Then there was a game in Peterborough, where we were
trying our best to get out of the Evinrude Centre in one piece
against the OMHA minor peewee equivalent of the Broad
Street Bullies. The Petes were a nasty bit of business back then
with their size and aggression. In this game, some of our kids
were competing surprisingly well, but there were still too many
passengers. Going into the third period, I did something I had
never done before. I sat down
five
kids and didn't play them a
shift for the whole third period.
Included in the
five
were some key players who had been
with the AAA team since minor novice. My attitude was that
taking away only
fifteen
minutes (or the equivalent of about
five
shifts) of hockey from a kid is a small price to pay if that
kid gets the message to compete harder. The kids didn't like it;
their parents didn't either, nor would you expect them to. But
there was one parent who lost it. During the middle of that
third period, he started yelling loudly and repeatedly at me
from the stands: "Put [his kid's name here] on. Put [name of
player] on."
I couldn't believe it. No one could. It was so loud and clear.
It was embarrassing for me but more for that father and his
son, who was among the
five
stapled to the bench. That
s
pecific
issue got sorted out with that father after the fact, but it
reinforced how this whole notion of pushing the kids hard
only works if the parents buy in, too. I had a parent meeting
to explain exactly that; that if the parents were always going to
give their kids a soft landing at home any time I put the kids'
feet to the
fire
at the rink, I would be sunk as a coach and we
would be sunk as a team. For the most part, the parents were
great. They understood I wasn't being mean to their kids; I was
only trying to teach them to compete.
Mind you, a coach has to be careful not to cross the line.
That point was driven home to me at practice one day. Our
best defenseman was Femi Amurwaiye. Femi was a smiley, outgoing kid with a lot of
personality and I really liked him, but
he had a little Eddie Haskell in him. "Hello, Mr. McKenzie, how
are you today?" he would often say. Femi, who went on to play
prep-school hockey at Holderness in New Hampshire and then
NCAA Division Three at Amherst College in Massachusetts,
could be a real character and wouldn't mind testing you a bit
either. He would eat Skittles between periods. He wasn't above
cutting a corner or two in practice drills.
We were doing a hard, full-ice, zigzag skating drill that
included sprints and then quick-step lateral crossovers. From
my end of the ice, I saw Femi fall down on the crossovers. He
got up slowly and basically stopped doing the drill. I was yelling at him from the far end of the ice to keep going. He was
shrugging his shoulders and not doing the drill, just sort of
shuf
fl
ing along. I kept yelling at him to get going but he wasn't
moving. I just assumed he was pulling a fast one to avoid doing
the rest of this drill. I wasn't amused. Kyle O'Brien then skated
from that end of the ice to me and said: "Mr. McKenzie, I think
Femi is hurt pretty badly."
My heart went into my mouth. I raced down to see what
the problem was and Femi showed me his leg, the inside of his
thigh. It was quite a nasty laceration. Femi had a habit of not
pulling up his socks all the way in practice and when he fell,
he somehow shredded his leg and was bleeding pretty good. I
was devastated. Actually, morti
fi
ed. Here I was, yelling at the
poor kid to skate and the blood was running down his leg. If
I needed a harsh reminder that, even in this atmosphere of
pushing the kids to be better, common sense must still always
prevail, I certainly got it that day.
Somehow, through all of the losing and my pushing and
prodding of the kids, we all managed to maintain our sense
of humor, perspective and sanity. Of the almost forty regular-season league games we played that year, we won a grand total
of
five
.
The best players on our team in any given game that year
were call-ups from the major atom AAA Wildcats. James Neal,
who had a
terrific
rookie season (2008-09) in the NHL with
Dallas, and David McIntyre, who was drafted by Dallas but
subsequently had his NHL rights traded to Anaheim and New
Jersey while starring for Colgate University, were both '87s but
more talented than any of our '86s.
Because we
finished
in last place in our division, we didn't
qualify for the OMHA playoffs but were automatically entered
into the ETA (Eastern Triple A) playoffs or consolation round
with the other non-playoff teams and the losers from the
first
round of the OMHA playoffs. Maybe it was because we had
more incentive than other teams, but the kids came
together
really well in the ETA playoffs. They competed hard. The differences in physical play and speed that were so glaring early
in the season were not nearly as great at the end and-surprise,
surprise-we actually won the ETA championship.
It really was quite an accomplishment for those kids. I was
unbelievably proud of how far they came that season. They
deserved all the credit in the world and so did their parents,
because while the kids invested the blood, sweat and tears
and believe me, there were all three of them-it was the parents
who fostered and permitted an environment that allowed their
kids to be pushed as hard as they were by their Crazy Head
Coach.
I really like to think the kids learned a large life lesson that
season, but even if they didn't, I know I most certainly did.
