Rebels stats men marking quarter-century behind the scenes

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Three of them are marking 25 years of volunteering with the Western Hockey League club this season.

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“It’s something to do in the winter. Instead of sitting at home and freezing to death, you can go there and do something,” Gerry Johnston jokes.

Johnston, who spends game time way up above the ice doing plus/minus, admits it’s the camaraderie that keeps him coming back each season.

“We just have a good time, and we enjoy watching hockey players develop,” he says. “The team is doing a heck of a lot better than I thought they would have. I’m quite surprised and happy for those guys.”

Johnston and fellow volunteer Gerry Paquette share a passion for the job they do for a lot of the same reasons. One interesting tidbit they agree on is who is the most memorable Red Deer Rebels player.

“The guy that I found the most funny or entertaining was Colby Armstrong,” Paquette says. “Whenever he came into the penalty box, he was a hoot. Him and another guy would get into an altercation and be arguing back and forth – the regular chit chat between guys – and Colby always had a better comeback.”

As it turns out, Paquette, who is from Debden, Saskatchewan, has ties to the Rebels from long before they became part of the WHL.

“I started working with the Rebels when it was still the Simpsons’ and they used to be our customers back in northern Saskatchewan in the 60s,” he recalls. “My father had a GM dealership and I was the parts guy. Terry and Wayne (Simpson) used to buy vehicles from us.”

In 1999, Brent Sutter bought the team and would guide them to a Memorial Cup title in 2001. The Centrium would also play host to the World Junior Championships, multiple international games, and its own Memorial Cup in 2016.

Johnston, Paquette and Barclay White, the Rebels’ scorekeeper, have worked most of those events, not to mention the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in 2018, the Esso Cup in 2015, and the upcoming Canada Winter Games.

“Junior hockey is a fabulous sport and it’s so much fun to watch the advancement of these kids, and how they progress along. It’s a great sport to watch and to be involved in,” says White. “The Memorial Cup team of 2001 was a fabulous team with a lot of players that went on to play in the NHL. That was a highlight.”

White says, finally, what the entire trio expressed, that the organization has and continues to treat them and all the black jackets exceptionally well.

“Brent and Connie, the whole crew, they really look after us,” he says. “They appreciate the job that we do. They’re terrific owners and terrific people. It’s fun to be a part of the organization and a part of the Western Hockey League.”