Now, it should be pointed out that not all that was being
done that season was positive, educational and
confidence
instilling. Truthfully, I didn't always do a very good job of
navigating through those turbulent times for Mike and me. As I
was trying to teach the whole team how to deal with adversity,
which was an uphill struggle, I was absolutely embracing the
concept of tough love. The kids on the team knew I liked them
so when I got in their face, they were fairly accepting of it,
although there were some occasions where maybe it wasn't
so pleasant. But as I told you earlier, I did it because I knew
those kids were better than they were showing. Mike knew
I loved him dearly and that I only wanted what was best for
him. I knew that hockey meant so much to Mike and he badly
needed to get over this crisis of
confidence
, not just for hockey
reasons but as a life lesson as well. So I went at him hard, just
as my dad went at me hard.
As his coach, for example, I told Mike that, as a winger, if
he couldn't get the puck out of our own end from the hash
marks to the blue line on the breakout, I couldn't put him on
the ice; that if a winger in hockey could have only one skill it
would be to get the puck out on the boards because otherwise
that winger is absolutely useless to his team.
As a dad, there were
definitely
some emotional and
uncomfortable drives home that season, but there was the one
horrible and truly regrettable night when it went way too far.
We were coming back from a game or a practice-I don't
recall which one-and I was really laying into Mike about how
poorly and softly he'd been playing. I decided to up the ante
in terms of pushing a button to
find
the old Mike. As we were
getting close to home, I told him that if he was going to play
like a chicken or a coward, I was going to cut him from the
team next season and I would stay on as the AAA coach without him. I told him he could go play AA or wherever.
I didn't really mean it. I thought I could shock him into
rediscovering the way he had always played the game, but I
had gone too far. Way too far.
Just as we pulled into our driveway, Mike lost it. He
snapped. He burst into tears and ran into the house crying.
Cindy came to see what all the commotion was about and
through his tears as he ran upstairs to his room, Mike told
Cindy that I called him a chicken and a coward and I was
going to cut him from the team.
Cindy was not impressed. Not one of my
fine
st moments;
not a scene I enjoy recounting now. I will spare any further
details and just say there was, in the wake of that night, a
great deal of discussion,
reflect
ion and soul-searching on
what's important in life. Fortunately for me, the father-son
bond between Mike and me was so strong that it was able to
withstand that episode. Mike quickly appeared to forgive, if
not forget.
The good news, not to spoil the story by jumping way
ahead, is he eventually got back to that good place. Not overnight, mind you. It was a process, somewhat gradual in nature,
almost painfully so at times, but one in which Mike ultimately
triumphed and triumphed large.
He did it and he should be proud.
Me? Maybe not so much.
21: No Need for a Coin Toss: 'Twas the Best Year Ever
THINK BIG. Why settle for good when you can be great?
Without getting too deep or philosophical, I really do
believe in those attitudes. I've always told Mike and Shawn,
"Don't ever be afraid to be excellent."
So while practicality and common sense might dictate
that a coach who won only
five
regular-season games the year
before establish a modest goal of, say, just making the playoffs,
I was totally convinced we had to set our sights much higher
than that.
And we did.
I knew it was going to be my last year coaching Mike's
team so I was consumed by the feeling that it couldn't just be
a good year; it had to be a great year. And for me, great would
be de
fine
d by setting and achieving two lofty goals. One, get
the major peewee AAA Wildcats into the prestigious Quebec
International Peewee Tournament. Two, get the team into the
OMHA championships, which would require not only making
the playoffs but winning two best-of-
five
playoff series.
On the coaching front, my friend Mark Rowland had
decided to go back into retirement. Stu Seedhouse returned
as an assistant, so the Three Amigos-Kevin, Stu and I-were
back together once again. Steve Hedington stayed on to help
us. We added Bob Anderson, whose son Matt was our captain,
as another assistant coach. (Bob, by the way, is the brother
of Atlanta Thrashers' head coach John Anderson.) Our goalie
coach, Bucky Crouch, was on board from the get-go. Ron
Balcom was back as the manager. We had a bigger staff than
the University of Michigan football team.
