Hockey Towns

by Ron MacLean

  Barry wanted the boys to block shots. Russ had never blocked a shot in his life, but Barry taught him to go down on his knees or to slide along, depending on the angle. Blocking a shot was a sign of a player’s commitment to team play and to doing everything possible to win. While he didn’t become a prolific shot blocker, Russ learned the value of putting the team before himself and how important it was to work together as a unit on the ice. Barry was also about respect, the discipline of respecting your opponent, your team and yourself. Archie was like that. When “O Canada” played during Hockey Night in Canada, he’d have his kids stand, hands by their sides.

  Russ shared with Barry his dream to be an NHL player, and Barry saw how committed the boy was to learning. Barry thought Russ was like a sponge.

  One day, Barry had a talk with the team, pointing out that if you’re going to be an NHL player, there are two ways to get there. One is major junior and the other is college. He finished his talk by saying, “And by the way, we’ll be very lucky if there are even two of you here that will make it to the NHL.” Russ looked around and thought, “I wonder who the other one is going to be.”

  As it turned out, it was one of the defencemen on his team—a kid a year younger than Russ. A kid named Wendel Clark.

  London

  ONTARIO

  POPULATION:

  366,151

  Tea for Two

  London lies on the forks of the beautiful Thames River, which was cut by water from melting glaciers more than 15,000 years ago. It’s the largest city in southwestern Ontario, home to the London Knights of the OHL and to the University of Western Ontario. People call it the Forest City, but there was a time in the early nineteenth century when trees were not popular. Local writer and historian Pat Morden writes that, in 1793, “trees were the enemy, standing in the way of construction and commerce.” Toward the later part of the 1800s, the trees were almost all gone. In fact, the city looked so bare that by 1871, “15,000 trees were purchased at 25 cents each and planted along city streets and in the newly created Victoria Park.”

  NHLers from Nazem Kadri to Rob Ramage, Rick Nash to Brendan Shanahan, Drew Doughty, Craig MacTavish and Eric Lindros have grown up shaded by those magnificent nineteenth-century maples. The city has shaped some of the game’s top players—players who either started there or came to play junior.

  Brad Marsh is from London, but he now lives in Ottawa. I have so many memories of Brad. In the third round of the 1987 Stanley Cup playoffs, we were in Philadelphia as Brad’s Flyers hosted Montreal. Our studio for “Coach’s Corner” was half of a dressing room we shared with the Canadiens! Only a heavy curtain separated me from the Habs’ trainers’ table, where the players would receive pregame treatments. Can you imagine?

  In the first intermission, Brad was my guest. He sat down next to me and, before we went live, Don Cherry said, “Brad me boy, you look like you’re eighteen again. I’ve never seen ya skate so great!” And from the other side of the curtain, the Canadiens’ Chris Nilan hollered, “B.S., Grapes. He’s a lumberjack! A plodder from day one.”

  You should have seen Brad’s face. I don’t think he said ten words in the interview, and none were any more than a whisper. Actually, Don was right about Marsh’s skating, but as they were preparing the team for the new four-on-four rules, assistant coach Ted Sator worked with Brad for two years building his leg strength and agility. Suddenly Brad was winning all the icing races. His son Patrick became a competitive speed skater, so there was an added benefit to Brad’s hard work.

  Brad drank tea, not coffee or soda, before games, and that reminds me of a story the wonderful writer Roy MacGregor told. It was the tail end of Brad’s career, and he was a member of the Ottawa Senators. One night on the road, it was time for Sylvan Lake, Alberta, native Darcy Loewen’s rookie dinner. The team dined lavishly and the rookie footed the bill. At dinner’s end, Brad ordered ten shots of hundred-year-old cognac. Loewen was terrified his credit card wouldn’t be able to cover the bill. Turns out Brad had been scheming with the waiter. The shot glasses were filled with iced tea.

  Brad Marsh’s spirit was developed on a front-yard rink in London. It was a big rink and the entire neighbourhood came to play. There was a fire hydrant in the middle, so everyone kept their heads up.

