Hockey Towns

by Ron MacLean

  Dedication

  For my parents, Lila and Ron.

  Throughout my nomadic childhood spent in several towns, the compass my parents used reflected two norths, one true, one magnetic. That leads me to a thought about fixed positions. Mom and Dad placed very little emphasis on agreement. With their blessing, I was free to inquire, to be wrong and to be sorry. The thought of them is thought itself.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA It’s God Calling, He Wants Us to Win Tonight

  WINNIPEG, MANITOBA Me Blue, You Blue

  GRAND CENTRE AND COLD LAKE, ALBERTA Great Sadness

  ST. CATHARINES AND NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO Cheesy

  Little Zee

  CASTLEGAR, BRITISH COLUMBIA The Role Player

  VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA The Curse of the Leafs

  LONDON, ONTARIO Tea for Two

  One Great Keeper in the Hands of Another

  The Big Red Turtleneck

  SWIFT CURRENT, SASKATCHEWAN Reckless Abandon

  RED DEER, ALBERTA Suds

  You Know How to Whistle, Don’t You?

  REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN The Life of a Thousand Men

  The Next Wayne Gretzky

  Hot Stick

  PÉRIBONKA, QUEBEC Gou! Gou!

  MONTREAL, QUEBEC One Hundred Per Cent

  OAKVILLE, ONTARIO Night Train

  The Assigner

  SAULT STE. MARIE, ONTARIO The Soo

  MONCTON, NEW BRUNSWICK The Incredible Charlie Bourgeois

  PHOTO SECTION

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The first man to ever successfully put into words exactly what a big hockey game really means was Phil Esposito at the September 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. Fresh off the ice in Vancouver after losing 5–3 in Game Four, taking the series to 2–1 for the Soviets, Esposito, his curly black hair stuck to his head thanks to the gallons of sweat he poured into the game, sent an important message home to all of us.

  To the people across Canada, we tried, we gave it our best, and to the people that boo us, all of us guys are really disheartened and we’re disillusioned, and we’re disappointed at . . . some of the Canadian fans—I’m not saying all of them . . . We’re trying, but hell, I mean . . . they got a good team, and let’s face facts. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not giving it our 150 per cent, because we certainly are . . . Every one of us guys, thirty-five guys that came out and played for Team Canada, we did it because we love our country, and not for any other reason, no other reason . . . They can throw anything they want out the window. We came because we love Canada. And even though we play in the United States, and we earn money in the United States, Canada is still our home, and that’s the only reason we come. And I don’t think it’s fair that we should be booed.

  After that little pep talk, and thanks to Paul Henderson, Canada came out and won the series. They held their flank on the Russian front. And then, thirty years later in Salt Lake City, Utah, Canada was off to another slow start—hammered by Sweden, they barely beat Germany and then tied the Czechs, their record 1–1–1. When Theo Fleury was levelled in front of the net by Czech player Roman Hamrlík, it was the last straw for the Great One, and he did something he rarely does. He went public.

  “You talk about we’re not a skating team, we can’t move the puck, we have no finesse. That’s crazy. We outskated them into the ground, third period. There should have been four or five penalties, blatant penalties. And [there] should have been two or three suspensions. Am I hot? Yes, I’m hot, ’cause I’m tired of people taking shots at Canadian hockey. When we do it, we’re hooligans. When Europeans do it, it’s okay because they’re not tough or they’re not dirty. That’s a crock of crap.”

  The team would end up with a gold medal for the first time in fifty years. And at those same Olympics, the Canadian women’s team won gold for the first time ever. As she came off the ice after the win, Hayley Wickenheiser, the undisputed face of Canadian hockey, was more than a little fired up. “You know what? The Americans had our flag on the floor of their dressing room, and now I want to know if they want us to sign it! I am so happy!”

  It’s usually hard to put these feelings into words, but Esposito, Gretzky, and Wickenheiser are the best of the best. They embody the Canadian spirit—play fair, play to win and don’t mess with our hockey.

