Hockey Dad (16 page)

The tournament
official
tossed the coin. The other coaches,
there were two of them, called it heads. Sure enough, it came
up heads, but before the coin had landed on the ground, it hit
the top of my shoe. The two Quebec coaches were high-
fi
ving
each other after winning the coin toss and I'm saying, "No
%$#&*!% way, bad toss, interference, do it over again." The
tourney
official
shook his head and I'm saying, "Screw that, we
have to do it over." No chance. So while these two imbeciles
from the Quebec team were celebrating a victory in the coin
toss of all things, the other imbecile-that would be me-was
storming out there with a torrent of "%$#&*!% bullshit toss,
interference."

I don't imagine those two guys who coached that Quebec
team get TSN in Quebec City, but if they do, I've often
thought if they ever turned on the TV after the fact and saw
me, they would say: "Voilà le maudit fou qui nous a fait perdre
le pile ou face."

Rough translation: "There's that crazy bastard who called
interference on the coin toss."

Yup, that would be me…but you have to admit, it was a
B.S. toss.

The Quebec Peewee experience was everything we thought it
would be, and then some. The hockey was
terrific
, but as I
fully expected, it was just one aspect of it. If you ask any of the
kids or parents now, they're likely to tell you the most memorable and enjoyable day was spent at the giant Snow Parc just
outside Quebec City, which is like a full-
fl
edged ski resort but
with rubber tubes. It was an all-day venture and if any team
goes to the Peewee tournament and doesn't get to the Snow
Parc, well, shame on them. Between that excursion and just
walking around the walled old town in Quebec City at night is
something none of us will ever forget.

But Phase Two of our Dream Season still awaited us. We
had accomplished our goal of getting to Quebec but now the
focus was on making it to the OMHA tournament. And it was
going to be a quick turnaround.

Our train from Quebec pulled into Oshawa on a Friday
night at midnight. We were physically and emotionally
drained, but our
first
game of the playoffs, against the
first
-place Quinte Red Devils, was the next day at twelve noon in
Belleville's Yardman Arena, home of the OHL's Belleville Bulls.

It was ridiculous scheduling and we weren't happy about it,
but it was the price to be paid for Quebec. C'est la vie.

Somehow, we won that
first
game in overtime. It was a
terrific
back-and-forth series that ended up going to a
fi
fth-and-deciding game in Quinte's barn. The game went into
overtime and Zack Greer buried the game winner to send us
on to the next round.

Next up was the York-Simcoe Express. It was an intense
series that, at times, looked like it might get out of hand.

We had played, and won, in Aurora and after the game was
over, one of their parents, incensed about something that happened during the game, tried to get into our dressing room.

Bob Anderson, who is as thick and as strong as they come,
intercepted this idiot. This guy foolishly decided he was going
to mix it up with Bob. Not a smart thing to do. A bunch of us
got in to break it up before any real damage was done.
When I got home that night, I called the Whitby AAA convener, Larry Dancey, and told him of the trouble in Aurora that
day and how he might want to arrange for a little extra security
for the next game at Iroquois Park. Sure enough, Larry attended
the next game to keep a lid on things. We lost that game. It was
an emotional
finish
. I was standing outside our dressing room
unwinding and as the spectators were leaving the stands on
the other side of the rink, one of their fans started heckling me.

The guy was really giving it to me; stuff about the team, about
losing, about me being on TSN, stuff about my kid. Not nice
stuff, although it wasn't anything I hadn't heard before on
countless occasions. I ignored it for awhile but he was relentless. Finally, I'd had enough and I yelled across to him, "If you
want to talk to me so bad, come on over here."

He yelled back: "Why don't you come over here?"

I was off like a shot. Just as I got around to the other side,
in the stands, with me going towards this loudmouth and him
coming towards me, I was intercepted by none other than
Larry Dancey.

22: Rejected: The Parents Always Take It Harder Than the Kid

THE TIMING WAS NOTHING if not impeccable.

No sooner was I done as Mike's coach than my services
were desperately required elsewhere-with Shawn.

That was always the plan anyway. I knew once I
finished
coaching Mike I would turn my attention fully to Shawn for
as many years as I could. And let's just say the light was never
greener.

It seems young Shawn was a man without a team.

Shawn experienced what a lot of kids go through in minor
hockey-he got cut. There was not going to be a spot for him
on the major atom AA Wildcats for the 2000-01 season.

This was a whole new experience for the McKenzie family. In all the time Mike played hockey-right into junior
and college-he was never once cut from a team, unless you
count his diarrhea-induced, underage minor novice AA tryout absence when he was seven years old, or not making the
Ontario Under-17 team (which was never a realistic possibility to begin with).

