Brian Swane, Special to Canada West

EDMONTON – After his last hockey game for the University of Saskatchewan, he was offered his first professional gig by a former member of the team.

The defenceman has since joined forces with another ex-Huskie. Not that far down the road, his longtime teammate is in the same game.

Seems like everywhere he turns in his career, there's another familiar face that's a proud product of the Huskies hockey program.

Which is quite remarkable, considering that nowadays, none of them are actually hockey players.

"Maybe we're an anomaly at the U of S" laughs Stephen Mann, CPA, CA. 

"Maybe we're the only team that has all these accountants."

Mann is a co-owner of Vantage Chartered Professional Accountants in North Battleford, Sask., where one of his partners is former U of S blueliner Derek Sieben.

And that's just the tip of the blade for the 35-year-old, who earned a finance degree from the U of S, where he skated for the Huskies after several seasons in the Western Hockey League. When Mann landed first job out of school, at MNP LLP in Saskatoon, it was Huskies alum Trevor Winkler that hired him.

"It just goes to show a the connections that you have with hockey and what can happen afterwards," Mann says

A left-shot rearguard, Mann had 156 points in 205 WHL regular season games, and suited up another 30 times in the playoffs, before going on to play four seasons at venerable Rutherford Rink. The countless hours he spent in practice – skating laps, repeating drills, scrimmaging – was preparing him as for real life outside the arena as much as the athletic contests inside it.

"The business world is a small world like the hockey world and being how much everybody here in Western Canada loves hockey, it leads to all your connections, either your clients, your staff and even your partners," he says.

"For me, personally, that played a very large role in being able to develop my business, where a lot of my clients were acquaintances in some shape or form through hockey, or some sort of connection thereof, so it's definitely opened a lot of doors from that side of things.

"And not only that, it's always a good conversation-starter if people have either watched the game or heard of somebody you played with or played for."

Mann was selected by Spokane in the ninth round of the 1998 WHL Bantam Draft, and made his major junior debut with the Chiefs in 1999-2000.

"I looked at the WHL as almost the NHL," says the native of Naicam, Sask. "I grew up watching the Prince Albert Raiders and the Saskatoon Blades, so for me that was kind of the elite league, so to actually make that jump after playing bantam in a small town was quite exciting."

In 2001-02, the Chefs dealt Mann to Saskatoon, where he played two and a half years with the Blades, then decided to stay in town and attend of the U of S. He was able to take advantage of WHL scholarship program, which for each season in the WHL entitles players to a year of tuition, books and compulsory fees at any post-secondary institution.

"Knowing that your schooling is paid for, that was probably the biggest factor if I think back on it," he says of his decision to go to university.

At university, it was not only on the ice but in the classroom where he had teammates, including his friend Mason Wallin, a forward that Mann first played with in Spokane. Wallin is also an accountant with his own firm, in Shellbrook. Sask.

"I honestly probably didn't know what I wanted to do (career-wise) until my second or third year …. a large group of our team was in finance, and a few of us went in accounting," says Mann. "Talking with some Huskies alumni and knowing there was potential jobs after school was a big part of it.

"The alumni are pretty active with the U of S team, staying in contact with us, so that was a pretty big part of my decision to go with accounting."

Mann was among a group of several men's hockey student-athletes that began attending the U of S in 2004, and grew up together, eventually winning the 2007 Canada West championship. The Huskies rallied from a 1-0 deficit on the road to topple the arch-rival Alberta Golden Bears in a classic three-game series that saw each contest decided by a single goal.

"There were quite a few rookies on our team from the first year, and that was our third year, so a lot of the same guys that had went through the same grind," says Mann, who was named a Canada West Second Team All-Star that year.

"When you know them that well, you're playing for the teammate beside you, and everybody came to play playoff hockey at that point in time. It was everybody pulling their own weight and everybody playing playoff hockey, just bearing down."

Right upon graduating in 2008, Mann joined MNP as a full-time employee. He spent several years there, before making the next step in his career and moving North to become a partner at Vantage.

Every day that he goes to work is game day.

"People probably don't think accounting would be a team sport or a team effort, but it definitely is, because we rely on our staff and on our clients, and we think of that as a team effort to get their stuff done too," he says.

"A lot of it is just being able to meet with people and help solve problems, the same as you would on a team. In a game, if you're solving problems and working together, you get the end result, so I think all that reflects into our profession as well."

About #CanadaWestCreated

The #CanadaWestCreated series features stories of former Canada West student-athletes who have moved on to excel in their careers and communities. The individuals profiled in the #CanadaWestCreated series exemplify how student-athletes build the skills and connections needed to succeed following the completion of their time in university.