Shawn liked playing for John Annis, or Johnny A, as Shawn
and the kids often called him. John is a guy who grew up in
hardscrabble Regent Park, the tough, low-income, downtown
Toronto housing projects (home of NHLer Glen Metropolit).
He's a no-nonsense guy who can be a little rough around the
edges, but also a lot of fun, too. As a minor hockey coach,
John was very successful, winning some OMHA titles and icing
competitive teams that played hard. He ran some of the best
practices I've ever seen at any level, just for the players being
able to skate, pass and shoot and work on their skills. He didn't
tolerate slackers. If a kid was
fl
oating through practice or being
a nuisance, John would just order him off the ice and send him
home, and that was as true of his goaltender son Wes as it was
any player on the team.
Some kids and parents no doubt ran hot and cold on
John-depending on whose ox was getting gored at the time-but I always sensed that John had real affection for this group
of kids and cared about them.
He
definitely
favored high-paced, offensive hockey with
not a lot of time spent on systems or structure. He motivated
the kids to play hard, demanded they compete, and as rough
and tumble as he was in so many ways, his
first
priority was
to get the kids playing the game fast and skilled and with
the puck. Because he had a team with a fair bit of talent and
skill, other weaker teams would try to rough them up, put the
game in the gutter, and it used to drive John crazy. He called it
"bullshit hockey," but rest assured that if the fertilizer did hit
the fan in a game, it didn't take much to set off Johnny and his
Regent Park side would come out. When that happened, uh,
well, things could get interesting, to say the least.
The team had some tough kids and competitors so they
could play it any way the opposition wanted. Shawn was
becoming an interesting case study in this regard. As laid back
and easygoing as he was off the ice, Shawn was starting to
enjoy the physical part of it. Shawn wasn't tall-about
five
foot eight then (no more than
five
foot nine now)-but he was
strong and didn't mind at all when the game would get edgy.
Mike's primary focus when he played was scoring goals
and creating offense. If that wasn't happening to his satisfaction, Mike might get frustrated and let his emotions get the
better of him. The next thing you know Mike would be in
the middle of everything. Shawn also started to
find
himself
in the middle of some "situations," but it was never because
Shawn was frustrated or angry; it was more calculated on his
part. Shawn loved to torment players like his brother because
he had an advantage over them-he wasn't taking any of this
too much to heart. It was all just good fun or sport for him.
But that didn't mean Shawn didn't need to be reeled in
that season, perhaps feeling a little too full of himself as a new
AAA player.
I wasn't at this particular regular-season game in November
against the Clarington Toros because I had to work, but there
was a Clarington defenseman who was engaging in some
hit-and-run tactics, playing what John Annis would say was
"bullshit hockey." It was only a matter of time until there
was a response because that's how John's teams played. It was
Shawn who took it upon himself, right off a face-off, to engage
this opposing player. Shawn ran into him and when the guy
pushed back, Shawn's gloves came off and it was on. This kid
clearly didn't want to
fight
. He covered up and that was that.
Shawn was ejected from the game and received an automatic
one-game (regular season) suspension.
I wasn't too amused when Cindy related the story to me,
but John Annis told me not to be too hard on Shawn, that
Shawn was standing up for his teammates. I did give Shawn a
lecture about picking his spots-how there's a right time and
a wrong time to send a message; that
fight
ing and getting suspended in minor bantam hockey isn't always the best way to
go about it. But you could tell he was pretty pleased with himself and he had the admiration and respect of his teammates
for stepping up. Whether you happen to like it or not, that,
in a nutshell, is the culture of hockey, even in minor bantam.
Fortunately for Shawn, the suspension wouldn't affect him
for the coming weekend, when the team was competing in a
tournament in London, where Whitby's
first
game was against
the London Junior Knights. With future Los Angeles Kings
star Drew Doughty and future San Jose
first
-round pick Logan
Couture, the Junior Knights were one of the premier teams in
the province.
Shawn and I were driving to London on the Thursday
night-Cindy was staying home so it was a boys' weekend
away-and we were both looking forward to a fun weekend
road trip.
The
first
game turned out to be a huge dud for Shawn's
team. They got steamrolled. The Wildcats lost by a considerable margin, seven or eight goals. It was just one of those
games.
