Taro Hirose had just landed in Winnipeg for an April double-header when he was asked, “Were you ever a member of a boy band?”

“I cannot confirm or deny that,” he replied cryptically. “Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that.”

The boy band in question was supposedly made up of Hirose and three of his Salmon Arm Silverbacks teammates when they were all teenagers in the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL). Though he could not confirm (or deny) its existence, Hirose did speak about the hockey journey that led him from going undrafted by every Western Hockey League (WHL) team as a youth to top NCAA free agent with multiple suitors lining up to give him an NHL contract…