And because Shawn had chosen not to even try out for
the AAA team in novice or minor atom, this was his
first
time
experiencing legitimate rejection.

If Shawn was upset, he did a good job of hiding it. Don't
get me wrong, he was a little disappointed. You could see and
sense that on the way home in the car the night he was cut.

No one likes to be told they're not good enough. No one likes
to be told, "You're no longer on the team." And when your
friends you've played with for a few years are still there, it can
be a little tough.

But I was probably more upset and disappointed than
he was.

Which, as a rule, is pretty much par for the course. Parents
almost always take getting cut much harder than their kids.

I will grant you there are times when a kid is legitimately
devastated. These extreme cases usually involve a player who
has played on the same team for many, many years, forged
incredibly tight friendships and then-usually in one of the
older age groups, bantam or midget-gets the unkindest cut
of all. That can certainly seem like the end of the world to a
teenager because it's not just about hockey; it's about social
standing and being part of a peer group.

But most kids, especially in the younger age groups, are
incredibly resilient. They bounce back and bounce back
quickly, a lot faster than Mommy and Daddy.

The truth was that as much as I may have been piqued the
night Shawn was cut, I was hardly surprised. You could see it
coming.

As I told you earlier, Shawn was a good little AA player
from the time he started playing at that level in minor novice. But as he progressed into major novice and then minor
atom, he certainly wasn't getting better. He started to go longer
stretches without scoring goals or getting points and while he
was never a liability and never looked out of place, he wasn't
always accomplishing a whole lot either. If I were the coach of
the team, I might have cut him, too,
figuring
it's sometimes
better to take a chance on a lesser-known new player who
might have a bigger upside than to take the middling same-old, same-old with a kid like Shawn.

Having been a coach myself, I knew that cutting kids is easily the worst part of the job. It's a gut-wrenching experience.

There's no good way to do it. If you cut them en masse like I
did with Mike's team, you're accused of not providing individual attention. If you meet one-on-one and tell the kid and his
parents that, for example, the boy needs to work on his skating, they go out saying, "Who the hell does that guy think he
is to say my kid can't skate?"

Cutting players is a dirty job, but one that has to be done.

I've seen long friendships deteriorate or break up entirely
because a coach cut a friend's kid. It can get very ugly and it's
why some guys just aren't cut out, if you'll pardon the pun, to
coach kids' sports.

After you coach awhile, you realize you can't win no matter what, so you try to do what you think is right for the team.

If it costs you a friendship or two along the way, so be it. If
that friendship couldn't withstand a rough patch from cutting a friend's kid, it probably wasn't a truly solid friendship to
begin with. At least that is what you have to tell yourself. As
for the parents whose kids get cut, I have this one simple piece
of advice: Don't take it personally because it's usually not. Get
over it. Your kid will and you will, too, if you allow yourself.

So, based on all of that, I actually felt a little empathy for
Don Houghton, the coach of Shawn's team in minor atom
and the guy who cut him. Don's son Bryant, or Buzz as he was
called, and Shawn had played together on the same teams for
the previous four years. Cindy and I were friends with Don and
his wife, Paula, so it wasn't
difficult
for me to put myself in
Don's shoes and realize this was no fun for him either. He was
just doing what he thought was right for the team; you can't
fault a coach for that.

Which is not to say I still wasn't a little ticked off, generally speaking, the night Shawn got cut. He's my kid, after
all. It's only human nature to absorb or share some of that
disappointment with your son. And to embrace a little bit of
that "we'll show you" mentality. Shawn was, in my opinion,
entirely capable of being a AA-level player; he just wasn't playing as well as he could on a consistent basis and was going to
need some work.

I would hate to think the reason for Shawn's lack of progress as a player through novice and minor atom was tied to
the fact I was a lot busier with Mike's hockey over those three
years than I was with Shawn's, because I still did manage to
make a lot of Shawn's games and practices. I was on him about
work ethic and him getting more involved in his games; it's
not like I neglected him or his hockey. He was just a pretty
laid-back dude.

But all that was history; it was time to focus on the present. I told Shawn precisely that on the way home that night.

I said I was going to put in to coach the major atom A team,
that we were going to have a lot of fun together, that he was
going to have a great season and if he played as well as he's
capable of playing, I would put in to coach the AA team the
next year and he would prove to everyone he was still a good
player who deserved to play AA hockey. It was a good little pep
talk-Shawn seemed to like it-and the best part about it was
that I actually believed every bit of it.

