in Saskatoon, SK, June 1, 2017 Photo Electric Umbrella/Liam Richards
OTTAWA — The city of Kingston is renowned for producing high-calibre hockey players.
Wayne Cashman, Scott Arniel, Doug Gilmour and Kirk Muller are just some of the men from the Ontario city who went on to have standout hockey careers.
Rob Bagg started down a similar path — the 32-year-old Kingston product remembers playing his first league game when he was four — but ultimately he went a different direction. He’s now in his 10th season as a member of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders.
“I like the same things about hockey that I like about football,” begins Bagg, whose Roughriders are to visit the Toronto Argonauts on Saturday. “I like the brotherhood in the locker room. In hockey, the 15 guys who make the novice team are more or less the same guys who play AAA with you all the way through, so that was super-cool.
“There’s also the Canadian-ness of hockey. I grew up as a (Toronto Maple) Leafs fan, so I watched Gilmour, Muller, Felix Potvin — all of those guys were big heroes.
“Then, of course, the main one was (Wayne) Gretzky. I always had 99 on my helmet until I was old enough to know that the 99 on your helmet had to match the number on your jersey. I was a huge hockey fan.”
So was Bagg’s dad, who played the game at the University of Guelph in the days before he become Dr. Stephen Bagg.
“He played for one year there,” Rob says. “He told me stories of how he was a fourth-line fighter even though he’s a doctor.
“He said his career ended when he hopped the boards and the opposing team’s backup goalie jumped out. He said he got his face dented in pretty good and said, ‘Screw this. I’m not playing anymore for no pay.’
“Hockey’s just in our family. It was a lot of fun growing up playing that game.”
The elder Bagg got his son on a backyard rink when Rob was around three years old. The youngster then started playing organized hockey the following year.
Bagg played minor hockey for the next decade and a half and progressed to the point where he thought he would be selected in the Ontario Hockey League draft.
But much like what he later would experience in the CFL, Bagg wasn’t selected in the OHL lottery. The young centre thought about quitting hockey at that point before relenting.
“A lot of my buddies who I thought I was going to get drafted above were bigger guys and they ended up getting picked,” Bagg says. “We probably had eight guys go off our AAA team to the OHL and I ended up signing as a free agent with the Belleville Bulls.”
But Bagg was so unhappy that he wasn’t drafted that he didn’t report to Belleville. Instead, he played for a provincial A team in Kingston — but that didn’t go too well, either.
“I learned the ins and outs of the politics of the sports world at about 15 or 16 years old,” he says. “(The Kingston team) started bringing in kids from other teams who were drafted because their OHL teams wanted them to play on the first two lines in Kingston. That frustrated me.
“I was up and down with them. I was going to play junior in Brockville, so I went down and made that team. Then I started playing football (in Grade 11). That was my last year of organized hockey.”
Actually, Bagg nearly took advantage of another opportunity a couple of years later.
With his football career starting to blossom, Bagg decided to attend Queen’s University in Kingston and walk on with the Golden Gaels football team. When that news got out, Chris MacDonald — the head coach of the Queen’s men’s hockey team — contacted Bagg with an idea.
“He was a Leafs scout back then, so he always had eyes on the Kingston talent,” Bagg says. “When he saw me wander to Queen’s, he talked to me about playing hockey there.
“The intention that I had going to Queen’s was equally as much for hockey as it was for football. Essentially, I was walking on to both teams.”
But Bagg earned a starting spot with the Gaels football team as a freshman in 2003 and that helped curtail his hockey career. However, football wasn’t the only factor.
“I was going to play football and then I was supposed to go to the hockey team at Christmas,” Bagg says. “I stayed with football, but then I saw my grades at Christmas and realized I wasn’t ready to be a two-sport athlete.
“I had a hockey bag in the team’s locker room, but I never made it over there.”
Bagg signed as an undrafted free agent with Saskatchewan in 2007 and made the team during training camp, but he decided to return to Queen’s for his final season of university eligibility. He joined the Roughriders in 2008 and has been a fixture in Saskatchewan since.
His hockey career disappeared in the rear-view mirror long ago.
“I guess I’m just a salty person in general,” Bagg says with a grin when asked if he has missed hockey. “When things don’t work out my way, I have a disdain for them, so I really haven’t missed the game that much.
“But I was pleasantly surprised how much I did miss it and the different perspective I had now that my son (five-year-old Thomas) is starting his journey in sports and life. It has been awesome to get out (on the ice coaching with Thomas’ team) and see kids be rewarded with improvement when they give great effort.
It’s been a long day…but well worth the 24hrs I got with the fam! Even played some hockey! pic.twitter.com/25f535u7mH
— Rob Bagg (@R_Bagg6) October 1, 2017
“All sports teach different types of people how to work together and that’s what I love about sports in general. But certainly in Canada — and specifically in Ontario and Kingston — hockey definitely is king.”