The next game, then, would be crucial. Lose it and the
Wildcats would play out the string with one more round-robin game on Saturday. Win it and, if there was another win
on Saturday, there was at least a chance of moving on. The
afternoon game on Friday was against the Mississauga Reps,
a GTHL team that wasn't considered very good. But whatever
ailed the Wildcats in the London game, it was still with them
against Mississauga.
It was a dreadful hockey game, the absolute worst of minor
hockey on display. It went from being chippy to pretty much
out of control. Some games are just like that. There was a lot of
hacking and whacking, cheap shots all over the ice. Johnny A's
combative Regent Park side had surfaced. At one point, he was
looking at the other coach and putting his
fists
up in a John L.
Sullivan boxing-style pose on the bench, checking to see if the
other coach wanted to take this outside.
Normally, I would have found some level of amusement
at that, but Shawn had become involved with some player on
the other team who had run him. On this occasion, whatever
the kid had done to him, Shawn was genuinely angry, which
was rare. Shawn then blatantly and viciously cross-checked the
other player in the head. Shawn was assessed a
five
-minute
major, was ejected from that game, and would be suspended
for the balance of that tournament plus his next two OMHA
league games as well. Throw in his
fight
ing suspension from
the week before and he was going to be sitting down for three
league (OMHA) games.
I was furious. As soon as Shawn came off the ice, I told him
to get out of his gear because we were going home. He came
out of the dressing room-the game was still going on-and
we drove to the hotel, packed up our stuff, checked out and
drove the two hours back to Whitby, with me pretty much
going up one side of Shawn and down the other.
Shawn is the kind of kid who doesn't like being in trouble-Mike could have gone the two hours without saying a
word-so it was an uncomfortable ride home for Shawn. And I
wanted it to be uncomfortable because as happy as I was with
him playing AAA, he damn well wasn't going to play like this
all season long.
The good news was it was just one of those weeks for the
Wildcats, and Shawn. The team rebounded to play better;
Shawn served his suspensions totaling three games and came
back to play hard and aggressively, but without any nonsense
the rest of the season.
The Wildcats were playing host to the OMHA championship that year because they had won the title in the previous
year. It's a good thing they were the host team, too, because
they lost in the second round of the playoffs to Ajax-Pickering,
who were led by Marcus Carroll, Bill's youngest son who went
on to play for Owen Sound in the OHL. If not there as the
host team, the Wildcats wouldn't have made it at all. Whitby
did rebound to beat Ajax-Pickering in the semi-
finally
s of the
OMHA tournament, but lost a heartbreaker to the North
Central Predators in the championship game. In Shawn's
first
year of AAA, he got somewhere his brother had never been-an OMHA championship game, albeit on the losing end.
It was John Annis's last game with that collection of
kids. It really was quite a remarkable minor hockey run for
that group, which had been together for a number of years.
Shawn, meanwhile, was just happy and proud to have been
a part of it and to have proven he was a AAA-caliber player. I
could see no reason he wouldn't continue to play at that level
for a good, long time.
Little did I know . . . .
28: Turn out the Lights, the Party is Over
I WOULDN'T WISH the last seven months of 2003 on my
worst enemy-and that's saying something, because I've been
known to suffer from Irish Alzheimer's (where you forget
everything but your enemies).
The year had started with such promise. Shawn had just
finished
his
first
full season of AAA, loved it and had already
made the AAA team for the next season. Shawn was going
into Grade 9 at Trinity College. Mike had just completed his
first
year of Junior A and had excelled-the Saginaw Spirit
indicated they were prepared to sign him; a number of U.S.
colleges had expressed some interest in him as a potential scholarship athlete. Mike was back for his second year,
Grade 11, at TCS.
As I headed off to the '03 Cup
finally
between the Mighty
Ducks of Anaheim and New Jersey Devils, I was thinking life
didn't get any better than this. And I was right, the part about
life not getting any better, because it didn't.