  A lot of NHLers talk about how they could hardly wait to get outside after school to play shinny, even when it was thirty below. When it’s that cold, you feel it behind your eyes. Sniff, and your nostrils stick together. Shinny means no refs, so you’re on the honour system. No equipment means you’re faster and lighter. And no coaches telling you what to do made room for a lot of dangling and dipsy-doodling. Somebody always raised the puck, so you’d get whacked in the shins a few times. Without boards, guys were always flying into the snow. Skating backwards meant hitting a rut and landing hard. None of it mattered. Late evening on a backyard rink is the closest thing to heaven. The smell of wet spit on your scarf, the reflection of the moon bouncing off pockmarked ice, and no other sounds but a dog barking at a car in the distance and your blades scraping the ice. You wouldn’t come in until it got so dark you couldn’t see the puck anymore.

  Back in the day, when Brad played, minor hockey was just an extension of the corner pond. There were no AAA teams, no AA teams, no big travel teams. Organized hockey meant dividing the kids who signed up onto teams. Friends played with friends. The only difference between the games and shinny was that they were played on an indoor rink and had referees.

  Brad’s dad would pick him up outdoors somewhere. The kid had already been on the ice for hours. He’d jump into the car and away he went to his game. When it was over, Brad didn’t bother to take off his skates. He was dropped back off at the pond for a few more hours of fun.

  Brad now makes an outdoor rink for his kids the way his dad did for him. He’s as happy with a shovel in his hand as he is with a hockey stick. Brad is enthralled with the game, from first freeze to last thaw. He truly is a child of winter.

  The 1968 Southwest London Bobcats were made up of guys born ten years earlier. Maybe there is something in the London water, but two of the team’s players, Craig MacTavish and Brad Marsh, were the last guys not to wear helmets in the NHL.

  The Bobcats won fifty-three games in a row that year and then lost in the provincial final against Riverside. There were games where MacTavish and his linemate, Doug Berk, got more than twenty goals each. Their goaltender, Robin Smith, had thirty-six shutouts.

  MacTavish’s nickname was Gabby. Robin says Craig was a hummingbird on speed, always going eight thousand miles an hour. He was like that on the ice too—an incredible talent.

  The Bobcats’ biggest game that year was at Treasure Island Gardens, the home of the London Knights. At the time, it was a fairly new arena—only three years old. The game was tied with only minutes left when MacTavish, with that big sheet of ice ahead of him, stickhandled through the entire opposition, deked out their goalie and . . . shot it wide. Behind the bench was a brick wall. Bobcats coach Bruce Stewart punched it in frustration and broke his hand.

  When I interviewed Marsh one time on Hockey Night in Canada, I asked him to name the best coach he ever had. Brad had had some great and storied coaches in his career, including Pat Quinn, Mike Keenan and John Brophy, but his answer was Bruce Stewart, his minor-hockey coach. Brad says Stewart brought the best out in the guys. He understood the game, and the boys respected him because he demanded 100 per cent. “I can’t really sit here and say he taught me how to pass, or he taught me how to shoot, but he taught us the importance of hard work. He taught us the importance of winning and he taught us the importance of playing together as a team.”

  If a player didn’t do his best every shift, he heard about it. Stewart’s work ethic stayed with Brad and carried him through his formative years, because those were his traits throughout junior hockey and in the NHL. Stewart coached the boys five years straight, and every guy on the team feels the way Brad does.

  Teams didn�
��t travel much back then, so they’d play different London communities—Stony Brook, Oakridge, Sharon Heights and Byron. That February, the boys were invited to the Strathroy Olympics, which was a big tournament in the area. There was school the next day, so afterward they all made the one-hour drive back. Highway 402 wasn’t complete yet, so they had to deke south through Mount Brydges. It was slow going because there was a snowstorm. Without the wind chill, it was minus-28, and the roads were murderously slippery. Brad and his brother were half asleep in the back seat of the family’s big new Buick, and their dad was driving with their mom beside him. As the car approached a big, lazy curve, it collided with another car headed toward them. The Buick took a beating, but thankfully everyone in both cars was okay.

