Ryan White never got to become a Brandon Wheat King as a player.
Instead, he left home, played junior hockey elsewhere and built a professional career that carried him through more than 300 NHL games.
Roughly three decades after first dreaming about wearing the Wheat Kings crest, he finally gets to wear it on his chest.
He just had to wait until his playing career was over.
“I dreamt of being a Wheat King, like anyone else around here,” White said. “When that day didn’t come, it was tough. But it probably led me to have a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and it probably led me to work even harder.”
For a hockey-playing kid growing up in Brandon, the dream was an obvious one.
The Wheat Kings were the team in his city. White wanted to be one of them.
He never got that opportunity.
What followed instead was a career far beyond junior hockey. White reached the NHL, played more than 300 games and learned how to survive professionally through competitiveness, physicality and a willingness to adapt to whatever kept him in the lineup.
Now his first WHL coaching job has brought him back to the organization he once hoped would give him his start.
There is something fitting about the way White eventually found his way there.
The disappointment of not becoming a Wheat King helped shape the player he became. Years later, he has returned to help develop players chasing versions of the same dream.
Coaching has also forced White to reconsider some of what he believed when he was the one being developed.
“Maybe I didn’t understand what they were trying to coach me on,” White said of some of his coaches. “As you go through life and you look back, you understand exactly what they were trying to coach you on.”
As a player, White understood being pushed.
His career was built on it. He carved out an NHL role through competitiveness, physicality and a willingness to change when the game demanded it.
But coaching has taught him that knowing how he responded does not mean every player should be treated the same way.
“We’re all different,” White said. “Some guys are like me and they’re easy to poke and prod. Some guys aren’t.”
That has become one of White’s fundamentals of coaching.
He cannot simply teach every player the way he would have wanted to be taught. He has to understand who they are first.
“You’ve got to find out what these guys’ personalities are like, and you’ve got to spend time with them and you’ve got to get to know them,” White said. “Once you get to know a guy and you build a little bit of trust, it’s a lot easier to ask them to do something you want them to do.”
As a player, White’s responsibility was relatively straightforward: understand what was being asked and find a way to do it.
As a coach, knowing the answer is only the beginning.
Now he has to figure out how to get someone else there.
“Try not to paint them all with the same brush,” White said. “They’re all different, and just try to approach each guy differently and try to get the most you can out of each one.”
There is added weight because of where White landed his first WHL coaching job.
He is not coaching somewhere foreign to him. He is coaching in the city where he grew up, where his family lives and where the Wheat Kings were part of his idea of hockey long before he became a professional player.
The crest means something different when you spent your childhood hoping to wear it.
“The way I carry myself around the rink and the way I carry myself outside of the rink, I want it to be special,” White said. “I want people to be able to look up to me and hopefully want to achieve that one day too.”
He can already see some of that influence at home.
White says his children sometimes debate whether they want to become players or coaches because coaching is now what they watch their father do.
White still wants them to chase the playing dream first.
“I want them to be a player first,” he said. “That’s what I would hope for all the kids around here, wish to be a Wheat King as a player. And you do things right, you might just end up here as a coach one day too.”
Before his first game behind the Brandon bench, White was not trying to hide what the moment meant.
He called himself “a kid in a candy store.”
“I’ve been waiting this opportunity my entire life, and to be able to put that crest on is special to me,” White said.
What he anticipated most wasn’t drawing up a play or earning his first win behind the bench.
It was simply being there.
Friends and family would be in the building. There would be a first time standing behind the Brandon bench and eventually a puck drop that would turn something White had imagined since childhood into his everyday job.
And when the Wheat Kings jumped out to an early lead in their season opener, White was finally celebrating from behind the Brandon bench.
For the kid who once wanted to be out there wearing the jersey, the view had changed.
He was finally part of it.
“You only get one first opportunity,” White said. “It’s a special feeling for me and a special moment for my family.”
But perhaps the clearest sign that White has moved from player to coach is how quickly the story stops being about him.
Ask what would make his first season successful and he doesn’t start with wins, his own career trajectory or what coaching might lead to next.
He talks about the players.
“I want the players to get better, and I want them to accomplish their dreams,” White said. “I want them to get to the next level.”
That could mean college hockey. It could mean professional hockey. For some players, simply finding the next opportunity will be enough.
White understands better than most how much a career can change when one door does not open.
The Wheat Kings were once that closed door for him.
His career continued anyway.
Now he gets to spend his days trying to make sure the players in front of him are prepared when their own doors open.
“Fast forward a couple years down the road and you see guys playing in North Dakota or playing pro hockey or wherever that is, that’s a pretty special feeling,” White said.
White spent his childhood wanting someone to give him the opportunity to become a Wheat King.
He eventually created his own.
Now, wearing the crest he once wanted as a player, his job is to help someone else’s opportunity become a career.
“At the end of the day,” White said, “my job is to help these guys accomplish their dreams.”