Hockey Towns

by Ron MacLean

  Whether Eric’s team killed or got killed, after every game Eric would come home and plug in the family’s radio/cassette player outside and load up an AC/DC cassette tape his uncle Mark had given him. While it blasted through the yard, he’d skate onto the ice and replay the whole game, shot by shot. He’d circle and shoot, picking up phantom passes and pouncing on rebounds over and over again. He didn’t know it then, but as he carved up the ice to “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll),” he was starting his own climb up the mountain.

  Swift Current

  SASKATCHEWAN

  POPULATION:

  15,503

  Reckless Abandon

  When Eric Lindros retired from hockey, he donated five million dollars for concussion research to the London Health Sciences Centre at Western University. In August 2014, I joined him there as honorary chair of the second annual education, awareness and fundraising event for See the Line—a collaborative effort between world-class health care and research partners, including the Sports Legacy Institute in the US and Canada, who are taking a leadership approach in the field of concussion prevention and finding ways to improve diagnosis and treatment.

  Former Canadian Football League player Tim Fleiszer, who was the first-ever freshman to start a game for Harvard in football, breaking a 121-year precedent, is the executive director of the Sports Legacy Institute Canada.

  Trent McCleary grew up in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. He is one of those rare kids who played hockey all the way from tyke to junior in his hometown. Swift Current is a great little city, and hockey is a big part of its culture. It’s the smallest market in the Canadian Hockey League by far, and yet 20 per cent of its residents come to the Broncos’ games. As Trent says, “Name any other city that holds an event where 20 per cent of the population attends on a regular basis. You can’t.”

  Trent was in a near-death accident in 2000, while blocking a shot in a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Philadelphia Flyers, and because Tim’s father, Dr. David Fleiszer, was at that game, Trent is still alive today.

  A similar accident happened to Mark Goodkey, a University of Alberta Golden Bears defenceman who died blocking a shot in a pickup game at Clare Drake Arena in March 1996. Mark was from Sangudo, Alberta, a hamlet near Stettler, ninety-nine kilometres northwest of Edmonton. He was a selfless player trying to get in front of a slapshot, and the puck struck him in the back of the head. Don Cherry broke down while telling that story on “Coach’s Corner” at the time. It’s a vivid and profound memory that will likely stay with me forever.

  Trent McCleary’s most vivid memory of hockey is of being nine years old and wanting more than anything to get out onto the ice to try out for a select atom team, but feeling so sick with the flu he could barely stand up. His dad brought him into the bathroom and said, “Yeah, son, put your finger down your throat and puke. You’ll feel a lot better.” Trent did as he was told—and made the team, so obviously it helped.

  His dad, Ken, played a bit of junior back in the day—in Estevan with Ernie “Punch” McLean, an old, old hockey guy. Ken didn’t really want to coach Trent and his brother Scott’s teams—he didn’t have time. He worked in the oil patch so he was on call a lot. But no one else in Swift Current stepped up for Tom Thumb, so he volunteered.

  Every Sunday morning, he’d have the guys doing drills and running the gamut. He wanted his boys to be able to play old-timer hockey when they grew up, because everybody ends up in old-timer’s.

  Ken knew what every other guy who puts on a sweater knows—that there’s nothing better than a hockey dressing room. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re sixty-five or fifteen, it’s the happiest place on earth. Everybody had a nickname—today they are a bit of a thing of the past. Almost every great player had one—Mr. Hockey (Gordie Howe), the Great One (Wayne Gretzky), Le Gros Bill (Jean Béliveau), the Rocket (Maurice Richard), the Golden Jet (Bobby Hull), the Stratford Streak (Howie Morenz), Super Mario (Lemieux), the Flower (Guy Lafleur). The only great without a nickname is Bobby Orr.

  One of my favourites is Todd “One Touch” Warriner. Pat Burns was mad at Todd for trying a Dougie Gilmour–style one-touch pass, so he walked into the Leafs room to give him hell, saying, “Where the eff is ‘One Touch’?!”