  Lethbridge

  ALBERTA

  POPULATION:

  83,517

  It’s God Calling, He Wants Us to Win Tonight

  Mike Babcock had just been fired by the Moose Jaw Warriors. Although still in his twenties, he had been general manager and head coach of the struggling Western Hockey League team. It was tough to coach in Moose Jaw because the team was community-owned, and many of the owners wanted to have a say. In 1993, Babcock was all but drummed out of hockey and had lined up a job as an accountant in Strasbourg, Saskatchewan. And then he got a call from Peter Anholt, coach of the Red Deer Rebels (he’s now the GM and head coach of the Lethbridge Hurricanes). Anholt told him the University of Lethbridge was looking for a head coach.

  Mike tells a story in his book, Leave No Doubt, about some advice that John Chomay, one of his professors at McGill, gave him. At the end of Mike’s teaching practicum, Chomay told Mike he was going to give him the highest mark he’d ever given one of his Faculty of Education students, but it came with “an obligation to live up to my potential.”

  In my view, the grade Mike got at McGill along with Chomay’s comment stuck with him. He knew he could be in a better place than where he was in his career at that point. He could not leave all the hard work he had done behind. He could not quit hockey. He had to give it one more shot.

  Mike Babcock came in to coach the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns on August 10, 1993. He interviewed all the assistant coaches, including young Trevor Keeper, who is now the coach of the Red Deer College Kings. In his meeting with Trevor, Mike grilled him about the players on the team. He wanted a sense of where the team would finish in the upcoming season. Former coach Dave Adolph had set the table. He started the program just four years earlier, and the Pronghorns were improving. They’d gone from 1–25–2 in 1989–90 to 9–16–1 in 1992–93.

  Mike was determined to turn the team around. It was his last shot. He’d put in all that effort at McGill, and then as a player coach in the UK. And then he’d coached in Red Deer with the Rebels and after that, Moose Jaw. There was just too much to lose. Of course, nobody could have predicted what was about to happen that year.

  Later that summer, Mike called Parry Shockey, a guy he’d met at a coaching clinic in Calgary. He said, “Hey, Shocks, I don’t know if you know this, but I just got in to Lethbridge and I need an assistant coach. I don’t have a bunch of money, but I need somebody that I trust. Will you come and do it?” Parry agreed, but when he got to Lethbridge, he discovered it was a little crowded—Mike had kept the three assistant coaches from the previous year.

  At the end of every period of a Lethbridge game, Mike would ask each of the assistant coaches to tell him one positive and one negative thing the team had done. There was no time for hesitation. It was, “What didn’t you like? Okay, good. Next guy? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Good. Okay, get out of the way. Next guy?” Mike doesn’t live in a world of black and white—he lives in a world of plus/minus. But his system is not goals for and against, which is the convention. Mike’s plus/minus philosophy is to ask, when you move the puck—the minute you pass it, shoot it, dump it, whatever—what happens next? If something good happens next, you get a plus. If something bad happens ne
xt, you get a minus. Anywhere on the ice, any situation. That’s his system.

  After talking to the coaches and looking over the talent, Mike realized the Pronghorns had a pretty good team, but they had a record of losing close games. Two years earlier, the Pronghorns had lost fifteen games by only one goal. Mike was going to have to figure out how to stop that.

  The Pronghorns played in the Canada West conference of the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletics Union (now the CIS—Canadian Interuniversity Sport). It’s a highly respected level of hockey, but playing in the National Hockey League isn’t the goal for most of the players. A few of the Pronghorns’ best players were not interested in playing Mike’s way, and so they left, which thinned out the ranks. Mike told Quentin Taylor, a reporter for the U of L’s Meliorist, “After the first practice, I almost went home and cried.”

