No Compassion Veteran Defenseman Has Overcome A Lot To Be Recognized As One Of The Whl’s Best

The puck that hit him flush on the jaw sent then-17-year-old Joel Boschman to the upstairs dressing room in the old Spokane Coliseum.

Bleeding hockey players had trooped up those stairs for 40 years by the time Boschman took the early route back to the room.

Waiting in the sparse quarters of the old Barn, since demolished, was the welcome wagon in the Western Hockey League - a doctor with needle and thread.

On that December night in 1994, Boschman assumed that with a stitched-up faced he’d be excused for the evening. He didn’t expect sympathy, exactly, but he thought Chiefs coach Mike Babcock might wonder how he felt, maybe ask if there was anything he could do.

Boschman laughs.

“He said, ‘OK, Let’s go. We need you on the PK (penalty kill)!’ I couldn’t believe the coach was doing this to me. Geez, man, have a little compassion. I’m 17, getting stitched up, waiting to hear ‘How you doin’?’ and it’s ‘Get back on the ice, we need you.”’

Boschman was back on the PK in the second period.

“Welcome to the league,” he says. “My mind was on other things that night. We were playing Swift Current. I wasn’t very good, but at least I was out there.”

The scar on the chin is a reminder of how a player hardens from a 17-year-old rookie to an 18-year-old veteran. A longer scar runs down Boschman’s right check, a souvenir from last season’s playoff with the Kamloops Blazers, when Cadrin Smart smashed Boschman’s helmet visor into his face.

“The visor cut me for 16 (stitches),” Boschman said, “but it didn’t really hurt. I was coming off the ice (in Kamloops) and everyone was pointing and staring. I wondered what it was all about and then all I saw was the blood.”

It was about that time Boschman was establishing himself as one of the premier defensemen in the WHL West, a steadying, punishing influence that Babcock says made him the Chiefs’ most effective D-man through the postseason - high praise, since Spokane played all the way to May.

“Bosch is the kind of player everybody in the league wants,” Babcock said, “a rugged, stay-at-home guy who makes people pay. He’s an excellent penalty killer who plays against the opposition’s best guys every night. People know who he is.”

Boschman has introduced himself with an intimidating style that rarely includes trading punches.

“To a Kerry Toporowski or a Mick Vukota,” he says of tough guys past, “fighting is in their character. I’m very aggressive, very powerful, but fighting has never been in my character. I’ll fight - it isn’t like it’s a big deal because you do what you have to - but I’m not a fighter.”

Babcock’s philosophy - boiled down - is “Run ‘em over and wear ‘em down,” Boschman says, “so they know that every time they touch the puck somebody’s going to be on them.”

Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz points out that Boschman is undrafted but not unnoticed.

“Because he doesn’t do anything flashy he’ll have to prove and re-prove himself to get a professional opportunity,” Speltz said. “He’s not a guy that (the scouts) come to watch, but when they leave he’s the type of player they’ve noticed.”

Boschman is encouraged by the past two seasons when teammates Darren Sinclair and Kevin Sawyer signed as free agents. A pro career remains a goal even though he believes in life after hockey.

“He knows hockey doesn’t last forever,” his mother, Bonnie Clark, says from Saskatoon. “He’d like to take it as far he can, but he’s intelligent. He knows that university is down the road somewhere.”

Boschman enrolled at Spokane Falls Community College with an eye on further study that will allow him to combine business and language skills. Well-spoken in two languages, he’s fluent in English and French.

He’s also no stranger to hard times. His earliest memories are of his mother scrambling to meet his every need.

“She’s my mentor, I guess, my role model, friend - everything a mother could be and more,” he said. “She still works two jobs, selling real estate and working as a hospital lab tech. I never thought about being poor. I know I never felt poor.”

Boschman never went wanting with a mother - and grandmother - who thought of him as a miracle.

“You make do with what you have,” said his mother, who was 21 when Joel was born. “My father’s mother - Anne Boschman - supported both of us when Joel was very small. Joel was her love, too.

“I think of the good things that happened when he came into my life. He was a miracle for me.”