We had some key additions on the ice, too. I neglected to
mention another factor in our struggles in minor peewee: one
of the best offensive players in Whitby, Zack Greer, had decided
to take a break to play AA for a year. Zack's
first
love was lacrosse
and why not? He and Peterborough's Shawn Evans were the
two best lacrosse players for their age in Canada. Zack went on
to get a scholarship to play
field
lacrosse at Duke University-yes, that Duke University lacrosse team (but don't even get me
started on how unfairly those poor kids were treated)-and all
Zack did in his four years there was to establish myriad NCAA
scoring records. A superb athlete, Zack was a bit of a heavy-footed skater but had a heavier shot and could really put the
puck in the net. It was huge to get him back on the team.
We also had a new goalie, Blake Cross, who jumped up
from the Whitby A level. He stepped in and immediately provided some top-notch netminding and Kyle Clancy returned
to be on top of his game, too.
Mike was also slowly but surely making his way back. For
all that he went through in minor peewee, Mike was still one
of our top scorers that year. His skating still required major
work, but he was at least showing signs of being on the right
track. So was the whole team.
Getting into the Quebec tourney isn't easy. It's the crème
de la crème of minor hockey events, the trip of a lifetime for
any kid who plays the game.
I played in the 1969 Quebec Peewee tournament when I
played for Bob Park's Scarborough Lions. Our team normally
wouldn't have been considered good enough to go, but Bob
Park coached the team that won the very
first
Quebec Peewee
tourney in 1959, with his future Hall of Fame son Brad and Syl
Apps, Jr. on the roster. He had an open invitation to go back
and he took our team.
The Peewee tournament isn't just a hockey event for the
kids. It's a life experience. It's as much about the team train
ride there, being billeted with French-Canadian families, trying to make time with teenage girls from Quebec and playing
in front of 14,000 fans at Le Colisée, the building that Jean
Beliveau made famous in his days with the Quebec Aces, as it
is playing hockey.
I knew I could use my connections in the hockey world
to open some doors to get us considered for Quebec, but I also
knew they weren't about to accept a crap team because it was
coached by the Hockey Insider. And if only one team from our
OMHA ETA league was going to go to Quebec, it was going to
be the defending champions from Richmond Hill, who were
head and shoulders better than everyone.
I talked to Patrick Dom, who runs the Quebec Peewee tourney, explained the situation (bad team last year) and the lofty
goal (get invited to Quebec this year). He had me
fill
out an
application, made no promises and suggested the team better
start winning some hockey games for us to have any chance.
We did exactly that. In our
first
tournament of the year,
we went to the
finally
s and lost a close game to a very good
Brantford team from another league. Brantford which was an
automatic to go to Quebec. That sent a strong early message-we could play with the high-end teams.
What a difference a year made. The kids were really dedicated to an off-ice program of plyometrics. We got extra ice time
to continue working on their skating. They still weren't what
you would call a high-speed or high-skill team, but they were
smart, coachable and becoming a hard team to play against.
When we played Bill Carroll's high
fly
ers from Ajax-Pickering, we would make like Ken Hitchcock's Dallas Stars,
take away the middle of the ice and put the game on the
boards, where we made teams
fight
for every inch of ice. Our
kids backchecked ferociously; they were always trying to get
themselves on the right side of the puck when we didn't have
it. It was beautiful in its own ugly way. Most highly skilled
teams simply didn't have the appetite to play that type of hard
game, not for three periods. I think I even won the Rum Cup
with Bobby Lalonde that season.
We got off to quite a good start in league play. Our record
was comparable to the other ETA teams-besides Richmond
Hill-that also had aspirations to go to Quebec.
In early November, I got a call from Patrick Dom telling
me there was a spot for Whitby in the Quebec tourney. I was
shocked. I asked him which other team from our league was
going and he told me there wasn't any other team. To this day,
I think he was just testing me, but for Richmond Hill to not
be the one team going from the ETA was a travesty and I told
him so.
"Bob," he said to me, "you realize you are turning down
an invitation to the Quebec Peewee tourney? You realize no
one does that?"
Tempting as it may have been, it was an easy call. Richmond
Hill was head and shoulders better than any other team in our
league. I wanted to go to Quebec but not that badly.
