When it rains, it pours.
For Cochrane’s Tanner House it also floods, hails softballs and spawns tornadoes.
The Oklahoma City Barons forward has pretty much weathered every storm between here and Moore, OK, in the last two months.
“Not even close,” House answered when asked if Cochrane’s recent torrential downpours compare to Oklahoma’s weather. He’s back in Cochrane, with his wife and baby daughter, to spend the summer with his family. “The flooding and stuff is pretty bad here right now.
“But it’s totally different down there. I went to Moore after it was over and you wouldn’t even know there was a town there.”
The May 20 Moore twister reached a maximum path width of four kilometres and ripped a 26-kilometre-long trail through rural Oklahoma, killing 24 people. Wind speeds reached 474 km/h. While in Oklahoma, House kept a close eye on weather alerts. Television and radio provide constant updates during storm warnings. While there aren’t many basements in Oklahoma, there are shelters in which to seek refuge from deadly tornadoes.
“They are really good at predicting where they’ll touch down,” he related. “They can pretty much pinpoint where the tornado will be. They can chart its path. I was monitoring them, but I didn’t have to take shelter or anything.”
He would have benefitted from shelter on the hit former teammate Tristan Grant decked him with May 29 in Game 3 of the American Hockey League Conference final against Grand Rapids. Grant caught him flush on the jaw with a shoulder, knocking House out briefly and ending his playoffs. Grand Rapids won the Conference final against Oklahoma with a 5-4 score in the seventh and deciding series game.
“I didn’t see it coming,” House admitted of the hit. “It was a bit late, but there was no penalty.”
The league reviewed the play, ruled the hit was “shoulder-to-shoulder,” and no penalty or suspension was given. House recalled catching fellow Cochranite Justin Dowling of the Abbotsford Flames with a similar check last season and taking a two-game suspension for it.
“That’s just the way it goes,” the 27-year-old, penalty-killing specialist said. “He (Grant) is a former linemate. He’s a big boy. He’s had his share of penalties. We talked about it after the game. It’s just one of those things. The game is so fast.”
House has since passed the team’s post-concussion tests and feels fine. He’s resumed all his off-season workouts to ensure Oklahoma’s parent club, the Edmonton Oilers, has no doubt he’s ready to go. He will be a free agent July 5 unless he gets a deal done with Edmonton before then.
“Edmonton is really doing great things right now. I’d like to be a part of this franchise because it’s really going places,” House said. Failing that: “Somewhere else where I’d get a shot at the NHL.”
Of course, if he ever gets tired of hockey he can always be a meteorologist.
