Darryl Sutter, brothers made NHL off work ethic learned on farm, frozen slough in rural Alberta

The NHL and conservation non-profit Ducks Unlimited Canada are teaming up to tell stories of current and former NHL players and how access to community ponds and the outdoors helped shape their love for the sport. Today, a visit with Darryl Sutter, a five-year captain of the 1980s Chicago Blackhawks who went on to coach the Los Angeles Kings to the Stanley Cup in 2012 and 2014. One of seven brothers, six of whom played in the NHL, Sutter today lives on a sprawling farm just outside of Viking, Alberta, where in his youth he skated on a frozen slough in winter and played endless ball-hockey games in the hayloft of a barn.

Darryl Sutter probably has as much dust in his veins as he has blood, a man to whom jeans and a flannel shirt aren't as much a fashion statement as they are a lifestyle.

It was on the family farm in rural Alberta, in his youth and working the land to this day, where Sutter learned that there is no substitute for dirt beneath one's fingernails.

From 1980-87, the native of tiny Viking, Alberta, played 406 NHL games for the Chicago Black Hawks, the favorite team of his youth, and another 51 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs before injury would prematurely end his playing career.

Between 1992 and 2023, Sutter would answer his true hockey calling as coach of the Blackhawks, San Jose Sharks, Calgary Flames, Los Angeles Kings and finally the Flames once more, guiding the Kings to their 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup championships.

Darryl Sutter at home in Viking, Alberta with the 2014 Stanley Cup that he won as coach of the Los Angeles Kings. His children, from left: Brett, Jessie and Christopher.

After a playing career that ended with 279 points (161 goals, 118 assists) and 43 (24 goals, 19 assists) in the playoffs, Sutter coached 1,479 games, 182 more in the postseason. With the Flames, he was voted winner of the 2022 Jack Adams Award as the NHL's top coach.

You'll find reminders of some of Sutter's storied career, and those of his brothers, on the walls of buildings on a 3,200-acre farm some 85 miles southeast of Edmonton.

"We're seven miles east of Viking," Sutter, 66, said in recent conversation. "If you get lost, just ask because everybody knows where we are."

For all the memorabilia displayed, there are many more milestones and relatively small achievements consigned to his memory, where they are indelibly painted in bold colors, softer pastels and sepia tones.

Darryl Sutter took viewers on a tour of his Viking, Alberta, farm in this September 2022 Calgary Flames video.

Six of seven Sutter brothers made it to the NHL, not because of God-given talent but a work ethic they learned as teammates on the farm, chores done before they laced their skates on a frozen slough and then in the small local arena.

"Work ethic, yes," Sutter agreed, "but determination and the mental part of it was huge for us because we just weren't going to be denied doing what we wanted to do.

"To think that we all could move on and move up and play at the highest level is probably a remarkable thing. They always say the work ethic. You've got to remember we all left home when we were 15 or 16, when we were the only boys doing that. We leaned on each other. Our toughness was around the mental part."

Brian, Brent, Darryl, Duane, Rich and Ron Sutter played a combined 4,994 regular-season NHL games, another 603 in the playoffs. They totaled 2,936 points (1,320 goals, 1,616 assists) and 275 (122 goals, 153 assists) in the postseason.

Only Gary Sutter, the eldest, chose a route other than hockey.

The Sutter brothers -- "seven gunslingers and Dad's dog, Smoky," Darry Sutter jokes of the photo -- in front of a barn on their farm in Viking, Alberta. From left: Gary, Duane, Brent, Brian, Ron, Darryl and Rich.

Duane won the Stanley Cup four times with the 1980s dynasty New York Islanders, Brent winning two as Duane's teammate in 1982 and '83.

Darryl would add to his two coaching championships in Los Angeles with front-office time as Flames general manager, a combined 581 regular-season and playoff games between April 11, 2003, and Dec. 28, 2010. His final coaching job ended when he was fired by the Flames on May 1, 2023, after they missed the playoffs by two points.

Today, North American arena roofs have been replaced for Sutter by the big sky of Alberta, long days happily spent tending to cattle and fields that seem to stretch forever, chores around the farm in some ways not a whole lot different than those he did as a boy. The land and what it means to himself, his family and future generations is hugely important.

From family matriarch Grace Sutter's collection, a 1992 water-color painting of the seven Sutter brothers playing hockey on a slough in front of their farmhouse in Viking, Alberta.

Darryl and his wife, Wanda, have recently engaged with Ducks Unlimited Canada's "Small Ponds, Big Goals," emphasizing the importance of smaller wetlands and the conservation efforts needed to protect them.