Not long after that, Patrick Dom called me back and told
me Richmond Hill had been accepted into the tournament
and that if we still wanted to go, they would take a second
team from the ETA. Before accepting that, though, I asked him
if I said no, what team would go in our place? St. Catharines
(SCTA), he said.
As fate would have it, we were playing St. Catharines that
weekend in a tourney in Peterborough, so I told Patrick: "Tell
you what, if St. Catharines beats us on the weekend, give them
the spot; if we beat them, we're coming."
I thought that was fair. If the Wildcats went to Quebec,
there had to be some legitimacy. That said, our kids went into
that St. Catharines game knowing a trip to Quebec was on the
line; the St. Catharines' players had no clue. We hammered
them, beat them by
five
or six, and they started gooning it
up, so I didn't feel the least bit bad about taking that spot in
Quebec.
Getting the team ready to go to Quebec, on and off the
ice, became a full-time job for me. Crazy Hockey Coach was
spending hours-seriously, hours-every day on preparations-sorting out the train travel, van transportation once
we got there, hotels, billet lists, getting third jerseys made up,
commemorative patches, right down to what kind of hats the
kids would be wearing there, to say nothing of setting up practice and exhibition games once we got there. This will come as
a surprise to those who know me (not!), but I can be a bit of a
control freak at times.
But that was only because I wanted to make sure it was
done properly. Too many teams go to the Quebec tournament
and make it just about the hockey. They don't take a train or
they don't billet their kids with families or they pack up and
leave as soon as they're eliminated. I desperately wanted this
to be a total life experience for our kids and their families, not
just another hockey tournament.
And it was. The train ride there was the party of all parties
as we had our own railway car. The kids were having fun but
maybe not as much fun as the parents.
As for the hockey itself, our
first
game at Le Colisée is one
the kids and parents will remember forever. There were at least
12,000 in the stands. We were playing a team from Fredericton,
N.B. I had told our two goalies they would split the game down
the middle. That's not the norm, but if we lost this game, it
would be our only game in Le Colisée and I thought both kids
deserved a chance to play in the big building in front of the
big crowd.
Our kids were unbelievably nervous and I dare say the
coaches were a little uptight, too. The kids were getting dressed
and it was a far quieter dressing room than ever before. I
noticed one of the players, Stephen Foston, was snif
fi
ng and
rubbing his eyes as he got dressed. If I didn't know better, I
would have thought he was crying. And he was.
"Stephen, what's the matter," I said.
"Nothing," he sniffed.
"Well, something has to be wrong, you're crying," I said.
"I'm
fine
," he said, wiping away tears.
One of the other kids said to me: "He's upset because he
lost his Quebec Peewee tournament ring."
Prior to the game, a lot of the kids had gone out and
bought souvenirs and some of them splurged for pretty nice
commemorative rings. Stephen had apparently lost his and
now he was upset.
"Stephen," I said. "Stop crying right now. We will
find
your ring. If we don't
find
your ring, I promise you I will buy
you another %$#&*!% ring as soon as this game is over. I will
buy you
five
%$#&*!% rings. Stop %$#&*!% crying right now
because we're all so %$#&*!% nervous right now that if you
don't stop crying, we're all going to start crying."
That broke the ice. Repeatedly swearing in front of thirteen-
year-olds isn't standard protocol but it can be an icebreaker.
Steven cracked a smile, the other kids started laughing uproariously and we were a little more relaxed after that.
We won the game, which was great because it would guarantee at least one more game in Le Colisée, which was very
cool for the kids. Our next game was against a hometown team
from Quebec so the place would be packed and we would be
decided underdogs, but the winner of that game was going to
face a Russian team next.
We lost that game 4-1 to the Quebec team-which eliminated us from the tournament-but the notable story, for the
purposes of this book, happened before the game. As I said, we
had these really nice third sweaters made up just for Quebec,
like the St. Louis Blues' dark blue sweater but with our Wildcat
logo. We wore them in the
first
game; the kids loved them.
Prior to our second game at Le Colisée, we had to determine
who would wear what color sweater and the Quebec team also
had third jerseys and theirs were black. One team would have
to wear their regular white uniforms and neither wanted to do
that. So the tourney organizers said there would be a coin
fl
ip
to settle this highly contentious issue.