  He couldn’t come up with twenty-six players, but he had twenty-two character guys. The Horns didn’t have the depth of a school like the University of Calgary, but they did have some key players. Jarret Zukiwsky had played for Mike when he coached the Moose Jaw Warriors, and so he understood how important it was to be part of the team. Jarret was a big, strong kid from the Pincher Creek area. A fiery competitor, he had enough talent to play pro and would go on to win the Canada West rookie of the year award. Parry Shockey saw that in some ways, Jarret was like Mike. “They both had an edge and walked a fine line between arrogance and confidence.”

  When Jarret played for Mike in Moose Jaw, one day after a rookie party the guys kept messing up the drills. So Mike took the nets and pucks off the ice, lined the team up and blew the whistle. They were skating lines. After a minute or two, he yelled, “Okay, who had one beer last night? You can stop. Two beers? Okay, enough. Four beers . . . take a break.” Guys were dropping off and standing at the boards, just watching. At six beers, there were only about four guys left, including Jarret. And then, all of a sudden, Mike said, “Okay, stop. You guys are fine—off the ice. The rest of you liars line up!”

  Jarret went into the dressing room so tired he could barely unlace his skates. He had a long shower and then headed back to the ice to see what was going on. Mike had thrown a few buckets and garbage barrels out on the ice, and he had the guys who had dropped out early still doing lines. From that day forward, every time the team had a drill like that, nobody quit skating lines until everybody quit skating lines.

  Some people make fun of ghost rosters—when a coach puts together a team before he knows his players. “We need this type of player and that type of player, playing with this type of guy or that type of guy.” But Mike wanted four solid lines—two scoring lines and two checking lines. It makes for a versatile team, and there is less envy in the dressing room. Fewer guys will be jealous of ice time when they have set roles and responsibilities.

  In Lethbridge, the veteran captain, Cregg Nicol, was rawboned and tough. In the two previous years, Cregg was on the first two lines as a scoring centreman, and he had just come back from the Detroit Red Wings’ camp. Mike made him the centre on the Horns’ third line. It was a checking, penalty-killing line—not the most glamorous position. Cregg, a team guy to the core, bought in immediately.

  But most of the team had played together for four years, and so at the outset they weren’t sure about all the changes. Every team has two leaders, a captain and a straw boss. Mike’s straw boss was going to be someone he knew and trusted, and Jarret was that guy. But Jarret ruffled feathers right away when he questioned the players’ work ethic. The first day of practice, one of the veterans was cheating on a drill. Jarret went up to him and said, “Why are you cheating? You’re one of the fastest guys on the team.”

  Cregg intervened, calling over, “Hey! Just ’cause you played for Mike in Moose Jaw doesn’t mean you get a say.” Jarret looked at Cregg and said, “Look, you guys have won eff all. You’ve never even made the playoffs. We can’t be taking shortcuts.” Cregg registered the remark. He knew Jarret was right.

  James Moller was a guy with NHL bloodlines, the younger brother of Randy, who played for the Florida Panthers, and Mike, who played with the Buffalo Sabres and the Edmonton Oilers. There was almost a ten-year difference between James and his brothers, but they always made sure to include him when they hung out at the house with their friends—the Sutter boys, future NHLers Kelly Kisio and Glen Wesley, and minor pros Doug Rigler and Graham Parsons.

  Mike saw uncapped ability in James—raw talent that really hadn’t been refined. Under Mike, it got developed. James was a forward, like his older brother Mike, who was a prolific goal scorer and point producer, so Babcock immediately took that pressure off. He put James on the third line with Cregg and told him, “You are going to block shots and kill penalties.” He gave James a purpose on the team, and James excelled in the role.

  Mike made a similar adjustment on the fly seventeen years later, early in the Vancouver Olympic Games. Canada was not doing well. They were set to play a key game against Russia in the quarter-finals, so Mike told Jonathan Toews, a big, tough number-one centre on every team he ever played for, a guy used to power-play time, that he was not going to be used on the power play or in offensive situations. Instead, Toews would centre the third line—a checking line. Mike put him with Rick Nash, a Rocket Richard–type goal-scoring leader. He told Nash he wanted him to use his size and speed to check Alexander Ovechkin, who was the key to a Russian victory. And then he filled out the line with Mike Richards, probably the smartest checking forward in the league. He created a matchup line out of three top-flight offensive superstars.

