Devin Setoguchi

Yesterday I wrote lightheartedly about the town of Taber, Alberta and it's "Cooks" hockey team. I ended the article by mentioning that in much more modern times Devin Setoguchi has become the town's most famous hockey player.

Today we will look at Setoguchi and touch on the small town's dark past. 

Setoguchi is best remembered as fast skating scoring sensation with the San Jose Sharks. The 8th overall draft pick of 2005 NHL draft starred on a line with Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau for a good stretch. He ended up with a 516 game NHL career with 131 goals and 261 points.

Growing up, his idol was fairly obvious - Paul Kariya. After all both were Western Canadian kids who not only played similar games but were of half-Japanese descent.

"Growing up, I just wanted to be like him," said Setoguchi. "It's just one of those things. I'm half-Japanese, he's half Japanese. I always liked him as a player. Of course, I'm going to take pride in my background. Only a handful of players have been able to play in the NHL with that background."

Growing up Setoguchi easily could have become a potato farmer in Taber, Alberta, like his father. But when Devin was 10, he sliced off the top of his left index finger on a conveyer.

“That kind of turned him off a bit,” said Dale Setoguchi, a pretty good hockey player in his day. “He kind of got gun-shy being around the farm after that. He was always thinking in his mind he didn’t want to be a farmer.

“It worked out pretty good for him because I don’t think I wanted to see him back here either,” Dale said and laughed. “He probably wasn’t cut out for it.”

All of this got me thinking. Just how did this Japanese family end up in rural Alberta, anyway?

It turns out Taber has a dark past. During World War II the Canadian government put people of Japanese descent into labour internment camps. Setoguchi's paternal grandparents were removed from Vancouver and put to work at the sugar beets factory in Taber. Upon the end of the war they got their freedom back but were barred from moving back to the west coast. They, like several other families, stayed in Taber and established Setoguchi Farms, growing potatoes.

"It wasn't something that my grandfather talked about very much, and we never really pushed the subject," Setoguchi told Rafu Shimpo, a Los Angeles Japanese newspaper when he played for the LA Kings late in his career. "I knew where they had come from and what they had gone through. It's a pretty incredible story when you look at it and see where I am today."

In the same article Setoguchi talked about his own hard times. After his career sputtered in San Jose and he began being traded around the league, he became depressed and dependant on alcohol and cocaine. 

Devin Setoguchi overcame his demons. I will always remember him as the speedy youngster on the Thornton-Marleau line in San Jose