It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Don Parsons doesn’t know how it was supposed to end, just not like this.
Two days after Christmas, he took a pass from a Bloomington (Ill.) PrairieThunder teammate and stuffed the puck past Flint Generals goalie Chad Alban. It was the 678th score of Parsons’ career, giving him the all-time record for minor-league goals. The game at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington was stopped to recognize the accomplishment. The owner of the team came onto the ice to congratulate Parsons.
On Tuesday, PrairieThunder coach Jarrod Skalde waived Parsons.
“I felt like I was betrayed a little bit, especially just not getting a warning,” Parsons said. “I think I deserved a warning in the weeks beforehand and him saying, ‘You’re not playing up to par,’ or whatever else he was thinking about. That hurts more than the fact he did it.
“I’m definitely not going to walk around and say bad things about him, but I’m not going to call him up and ask him to go on vacation with me.”
With a record of 10-20-1, the team was struggling. Skalde decided that a shake-up was necessary and that the shake-up would include Parsons, the PrairieThunder’s captain and a player-assistant coach. It was the first time in Parsons’ career that he had been cut, but even if it hadn’t, “it never would have been more of a surprise than this one right now,” he said.
He is second in the International Hockey League in goals with 21 this season and tied for 11th in scoring with 33 points.
There doesn’t seem to be anything nefarious here, no hidden story. Parsons wasn’t a bad apple. There was no tension between player and coach. This was a team deciding to go in the proverbial “different direction.” An odd direction at an odd time, but a different direction.
“I don’t want to diminish the importance of Don Parsons or to point a finger and say it’s him,” said Skalde, who played seven games for the Blackhawks during the 1997-98 season. “But I just felt like a top guy on our team is supposed to be a top guy every night. Don would have tremendous games, but — and I don’t know whether it was age — I just felt there were other games that I needed more out of him for us to succeed.”
He said he believed Parsons could sense his frustration leading up to the decision.
So after playing for 17 minor-league seasons in cities such as Nashville, Tallahassee, Fla., Johnstown, Pa., and Memphis, and for teams with names like the Tiger Sharks, the IceCats, the Kingfish, the IceGators and the Mallards, not to mention the PrairieThunder, Parsons might be done playing.
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“I think it’s kind of crappy that they waited until I broke the record,” he said. “I feel they used a lot of the publicity for themselves, naturally. Then 10 days after I broke it, they break this news to me. A little disappointing that way.
“A lot of people think I was playing to get the record and then retire. That’s about as far from the truth as you can get. I was playing because I love hockey and I wanted to win a championship and be part of a team. I had no intention of retiring or leaving the game as soon as the record was broken.”
If this is indeed the end, Parsons will have finished his career with 682 goals and 626 assists in 987 games for 13 different teams. Kevin Kerr, who played for 14 teams before retiring in 2005, had the record for goals until Parsons broke it last month.
Parsons turns 40 on Jan. 17. He hopes to become a coach next season, perhaps in the minors. He certainly knows that life.
Since last season, he had made the two-hour commute from the Quad Cities area to Bloomington two or three times a week for practice. After returning from road trips, he often would sleep in the PrairieThunder’s dressing room lounge, then drive home the next day. Commuting four hours a day for practice was better than uprooting his family. His wife is a special-education teacher in the Quad Cities, where he had played during the 2006-2007 season, and his three children are in school there.
“It was great when the gas prices went back down,” he said of the commute. “Last year it got a little sketchy. It was costing about $200 or $300 a week in gas. This year it’s a little over $100. It got to be almost like you’re a truck driver. You don’t even know you’re driving.”
That was like the beauty of hockey for Parsons. He didn’t even know he was working. Even the part-time jobs he had early in his minor-league career — running a youth hockey program and working in his father’s sporting-goods stores — didn’t feel like real jobs. He also played professional roller hockey for the Long Island Jawz, the New Jersey Rollin’ Rockers and the Las Vegas Coyotes during several summers.
He realized in his second year as a pro, when he was playing for Nashville of the East Coast Hockey League, that he probably wasn’t going to play in the NHL. He had picked up 61 points in 60 games and didn’t get a contract from a higher minor-league team.
“I was the same as every kid coming out of college or juniors right now,” he said. “They all think they’re good enough to play pro. It takes a couple of years to realize there are 5,000 other kids who are good enough or just as good as you are and want to play in the NHL too. It became a reality pretty quick to me. I decided that if I kept going in my pro career the way I started, I could make a decent living as a minor professional.”
In 1995, he met his wife, Kristen, while he was playing in Johnstown. The next year, when he was headed to Louisiana to play for the Baton Rouge Kingfish, he told her they could have a long-distance relationship or she could move with him. But either way, he said, he would retire after the season and they could settle down. She moved with him.
“I told her one more year a long, long time ago,” he said. “She has been pretty good about it.”
In 17 seasons, he has had a shattered cheekbone, broken hands, a separated shoulder and a dislocated shoulder, among other injuries. In something of an upset, he has all his teeth.
He does not have a job.
“It’s wasn’t easy telling him, and it’s not easy explaining to some fans why I did it,” Skalde said.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way, but it did. Parsons is trying to look at the bigger picture.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “I played the sport I love for 17 years and got paid for it. How could you ask for any more?”
You could ask for it to keep going.
“If anyone calls who has any opportunities for me, give them my number,” he said.
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