  The Horns’ twenty-four-year-old alternate captain, Trevor Ellerman, had played junior. He was a tremendous athlete and could golf like a pro. Under Dave Adolph, Trevor had played on the first line with his two buddies Greg Gatto and Dana McKechnie, but early in the year, Mike made Perry Neufeld, a skilled two-way centre, his first-line centre and put Ellerman on his left wing and Jarret across on the right.

  Trevor had come back to the U of L for one more year just to play hockey and score a ton of points, and now Mike was messing with his plans. At the end of practice, Trevor confronted him. “What’s the deal, Coach?” Mike told Trevor he had split the players up so the team would have two good lines. Trevor shook his head in disgust. He sure as hell didn’t see it. Mike said, “Try it out.” Their first game together, the new line got five points.

  And then there were the goalies, Derek Babe and Trevor Kruger. Trevor had played goal for the Swift Current Broncos and won a Memorial Cup. He was an unorthodox, tremendously athletic goaltender with a Dominik Hašek style of play. But he was on the small side, so he was passed over. Trevor was a free spirit. Mike worked with him, giving him the boundaries he needed. Mike told him, “If you step outside those boundaries, then you don’t play.” Trevor lived within them. He knew when he could party, and he knew when he had to play. A year earlier, Derek Babe had alternated in net with Trevor, but when Mike made Derek the backup he didn’t complain.

  Mike took no prisoners. It didn’t matter whether it was the captain or a walk-on, everyone was held accountable. It started in one of the first exhibition games. Trevor Ellerman was maybe the best scorer on the team, but he wasn’t performing. However, Mike could smell that, deep down, Trevor was driven to win. So he went to Trevor and said, “You need to be accountable defensively. Let’s focus on always being on the right side of the puck, and let’s see some backchecking.” Trevor blew him off—“Yeah, yeah, okay. Whatever.” Later in the game, Mike had him serve a bench minor. When it was over, Mike told him to go back on. Trevor threw out a little attitude. He got up slowly, hit the ice and stretched, as if to say, “I’m cold from sitting out,” so Mike threw him back on the bench and he didn’t play another shift that game. Mike made it clear—“I’m going to coach this team, and you are not, okay?” Mike had to make a statement early, and when he did, it was a turning point for the team.

  The season opener was in Manitoba against the Bisons. Friday night, the student paper r
eported that the Horns “completely dominated, winning 5–1.” Trevor Ellerman recalls that the next night they played well but then threw the game away.

  Mike worked with each player, breaking down the opposition’s plays and talking about their tendencies. And he had a knack for putting the guys in the right frame of mind. He’d look around and if he saw that someone was uptight or nervous, he’d give him a friendly jab. When the guys hit the ice, they were always amazed to find the game exactly as Mike had predicted.

  Winning tight games is a strength Mike would become known for. It would define him as a coach. In the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Canada beat Slovakia 3–2 in a semifinal nail-biter and went on to win the gold against the US in overtime 3–2. The same thing happened in 2014 in Sochi on the team’s way to the gold medal game against Sweden. Canada won the quarter-final over Latvia 2–1 and beat the Americans in the semifinal 1–0 before defeating the Swedes. Over Mike’s tenure as head coach in Detroit from 2005 to 2015, the Red Wings won an average of almost fifty games a year—475 wins over ten seasons. Everybody thinks these were 10–1 romps, but the truth is they were often one-goal games. And it all started in Lethbridge.

  Two weeks later, Lethbridge was on the road again, in Brandon to play the Bobcats. The Bobcats’ home record against the Horns was 12–3–1. But Saturday night the Horns swept, beating the Bobcats 6–5 in overtime. It was a huge, emotional win for the Pronghorns, knocking the one-goal-loss monkey off their backs. And they followed it up with a 9–6 victory on Sunday.