IN DEPTH WITH... Daryl Lipsey

But the man who wrote his name into local folklore as a Swindon Wildcats’ legend didn’t exactly flit away his formative years by the banks of Coate Water, or grow up admiring the dazzling design of the Magic Roundabout.

Daryl Lipsey is the man from a small city in central Canada who became a cult hero at the Link Centre.

In January 2011, the Wildcats retired Lipsey’s number 14 jersey, a sweater in which the 51-year-old shone as Swindon’s player-coach for nine years. He remains the club’s all-time leading points scorer with a whopping 874 to his name – almost 300 more than Gary Dickie – and heads the charts for both goals and assists.

In 1984, Lipsey bid farewell to his home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and, by way of Bournemouth and very nearly south west Germany, the Canadian ace arrived in Wiltshire two years later, primed to weave together his Wildcats legacy.

A fresh-faced Lipsey

“I was playing Junior A level in Canada before I came over. I never made it to the pros. I had a scholarship offered to me to go to Western Michigan (University) in Kalamazoo but it was half a scholarship, where you had to pay half,” says Lipsey.

“I sat down with my dad and basically told him that I was only going for the hockey. I wasn’t really bothered about the schooling. I think it was going to cost us about $15,000 and I told him ‘save your money’.

“I sat down with my coach who asked me what I wanted to do and I said ‘I wouldn’t mind going and playing hockey in Europe, trying something different and seeing a bit of the world’.

“He helped me and we made a few contacts and then it was Stuttgart in Germany that I signed with.

“I had signed a contract to go to Stuttgart and what happened was that a player from the NHL got cut from the Hartford Whalers. Because I hadn’t played as high a level, they called me and said ‘look, we’re signing this guy from the NHL and we’re going to have to let you go but don’t worry, we’ll find you a place to go because you’ve signed a contract’.

“A week later, they contacted me at home in Canada and said ‘we’ve found you a place to go in Bournemouth in England’ and I said ‘they play hockey in England?’.

“I came and played a friendly game here in Swindon when the rink first opened. I was playing for Bournemouth at the time and we had an exhibition game against Southampton, I think.

“I saw the facility – I was playing in a very small, old rink in Bournemouth – and the opportunity came.

“They were looking for an ice hockey development officer at the time – somebody to run the junior programme – and they were also looking for an import for the team that they were starting up and I basically applied for that and got it.”

Lipsey outside the Link Centre in 1995

Lipsey was the newly-formed Wildcats’ first major import signing and, as a young man from across the pond, British hockey was a world apart from what he had previously been used to.

The weight of responsibility on his player-coach role was completely alien, but it wasn’t long until Lipsey, who was named Swindon’s greatest player of all-time by readers of the Swindon Advertiser back in 2011, thrived.

He says: “You don’t do that in Canada – you’re a player and that’s it. You turn up, you play and you go home and then get up for practice the next day.

“Being in charge of everything was different but it was a good experience. You figured out a lot of stuff that you weren’t used to, like finance and sticking to a budget.

“We were always a team that was mid-table but one year, we won the Autumn Cup (in 1991). That was our big win.

“I think this ‘Mr Swindon’ just came from setting up the junior programme and getting them going.

“Playing-wise, I guess I’d say I had a decent career playing for Swindon.

“I always tell everybody the goalies weren’t as good back then. They’ve improved a lot now and you were always one of the top goalscorers in the league.

“But you had to show up and play. Back when I played, if you weren’t performing, they were changing imports left, right and centre, so if you had a bad night, the next day you were getting shipped out back to Canada – you had to be on your toes.”

Lipsey salutes the Swindon faithful after his final game for the club in 1995

Lipsey returned to Swindon as head coach in 2003 – the team was then known as the Lynx – and ended his second spell at the Link Centre in a consultancy role in 2006.

But that was only after his memorable association with the Manchester Storm, the North West mega-franchise that played at the 17,643-capacity Manchester Arena and enjoyed a swathe of success in British hockey’s top league before money troubles led to their demise in 2002.

Joining the Storm for their inception in 1995, Lipsey helped them gain promotion to the Superleague and went on to have spells as both assistant and head coach.

“At Manchester, it was a proper NHL rink. We were playing in front of 17,500 people,” says the Wildcats hero.

“We were owned by an American company who put in a lot of money and it was a good experience for everybody involved and there were a lot of fans new to the sport.

“Man United and Man City were playing on the same night as us and we were still playing in front of 17,250, so it was pretty crazy at the time.

“As a player, playing in front of that many people was pretty cool.”

Lipsey on the bench for Manchester Storm

Lipsey’s days of blasting the puck past hapless netminders may have passed, but his love affair with the ice is far from over, thanks in no small part to another Canada-born Wildcats legend – former D-man Bryan Larkin.

Lipsey helps provide hockey equipment for teams and organisations around the country for Larkin’s Cricklade-based hockey equipment distributor Sixty Thirty Sports, whilst the ex-Swindon duo both coach the Wildcats’ U14 A side.

“When I came back to Swindon, I contacted Bryan, who was working with Miras Sports, the company he took over, and he asked if I wanted to help out in the warehouse for a while,” says Lipsey.

“I ended up working for them when I first came back for seven years and Bryan took over, named it Sixty Thirty Sports, and I’ve been with him ever since.

“You miss the playing a bit, but I still get a lot of enjoyment coaching the kids.

“I’ve got two sons that have started playing hockey – my first son (Mason) is playing U14s and myself and Bryan (Larkin); we coach the team. And my second son (Dylan) is the U11s.

“We can give a lot back to hockey and there are a lot of other good coaches here in Swindon that have played hockey for the Wildcats before.

“The big thing is trying to give back to what we’ve taken out of the sport. Our knowledge - being from Canada - we can help the kids immensely.

“We’ve got a really good junior programme in Swindon and we want to make sure that it stays at that level or gets better all the time.

“We’re not guys that think we know everything. We’re constantly learning. If we’re not learning from other coaches, we’re learning from players.

“It’s not a cheap sport anymore. The kids put in a lot of time but unfortunately there’s not enough time because the ice-time isn’t available.

“It’s our (Canada’s) national sport and we have the advantage obviously because of the cold weather in the winter. Every school has an outdoor rink. You can skate on the lakes so you’re always skating.

“This country here, what is there? There’s something like 44, maybe 46 rinks in the country so it’s tough to get on the ice as much as we did in Canada.

“The thing with kids too is that all kids want to be the goalscorer. All kids want to be the hero. Everybody wants to score the goals and nobody wants to be the defender.

“It’s tough to teach kids ‘your position now is a defender and we’re going to help you out and tell you what to do’.

“All kids will tell you that they want to play in the NHL, just like footballers want to play in the Premier League – it’s a tough place to make it.

“The British kids are in an even tougher position because of the ice time that’s available, so a realistic goal would be that some of them make the Elite League and the rest of them become Wildcats players and see what happens from there.

“We always tell our kids that schooling is number one and hockey is number two. You have to do well in school and we tell our parents all the time that if the kids have to miss a practice because they’re not doing well in school, let us know.

“You miss certain things about the game but being involved with our kids now; we go to other rinks and see people that we used to play with, and they have kids now that are playing hockey.

“So you’re always seeing guys that you used to play against and you’re involved in hockey and talking about hockey all the time.

“With Bryan and myself now selling hockey equipment, we’re still talking to people that are coaching teams and are involved in hockey.

“When we go and see ice rink shops, we’re showing them the gear and being shown around. It’s pretty cool now to still be involved in something that we love doing.”