Neighbourhood kids looking to to be the next Glen Metropolit or Trevor Daley skate around the Regent Park rink.

Metropolit’s hockey career has taken him from Regent Park to Vernon, B.C., Nashville (ECHL), Atlanta (IHL), Pensacola, Fla., Grand Rapids, Mich., Portland, Maine, Washington, Tampa Bay, Helsinki, Lugano, Switzerland, Atlanta, St. Louis, Boston, Philadelphia, Montreal and back to Switzerland to Zug, Lugano and Bern before landing in Mannheim this season.

Most summers, Metropolit returns for a week in Toronto. He spends an afternoon at the Regent Park community centre spreading his goodwill. He tours around his old stomping grounds and reflects.

He even travels a few blocks away, takes the footbridge across the Don Valley Parkway and runs the Riverdale Park East hill.

When Metropolit was younger, a friend spotted then Toronto Maple Leafs captain Doug Gilmour running the hill as part of his summertime training. That was enough for Metropolit to copy one of his idols.

What does Metropolit think about when he visits Regent Park?

“I look back and get in the moment,” he said. “I’m so thankful in being able to get out of there. It gives me strength. It renews me, even at this age. It gives me an appreciation and reminds me where I came from.”

Metropolit came from a challenging childhood. His mother, Linda Hachey, gave birth to her eldest son when she was 18. Metropolit knows only the name of his biological father, Marty McGill.

Metropolit gets his surname from Bruce Metropolit, Linda’s former boyfriend and father of her son Troy, who is three years younger than Glen. Troy and Glen have a younger sister, Nicole, now 30.

Because of the family’s dire financial situation back then, Glen and Troy were in and out of foster homes as kids, and sometimes they were separated. But Glen found solace on the hockey rink. Troy, on the other hand, was lured by the excitement of Regent Park’s mean streets.

Sixteen years ago, Troy and two accomplices kidnapped lawyer Schuyler Sigel and his wife Linda, and then ransacked their Rosedale condominium.

Troy was sentenced to 14 years and then was charged with first-degree murder of a fellow inmate in Millhaven maximum security prison in Bath, Ont. He ended up spending 16 years in prison and was released to a halfway house last month.

“He’s upbeat,” said Glen, who frequently kept in touch with his brother throughout his incarceration. “He’s worried, but he seems to have it together. I’m doing what I can through some connections to get him a job in construction.”

Who knows what would have happened to Glen had he not fallen for hockey. If he wasn’t outside playing shinny, he was hanging out with his uncle Neil Karrandjas and his friends watching their beloved Maple Leafs.

“In looking back and thinking about it now, there was so much negative stuff going on around me, and when I fell in love with hockey, it was a way for me to get away from all the negative stuff,” Metropolit said. “As I think back now hockey brought me to a happy place.

“There was a lot of talent on that rink back in those days, but there also was a lot of misguided youth. Some of them are now dead.”