The Sutter Conservation Easement and Elk Conservation Easement projects, owned by Sutter, are Ducks Unlimited Canada Conservation Easement initiatives aimed at permanently protecting valuable wetland and parkland habitats in the Viking area of Alberta.

"It's almost 800 acres of our property that will never be broken or inhabited, even if the land is ever sold," Sutter said. "We wanted to protect our water and the native grass and the old land and all the wildlife that comes with it. Wanda and I feel very strongly about it. It's a legacy thing, to be honest."

It's natural that Sutter feels a profound commitment to the land, the family homestead established in the first years of the 20th century. He's been on this farm since 1966, when he was 8. Downsizing a little now, he once managed 700 head of cattle, the fields rich with canola wheat, barley and oats.

When his father, Louis, died Feb. 10, 2005, Sutter and his wife bought the property from the patriarch's estate. Until recently, his mother, Grace, lived on the farm. Now 89, she resides in town.

Darryl Sutter on his farm in Viking, Alberta, after having coached the Los Angeles Kings to the 2012 Stanley Cup championship. Also in the photo is the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl, presented to the NHL's Western Conference regular-season champion.

"This is where we grew up," Sutter said of the spread. "We always came back to Alberta in the summers, this is where we built and stayed. It's a big operation, a lot of work with the grain and the cattle, putting up our own feed.

"It's full-time work. When I was away coaching, we hired men and a family even lived here for years, but now we do it all ourselves. We've always managed it ourselves. We just weren't always here. Managing means all the labor.

"Summertime, we get up with the daylight. It's a little different in the winter, now we're just feeding cattle and plowing snow. In the summer, you're putting your feed up, checking fences, calving cows …."

Only a decade separates the seven Sutter brothers, so it wasn't uncommon for all the boys to be on the farm's slough, a frozen swamp roughly the size of six rinks, to play marathon games -- only after the chores were done.

"We were so close in age and the chores that needed to be done on the farm were so entwined with hockey that it made us understand how to be team players," Sutter said. "I remember Mom telling us that if we got the work done, we could play all we wanted."

Darryl Sutter (r.) with his brother, Brian (l.) and Hall of Fame goalie Glenn Hall in 2017, and Darryl Sutter coaching the Calgary Flames in April 2023.

It was on this slough that six brothers began their skate toward NHL careers.

"Surreal is a good word," Sutter said, considering the extraordinary fact that six siblings rose to hockey's highest level from a tiny speck of Alberta. "But you know what? My dad said once that his boys made their minds up when they were little that hockey was going to be the most important thing in their life. He said, 'Where it came from, I don't know.'

"As little boys, we said we were going to be in the NHL. We pretended we were NHL players. I was Bobby Hull, Brian was Gordie Howe, Brent was Bobby Orr, Gary was anybody who was with the Toronto Maple Leafs. It went on and on. It's hard to explain but that's what we were going to do."

When the slough softened, the boys took their competition to the hayloft of a barn, playing 3-on-3 ball-hockey games that were hotter than the stuffy 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures. Louis Sutter would send them all to the virtual penalty box when things got out of hand.

The barn hayloft, where the Sutter brothers played their marathon boyhood ball-hockey games, was pictured in a Los Angeles Times feature on Darryl Sutter published Aug. 24, 2014.

Once during their NHL careers, four brothers -- two on the Islanders, two on the Philadelphia Flyers -- were on the ice at the same time, rumbling like they were back in the hayloft.

Said referee Ron Wicks, when he helped to pull the bodies apart: "I really feel sorry for your mother."

Sutter remembers his early skates, purchased at the Marshall Wells or Macleod's store in Viking, quickly worn into wet leather and blunt carbon-steel on the slough.

"They were always used," he said of the skates. "We'd go in after the store was closed at night, the owner opening up for us, and on the old wood floors we'd try on all the used skates that had been traded in. We'd all go in together. When we left, we all had big smiles and old skates.

"They had to last us all year. We were all so close in age that there were a lot of hand-me-downs, too. If you broke your stick, you used nails and tape to fix it. We had lots of hand-me-downs and second-hand equipment from lots of people. There are pictures of us at Christmas with a new Maple Leafs jersey, a new Detroit jersey… those were big things."

Darryl Sutter and the Stanley Cup in front of an arena-wall mural of the Sutter brothers at the original Carena in Viking, Alberta, on July 21, 2012. Sutter had coached the Los Angeles Kings to the championship.

The boys' love of hockey grew with two NHL games a week watched on the family's black-and-white television.