  Others are based on the way you look. Mark Hunter played with the Flames for three years—1988–89, ’89–90, ’90–91—and that’s where they started calling him “Heifer Head.” God help you if you come in puffed up, because you will leave with your ego in check. The guys love that. A good putdown can make you chuckle for days. But most of what happens in the dressing room doesn’t translate outside.

  Ken could see that Trent had talent. He was a good skater and good on his edges. He had the ability to keep his ankles stiff and distribute his weight evenly. More weight on an edge slows you down. It’s physics. Trent could take two or three hard strides, glide, and not lose speed. Going that fast helped force turnovers and caught guys off guard. But what set him apart was his energy. He was a spark plug. He’d go full speed and stop only when he connected with an opposing player.

  Trent was a hometown boy who played his entire amateur career in the same town—three years with the peewee Kings, who were division champs, and then in bantam, where they won the Western Canada bantam championship. In midget, his team made it all the way to the provincial final and lost against the Regina Pat Canadians. Next, he played for the Rotary Raiders and then the Swift Current Legionnaires.

  The Swift Current Broncos came back to town in 1986, when Trent was fourteen and a right winger for the Legionnaires. The Broncos team was started in Swift Current in 1967 and then moved to Lethbridge in 1974. Management decided to bring in some of the higher-end locals, which was a popular move in the community. No one was kidding themselves about Trent, except Trent. A guy his size with a lack of spectacular talent would never make it to the NHL. He was considered one of the best of Swift Current’s young players, and so they listed him, but c’mon. Trent knew otherwise. On every team he’d played on, he’d had to prove himself. He’d do it again.

  Back then they didn’t have a draft. If you were fourteen or fifteen you took up two spots. If you were between sixteen and twenty, only one spot. So Trent was a two-spot practice player on the Broncos for one year.

  Walking into that dressing room the first time and seeing Sheldon Kennedy and Joe Sakic and all the guys was unbelievable. Sakic was quiet. He got a lot of well-deserved attention from the media, but it’s not like he drank it up. Sheldon Kennedy was kind. He was the leader and had a lot of confidence. When Trent came in, it was, “Hey! How you doing, Trent?” Always a nice guy. Were they friends? No—Trent was fourteen, Sheldon was seventeen—but just a “hi” to the younger guys meant more than he’d ever know. Trent would keep his head down and find a place at the end of the line. At five foot nine, he wasn’t going to outshine anybody. He was just happy to be there.

  Graham James was their coach. He focused on speed, puck handling and the power play. As sick as he was as a person, on the ice, he let the creative players be creative. Nobody wanted small defencemen like Darren Kruger or Dan Lambert, but when they got to Swift, they found a home because they moved the puck out. Graham’s philosophy was that if you control the puck, you control the game. Unfortunately, hockey has an undercurrent of creepy guys like him in every walk of life. Later it came to light that James headed up the list. I certainly remember a creep in Red Deer. My best friend and I went over to this guy’s house. He tried putting his hands on us and we were outta there. Trent was fortunate that Graham never bothered him. He heard rumours and there were a few jokes, but in his entire time with the Broncos he had no idea that Graham was molesting Sheldon Kennedy and Todd Holt.

  Lorne Frey was another one of the coaches. Trent loved Lorney. He thought Lorney had one of the best hockey eyes ever. He was the guy who spotted Duncan Keith, Shea Weber and Josh Gorges after all were passed over in the WHL draft. Lorney’s crystal ball cou
ld see into the future and tell you how a kid was going to develop and where he would end up. He knew Trent was never going to be a goal scorer, but he saw that Trent was faster than most and made a good penalty killer and shot blocker—and he liked to agitate. Lorney told Trent to keep working hard because there are other roles on the team besides scoring.

  It was a couple of days before Christmas—December 20, 1986. The Broncos were on their way to a game against the Pats in Regina. Trent was hanging out at home watching TV, but the radio was on in the background because the family would always listen to the Bronco games when the team was on the road. All of a sudden a story came on saying that the Broncos’ team bus had slid off the road just outside Swift Current after hitting black ice. And then the reports started coming in saying players were injured and maybe dead. Trent ran to the radio. “Don’t let it be Sheldon or Joe or . . .” The names and faces of all the guys on the team ran through his head like ticker tape. Alarms were going off in his fourteen-year-old brain. “They just came back to town. What’s going to happen to the team? Holy smokes! Don’t let it be true!”

