A long way in a short time.
Professional hockey waits for no one, so Cochrane’s Justin Dowling had to get on his horse and ride.
Dowling, and his Texas Stars, rode all the way to a Calder Cup championship June 17 in St. John’s, Nfld., defeating the IceCaps 4-3 in Game 5 overtime to win the American Hockey League best-of-7 championship series 4-1 over St. John’s. Dowling assisted on Mike Hedden’s third-period tying goal to give the Stars a chance to win it all in OT.
“It’s pretty surreal, to be honest. It hasn’t sunk in,” Dowling said in a telephone interview with The Eagle. “It probably won’t until I get home. The last couple of days have been pretty wild.”
The championship closes a chapter in the 23-year-old’s pro hockey book that opened with an eight-game introduction to the American Hockey League (AHL) in spring 2011 with the Abbotsford Heat. In February 2012, the Calgary Flames Abbotsford AHL team contested the Oklahoma City Barons at Calgary’s Saddledome in front of Dowling’s hometown fans.
The Heat cut him days before the game, sending Dowling to the East Coast Hockey League’s (ECHL) Utah Grizzlies.
“It’s always tough when you get sent down, especially in your rookie year,” the former Swift Current Bronco admitted. “You never want to get sent down.”
He vowed he’d return to the AHL a better player.
“It got me going. It jump-started me. It pushed me to want to be better and do more. Being a Calder Cup champion now, it’s an amazing feeling.
“Things kind of worked out.”
Following a productive 34-game segment with the Idaho Steelheads (13 goals 33 assists in 34 games) to open the 2012-13 ECHL season, the Stars signed Dowling to the Cedar Park, Tex.-based AHL club where he finished the season with 16 goals and 14 assists in 38 games.
It was there head coach Willie Desjardins, who now coaches the Vancouver Canucks, unlocked the 5-foot-10, 180-pound centre’s potential, routinely placing him in Texas’s top-6 forward mix. This season, Dowling scored 12 goals and 35 assists in 74 games before carding four goals and 10 assists in an injury-shortened, 14-game playoff campaign. He thought he was done when he got kicked May 16 in second-round play against Grand Rapids Griffins, tearing the bicep in his left arm.
“I was ready to pack up and go home. And don’t know how, or what, happened. But my arm healed,” he said of his improbable return to the playoffs 18 days after being injured. The Texas Stars’ National Hockey League parent club in Dallas saw enough in Dowling to sign him to a two-year, entry-level contract in March. With a proven track record in the AHL, he’s hoping to write a new chapter in his hockey book from hockey’s top shelf.
“We’ll just have to wait and see. That’s my goal, to play in Dallas,” Dowling surmised. “I just have to work hard this summer and work hard at camp and see where the cards fall. If I get an opportunity, I’m just going to take the bull by the horns and see how I do.”
Given his ride so far, don’t put it past the Cochrane Minor Hockey product to gallop into hockey’s biggest show.
