Trent Klatt
Episode 118
3 MAY 2021
Currently the Director of Amateur Scouting for the NHL’s New York Islanders. As a player he had a long career in the National Hockey League, having originally been chosen by the Washington Capitals in the 1989 NHL Draft and going on to appear in close to 800 regular season games over almost 13 seasons, plus an additional 74 playoff games, competing throughout his career with four different franchises, including making a Stanley Cup Finals appearance with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1997. He has also done some coaching in hockey as well. Listen near the end for his emotional report on his oldest daughter’s calling!
Notable guest quotes:
“There was a time I got sent (down) to Syracuse in 1999, I’d already played 400 games in the NHL. It was one of the greatest lessons I’d ever learned.”
“I can honestly say I didn’t want to be there. Ya’ know, everybody was wrong because I was sent there. I’m gettin’ screwed — all that type of stuff. And we ended up talking about God.”
“We would go have, on an off day, we’d have happy hour, have a beer, and we would end up talking about God and family and all that.”
“At that point in time, I had to start making decisions for God and not for me, ’cause I was just one selfish individual at that point in time.”
“It turned my career around completely, as far as hockey is concerned, and even spiritually it just sent me on a path that I needed to go find answers, and at my weakest moment, Darby Hendrickson was there and so was God.”
“Sometimes you don’t even realize you’re jumping over a hurdle or you’re walking through a mud puddle and the Lord’s gonna clean you up, but when you get beyond it and you look back, you go, ‘Oh, I totally get it now. I had to be there. I had to go through that’.”
“The benefit for me as a coach is, I had learned so many lessons as a player that I was able to just stay relatively calm on the bench.”
“As a coach you have time to think, ‘Okay, Lord, what do you want me to do here? What do you want me to say? How do I get through this problem? How do I get through this mess?’ You had time to prepare a response and act accordingly.”
“When I was coaching everybody knew that I was a follower of Jesus Christ and I wasn’t afraid to tell people that and show people that and, ‘You’re gonna go to church on a Sunday morning… and then you’re gonna act differently in public’?”
“I was asked to kind of just come and speak at the men’s conference and give my own testimony and I’d never done that before. I was scared to death. My wife would say, ‘Well just tell your story, tell your story!’ And I’d look at her and I’d go, ‘I don’t have a story’!”
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