20: Of Gun-Shy Dogs and a Crisis of Confidence
WHO STOLE MY TWELVE-YEAR-OLD SON MIKE and what the
hell did they do with him?
That pretty much summed up my reaction to the beginning of the minor peewee AAA season, my
first
as a head coach.
It was one thing for the whole team to have taken a surprising
and precipitous fall from where they were in previous years; it
was quite another for it to happen as strikingly as it did to my
son in the 1998-99 season.
During his
first
four years of rep hockey, Mike was an
above-average AAA player, not elite by any means, but above
average. In his major atom year, for example, he led our team
in scoring, averaging close to a goal and almost two points per
game. He skated quite well, demonstrated good athleticism,
showed tremendous self-
confidence
, competed hard (sometimes too hard), had great passion for the game (sometimes
too passionate), exhibited great hockey sense and vision, made
terrific
plays and had nice soft hands for
finishing
.
But it wasn't very far into the minor peewee season when
I could scarcely believe my eyes.
He no longer skated well; in fact, he looked slow and
awkward. He was no longer aggressive; in fact, he appeared
tentative and timid. His athleticism and
confidence
had seemingly disappeared. He didn't compete nearly as hard and while
he still loved to go to the rink for practices and games, his offensive instincts and skills, which were so readily apparent in the
past, weren't as much a factor now that he had become slower.
What had happened to Mike in the space of mere months was
symptomatic of our entire team, but I don't believe anyone's
game had gone as far south as quickly or noticeably as Mike's.
I was crushed. I'm not going to lie. It was just so unexpected and presented some real challenges in my
first
year as
a head coach.
Here I was, responsible for the performance of seventeen
largely underachieving kids that season, and the one thing
that I never used to have to worry about-Mike-was suddenly
my most heartfelt and deeply personal concern.
There will be those who suggest the explanation was readily apparent and cite this being the
first
year of body contact
as the reason Mike became a shell of his former self. Lots of
kids notice a big difference when hitting is introduced. This
is often the age when they separate the twelve-year-old men
from the twelve-year-old boys, so to speak. And I might have
considered buying that line of thinking if there hadn't been
such overwhelming evidence to the contrary in Mike's previous years in sports.
While Mike had never played contact hockey until that
season, he knew what it was like to be hit and hit hard. Having played rep lacrosse since he was six years old, Mike was well
acquainted with body contact. He didn't take backward steps
or show any hesitation to scoop up loose balls in
traffic
or go to
the danger areas in front of the net in lacrosse. He'd been crosschecked hard off his feet too many times to count and it never
had any impact on him. I always believed he would go through
the gates of hell if he thought he could score a goal there.
Years later, I wondered if the fact Mike broke his arm playing Peewee A lacrosse in the summer of 1998 might have been
a contributing factor. It happened in the annual Peterborough
Early Bird tournament in May. It was just a freak accident. He
tripped over his buddy Kyle O'Brien in front of their own net
and fell. He used his hands to break his fall and broke his arm
in the process.
Since we're on this subject, I might as well go the distance
and expose myself as Crazy Lacrosse Dad/Coach, too. I was an
assistant coach on the bench, running the front door where
players go out onto the
floor
. Mike came in the back door holding his arm and our very capable trainer Mike Doherty was
looking after him.
I could hear Mike crying and I looked down the bench.
"You okay, Mike?" I yelled.
"No," Mike said to me.
"I don't think it's good," Mike Doherty yelled down to me.
Mike was still crying.
"Oh, he'll be
fine
," I yelled down dismissively. "Mike, come
on down here. Your line is going on soon. C'mon, let's go…"
"I can't," Mike shrieked, "my arm is too sore."
More like too broken, it turned out. Cindy came and got
him off the bench and took him to the hospital. I stayed to
finish
coaching the game. When it was over, I hooked up with
Cindy and Mike at the hospital emergency room, where he was
getting the fracture set and put in a cast.
I don't honestly believe the broken arm was the reason
Mike regressed in the minor peewee hockey season, but I have
always tried to make some sense of that year.
Or maybe it was his glasses? He had stopped wearing them
under his helmet and cage. Samson's hair? Mike's glasses?
Hmmm…
The more plausible explanation was simply that Mike, like
a lot of the kids on our team, hadn't gone through puberty yet
and found himself at a big physical disadvantage. I think once
Mike lost his wheels and became a below-average skater, his
moves and skills, which came so naturally before, became
difficult
, if not impossible, to execute. I think once he realized he
had lost that magic, he spiraled into a real crisis of
confidence
that manifested itself with a wholesale mental and emotional
shutdown. At least that's my theory.
There probably isn't any fate worse in minor hockey
than being a kid who is deemed to be shy about contact and
competing. Hockey is such a hard, physical game that when
someone isn't prepared to play it that way, he sticks out like a
sore thumb. Opposing players and teammates aren't shy about
pointing it out and neither are parents.