"The first game I saw in color was in the 1970s at my grandparents," Sutter said. "At home we could get Channel 3 for a Wednesday night game and Channel 5 was always 'Hockey Night in Canada' on Saturday. Sunday afternoons we'd listen to game on the radio. My dad was a big Leafs fan, so if he was watching or listening with us, we had to pick our spots about our favorite team."

For Sutter, a Black Hawks fan through and through, there was no second choice. His boyhood scrapbooks were filled with photos and his own drawings of Chicago players.

As a boy, his hockey heroes included Black Hawks goalie Glenn Hall, who today lives about 100 miles away in Stony Plain; later, he'd become a huge Tony Esposito fan. He cherishes his friendship with Hall, Mr. Goalie's visits to the Viking farm among his best memories, and was thrilled to be a 1980s teammate of the late "Tony O."

Sutter wasn't the Black Hawks' first target in the 1978 NHL Draft, selecting the forward in the 11th round (No. 179). That did nothing to dilute the player's love of the team.

Darryl Sutter in front of a small portion of a wall at home celebrating his family's hockey history, and from a family album, Louis and Grace Sutter and their seven sons.

He would be named Chicago's captain Dec. 9. 1982, wearing the "C" for three seasons, sharing it with Bob Murray in 1985-86, then alone for an aching 44 games in 1986-87, his last in the NHL.

On June 27, 1987, at age 28, his body battered, Sutter retired and was named Blackhawks assistant coach under newly appointed Bob Murdoch.

"There comes a time when you have to sit down and figure if you'll be able to walk when you're 40 or 50," he said at the time, having had several knee operations. "The League is getting bigger and faster and if I'm a step behind, I don't want to play. I don't want to be a hanger-on."

Chicago's captaincy "was a tremendous honor," Sutter says today.

"It went back to my being such a Black Hawks fan as a boy," he said. "I knew who all the captains were -- Pierre Pilote, Stan Mikita… Keith Magnuson, who I got to play with a little bit before he was my captain, then my coach… to wear the C after him was an awesome thing. Tony (Esposito) and Stan were my Chicago heroes, and I played with them both. It was a huge thing for me, for sure."

Chicago Black Hawks captain Darryl Sutter in action against Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens on Oct. 15, 1983, and a 2005 Hockey Hall of Fame display celebrating the six Sutter brothers who played in the NHL.

Hanging up his skates, Sutter found his way to coaching. There was already precious metal in his family before he lifted the Stanley Cup in Los Angeles in 2012 and 2014, beyond the six championships won by two brothers.

In 1848, Sutter's great-great uncle, Gen. Johann Augustus Sutter, had gold discovered by a carpenter on his property 500 miles north of Los Angeles, a year before the California Gold Rush forever changed the landscape of the West Coast.

"He must have been a tough son-of-a-gun to do that," Darryl Sutter said of his distant relative's pioneering spirit, gold having been panned from a Sacramento River stream 164 years before he hoisted the silver and nickel alloy Stanley Cup.

A 1925 book was written, and a 1936 movie made about the life of the legendary General, "Sutter's Gold" only part of a remarkable family history.

Los Angeles Kings coach Darryl Sutter after his team won the 2012 Stanley Cup, and a poster for the 1936 movie "Sutter's Gold," a biopic on the life of his great-great uncle, California Gold Rush pioneer Gen. Johann Augustus Sutter.

Today, watching hockey when it appeals to him, his son Brett a coach with Calgary of the American Hockey League, Sutter considers the slough on which his life's journey began, and the outdoor hockey that instilled in him an abiding love of the game.

"I don't remember much about the wind on the slough," he said of the wide-open farm. "It was cold, but you stayed out there all day and you were still sweating when you came in.

"There were very few indoor rinks. We were lucky, our little town had an indoor one, but you went there only on Saturday and that was it. You played outdoors all the time, on the slough every day, you didn't go to town to skate.

"Outdoors was our best time, and it still is. We're lucky to have what we do. To be so rural, there's less and less of that in this world."

As an NHL player, coach and GM, Sutter would look out an airplane window to see his boyhood reborn, memories rekindled of a simple time that he has forever cherished.

"When we flew into the colder weather cities for a game, I'd love to come in at night and you'd see all the outdoor rinks with the lights on," he said, wistfully back on the slough of his sprawling farm and the outdoor sheets of Viking. "It would take me back to when I was a kid."

Top photo: Darryl Sutter attending a game between the Los Angeles Kings and the visiting Minnesota Wild on Dec. 7, 2024.