  This was the era of the Broad Street boys—Bobby Clarke, Reggie Leach, Don Saleski, Bob Kelly and Dave “The Hammer” Schultz. Brad Marsh was never the most gifted player, but he understood the game and was a hard worker. He made the Junior B London Squires as a fourteen-year-old because he was such a big boy—six foot one, 195 pounds. His dad lied about his age, so Brad was playing with twenty-year-old men. He was on a really steep learning curve, but he always showed up with the Bruce Stewart attitude—you play to win.

  When it came time for the rookies to be initiated, the veterans decided to start with the youngest player first, but they walked right past Brad in the dressing room. The guys never dreamed he was only in grade 9. When they finally found out, they nicknamed him Baby Huey. To this day, when Brad runs into guys he played with back then, it’s “How’re you doin’, Baby Huey?”

  In London, there were the Junior B Squires and the Junior A London Knights. The senior team was called the London Kings. They all wore the same jersey, because they were one big team for the city, and you could aspire to play all the way up. Brad was fifteen when he got called up to Junior A with the Knights.

  His first road trip was to Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. It was so cold that the driver kept the bus running overnight. Big Betsy was parked right outside Brad’s window, and so he woke up every hour thinking he was going to miss his ride because he could hear the engine.

  Brad’s Brick Street public school teacher in grades 5 and 7 was Donna Ramage. She had a son named Rob who played for Byron, the Bobcats’ biggest rival. It was a hate-hate situation—there was no love involved. Eventually, Rob and Brad would play together on the Squires and Knights and become co-winners of the Max Kaminsky Trophy—given to the best defenceman in the OHL—in 1977–78.

  At the start of the Knights’ season, long before the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rob Ramage and Brad Marsh were climbing up and down manholes. They’d grab some of the rookies, gear up with flashlights taped to their hockey helmets and a couple of cases of beer and lead them through the storm sewers of Byron, scaring away the rats with loud drunken choruses of songs like the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute.”

  In his last year with the Knights, Brad came away with sixty-three points, but his offensive skills didn’t compare to the Scott Stevenses of the world, and there were a lot of players his size. If he was going to make it in the NHL, he would have to adapt, find his niche. Brad knew if he tried to be offensive he wouldn’t last, so he focused on his strength—looking after his own end.

  Brad’s NHL career began with the Atlanta Flames in 1978–79. He would become one of the best defensive players in the league. He wound up playing 1,086 games, and when he hit 1,000 he was only the sixteenth defenceman in the history of the NHL to do so. There’s a whole other dimension certain players bring to the rink. A dimension that fans don’t see because it happens in the dressing room. Brad wasn’t the first around a pylon in practice and he would never be able to turn on a dime, but there was always a C or an A on the front of his sweater.

  Rob Ramage was the first-overall pick in the 1979 NHL draft and played fifteen seasons in the Show. He was just a fantastic athlete. He played three years with the Knights, who retired both his and Brad’s sweaters together on Sunday, January 6, 1991. His first NHL contract was with the Colorado Rockies to play for coach Don Cherry. Rob went on to play with eight NHL teams. He won two Stanley Cups and played in four NHL All-Star Games.

  On December 15, 2003, Rob attended Keith McCreary’s wake. Keith was a former NHL player and NHL Alumni president. He was extremely popular and was deeply mourned after losing his brave battle against cancer. Afterward, Rob took the wheel of a rented car, and his friend, former Chicago Blackhawks captain Keith Magnuson, hopped in the passenger seat.

  Rob’s car swerved into an oncoming SUV and Keith, who was fifty-six years old, was killed. In 2007, Rob was found guilty of impaired driving causing death and was sent to the Frontenac Institution.

  Tuesday nights at 6 p.m., he’d brew a pot of tea in his cell and bring two cups out to the visitors’ room, where he was greeted by the same face. Brad Marsh—his teammate, a guy who’d stood up for him hundreds of times—made the two-hour drive from Ottawa down to Kingston every week, come hell or high water. Brad put the word out and other guys showed up on Saturdays—Rob’s brothers from the Knights, Doug Berk and Tim Whitehead. And other NHL alumni showed up too, guys who didn’t even know Rob, like Boston’s Rick Smith, and Fred Barrett, who played defence for Minnesota. Rob’s goalie in St. Louis, Ed Staniowski, visited too. They’d sit and tell hockey stories and chuckle about the sewer tours and road trips, and talk about different coaches and the crap they used to pull on each other. Week after week, different guys would show up.

