As a youngster playing for the Regina Pat Canadians, former
Pats forward and Boston Bruins first round pick, Nevin Markwart, didn’t have
many designs on playing in the NHL. His
eyes were set on playing for the Regina Pats whom, when he first moved to the
Queen City from Sault Ste. Marie in 1973, left him hoping some day he could be
a good enough player to don the Blue and White.
“We had little black and white TV’s at home. We didn’t have big screen HD TV’s that showed
14 hockey games every night,” Markwart explained. “There was one game, it was on Saturday
night, called Hockey Night in Canada and for us, most of those games were
Montreal Canadians games. So all you see
on this little black and white screen are these hockey players and they almost
rise to the level of Gods. So the idea
you could ever play in the NHL was just zippo.
You had no aspiration for that at all.
I had never met an NHL player so I didn’t even know you could touch
those guys.”
Markwart realized his aspiration of playing for the Pats
midway through the 1981-82 season when he got called up from the Regina Pat
Blues of the SJHL. After that shortened
season, he found himself ranked in the first round of the next season’s NHL
Draft. The next WHL season was his
coming out party when Markwart scored 27 goals and added 39 assists in just 43
games before a shoulder injury ended his season.
Despite the shortened season, Markwart got a
call from the Bruins who told him two things.
If he was available in the draft, they would select him 21st
Overall and he would play in the NHL the next season. The Bruins did just that in the 1983 NHL
Entry Draft and Markwart played 70 games, posting 30 points and 121 penalty
minutes in his rookie season.
The scrappy forward went on to play 309 games in the NHL,
picking up 109 points along the way to go with 794 penalty minutes. After nine seasons in the NHL, though,
Markwart’s career came to an end due in part to chronic shoulder injuries.
The transition to life after hockey is not an easy one and
there are many stories to illustrate the point.
Markwart’s switch came a little easier as he jumped right into the
business world. Markwart knew a
professor at Northeastern University in Boston and inquired about their MBA
program. Two days of reading later,
Makrwart wrote the entrance exam and scored high, but still had to get past the
admissions committee.
“At first the admissions committee wasn’t real excited about
an ex-hockey player who didn’t have an undergrad… that wasn’t really their
profile of their optimal student,” chuckled Markwart. “Professor Malloy worked his magic and I got
into the program. Two years later I graduated
with my MBA in Finance, graduated number four in my class and went into the
investment industry.”
For Nevin the transition was quick, eight to nine weeks from
player to student, with very little time stuck in limbo and struggling to find
what to do next. Something he feels was
key to successfully moving on.
“I went from finished being playing, to being in the
classroom. I think a lot of my
contemporaries have had difficulty with that, the transition period elongates
for them and other demons show up.
Therefore, it can be problematic.
I was lucky to have my NHL career, and I was very lucky that Jim Malloy
was a strong advocate for me.”
As a result of his experiences, Markwart is a strong
advocate for making education a key part of the junior hockey experience and
supports the WHL in its efforts to provide education to its players through the
WHL Scholarship Program.
“I think it’s important, the concept the league has gone to
in a formalized program to make sure they can help out players when they’re
done playing towards aspirations in education.
I think it’s terrific, I say more….
How do we figure out how to get more of that in place?”
