by Ken Dryden
Even with Gretzky’s arrival in the NHL, the early 1980s were an insecure time for Canadian hockey. There was more fighting; the game seemed messy and out of control. In Gretzky’s first season, only 4 per cent of the NHL’s players were developed in Europe—twenty players were from Sweden, five from Finland, two from Czechoslovakia—but sixty-nine were now from the U.S., more than 10 per cent of the league. There were no Soviet players—they were still winning championships, believing in something bigger, and solidly behind the Wall—but their presence was felt everywhere. In February 1979, they had defeated the NHL All-Stars (a team that included three Swedes) in the three-game series known as the Challenge Cup. Two years later, they obliterated Team Canada, 8–1, in the final of the Canada Cup in Montreal. The Soviets, with their off-ice and off-season training, motivated by dedication not money, seemed to be going where the future was headed.
Canada seemed stuck—as a hockey power, and even as a country. After the heady years that had followed its centennial in 1967, and the early promise of Pierre Trudeau’s government, Canada, it appeared, had returned to its historic backwater, and nothing embodied the country’s disappointment in itself more than Canadian hockey. This was the perfect moment for Don Cherry.
Cherry had grown up in a working-class family, developed into a player of working-class skills, and become the coach of a team with a proud working-class identity, the Boston Bruins. As a coach, he was successful, cranky, and funny: a character; a blustering, ranting, syntax-challenged street kid who spoke basic truths. That was his schtick. After leaving the Bruins in 1979 for a big-money job to coach a bad team, the Colorado Rockies, he discovered that he couldn’t live with losing, got fired, and moved from coaching to what became his Saturday night soapbox, “Coach’s Corner” on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. It was 1982. In all the decades of radio and television before, it had been the play-by-play announcers—principally Foster Hewitt and Danny Gallivan—who had defined hockey broadcasts. Now it was Don Cherry. More than thirty-five years later, it is still Cherry.
Many Canadian hockey commentators at the time were dumping on Canadian hockey; many Canadian opinion-makers were dumping on Canada. But if you’re a working-class kid, whining doesn’t work and irony is too clever; pride is all you have going for you, and Cherry was proud. He spoke to the “deep in the bone” feelings of Canadians—the pride they had for their kids and families, their communities and hometowns; their loyalty to, solidarity with, and belief in their companies, organizations, and teams, in hard work and doing things together, in the jersey and the uniform and everything emblematic of the country. While others trashed Canadian hockey, Cherry stood up for it, and he struck a chord. His hockey was the stereotypical Canadian game of the time: all stitches and missing teeth, and rough and tough players; hockey that was “Rock’em Sock’em,” as he called his bestselling annual videos; a game of the heart and spirit, not of science and the brain.
But Cherry also struck a reverse chord. Many people hated him. To them, his view of Canada was unsophisticated and simplistic, too much of a time that no longer existed. A Canada of Saturday-morning-at-the-hockey-rink/Tim-Hortons-coffee-drinking Canadians—not of the highly educated, eloquent, global moderns his critics were and wanted Canadians to be. Cherry embarrassed them.
In his early years on “Coach’s Corner,” European players and the way they played were more threat than reality. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that the Russians arrived in the NHL in important numbers. Quickly—along with other European players—they became stars, and began winning the NHL’s biggest individual awards—most valuable player; top point-getter, top goal scorer, top goaltender, top defenceman, most outstanding rookie—in numbers almost equal to Canadians. The Europeans had come from nowhere to a very significant somewhere in the NHL, and to many Canadians this trend was very disturbing. Cherry fought back even harder than he had before. To him, everything about Canadian players was right; everything about European players was wrong. Good guys can only do good things; bad guys can only do bad. And loyalty means friends are always right.