His mother is white, his father black. The racial mix left him open on the way up to name-calling and snubs that hurt, but not enough to kill the desire.

“We had a harder time with the racial issue than Joel did,” his mother said. “It’s a red-necked sport. The prejudice in this one particular year was not necessarily from other teams and parents but from our team members.

“One mother asked if it bothered me that they called Joel all those names. Of course it bothered me, but what was I going to do? We thought about registering a complaint with human rights, but all that would have done is call attention to it and it wouldn’t have helped Joel.

“We sat down and told him we were having a hard time with it. He said, ‘Mom it’s always been there. I can handle it. Don’t worry about it,’ but of course I did.”

Her husband’s counsel helped, she said.

“Bryan said, ‘Bonnie, face it, he’s black. This is what he’ll face in this sport, or any sport. Either he handles it or he doesn’t.’ I guess Joel had enough self-esteem to handle it.”

Although his mother is not as quick as Boschman is to brush it off, she heeded the advice of her son and husband and bit her lip mostly in silence.

“Ironically, in what was my worst year, we got a call from the Chiefs saying they were interested in Joel,” Mrs. Clark said. “We saw something good come out of all the flak and prejudicial statements. Pius Lang was scouting for Spokane at the time. He became our contact. I don’t think he knew how special that was to us as a family, to know that Joel was being thought of as a special player.

“He had handled himself well all year. He ignored it, tried to joke it off, did what he thought was best and it paid off.”

Boschman says, “There were some ignorant little kids who called you names. They didn’t know better. When I ended up getting a step-father I had both parental role models. I mean, I had a normal growing-up.”

Boschman says ties with his natural father have grown the past two years.

“I’ve been in contact with him a little more,” he said. “We kept in touch, off and on, but the connection is better now.”

Joel and mom were always tight, even when she insisted he learn to skate before he tried to play.

“Most kids in Saskatoon get skates as soon as they can walk,” she said. “I told Joel before we put the money out he had to learn to skate. I put him in a learn-to-skate class, a figure-skatingtype class. He wasn’t at all impressed. He was 6 or 7 and didn’t want to go.

“I told him he could finish the year and try something else. By Christmas they put the puck on the ice and got their sticks. After Christmas, that was it.”

Boschman was hooked. Baseball would take him to tournaments in Japan at 12 and St. Louis at 14 - he was a pitcher/outfielder - but “for a Canadian kid there’s more opportunity in hockey.”

Joel was 3 when Bryan Clark and Bonnie Boschman combined their families. Clark was a sprints and hurdles specialist who worked with the Canadian track team in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Joel took to baseball, soccer and eventually hockey, but was always seen by track coaches as a natural decathlete.

“I could see the positive effect Bryan’s training had on Joel’s speed and endurance by the time he was 12,” his mother said, “but he always liked team sports more than individual things. He told me four months of training for one race that was over in 10 seconds wasn’t as much fun as playing hockey.”

When he glowers on the ice, Boschman takes on a menacing look - Mike Tyson comes to mind - but when he smiles the resemblance is of the decathlon champ, Dan O’Brien. He’s been compared to both.

“I see what’s written - references to rugged and brutal,” his mother says. “I ask him, how can they say those things?

“He says, ‘Mom, people are scared of me. Why do you think I smile all the time?”’

Babcock says Boschman “has come a long way from the kid who used to sit there singin’ to the music.”

He still sings along with the rock that blasts over the Arena P.A., only the tone is subdued, knowing as he does how it grinds on the coach.

It’s just that Boschman enjoys the setting in Spokane, more so when 10,000 fans get into the action in the Arena.

“I love the fans,” he says. “I like doing something to keep them sailing, kind of like Dennis Rodman. He gets the fans going and feeds off it.”

He notices the raised eyebrows across the table.

Dennis Rodman as a hockey player is a little hard to visualize.

“Don’t worry,” Boschman says. “I’m not going to change my hair color.”

I guess cross-dressing is out, too, then?

Joel Boschman flashes the Dan O’Brien smile.

“No cross-dressing,” he promises.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ON DECK The Chiefs play at Swift Current on Wednesday night.