  Scotty Kruger, Brent Ruff, Chris Mantyka and Trent Kresse all died in the accident, and Swift Current was devastated. To this day, no minor or major hockey team in the city has jerseys with the numbers 8, 9, 11 or 22. It’s a tremendous tribute to the four young lives lost. And back in 2000, in tribute to the players who died, the city and the team banded together and, despite the loss, the Broncos made a run for the playoffs.

  The third year Trent skated with the franchise, 1988–89, the team was so dominant that there was little room for him, so he was called up for only three games. Meanwhile, he continued to play Midget AAA with the Legionnaires while attending more and more practices with the Broncos. The Broncos won the Memorial Cup that year, but Trent didn’t want a ring. He was on the roster, but he wasn’t really part of the team yet. If he was going to wear a ring, he wanted to earn it.

  Finally, at seventeen, going into Grade 12, Trent landed on the Broncos’ fourth line. He knew that to be noticed he had to become valuable. He was skinny and light, so he tried every trick in the book to gain weight—protein shakes, hamburgers, you name it. But nothing worked. He had too much energy. He was a chirper, always good with a comeback line, a tough checker and a shit disturber, mixing it up with the opposing team’s enforcers and drawing penalties. Thankfully, his buddy Mark McFarlane was a good guy. He saved Trent’s hide more than a couple times.

  In Trent’s second full year with the Broncos, the Leader-Post printed a list of stats they called the “Best of the West.” The results were voted on by WHL coaches and the media. Trent made the top five in skating and hitting. He had learned to rocket himself at people. He used Newton’s Second Law—force equals mass times acceleration. At that time, you weren’t called for charging as long as you made sure to glide the last couple of feet. Thanks to his skating style and strong ankles, he’d get going fast and then throw everything he had at guys, turning himself into a 175-pound missile. The two-hundred-pound defencemen he hit would be pissed when helmet and gloves would go flying, and so one of Trent’s teammates would jump in. But Trent often fought one Regina player, Derek Eberle, Jordan’s older cousin. Those battles got Trent noticed.

  One of the assistant coaches, Bruce Sutherland, became a scout for the Ottawa Senators. Trent had just finished his season as a nineteen-year-old when Bruce told him, “We like you. Keep up what you are doing, play hard, compete.” Trent wasn’t drafted, but he got a tryout in ’92 with the Senators. He wasn’t the most talented, but he was a cannonball. Everyone was given brand new Senators gear—white shirt, white socks and black pants. On his first shift, Trent ran an East Coast League player who turned around and popped him in the kisser. Trent’s nose exploded. He couldn’t see, but he dropped his gloves and started swinging, spraying blood everywhere. Afterward, he cleaned up his face, came back on and continued to finish his checks and get involved. He was easy to spot in his blood-red-and-white jersey.

  Brad Marsh was on the ice, but he was wearing a helmet so Trent didn’t realize it was him. Because Trent was in a live-or-die situation, he continued flying around hitting guys, and he happened to smoke Brad. When the play came back the other way, Brad zeroed in on Trent. As Brad skated up the ice toward him, Trent could see steam coming out of every pore on his body. Trent glanced around quickly and saw his teammates shaking their heads, planning his funeral. But the buzzer went off and so Brad stopped. He narrowed his eyes at Trent and growled, “You little pissant!” Marshy was a senior man. He had the right to keep coming and clock Trent, but he was too classy for that. Trent’s teammates told him, “You are so lucky you’re still alive.”

  Trent did whatever it took, including blocking shots. He wasn’t dumb about it—he tried to manage the angles—but he was optimistic. Trent was always convinced things were going to go his way. He’d try to get the puck to bounce forward off his shin pads so that momentum would carry it past the defenceman and create a breakaway. This meant constant swollen and bruised ankles and knees, and the odd charley horse that took him out of a game or two. The puck would bite like a son of a bitch, but for the most part Trent was rarely injured, and stopping a goal was more fun than scoring one. He didn’t like doing the flamingo or trying to get out of the way. To him, that meant he was putting himself ahead of the team. Besides, he was getting good at managing contusions with ice and flexing.