Cherry overstated his own case, and he probably knew it. He had always respected talent—his favourite player was Bobby Orr, and as much as he had reason to hate the Montreal Canadiens, he didn’t, because he knew that as talented as they were, like Orr, they were tough, too. And like other lunch-pail Canadian players he loves, Richard, Howe, and Gretzky are also Canadian. Cherry’s fans accepted much of what he said about European players, laughed and rolled their eyes at the rest, and loved him all the same. They knew that as much as his rants seemed to be about Canadian hockey, they were really about Canada. Don Cherry believed in Canadian hockey, and he believed in Canada even more.
Don Cherry began on Hockey Night in Canada in 1980, the same year the Montadors bought their house on Avonbridge Drive, in Mississauga, the same city Cherry moved to two years later. Steve began playing hockey during Cherry’s early years on “Coach’s Corner”—in the basement family room, on the backyard creek, and in the circle at the end of his street. Steve grew up to embody the ethic and spirit that Cherry espoused. He was tough, hard-working, and hard-trying; he stood up for his teammates and himself; he did whatever his team needed whenever it needed to be done; he never backed down, never quit. He was under-noticed and underappreciated. He was an upper-middle-class kid and a working-class player. He was an underdog. He was the kind of guy Don Cherry loved.
—
Athletes are willing to commit everything. It’s what being an athlete is. Hockey players had always been willing to commit more, and Canadian hockey players the most of all. They had a reputation and an identity to live up to, and they had their pride. But by the 1980s, NHL players were also being paid masses of money. They didn’t need to bleed Leafs blue or Canadiens red—except for the years they were under contract to the Leafs or Canadiens. Then, as free agents, they could bleed Flyers orange or Penguins black. Fans had always given their all to their team; with all this money, they were less sure that the players were doing the same, and they were looking for evidence of some equal dedication. What defined everything continued to escalate.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, as Steve was growing up in Mississauga and playing minor hockey, everything for an NHL player was eighty games and four rounds of playoffs that continued until the end of May (in 1992, the playoffs extended into June for the first time). Everything was 110 games, preseason included. It was off-ice and off-season training. With more teams and more players, it was a longer career, more money, and more wear and tear. It was still injuries to the face—cuts and lost teeth—but more damagingly, because of the greater speed and increased collisions, it was injuries to shoulders and especially to knees. Once retired, this generation of players would be undergoing knee and hip replacements in much higher numbers, and at a much younger age.
Equipment was becoming more protective. After all, why should a player feel the pain of the ice, the boards, the glass, a puck, a stick, or an opponent’s body if he didn’t have to? Pain distracts and slows a player down. So why not play with abandon? With better equipment, why not hit with the same force with less pain, and hit more often; or with greater force but with the same pain? Why not do everything that is in you, with no compromise of performance for safety?
Head injuries, except for visible ones to the face, didn’t seem much of a problem even at this time—and almost every player now wore a helmet. Some helmet-skeptics had argued for decades that head protection made a player more, not less, vulnerable. Without a helmet, a player can sense danger even from behind; with a helmet, it’s as if his radar is jammed. But most of the skeptics just didn’t like helmets. Fans identify with their heroes and want to feel for them, but when everyone wears a helmet, everyone looks alike, they argued. Fans can’t see that look of triumph or disappointment on a player’s face. When Guy Lafleur started up ice with the puck, fans could see his hair flip up then stream out behind. They could feel his
speed. With a helmet on, some of that excitement was gone.
The helmet would have much less of a protective effect than everyone imagined, a fact that wouldn’t come to be known until recent years. Helmets lessen the risk of a fractured skull, but do almost nothing to prevent concussions. Hockey still remained a compromise between performance and safety—even if most believed that both were possible pursued to their fullest, and compromise was no longer necessary.
Fighting had changed, too, but again our collective memory is dangerously wrong. The legendary tough guys of the 1950s—Gordie Howe, Lou Fontinato—fought a total of only four or five times a season—and that’s against all opponents, not just against each other. The fighters of the 1960s—John Ferguson, “Terrible Ted” Green, and Reggie Fleming—fought seven or eight times a season, again in total. But in the 1970s, players like Dave “the Hammer” Schultz, Garry Howatt, and “Tiger” Williams routinely fought twenty-five times or more each year (Williams had thirty-four fights in the 1977–78 season).
