Ted Nolan’s hands can still feel the pail of water, the heft and weight, the splashes over the sides. He would use the outdoor pump — they didn’t have indoor plumbing at the time — to fill the pail, which he would then lug carefully to the back of his house where he’d packed down some snow with his feet. He would pour out the water.
Then he would do it again.
The outdoor rink in his community, Garden River First Nation, outside of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, always seemed to be full of adults, not enough room for the kids. He figured it wouldn’t be all that hard to build his own.
“Now that I think [about it], it must have took me forever because I was only 10 years old, 11 years old doing it,” Nolan said. “And I bet you by the time I got around the corner of my house maybe half the water was still in the bucket. So, just to this day, I use it as a metaphor for a lot of the kids I speak to.
“That rink started with one pail of water, and it must have taken me thousands and thousands of pails to do it. But it’s like life, it’s just one step at a time.”
It was a step that started a journey that landed Nolan in the NHL, first as a player, later as a coach, setting him on a path that contained accolades and admiration alongside disappointment and heartbreak. Though little has been easy or straightforward about that life, it is also what has allowed him to do all he has done since.
In that time, Nolan has created a legacy beyond what he did on the ice or behind the bench, starting the Ted Nolan Foundation and the Rose Nolan Memorial Scholarship, supporting indigenous women across Canada. He, along with his sons, Brandon and Jordan Nolan, founded the 3NOLANS First Nation Hockey School in 2013 to work with First Nation youth on and off the ice.
“I know the most important work that he’s done throughout his life has been post that firing,” Brandon Nolan said of his father’s separation from the Buffalo Sabres after he won the 1997 Jack Adams Award voted as the NHL’s top coach. “He’s changed the lives of Indigenous youth all across Canada. He’s inspired Indigenous people all over North America.”
It is all that, from the ice to the kids, from the lessons behind an NHL bench to those taught in First Nation communities from Enoch Cree Nation, Alberta to Blind River, Ontario, that has garnered Nolan the Order of Sport in Canada, inducting him into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame as a builder.
“He’s just created so much change and so much good and it doesn’t come from anything special, just comes from treating people kindly, treating people the right way, doing the right things,” Brandon Nolan said. “I think people really see the genuine heart that he has and what he’s done for our people.”
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The Nolan family didn’t have a whole lot.
Ted Nolan’s first pair of skates were size 6 or 7, his feet 3 or 4, forcing him to layer a pair of rubber boots inside. He played on the rivers and ponds and outdoor rinks, until the family had enough money for the Sault Ste. Marie recreational hockey league, a decision that would set Nolan on a bumpy path to stardom.
“I just played [hockey] all the time and in the moonlight at nighttime — we didn’t have any lights in the backyard — so we’d just get out on a moonlit night,” Nolan said. “That’s where we really, really fell in love with the game.”
He would, eventually, head to the city to play hockey, where a whole world awaited him, Zambonis and skate sharpeners, indoor rinks that felt like Disney World, all the trappings that he had no access to back in Garden River.
His break came when Bill LeClair, a manager from his recreational hockey team, got him a tryout with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, the team Nolan would later go on to play for and eventually coach. He arrived overwhelmed and out of his depth in skates that hadn’t been sharpened in three years and left a member of the Kenora Thistles in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.
“That’s where life totally flipped over for me — and I say this all the time — it changed from loving of the game to try to survive in the game,” Nolan said of the period when he was 14 and his father, Stan, died and he left his community, leaving him adrift in a year that he no longer remembers.
It wouldn’t be his last rough patch.
Six years after joining the Greyhounds, though, Nolan made his NHL debut with one assist for the Detroit Red Wings in a 4-3 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Jan. 3, 1982. He would play three seasons, 78 games for the Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins, before injury chased him out.