  Near the end of camp, general manager Mel Bridgman called him into the office and asked, “What are you doing?”

  Trent didn’t have a clue how to answer. Bridgman continued, “Why are you here? We drafted all these talented guys and all anybody keeps talking about is you.”

  Trent shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Why would you run Kevin Hatcher? You play one game and you run our best defenceman. Why?”

  Trent said, “Uh, I have no idea.”

  Bridgman shook his head. “Okay, we’re going to give you a contract. This is it. There’s no negotiating. You have the same contract as all these other free agents that we got. And this isn’t going to be a good year for us, so go down to New Haven, play in the American League and get better.” Trent took the two-way contract—$100,000 guaranteed, $300,000 if he played in the NHL, with a $25,000 signing bonus—and he was over the moon with happiness.

  By the next year’s training camp, Mel Bridgman had been fired and a whole new management team had come in. This meant there was no room for Trent, not even with the farm team in PEI. So he was sent to the Thunder Bay Senators of the Colonial Hockey League. The experience in Thunder Bay was a lot like the movie Slap Shot. I reffed a few of his games and he told me later I didn’t give him any reason to chirp, but Trent was the least of my worries.

  One of the tough guys was Bryan Wells. When he was with the Regina Pats, he was the first player thrown out of the WHL for a wild stick-swinging joust with Mark Tinordi in Lethbridge and a vicious cross-check on Lyle Odelein, and it was rumoured he bit off somebody’s finger in another league. Thunder Bay had eight of the league’s top ten heavyweights. One guy, Mel Angelstad—a.k.a. “Mel the Mangler”—became Trent’s good buddy. Mel wore number 69. After a couple of weeks, Trent looked around the dressing room and said to himself, “Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  Trent could see that there was no future for a guy like him in the Colonial Hockey League. He figured if he didn’t make the American League the next year, he would quit and go to university. But 1994–95 was the lockout year, so he went right to PEI’s training camp, and because it was his last kick at the kitty, he decided to cause trouble.

  The team was playing an exhibition game in Cape Breton. Link Gaetz, a.k.a. “The Missing Link,” was trying out for the minor-league team there. Link was unpredictable and considered a dangerous player. While on defence, Link was stickhandling out of his zone when Trent flew in and just rocked him. Link went down, slid to the red line, got up and dropped his gloves. Trent look
ed back and started to run.

  Link chased him into PEI’s end and tried to hammer him into the boards, but Trent was quick and slipped out of the way. This irritated Link even more. Although Darcy Simon was one of PEI’s tough guys, the Western guys stick together. So he jumped on Link’s back and put him in a headlock, but that barely slowed him down. Meanwhile, everybody else paired off. It was chaos. Link was going after Trent while trying to shake Darcy off and yelling, “Let me go! I’m gonna kill ’im. Let me go!”

  Darcy refused. He knew Link might literally commit homicide. He continued to hang on for a few minutes even after the ref came over and ordered him to let go. Finally, the ref took Link’s arm and Darcy let him go. As Link skated off, Cape Breton coach George Burnett told Link to calm down, and Link went berserk tearing up the bench.

  PEI’s coach, Dave Allison, liked Trent’s nerve, and so he made the team. In January, Trent found himself in a game against the Cape Breton Oilers where he almost lost his left eye. He was standing in front of the net and moved to deflect the puck, but at the same time Boris Mironov lifted Trent’s stick, which followed through into Trent’s eyeball, tearing the retina.

  Trent immediately covered up his eye with his glove. The trainer came out and said, “Okay, let go. I gotta see it.”

  Trent replied, “I can’t. It’s going to fall out.”

  Here he was, finally getting a look from Ottawa and with a potential career-ending injury. Trent was in the hospital a week before he regained any sight, and then the team sent him home to Swift Current to recover. Healing an eye is like a concussion. You rest.

  Trent’s pupil would always be dilated, but two games into the playoffs, he was finally cleared to play. He hadn’t skated because of the danger to his eye, so he was eased into the lineup, but he knew his career was inches from being taken away, so he came onto the ice like a man on a mission.