One of Howe’s unique legacies as a player is commemorated in a special category of achievement, the “Gordie Howe hat trick”—a goal, an assist, and a fight, all recorded in a single game. Including regular season and playoff games, and his years in both the NHL and WHA, Howe scored nearly 1,100 goals, had over 2,400 penalty minutes, and played more than 2,400 games. In that time, Gordie Howe had two Gordie Howe hat tricks.
Before the 1970s, the game was played to a different set of understandings. NHL players looked to earn a reputation for toughness so they didn’t have to fight. That changed dramatically with the Broad Street Bullies. The league’s total fighting numbers stayed at similar high levels in the 1980s, but more player-fighters contended for the league’s lead in fights. Yet, with a few exceptions, they were still light-heavyweights—players who had to become good enough as players to get onto the ice to fight. But for fighters, giving everything was about to require a whole lot more.
Players had always needed to win, but in recent decades, they needed to win even more. The stakes were even higher. NHL franchises cost more money to buy; they were no longer just “hobby” investments for the local rich, but a significant percentage of their financial holdings. Most franchises were not located in traditional hockey areas. They had local competition from other sports teams and other activities. Spectacular success and spectacular failure were both possibilities. Serious money could be won or lost. The players became more important and more vulnerable. Everything, in terms of winning, had escalated as well.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was little to hold hockey back. The impact of the big changes that had been implemented throughout the century was just ahead.
In February 1993, Gary Bettman became the first commissioner of the NHL.
CHAPTER SIX
Every player, coach, and parent involved in peewee hockey everywhere in the world had their mind on Le Tournoi International de Hockey Pee-wee de Québec from the moment their teams were put together. Wayne Gretzky had played in the Quebec tournament. So did Mario Lemieux, Guy Lafleur, Marcel Dionne, Mike Bossy, Gilbert Perreault, Brett Hull, Steve Yzerman, Patrick Roy, and hundreds of other NHLers. All the best thirteen-year-olds would be there. Quebec was an opportunity for them and for their parents to see how they measured up against every other kid; to see how they were doing on their way to the dream. For these kids and their parents together, it was also a chance to get a taste of what that dream might be like: playing in Le Colisée, the arena that Jean Béliveau built, the home of the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques, filled with NHL-size crowds making NHL-decibel-level noise, the national anthem played before every game; around the city, the kids in their team jackets, local people pointing, whispering, and teenage girls asking for their autographs. When Montreal Canadiens Hall of Famer Steve Shutt was asked when he knew he wanted to be an NHL player, he said, “In Quebec,” his eyes lighting up. It was when he walked down the dark hallway from his team’s dressing room and turned into the light, towards the ice. When “all I could see was a wall of people. ‘That’s me!’”
Quebec was a hockey family’s reward, and Paul, Donna, Chris, and Lindsay were all there. It was February, 1993. The Toronto Red Wings were the powerhouse team that year, led by Tom Kostopoulos, who would later play more than 600 NHL games. The Red Wings had beaten the Marlies several times during the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL) regular season. Here, the two teams were in different brackets and wouldn’t meet—until, perhaps, the playoff rounds.
The Marlies won their early games and played a team from Quebec in the group final. Le Colisée was packed. All the Marlies’ parents, brothers, and sisters were cheering for the Marlies; all the thousands of others were cheering for the home team. Late in the second period, with the game tied, Steve had the puck in his own zone and the Quebec team was changing; there was open ice ahead of him. When he got to centre, the puck flipped over his stick. It took him a split second to notice. In that moment, a Quebec player grabbed the puck, skated in on a breakaway, and scored. Paul felt sick; Lindsay wanted to cry. Steve’s head was down, his body slouched.