“When I was hurt — I ruptured three disks in my lower back to end my career — to tell you the truth that was one of the happiest days of my life,” Nolan said. “It seemed like my whole life was an endless array of trying to prove that I can play and prove that I can keep up and so when it was over, I was just so relieved.”
A call from Phil Esposito eventually led him to coaching and trying to ensure that players were treated in all the ways he hadn’t been, “whether you’re a two-goal scorer or you’re a 50-goal scorer, it didn’t matter to me, you still deserved respect.”
Nolan coached the “human spirit of the individual,” letting each and every player know that he cared, not just about them as hockey players, but about them as people, about their achievements and their failures.
And it showed, with Rick Kowalsky, who captained Nolan’s Greyhounds team that won the 1993 Memorial Cup, saying, “He was the ultimate [coach]; he was like a friend, he was like a teammate, he was like a brother, he was like a father-figure kind of all in one.”
Once again, Nolan made it to the pinnacle, back to the NHL, where he earned the Jack Adams. But there was a messy divorce from the Sabres, with accusations of laziness and drinking on the job, which came with echoes of the stereotypes that had long been used against First Nation people.
“I went into a deeper hole than I did before,” Nolan said. “I almost lost my family because of it. I was depressed, I was mad, I was angry, not knowing what I did wrong, and it took its toll, it really did, for about five, six years.”
He got counseling, he talked to the elders in his community, went through some sweat lodges. He said he would never coach again, but nine years later, there he was, coaching the Moncton Wildcats of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, at the behest of team president Robert Irving.
“That was the first time in my entire career I felt wanted in the game,” Nolan said.
From there, it was the New York Islanders and Latvia at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, then back to the Sabres for another season-plus. But by then, Nolan and his sons had started 3NOLANS, which was to become his true passion, the way to help mitigate — at least in some way — all that he went through, to make things better for everyone else.
* * *
That feeling of being wanted in the game, wanted in life, is what Ted, Brandon and Jordan Nolan have tried to give to others in the years since, to make them feel valued with the understanding of what hockey can do to a person, for a person.
“I think he’s always had that hunger to share his story, share his message,” Jordan Nolan said. “I think he always wanted indigenous youth to realize how important they are and how they can succeed in life. I think that’s been his constant message his whole life and he’s never lost sight of that, whether he’s going through a tough time or a great time, he’s always found the time to visit our community and share his message.
“Most people would probably shut down or be bitter, but I think when you see him, how positive he can be when he’s sharing his story or working with our youth, that’s pretty inspiring.”
It inspires them back. Jordan recalled being in Enoch at the River Cree Casino when an older man stood up and sang an honor song to them. It was a special moment, for a person to do that, a moment that Jordan will not soon forget.
Nolan’s NHL journey had started with such a tribute, laying tobacco outside of Chicago Stadium before his debut, an homage to the people who had come before him. That was what had gotten him through, as he put it, “It was the resilience of our people before me, what they had to endure was a heck of a lot more than what I had to endure.”
He stayed for them.
“If I didn’t have the connection of my people, there’s no way I would have made it through,” he said. “Skill can only get you so far and work can only get you so far, but I’m a strong believer in the power of belief.”
And now, he counsels the next generation, again, for them.
“When I played my first game in the National Hockey League, when I played against the Chicago Blackhawks, the one thing I wanted to do was to come back and share my story with as many First Nation kids as I possibly can because I said, ‘Geez, if this skinny little kid from Garden River, who didn’t have skates that fit and made a rink in the backyard — if I could play in the National Hockey League, oh boy, you could do anything in life,'” he said.
For Nolan, there has been love with the game of hockey, there has been disillusionment. There has been a life changed, sometimes for the better. There have been insults and slights, honors and recognitions, a mixed bag of emotions, all of which has written one of the richest and most stunning rises in the history of the NHL.
“I think that was the biggest thing that I got from hockey,” Nolan said. “Not so much that first goal or that trophy that you win at the end of it. It’s the ability to share your struggles in order to make someone else’s less.”