One could easily pen an entire nostalgic column solely on the golf exploits of Dave Pulkkinen.

The now 73 year-old long time Sudbury resident captured the Idylwylde Invitational in 1990.

Years later, he teamed with Sid Segsworth to win the Ontario Senior Best Ball Tournament, combining to card a round of 67 against the best players their age in the province.

In between and thereafter, Pulkkinen would play countless top end courses across North America, many that have hosted PGA majors, often making these wonderful excursions with friends and golfing co-horts Sam Yawney, Berk Keaney and Marcel Pinard, among others.

Golf has absolutely been a major part of the life of the soft-spoken Finlander, whose father lent him the money at age twelve to buy his first set of clubs (Pulkkinen had a paper route to be able to repay the debt).

But focusing solely on his summer links pastime would not do justice to the hockey player that was drafted in the seventh round of the 1969 NHL Amateur Draft by the St Louis Blues, enjoying a fair bit of success in the minors and cracking the lineup of the New York Islanders of the 1970’s for a pair of games.

Did we mention that Dave Pulkkinen actually considers baseball his favourite sport?

Growing up in the south end when the south end wasn’t even considered part of the city proper, the father of two and member of the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club for more than forty years still recalls his earliest strides on the ice, most of which occurred at outdoor rinks – or any other convenient surface.

“Where McDonald’s (Regent Street) is now, that was McFarlane Lake Road; it was a gravel road,” said Pulkkinen. “I used to play hockey in the ditches along the road with my friends. The ice was only so wide, but it was pretty cool.”

Though Riverside Playground offered his first crack at organized sport, playing bantam and midget hockey at the rink, Pulkkinen was as diversified an athlete as they come at that time.

From the occasional track and field exploits at the Alerts Track (“behind where the Holiday Inn is now”) to baseball just a hop skip and jump away (“I played a lot of baseball – the corner of Nepahwin and Paris is where our baseball lot was”), and throwing some golf in for good measure (“a lot of my buddies from school played at the Sudbury Golf Course, but I played at Countryside Golf Course, which is Pinegrove now”), Pulkkinen was a well-rounded lad when he connected with coach Stu Duncan and the vaunted Lockerby Vikings provincial caliber hockey crew in the late sixties.

He would spend one year with the Oshawa Generals (1968-1969) after that, showing enough to garner the attention of the NHL Blues. To this day, the man who played the bulk of his career at 5’10” and 169 pounds chuckles at the notion that every hockey reference that can be found lists him at 6’0” – 195.

“That stayed with me all the way through,” Pulkkinen said with a smile. “But I couldn’t gain a pound. I found out how to gain a pound or two later on.”

Taking pounds off, however, was the role of NHL training camps. Suffice to say that the camps were a whole lot different than the ones which aspiring professional hockey players encounter in 2022.

“I had a book for training before I went to camp, but when we went, no one was in shape,” said Pulkkinen. “The younger guys that were drafted looked really good at the beginning of camp and everyone thought for sure they would make it. But after two or three weeks, those guys were cut.”

Pulkkinen was not.

Blessed with a wonderfully healthy perspective on where exactly hockey should fit in from a big picture standpoint, the northern lad was, however, not always one to follow the crowd. Three times the Blues brass of Cliff Fletcher, Al Arbour and Scotty Bowman approached him with contract offerings that fall. Three times, he turned them down.

“Scotty said to get rid of me so I walked out of the room,” said Pulkkinen, unsure of whether his stance would backfire or not.

He would eventually put pen to paper on a deal that earned him a salary of $6500 and a signing bonus of $2500. After IHL/CHL stops in Kansas City and Port Huron between 1969 and 1972, the defenseman turned forward was traded to the New York Islanders organization, where he enjoyed his greatest success.

During the 1972-1973 season, Pulkkinen led the New Haven Knighthawks in scoring (25G-41A in 75 games), playing on a line with future Islanders Gary Howatt and Bobby Nystrom. In fact, the trio were called up to Long Island as a unit at one point, dropping a 3-0 encounter to the big, bad Boston Bruins of that era, but earning the praise of one Bobby Orr.

“They played the way you should against us,” Orr was quoted as saying in a New York Post article from March of 1973. “They were the best forechecking line out there.”

Through it all, Pulkkinen remained grounded and realistic.

“Nystrom and Howatt deserved to be there (with the Islanders) more than me,” he said, noting that he always respected Hockey Hall of Fame GM Bill Torrey, the mastermind who assembled that New York Islanders dynasty that captured four consecutive Stanley Cups.

By 1975, Pulkkinen had seen enough of the lifestyle for those who don’t quite make it.

“It was an easy decision for me to step away from hockey,” he explained. “I had some really good years, met some really good people, but I wasn’t good enough. That’s the simple answer. When I came home (to Sudbury), I put my skates up for one year. I didn’t want to be that guy sitting in a hotel, telling people how good I was.”

Thankfully, he returned to the game, a mainstay with the Sudbury Nooners hockey groups of the 1980s, dabbling in coaching for a bit, even doing some radio colour commentary for the Wolves alongside Rob Faulds.

Summers, however, were now his season of sporting prominence, albeit from very modest roots.

“I’m a self-taught golfer,” Pulkkinen stated. “I wasn’t a good golfer; I got better over time. I shot in the eighties, then the seventies, then the sixties – and started winning things here and there and coming close.”

Beating North Bay native Mike Poupore two and one in the Invitational final in 1990, Pulkkinen snapped a skid of 34 years that the Idylwylde had gone without one of its own members laying claim to the longest running match play event in Canada.

“It’s a great feeling,” Pulkkinen exclaimed to Sudbury Star sports reporter Norm Mayer, who sadly passed away just a few years ago. “Since I’ve been a member here, I’ve looked up to the Idylwylde as being one of the premier tournaments in Ontario. I’ve always wanted to enjoy the thrill of winning the tournament at this club.”

To be sure, Dave Pulkkinen made a name for himself in golf – but let’s not completely forget his hockey career either.