He’s not your everyday mascot.
For the past two seasons, 46-year-old Corey Deschene has gotten to live out his childhood dream as Dash – the rowdy and popular face of the Soo Greyhounds.
Born and raised in the Sault, Deschene has many fond memories of attending Greyhound games with his grandfather and seeing the team’s mascot interacting with the crowd and heckling opposing players.
“I remember saying, ‘I’d love to do that just for a day,’” he says. “All these years later, I saw they were hiring, and I didn’t think I even had a chance considering my age. I’m extremely grateful.”
Now a grandfather himself, Deschene’s passion for the job has quickly stretched beyond the bounds of fist bumping with the kids and banging on the boards.
Using Bristol board, sharpie markers, and pencil crayons, Deschene has unleashed a hidden talent where he creates uniquely designed and detailed posters that he brings to each home game.
“It’s just something I enjoy doing,” he says. “I’ve been drawing pretty much since I was a kid. I had no intentions of doing anything like this with the Greyhounds, but when I got the job, I said I was going to have fun with it.”
Taking him anywhere from two to 12 hours per piece, Deschene has made a sign for nearly every OHL team that comes to town – a collection that includes 18 poster-sized drawings, and six others with lettering for the penalty box.
“The time-consuming part is the shading,” he says. “I spend a lot of time on the shading because I want them to look like they have depth and not look as cartoony.”
Up until he started with the Greyhounds last year, Deschene went seven years without touching a pencil.
In past games, he’s drawn the Sarnia Sting’s logo upside down to make it look dead, writing ‘1-800-buzz-off, call buzz control.’
In a game against the Ottawa 67’s, their mascot is a racoon, so Deschene drew their mascot in a trash can with the 67’s logo on it.
“I like to poke fun without crossing the line,” he says. “I think to myself, ‘how can I get under their skin, and maybe even get a laugh out of them?’ The other teams get a kick out of it.”
“Doing this for the hockey games doesn’t seem like a job to me,” he adds. “I won’t take money for them or else it would feel like a job.”
After some of his antics frustrated a visiting team, Deschene says the OHL had to introduce a league-wide policy where mascots were no longer allowed behind the opposing team’s bench.
“When Windsor was here, the day after I was banned from being in that spot, I taped Kleenex boxes and baby feeders back behind their bench and they thought it was hilarious.”
While he loves to stir the spot, he’s not always chirping.
During the holidays, the mother of Greyhounds goaltender Samuel Ivanov reached out to Deschene to see if he’d be interested in putting together an art piece for her son as a Christmas gift.
Refusing to be paid for it, Deschene spent around 12 hours drawing, colouring, and shading in a one-of-a-kind poster that features Ivanov in net as an angry-looking greyhound.
The surprise gift left Ivanov stunned.
“I was blown away,” he says. “The detail is incredible. It’s not every day that players receive artwork and gifts like this. It’s very special.”
Deschene’s appreciation for the players isn’t just limited to the Greyhounds, however.
While being interviewed with SooToday, Deschene was creating a tribute sign to honour London Knights forward Abakar Kazbekov, who died suddenly on Dec. 17, 2022 at the age of 18.
“The poster will feature a black silhouette of a hockey player with his number on the back of it in gold and green,” he says.
Deschene intends to display the artwork near the Knights bench when they play the Greyhounds on Sunday.
“I know they’re going through a really hard time right now,” he says.
When he’s not donning the Dash costume, Deschene works as a full-time cook at the Algoma Treatment and Remand Centre where he’s carried out his passion for making food for the last 23 years.
“I’m a huge foodie, I love cooking,” he says. “I love experimenting and throwing different things together and seeing how it tastes.”
“I just like to play around with it, I don’t get tired of my job.”
Deschene is also a huge music fanatic, and he even played in a band with his buddies as a bassist and vocalist.
Now with a wife, two sons, and four grandchildren with another on the way, he doesn’t have as much time for gigs anymore.
A type-1 diabetic and a transplant recipient, Deschene faces no shortage of unique barriers in his everyday life, but he says it’s the support from his family and colleagues that helps him tackle any challenge.
“Despite everything I’ve gone through, life is good,” he says. “I’m lucky to be here, I owe that to my wife. I can’t really ask for too much.”
The man beneath the mascot is going into 2023 feeling thankful for the fans that make his job at the GFL Memorial Gardens a meaningful one.
“I’ve had season ticket holders for 30-plus years come up to me and say they enjoy my antics,” he says. “Some people don’t think there’s room in hockey for my ‘nonsense,’ but so many older fans really do like it.”
“If someone has the opportunity to be a mascot one day, I suggest they do it. It really is a rush.”