There is also a theory embraced by many in the hockey
establishment: "A gun-shy dog will never hunt." The implication is that if a kid ever demonstrates any timidity or fear, he'll
never get over that; it's just part of his makeup; a
flaw
, a fatal
flaw
. You're either tough or you're not.
I don't necessarily buy that. I believe there can be a million
factors contributing to a kid lacking
confidence
or not feeling
comfortable with some aspects of the game. And I had some of
my own experiences to draw on.
Later in the book, I will talk a little about my nondescript
minor hockey career, but since it applies here, I went through
a somewhat similar experience as Mike at around the same age.
I was never even half the player Mike was or is. I had played
a couple of years in the Scarborough Hockey Association, a
caliber of play that was a couple of notches down from the
highest level in the MTHL. But in peewee, I went up a level to
the MTHL's Scarborough Lions-Brad Park's father Bob was my
coach-and I can recall very clearly that season getting berated
by my mom and dad on the drive home for sometimes being
hesitant to get physically involved.
I am not sure then what prompted me to attempt to move
up to the highest level of the MTHL the next season, trying
out for and making the Agincourt Canadians minor bantam
rep team. But I was even more out of my element there and
my shortcomings were even more obvious, so much so that
I was cut from the team a month or two into the season and
replaced by a better, presumably tougher, player.
Naturally, I was devastated, but I just opted to go back and
play house league for a couple of seasons, where I was one of
the better players. I regained my
confidence
, scored a ton and
just enjoyed playing the game. But in my minor midget year,
when I was
fifteen
, some of my good buddies were playing for
a new lower-level MTHL team and I decided to join them. I
thought I was long past any fears, but fairly early in that season, I accidentally clipped an opposing player in the helmet
with my stick. It happened to be the biggest, meanest, toughest guy on the other team and he indicated to me he was going
to kill me. I was sitting on the bench awaiting my next shift, not to mention the end of my life, and some of those old feelings of insecurity, and, yeah, maybe even fear, started to well
up inside me. I didn't like how I felt. Honestly, I was ashamed
I suddenly experienced another, far stronger emotion: anger
and disgust with myself.
It was, in a way, a de
finger
g moment. I told myself in no
uncertain terms this was no way to go through life; that I
either needed to grow a set and be a man or just quit hockey
and accept my shortcomings. So I worked myself up into a bit
of a state, hit the ice and went looking to confront my demons.
I went right after the big, tough kid who was going to kill me.
I ran at him hard, we battled and I thought we were going to
drop the gloves to
fight
. I was ready to do that, but a funny
thing happened. I could see and sense some uncertainty-maybe even a little fear-in his face as he decided to pull back.
Not to be overly dramatic about it, but I can honestly say
I never took another backward step in a hockey game for the
rest of my life, and I got punched out more times than I care
to remember because of it.
So I like to think I had a little insight into where Mike's
mind may have been. I had been a gun-shy dog but I learned to
hunt. I was convinced Mike would do the same if only we could
find
what buttons to push to get him to where he used to be.
I couldn't help but think it all came back to
confidence
.
I wasn't entirely clear on why he seemed to lose his to the
degree he did, but I was intent on
find
ing ways to restore it.
Keeping in mind Mike was still very eager and game to try anything that would make him better, we went on a quest of sorts.
Recognizing he
first
had to improve his skating, I took
Mike to Jari Byrski's skating and skills sessions in Toronto
at least once a week if it
fit
our schedule. I mentioned Jari
earlier and he's one of my favorites of the people I've met in
the long and winding road of minor hockey. He's an off-the-wall character-think of a Ukrainian version of Kramer from
Seinfeld-but a brilliant teacher of skating and skills. Most
important, though, he knows kids and how to reach them on
so many levels. Everything he does is designed to instil
confidence
. I can still hear him saying it so loudly on the ice with
his Ukrainian accent-"Con-fee-dence!"
I also took Mike to off-ice workout sessions with Mike
Marson, the former NHLer who is now a Toronto Transit
Commission employee and the older brother of "I hate Larry
Marson" fame from Chapter Four. Mike Marson is one of the
most fascinating people I've ever met, a martial arts expert
with more black belts than Don Cherry has ties. His story-being the
first
black
first
-round pick in the NHL-is obviously
remarkable but, for me, it pales in comparison to the story of
his life after hockey and where he felt he was headed before
making some signi
fi
cant changes for the better in his life.
Mike Marson worked with a variety of clients of all ages
and stripes who wanted to improve their physical
fitness
or
strengthen their mind or learn self-defense or other manly
physical pursuits. I've seen Mike Marson hypnotize people and
do some incredible things to demonstrate his mental prowess
and mastery over pain. He was just what the doctor ordered
for a kid like Mike, who needed a little help to rediscover his
true self.