated with a degree in physics, but wanted to avoid spending his life in a lab coat, and was less-than-enthusiastic about leaving the now-familiar environs of Colorado Springs. Instead, he now coaches clients of his own, and takes the best of the coaches that he had on the ice in order to help those he works with off the ice.

“Bliss and Clarky and Leigh are among the best coaches I’ve ever had, each in their own way,” said Sasaki. “They all brought something different and complement each other. What I appreciate now are some of the things that maybe I didn’t appreciate as a player – things like the tough love, and them telling it as it is, calling us out when we need to be better and we’re not performing. It’s something that you never want to hear when you’re a player, but when you look back, they told me the truth because they cared and they saw my potential, and they believed in me. That’s what I try to carry forward, is seeing the good and the potential in every person that I interact with. My role is just helping them recognize it themselves.”