While I was in Anaheim I got an urgent message from
Cindy, who had received a panicky phone call from my dad,
who called her up out of the blue one morning and said: "Tell
Bobby [he always called me Bobby] to come home, I don't
think I'm going to make it." My dad was seventy-
five
years old
but in reasonably good health, enjoying life to the fullest-playing golf three or four times a week, driving his Sebring
convertible, pumping the Andrea Bocelli tunes and holding
court at his favorite pub, Paddy O'Farrell's. He woke up one
morning with a piercing headache-he hadn't been feeling
quite right for a couple of weeks-and whatever sixth sense
humans possess to know something is seriously wrong, well,
his alarm bell had gone off.
I rushed home from Anaheim and within a week or two of
that, after a bunch of doctors' appointments and tests, he was
diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. The doctor said he
might, if he was lucky, have six months; he ended up with six
weeks and lost most of his mental faculties within two weeks
of the diagnosis. He played out the string in palliative care at
the Salvation Army Toronto Grace Health Centre in downtown
Toronto (which, as an aside, is the very de
fi
nition of grace,
kindness, compassion and dignity). He died on July 23, 2003.
It was, obviously, a tough summer, but you know what? As
painful as it is to lose a parent, it is the natural order of things.
It's the cycle of life. It's when bad things happen to your kids
that it really hits you hard, because you like to think, in a perfect world, kids are spared. We know only too well that's not
the way it works and there are far too many sad and tragic
stories as evidence. In the pantheon of bad things that can
happen to your children, what befell the McKenzie boys in
2003 isn't what anyone would necessarily deem tragic, not
when you compare it to what so many parents have to deal
with. But if your kids are hurting, as a parent, you hurt, too.
Six games into Mike's second season with the Legionaires,
in late September, he suffered a concussion. A doozy. He was
back-checking through the neutral zone at full speed in a game
at North York Centennial Arena (we don't like this arena very
much). He was chasing down a North York Ranger forward
when a Legionaire defenseman stepped up for the big hit at
the blue line. At the last second, the Ranger player jumped out
of the way and Mike took the full force of his defenseman's
hit, right smack dab in the middle of his face. On impact, it
sounded like a bomb going off.
He never lost consciousness, but that didn't mean anything really. We took him to hospital to make sure there were
no complications and he checked out
fine
, but it was obvious he was concussed. His face hurt like hell and his head was
pounding. The headaches didn't go away either. Not the next
day or the day after that or, for that matter, the next week or
the week after that.
This was Mike's
first
-ever concussion and it was quite clear
he had signi
fi
cant post-concussion symptoms-headaches, dif
fi
culty concentrating, motion sickness-that weren't receding
any time soon. If you have never experienced these symptoms,
or aren't close to someone who has, you simply have no idea
how dark, desperate and scary it can be. It is like a dark cloud
consumes your entire being, affecting your mood and ability
to function in everyday life.
A few weeks into Mike's recovery, he thought he was getting better and started skating again at practice. He thought
he was symptom-free, but even after a couple of days of hard
skating in practice without any ill effects, the minute he got
into a drill where there was a little jostling, some bumping and
grinding, he felt like he was right back to where he was, his
head hurting and not feeling quite right.
Aside from the obvious physical and emotional effects of
post-concussion syndrome, the worst part is the fear and uncertainty of wondering when, or if, it's ever going to be better. When
is normal going to return? It's pretty fair to say, given Mike's passion for all things hockey, he was a basket case through much of
this. When he had his setback at practice, I really started to get
concerned. So did he.
If you haven't already
figure
d this out about me, I tend not
to be a patient person. I don't like doing nothing. My job gives
me opportunities or connections that aren't necessarily available to other people. I'm not shy about utilizing them either,
especially on health concerns relating to my kids. So if the
best course of treatment for a concussed NHLer is to see noted
concussion specialist and neurologist Dr. Karen Johnston in
Montreal, then that's the treatment I wanted for Mike.
Mike and I made the trek to Montreal to see Dr. Johnston
(she has since moved to Toronto). Dr. Johnston is a wonderfully reassuring woman, who eased Mike's mind immediately
by telling him that he would get better. But she also said he
should be aware he would be more susceptible to future concussions, the key being to make sure he was fully recovered
from this one before returning to play. Buoyed by that prognosis, Mike weathered his recovery through the balance of
November. By early December-about nine weeks after he was
initially concussed-he was
finally
symptom-free.
