Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

He’ll make it work

GLEN GULUTZAN FILE

Crouched over bloody ice in Finland seven years ago, Glen Gulutzan at once believed his left eyeball had fallen into his left hand and that he had played his final professional hockey game.

A rinkside doctor told him that he'd be patched up quickly, so he could return to the action. After a few choice words from Gulutzan and digesting the severity of the wound, the doc gasped.

"I couldn't see anything," Gulutzan said. "There was blood all over."

A foe had inadvertently lacerated Gulutzan's left eye lid, which required 11 stitches to heal, with the business end of a stick. After a few days in a hospital, Gulutzan barely recognized shapes and figures through what resembled yellow wax paper.

The coach and general manager of the Las Vegas Wranglers, the new ECHL hockey franchise, was out of the game for three months, and doctors estimated that he had lost 25 percent of his vision in that eye.

"Still, I'm one of the guys who's fortunate," Gulutzan said. "If that's the worst thing that could happen to me, I'll take it every day of the week."

Last season, as a player and assistant coach for the ECHL Fresno Falcons, Gulutzan volunteered to remain with another teammate who had suddenly been afflicted with a fear of flying at Los Angeles International Airport.

The team flew on to Anchorage, and Gulutzan rented a car to drive him and his fellow Falcon back to Fresno. Once there, Gulutzan contracted Bell's palsy, which paralyzed the right side of his face.

Short-handed Fresno flew on to Boise, and Gulutzan, undaunted by the facial disorder, drove on to Idaho with his teammate in tow.

"He couldn't even blink," said Falcons coach and general manager Blaine Moore. "It was all the stress we had had in the previous few weeks. They did an MRI and CT Scan, to make sure there was no brain damage.

"He looked like Jean Chretien, the prime minister of Canada. When he was cleared to play, he said, 'I might not be able to see out of (his good) eye, but I'll play.' He played, and he played pretty well."

The effect on the rest of the Falcons was palpable.

"They all lit up," Moore said. "Here's Gully, who can barely see and can't close his mouth, and he's out there workin' and playin'. That forced everyone else to think, 'Geez, I have a sore ankle ... ' Everyone put their menial injuries aside.

"That sums up the character of Gully. He's polite and hard-working, a very intelligent individual. He's really earned the opportunity he's been given in Las Vegas. He wants to prove to everyone that he deserves this chance."

After a month, just before the ECHL playoffs started last season, the palsy -- which typically isn't a serious condition and can last a few weeks or months -- wore off, and Gulutzan helped guide the Falcons to the seventh game of the final.

A year earlier, they won the championship. In his six seasons, Gulutzan became Fresno's all-time scorer, with 425 points.

"I expect and believe he'll do a very good job," Moore said. "People in Las Vegas will know that his team will be an extension of himself. He played with a lot of desire, and he competed every time he was on the ice, in practice and games."

Gulutzan, 32, and his wife, Nicole, have been most surprised by the disarming friendliness they have encountered almost everywhere, whether they were house hunting or shopping, in their new city.

Wednesday, they settled themselves and their two young daughters, Emma and Brielle, into the family's new home in the northwest section of Las Vegas.

Giving a tour of the spiffy Orleans Arena, where the Wranglers will play, Gulutzan's eyes lit up a day earlier, even as workers shuffled about on a messy arena floor half filled with chairs and assorted equipment.

Before Gulutzan first met with Calgary general manager Darryl Sutter, of the NHL club with which the Wranglers became affiliated this summer, he was advised that Sutter is a man of very few words.

Gulutzan was in awe, anyway, because Sutter and five of his blue-collar brothers made the family famous by keeping the surname in the NHL for 25 consecutive seasons, through 2000-01.

When the two met, though, Sutter gushed to Gulutzan about the sports palace that he and his team get to call home, raving that the Orleans Arena has been the constant talk of the 31-team ECHL.

On the surface, Gulutzan's new environment is slick with polish and glitter. Below, there's his foundation of grit and guile and guts, not to mention blood.

At 12, the native of Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, learned an early lesson when his father, Eugene, a high school-level math teacher, coached his junior team.

Glen wanted to wear No. 10 on his jersey, as a tribute to the flashy and speedy Guy "The Flower" Lafleur, but Eugene suggested that his only son wear the No. 23 that Bob Gainey made famous for Montreal, from 1973-89.

Hudson Bay (pop. 2,000), more than 500 miles from the actual Hudson Bay, lies at the intersection of prinicpal highways 3 and 9. Welcome signs, with wooden moose peering from around the edges, on its outskirts boast, "Moose Capital of the World!"

The average winter temperature is about 0 degrees Farenheit, and Gulutzan revealed that, with Emma and Brielle, he built a snowman there early last week after a snowfall of 3 or 4 inches.

He believed he had hit the big time when, at 15, he traveled five hours south to play in another junior league, rooming with two pals in the upstairs of a couple's town home, in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, pop. 40,000.

"I thought I was in New York," he said. "We had a ball."

Early on, Gulutzan played in the Western Hockey League, for Saskatoon, when Bob Strumm was the Regina general manager. Strumm also held that title during six years with the Las Vegas Thunder, of the International Hockey League, in the 1990s.

Strumm is now the director of pro scouting for the Columbus Blue Jackets in the NHL, and he and Gulutzan, one-time rivals, have become friends.

"He always gave 100 percent, every shift," Strumm said. "It was certainly not out of the realm of possibility that he would become a coach. He was a real intelligent player, a student of the game. It doesn't surprise me that he's done well."

At 21, Gulutzan matriculated to the University of Saskatchewan, where he earned degrees in math and physical education.

His nine-year playing career brought him to the brink of playing in the American Hockey League, in Hamilton, but no farther. He harbors no delusions about not reaching the NHL, much less the AHL.

He did play four games in the International Hockey League, including one for the Thunder, in 1996-97.

"I have no regrets about not making it," Gulutzan said. "I did not get the shaft, because I did not have the size or the skating ability. I got the most out of my skills."

He and Moore also discovered how evaluating character is much more challenging than evaluating talent.

Four years ago, they were relieved when they had signed their last player for the Falcons.

"Finally, we were a team, " Gulutzan said.

But Fresno flopped, winning only 20 games.

"We worked hard, but in the wrong way," Gulutzan said. "We really got smarter the next year."

They paid much more attention to quality of character, to doing multiple background checks -- with former coaches and teammates, family and friends -- on each prospect.

One negative characteristic, and they were gone.

Then the Falcons won 51 times, then they won the ECHL title and then they finished a victory from defending that championship last season.

"It's that old saying, 'Where there's smoke, there's fire,' " Moore said. "That first year, we really didn't have any game plan. We just took anybody who came across the desk. We talked, but we didn't really make any calls on them, character-wise.

"If they looked good on paper, we signed 'em. In any job, you tend to learn on the job."

That character issue will be at the top of Gulutzan's agenda as he assembles the first Wranglers team.

He declined to say much about an ongoing ECHL players' strike, only reiterating what he said last week about being optimistic that a deal will get done.

An NHL executive laughed Wednesday about the strike, saying the ECHL season will begin as scheduled, on Oct. 17, even if the teams must stock their rosters with American-born scab players.

"First and foremost, they have to be dedicated to hockey," Gulutzan said. "And I know, if I can't develop players, I'm at a dead end. I know, if I can't win, I'm at a dead end. I'm trying to model this after our championship team, and that starts with character.

"And I can't wait for the puck to drop."

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