Then & Now: Oren Koules

Could-be Tampa Bay Lightning owner Oren Koules made a grating and indelible mark while playing minor-league hockey.

The fight. That’s what Buddy Bodman most vividly remembered about Oren Koules.

Fight? Heck, Bodman said, by the time all was said and done, his Spokane Flyers were in a real Western Hockey League throw-down with Lethbridge. And Koules, the scrappy left wing with a knack for getting under people’s skin, was right in the middle.

“The Sutter brothers were there,” Bodman said of Rich, Ron and Brent, representatives of hockey’s first family who played for Lethbridge. “They were after his butt. They were running him. I don’t know if it was something he said or they just didn’t like him.”

One way or another, Koules left an impression during his days as a minor-league hockey player. And those who remember him said it makes sense the smooth-skating, cocksure character, now 47, would go on to success as a Hollywood producer and, with his $200-million purchase agreement to buy the Lightning, take a shot at NHL ownership.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said former Devils star Ken Daneyko, Koules’ teammate in Spokane. “It was his personality. He was a different kind of guy, a Hollywood type. He was a hotdog.”

Mostly, though, peers remember Koules as a player.

He played 193 games in the WHL, including playoffs, from 1979-82 for Portland, Great Falls, Spokane, Medicine Hat, Brandon and Calgary-Brandon.

He played 43 in the old Atlantic Coast Hockey League and one for Saginaw in the old IHL. But it was in the WHL where Koules made a grating and indelible mark.

He wasn’t an NHL prospect, far from it. But as Les Jackson, Koules’ coach at Great Falls, said, “He could skate and was talented with the puck. He had the game sense and attributes that made him good at that level.”

“He had a lot of arrogance,” Daneyko said. “When he scored, he did things like blowing on the top of his stick like it was a rifle. I liked him.”

Who is this guy?

Koules went west at age 18, a 5-foot-10, 180-pound left-handed shot from LaGrange, Ill., with a hockey jones and some skills. But the WHL was a kind of closed society.

Several teams were based in the United States, such as Portland, Koules’ first stop. But players were mostly western Canadians who didn’t think much of the league’s few U.S.-born players, much less a who’s-that from a Chicago suburb.

“In those days, it was like foreign territory,” Jackson said. “In a lot of ways, he was a pioneer. His experience might have opened a door for other kids.”

Koules, as he has throughout the process of buying the Lightning, declined repeated interview requests. But those who remember said Koules stood his ground against fierce aggression while building a reputation and gaining acceptance.

“I don’t recall him being a fighter, but he was never afraid,” said Jackson, now an assistant general manager with the Dallas Stars. “The first measure other teams will take of you is courage level. If they can push you off the puck or your game, they’ll do it. He was always engaged in the game.”

Koules had nine goals, 20 points and 85 penalty minutes in 24 games with Great Falls before being traded to Medicine Hat, his third stop in his first season.

Goaltender Kelly Hrudey said he was impressed with Koules’ skills but paid even more attention to his personalty.

Hrudey, who played 14 NHL seasons, mostly with the Islanders and Kings, called Koules “charismatic” and “dynamic.”

“He and I hung out a fair amount early on. He was a fun guy to be around,” Hrudey said. “He had a good outlook on life, really positive and ambitious.”

The Sutter brothers, for one night, anyway, couldn’t care less.

Funny thing, said Bodman, the former Spokane seniors star who still resides here and was the Flyers’ coach in the city’s first season in the major junior league, his first impression of Koules was that he was not tough enough.

“He was the first guy into the corners,” Bodman said. “But he’d also be the first out.”

But as the 1980-81 season progressed, Koules established himself as a scorer, with career highs of 28 goals and 45 assists in 67 games, and an agitator with 112 penalty minutes.

Even tough-as-nails Ron Sutter, who played for Lethbridge, remembers Koules as “a guy you had to keep your head up for. He was one of those guys you want on your team but didn’t want to play against.”

Fight night

Koules also knew how to stoke a fire. Add the combustible Sutters, and the preseason game against Lethbridge was primed.

Hrudey wasn’t there the night the teams had their donnybrook but said he could imagine the atmosphere.

“He was a little bit brash,” Hrudey said of Koules. “He was charismatic and really good looking and skilled, and that probably didn’t suit the Sutters very well, knowing their disposition.”

“He probably agitated them because he was dancing around hotdogging,” Daneyko said. “Oren was a little bit Hollywood. If he burned somebody, he showboated.”

Specifics about the fight are few, but, “I’m pretty sure Oren sparked it,” Daneyko said.

And Bodman recalled, “The big brawl started with them running Koules or one of our guys running a Sutter for Koules.”

But Ron Sutter, now a Calgary Flames scout, took offense at the notion he or his brothers were zeroing in: “We were always like a pack of dogs but not on one particular player.”

Not that Koules was unnoticed.

“Being a kid from the Chicago area, he was trying to find a niche for himself,” Sutter said. “He was a feisty, hard-nosed, determined player. Too bad his team didn’t have 19 others like him.”