Bruins winger comes out swinging

Credits quality time stick-handling golf balls for scoring touch

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Marc Weber - The Province

Colby Kulhanek leads all Bruins goal scorers with four through the first five games of the season - Bob Frid photo

Colby Kulhanek struggled to tap in from a few feet away last season, but after a summer of improvement that included stick-handling sessions with a golf ball in his garage, the Chilliwack Bruins winger finds himself holing out with regularity.

Kulhanek tallied just twice in 75 games last season. Through five games this season he already has four goals, including both regulation markers in Chilliwack's 3-2 shootout win over Vancouver last Sunday.

Wanting to contribute more offence, the 18-year-old dug into his bag of tricks this offseason and pulled out a Titleist.

"My dad had me doing it from when I was seven years old," Kulhanek says of dropping a handful of pucks in the garage and dekeing around them with the dimpled device.

"We had a big three-car garage and he just left the cars out and set up a net and put up a bunch of boards so I wouldn't put holes in the wall. The golf ball slides real easy around the garage floor, makes it easy to work on moves.

"I hadn't done it in a couple of years and I realized that it helped me a ton. Now I feel I can play with the puck a little more. Last year I was just trying to get rid of the puck quickly, make the simple plays."

The Port Coquitlam native not only honed his handles this summer but also explored his creative side, playing 3-on-3 and packing on 10 pounds of muscle that has allowed him to get to the net better, which is where he does most of his damage.

With such a steep learning curve, exponential improvement is not extraordinary in junior hockey. Current Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic bagged just nine goals in 62 games for the Vancouver Giants in 2005-06, then catapulted to 30 in 70 contests.

"That's one of the really neat things about junior hockey," says Chilliwack general manager Darrell May. "You see a story like Lucic, who made a huge stride and almost came onto to the scene out of nowhere and, bang, he's in the NHL today."

Like a GM in any league, May has to identify the players who possess the skill and smarts to make it at the next level, but with the added wrench of knowing a kid can go from 5-foot-8 to 6-3 during the intermission.

"That's the toughest part of the job," says May. "To determine what a 14-year-old is going to look like at 18 as a hockey player. You're able to accumulate a lot more information on guys watching junior games than you are walking into some bantam rink in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Those are the challenges at our level."

Part of the challenge now for Kulhanek is to maintain the early standard he has set. If you extrapolate his current totals, he'll finish the season with 58 goals. No one expects that, but the former Langley Hornet says his confidence level is "huge right now" and the GM echoes that sentiment.

"I think the sky's the limit for him," says May. "It's early and he's off to a good start. If his confidence continues to grow and he continues to play the way he's playing, we'll just have to see."