A Surrey man who took part in the 1994 Stanley Cup riot as a teenager says he regrets what he did, and he's using his experience as a lesson for his children.

Ian Welch was 15 when the Vancouver Canucks lost to the New York Rangers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup riot. He was downtown when the game ended, and he and 25 friends joined in as the street scene turned into a riot.

"The group of us never initiated anything; we just participated in it. So if somebody was trying to roll over a car, [we said] ‘Well, let's go help.' Or if there was a group of people smashing windows, ‘Oh, we can smash that, too,'" the father-of-six told CTV News.

"It's intoxicating. It is a high and you're just caught in the rush of it."

Welch was ashamed of his behaviour and has rarely spoken about it for the last 17 years.

But on Wednesday, he and his wife April decided to venture into downtown Vancouver to watch another Game 7, and saw the seeds of a riot being planted before the game had even started.

"We got on the SkyTrain at King George Station at four o'clock, and kids were hammered already, talking about, ‘Win or lose, we still booze. We're going to riot. We're going to burn this city down,'" Welch said.

By the end of the second period, tensions were so high, the family decided to leave.

"This was not the fun, this was not the party, this was not the atmosphere I thought it was going to be," April Welch said.

When the Welches got home, they watched CTV News coverage of cars burning in the spot they had been standing earlier that night.

"In '94, there wasn't a blueprint for rioting. In this one, there was, and '94 was that blueprint," Ian Welch said.

After last week's mayhem, Welch started blogging about his remorse for being part of the 1994 riot. He says he wants his children to know how easy it is to get caught up in the actions.

"You can't be on the sidelines in a riot. These people watching it, they're just as bad as the people doing it, because they're egging them on, they're the ones cheering, they're the ones giving the people the motivation to keep doing it," he said.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Julia Foy