  But for two hours each and every Tuesday night, Rob and Brad were ten-year-old kids, back in London again.

  One Great Keeper in the Hands of Another

  Ian Jenkins, a phenomenal fifteen-year-old midget goaltender, was drafted by the London Knights in May 2011. A good-looking kid, his picture could easily be shuffled in with photos of Zac Efron and a young Ben Affleck. Ian—or Big E, as they called him—was on skates by the time he was two years old. His home in Milan, Michigan, is a three-hour drive up through Sarnia to London.

  His dad, Joel, wanted badly for the kid to play hockey, but Ian wasn’t a natural. So Joel decided to let him progress without pushing him. At seven, Ian got his start in organized hockey Tim Hortons–style. No goalies, just go for the puck. Near the end of the season, they’d have about six little scrimmage games. Ian couldn’t wait. He kept asking his coach, “When we play the real games, can I play goal? I really want to be the goalie.” Coach would say, “Yeah, yeah, Ian, we’ll rotate you in. Don’t worry about it.” Finally, in the very last game, he got his shot. And when he pulled on the goalie jersey—number 35—he found his place on the ice.

  When Ian and his father got home after the big game, Joel said, “Hey, son, come with me.” He opened up his old scrapbook and showed Ian a picture of himself between the pipes. He said, “That’s me, your dad.” But instead of saying, “Oh wow, how cool!” the first thing out of Ian’s mouth was, “Oh my God, Dad, those are ugly old pads.” Joel laughed, “That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting out of you, buddy.”

  The Jenkins family had a fairly large home, so they set up a net in the basement. Joel and Ian practised daily. Joel, whose idol growing up was Vladislav Tretiak, told Ian, “It’s very important to grab on to somebody so you can study him as part of your development.”

  Father and son would go to University of Michigan Sabres games where Ian would watch Ryan Miller, who had twenty-six shutouts during his time there. Ian was in awe of the Hobey Baker Award winner. He couldn’t believe it when a family friend had Miller send him a signed jersey. He treasured it along with a signed Nikolai Khabibulin jersey that Joel’s buddy, the marketing director for the Tampa Bay Lightning, sent him. Both sweaters hung in the basement near Ian’s net, which was where he spent most of his time.

  Like something right out of a scene from Star Wars, Joel would rent ice and sometimes throw a puck bag over Ian’s head. He wanted Ian to know and feel the crease without looking at it. Ian was gifted, very athletic, but Joel
didn’t want him to turn into a Dominik Hašek, relying only on his athletic ability. He wanted Ian to be more. So even if Ian had a good game, Joel would point out mistakes and together they’d work on fixing them. “Yeah, you got a shutout, but you did this or that and this wrong, so let’s make sure you don’t do that again.” Ian didn’t argue. Getting better was what mattered.

  Hockey wasn’t the only thing Ian had going for him. He was an A-plus student and a gifted musician. He started playing the guitar when he was four years old thanks to his mom, Gloria. She wanted to make sure he was well rounded. He was into a lot of classic rock and alternative music. He played some pretty hardcore guitar and was part of the rock band at the Ann Arbor Music Center. They’d perform at the University of Michigan Starbucks and at art festivals. His favourite band was Rise Against. Before big games, Ian would plug in his earbuds and stretch and warm up to his favourite songs, like “Behind Closed Doors,” and then he’d sit and focus.

  Ian was really tight with his family. He’d always shared a room with his younger brother, Garrett, and yet they never once had a fight. They might as well have been twins, they were so close. His little sister, Cassidy, was a few years younger and he treated her like gold. Cassidy and Garrett were a huge part of his life. Joel and Gloria divorced in 2005, but it wasn’t a bitter split—they remained friends.

  Joel married Debbie in 2008. Debbie didn’t try to mother Ian, but she was always there for him. Her son, Lester, was the same age and the boys became best friends. They played with and against each other growing up. His coaches would always tell Lester’s team that Ian’s glove was so strong they should try to get in on the stick side if possible, but that was tough too because he was just so quick to move over.