Selfish
ly, I was also encouraged that the AA team had cut
three more kids-a forward, Bryn McDonnell, and two defensemen, Breandon Barnett and Michael Ochman-who I thought
were good AA-caliber players. For whatever reason, they had,
like Shawn, underachieved that minor atom season and pretty
much played their way off the team. Great, they would make
a good nucleus for the A team.

Before I could commit to coaching the A team, though, I
had to take care of logistics. There would be no Kevin or Stu or
Ron Balcom to back me up, so I had to
find
a whole new staff.

Steve Hedington, who had been such a big help the last two
years with Mike's team, agreed to keep coaching with me. That
was huge, because Heddy was an invaluable assistant coach-a level-headed, mature and responsible guy who had played
hockey at a high level and an absolutely outstanding teacher
who related extremely well with kids of all ages and calibers.

Bryn McDonnell's dad, Paul, who I often watched AA games
with, had indicated he would help out.

But the real problem was going to be
find
ing a manager,
because that is the most labor-intensive position. A head
coach's life is nothing but misery without a good manager.

The A team the previous year had been coached by a guy
named Mike Rostek, and his wife, Val, was the manager. Their
son Matt played on the team. Mike Rostek's two years as coach
with that group were up, so he was moving on to coach his
other son, David, an '87. Shawn and Matt Rostek happened to
be playing on the same house-league lacrosse team that spring
and while I didn't know the Rosteks well at all, I was pumping
them for information on the '89 A-level scene. Finally, I asked
Val if I applied for the team and if her son Matt made the
team-as a coach, you have to be careful you don't make promises you can't keep-would she be interested in managing? She
thought about it and eventually said yes, so I was once again
back in the coaching saddle.

I should point out the Rosteks, especially Mike, are completely and utterly crazy, far crazier than me. But that's crazy
in an affectionate, good-friend kind of crazy. They're late for
everything and the sight of Mike plowing that old, big blue
Suburban over snow banks and going "cross-country" to get to
games on time and roaring into arena parking lots all over the
province will forever be burned into my mind. But the overriding quality of the Rosteks, above and beyond all the craziness,
is they are inherently generous people who would do anything
for their kids or anyone else's kids for that matter-anytime,
anyplace, anything, you name it, no questions asked. In the
world of minor hockey, there's no greater redeeming quality
than that.

To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect coaching
at the A level after having been involved in only AAA hockey
to that point. I was pleasantly surprised. The A kids obviously
weren't as gifted as the AAA kids, but what I immediately realized was that, for the most part, the kids and their parents were
no less committed to minor hockey than the AAA families.

They were eager to learn, worked just as hard and while the
execution wasn't there to the same degree, it was obvious to
me that I wouldn't have to make many coaching adjustments,
except maybe try to be a little more patient when teaching
concepts or working on skills.

Speaking from my experiences in the Whitby minor system, there is no difference whatsoever in the time and effort
commitment or passion levels between AAA and AA and single A. It's the same basic routine regardless of how many As
you string together: two games and two practices, on average,
a week and anywhere between four and seven tournaments
depending upon what's available.

We had a competitive little team-not the best; not the
worst-in an A loop that included Stouffville, Pickering, Ajax,
Uxbridge, Clarington, Port Perry, Lindsay, Port Hope, Cobourg,
Trenton, Belleville, Picton and Napanee. I like to think we followed my four-point plan (have fun; embrace and reinforce
the proper values; improve skating and skills; and teach team
strategies, tactics, systems and concepts) and the season was a
success.

Best of all, putting on my parent hat, Shawn was excelling
at this level. He was one of the better players on the team.

He was scoring goals and points regularly, competing harder
than he had been, playing more consistently and seemingly
enjoying himself and having a great deal of fun with this
group of kids.

As a parent, you can't ask for much more than that.

23: New-And-Improved Shawn Makes A U-Turn for the Better

IT'S FUNNY HOW THE WORLD TURNS SOMETIMES. When
Mike was a twelve-year-old, his game went totally into the
tank, in large part, I believe, because he was a late arrival to the
puberty party. Shawn, on the other hand, got to this occasion
quite early. So while in the summer of 1998 I was asking what
the aliens had done with twelve-year-old Mike, I was three
years later wondering where did this new-and-improved version of twelve-year-old Shawn come from?

You could see the signs for Shawn in the major atom A season, the
first
year I coached him. Shawn was getting bigger and
stronger than the other kids, but it really became most obvious in the summer of '01, although that didn't prevent Shawn
from still experiencing the nastiest cut of all.