Article content

The game was his first love, but, like a character in one of his songs, hockey didn’t love him back.

At least not as much as he loved it.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ed Willes: Former Canucks prospect Chad Brownlee traded the stick for the guitar and never looked back Back to video

Oh, Chad Brownlee got close. He was drafted by the Canucks’ in 2003 after a couple of years with the Vernon Vipers. There were four years at Minnesota State and a brief tour in the East Coast league. But he never quite fulfilled the dream, never made the NHL and never played for the Stanley Cup, and that haunted him.

Good thing Plan B worked out a little better.

“It was extremely difficult but liberating at the same time,” Brownlee says of his decision to quit pro hockey.

“It was something I’d been doing my whole life and it became such a big part of my identity. But I knew I had this other voice in my ear, and that’s what I decided to follow.”

Photo by Adrian Lam / Vancouver Sun

A couple of weeks ago Brownlee played at The Bluebird Cafe, the hallowed club in Nashville where so many of his heroes — Garth Brooks, Keith Urban, John Prine and Steve Earle (OK, the last two are my heroes) — had played, and standing on that stage gave him the moment hockey never game him.