The game went on. Jim Nicoletti, the Marlies coach, put Steve back on the ice for his next regular shift. Immediately, Steve was bumping in the corners, moving the puck, jumping into the play, racing back, pushing himself to forget what had happened. Paul began to notice this only when the Marlies scored to tie the game once more; Steve was off the hook. Later, the Marlies scored again and won the game. It was a moment that none of the family ever forgot, and all of them remembered in their own way. For Paul, Steve had made an error, not a mistake—an error meant doing the right thing but not executing it properly; a mistake was doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. But most importantly for Paul, the team had picked Steve up. His teammates had helped him just as, at other times, he helped them. They had fought back together. It was the lesson of “team.” Years later, Steve would play in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) with the Erie Otters. In the team’s program, as part of his player profile, he described the Quebec tournament as his most memorable moment in hockey.
The Marlies lost their next game, to the Red Wings, and were eliminated. The Red Wings then beat Syracuse in the final to win the overall championship. For ten days, Steve had been up against the best peewee hockey players in the world: Marián Hossa, Alex Tanguay, Brian Gionta, Simon Gagné, Mike Ribeiro, Tim Connolly, and Tom Kostopoulos among them. And on his own team, he had played with Daniel Tkaczuk. Steve had not been one of the tournament’s best players, but it was now clear in his mind that he could play with them.
Steve returned to the Marlies the next year, but the following season he moved to another GTHL team, the Mississauga Senators. His Marlies coaches, after two years, saw him as a good, tough, hard-trying player. The coach of the Senators told Paul that he thought Steve had the talent to play in more critical situations as well—on power plays and penalty kills—and with the Senators he would be given that chance. But in his first season with Mississauga, nothing much changed. Other players were still more talented. Others still got more ice time in the high-skill moments of a game. But hockey’s style of play was evolving. Teams were demanding players who were faster, tougher, and more competitive. They were demanding what Steve offered. If many players each year were still better, many more were worse, and Steve still loved to play. He remained a good teammate, and his team won most of its games.
Things were now a little easier for the Montador family. At home it was just Lindsay and Steve, and Lindsay—older and more independent—went to the rinks only when she wanted to. Chris was in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, attending Notre Dame College, which at the time was the best hockey school in Canada. Wendel Clark, Curtis Joseph, and Rod Brind’Amour had gone there; so would Vincent Lecavalier, Brad Richards, and many others who went on to play in the NHL. The rule in the Montador family had always been that school came first. But little by little, under the compromises of AAA hockey, the definition of “first” had begun to slid
e. It had become not much more than “if Chris/Steve is passing, even if it’s by the skin of his teeth, he can play”—and at times Chris had been pretty close to the line. But at Notre Dame, he would have to earn his playing time for the Hounds in the classroom as well as on the ice.
After his season with the Senators, Steve got a chance to play Tier II Junior A with the St. Mike’s Buzzers. It was a big step from bantam to junior. Steve had always played with and against kids his own age; in junior, the players might be four years older—bigger and stronger physically, more developed emotionally, intellectually, and as players. But St. Mike’s, a hockey school even more legendary than Notre Dame, was too good a chance to pass up.
St. Mike’s had been a central building block for the great Toronto Maple Leaf teams of the 1960s. This was before the NHL’s universal draft was introduced with expansion in 1967. After the Second World War, NHL teams had begun building their farm systems. Players could be signed by NHL organizations at a young age to play for local teams that the big clubs sponsored. Many of the most promising of them were from small towns, especially in the north. As these young players got older, they needed to play for better teams in more competitive leagues, which were usually located in the south. But if these kids were to leave home and move to the big city, their parents wanted to be sure they were safe. That’s where Catholic schools came in. What could be better for the welfare of their kids, parents believed, than to be looked after by priests? Detroit sent their young out-of-town players to Windsor, to play junior for the Spitfires and to attend Assumption College, a Catholic high school. The Leafs sent their prospects to St. Michael’s College School (St. Mike’s)—Tim Horton, Frank Mahovlich, Dick Duff, Dave Keon, Gerry Cheevers, and many more. Red Kelly and Ted Lindsay, who both later signed with Detroit, also attended St. Mike’s. Next door to the school was the arena, and across the front of the arena, in big letters, a sign read, “Teach me goodness, discipline and knowledge.”