Dr. Johnston provided us with a very good, but extremely
gradual, return-to-play protocol that was in and of itself a couple of weeks long. Since that process would put Mike back on
the ice for just a couple of games before Christmas, we opted
to hold him out until after his team's Christmas break and buy
him almost two additional weeks of recovery time. I appreciate the sense of urgency all concussed hockey players have to
get back to playing as soon as possible-to say nothing of their
coaches and parents. But if all concerned would only realize
the
benefit
of taking a little extra time to fully recover, err a little on the side of caution, the hockey world at all levels would
be a much better place.
I should probably take a moment here to tackle the issue
of safety equipment as it relates to concussions.
In Mike's
first
year of Junior A, the Legionaires' team rule
was that
first
-year players had to wear a full cage as opposed to
the half visor that all Junior A players are permitted to wear.
Naturally, once he became a second-year Legionaire and had
the option of discarding the cage that is precisely what he did.
I'm not sure whether a full cage as opposed to the half visor
would have made a difference in protecting Mike from his
first
concussion, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt, given the
point of contact was directly on his face.
You should know this, though. While hockey helmets
most certainly go a long way to preventing skull fractures and
help to minimize trauma directly to the head and may ultimately prevent some concussions from occurring, in many
cases the hockey helmet is almost inconsequential to brain
trauma. Most concussions are the result of a person travelling
very fast and being stopped so suddenly and forcefully that
the brain literally smashes into the inside of the skull. In many
cases, no amount of outside protection will cushion the blow
of the brain on the inside of the skull. This, by the way, is not
true of some types of bicycle helmets, which do in fact absorb
some of the shock in a crash. I'm not advocating anyone to not
wear a protective helmet; I am just pointing out that hockey
helmets are often powerless to prevent brain trauma.
It's the same thing with mouthguards. All players should
wear mouthguards because they protect the teeth and gums
and while there is a "sense" that wearing a mouthguard helps
to absorb the shock in trauma that may cause concussions, the
truth is that there is no scienti
fi
c or medical data that proves
mouthguards minimize or prevent concussions. In that vein,
it is quite possible that Mike would have suffered a concussion even if he had been wearing a full cage instead of a half
visor that day, but I still think he would have been far better
off with the cage.
Hockey really is a macho game. Kids who choose to wear
the most protective equipment-a full cage, for example-are branded "pussies" yet most of the players who play Junior
A are doing so in order to get a scholarship to a U.S. college
where full cages are mandatory. Go
figure
.
Mike and I had a battle royale when he was coming back
from his concussion in January. He wanted to keep wearing the
visor; I wanted him to wear the cage. I knew the abuse he would
take for being a "cage" wearer, but I also knew that his season
or maybe his hockey-playing career could be over because of
an errant high stick or puck to the face. That
first
serious concussion he suffered had reduced his margin for error greatly,
especially if he was intent on getting a scholarship. For me, it
was a no brainer. I won out on that battle with Mike and only
two games into his comeback, something happened to get Mike
fully on board with my view
There was a scrum in the corner for a loose puck. Mike was
on the periphery of it, bent over and trying to
fish
the puck
out of a mass of skates and legs. The opposing defenceman was
right behind Mike and just as Mike
fish
ed out the puck,
the
defender
crosschecked Mike hard in the middle of his back.
The force of it drove Mike's caged-face into the top edge of the
dasher board. On the way home, Mike was looking at his cage
that had been badly "shmushed" in and duly noted that could
have been his face that got "shmushed" in and his season,
maybe even his hockey-playing life, would have been over.
I don't know how much easier that incident made it for
Mike to deal with million or so "cage-wearing pussy" comments he got over the next two-plus years of Junior A hockey,
but I do know this: He never got another concussion in Junior
A, despite being struck forcefully in his (caged) face numerous
times with a puck or a stick or the boards, and he ultimately
got a scholarship to play U.S. college hockey, where there is
no choice but to wear a full cage anyway. I know there are no
guarantees and that no amount of "protection" can keep a
player safe because hockey is a dangerous game and stuff happens. I know it all too well.
But my attitude on this issue of protection is obvious-if
you're not making your living at the game, why wouldn't you
wear the maximum protection permitted to safeguard whatever opportunities exist? But that attitude
fl
ies in the face of
hockey's macho code.