Hockey Dad (2 page)

Bob McKenzie

May 29, 2009

1 IT WAS ALWAYS IN THE (HOCKEY) CARDS

WHAT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND is there was never any doubt. None whatsoever, at least not in my mind. When my wife, Cindy, and I found out we were going to be parents for the
first
time, I just knew we were going to have a boy. A boy who would love hockey. A boy who would play hockey. It wasn't so much wishful thinking as it was a rock-solid assumption.

Now, I know how that sounds. I mean, I do get it. Any time a child is born there's a
fifty
-
fifty
chance it's going to be a boy. Or a girl. It could go either way and it's not something you can actually control. Besides, at the end of that glorious day when he or she does arrive, the only thing that ultimately matters is that the baby and mother are healthy.

So, yes, I will admit it was possible we could have been the proud parents of a baby girl and had that happened it would have been no less a day of joy and wonder for us and we would have loved that little girl to pieces. Hey, some of my best friends have daughters.

But it wasn't happening, not to us, and I just knew it. We were going to have a boy. And we did. He was going to love hockey. And he did. He was going to play hockey. And he did Michael Robert Thomas McKenzie, or Mike as we like to call him, was born in Toronto on April 29, 1986, so if one were
trying to pinpoint exactly where and when I became a Hockey
Dad, I suppose that would be the day.

I know what you're thinking. Just because a newborn baby
is a boy is no guarantee he will grow up to like or play hockey
and, yes, I get that too. I understand a boy could grow up to
love baseball or playing the piano or solving math problems
more than hockey.

That is, if, in my case, he were adopted.

I like to believe that if Mike had grown up to not like or to
not play hockey I would have been okay with it, that I would
have embraced whatever interests he pursued. That's what I
like to think anyway. But just as I knew we were going to have
a boy, I just knew we were going to have a boy who liked
hockey. I was not disappointed.

Far greater minds than mine have insight as to what degree
we are products of our environment versus inherited traits
versus free will, but I can only tell you this: If a child's surroundings are indeed a great
influence
on how he or she turns
out, Mike had no chance to be anything but hockey crazy, just
like I was as a kid.

One of the
first
truly traumatic events of my life, at
least that I can recall, was when, as a
five
-year-old, I went
to my kindergarten class one day at Bendale Public School
in Scarborough, Ont., with my complete set of O-Pee-Chee
hockey cards (1961-62 series) only to forget them at school
when I went home. When I went back the next day to get
them, they were gone, never to be found again. Now, getting a complete set of hockey cards was no easy feat. On
his way home from work each night, my dad would stop at
the variety store down the street from our house and, without fail, pick up
five
packs of O-Pee-Chee hockey cards, at
five
cents per pack (which was no small expenditure in our
household). I would greet my dad at the door. Every night. I
can still smell and taste the pink stick of gum, see that white
powder all over the cards as I looked through to see whether
each card was a "got 'em" or a "need 'em" and what trades I
might make the next day at school to get the complete set.

Then to get a complete set, only to lose it? I cried. I seem to
have gotten over the fact that on the
first
day of kindergarten that same year, I threw up all over poor Mrs. Malone's
blue dress but I still can't reconcile the loss of that complete
set of hockey cards.

So you get the point. If one is a product of his environment, Mike never had a chance.

He was just thirty-two days old when we made our
first
father-son hockey road trip-to the 1986 Ontario Hockey
League midget priority selections, better known as the OHL
draft, at North York Centennial Arena. Little did I know at
that time that sixteen years later Mike would actually be chosen in the OHL draft and, as fate would have it, some of the
truly lousy things that happened to Mike as a hockey player
occurred in that very same arena.

Suf
fi
ce to say that when your father is the Editor-in-Chief
of The Hockey News, as I was at the time, you are going to be
surrounded by hockey in one form or another as you grow
up. And so it was for Mike, which apparently was
fine
by him,
right from an early age.

Mike was crazy for all things hockey. As soon as he could
walk, he had a mini-stick in his hand, batting around a ball
and chasing after it. From the time he could talk, so much of
his conversation revolved around hockey. Cindy has what I
would call only a minimal or passing interest in professional
hockey, but she knew that if she wanted to get toddler Mike
to brush his teeth at night, she would say, "Mario Lemieux
brushes his teeth every night…" So Mike would brush his teeth
every night, as he would say, "
Like
Mario Le-Moo."

When he got to the age where he liked to draw pictures,
they were invariably pictures of hockey players. Mostly goalies. He loved to draw goalies. And NHL team logos. He would
sit at the kitchen table for hours at a time, drawing hockey picture after hockey picture. We still have a huge Tupperware bin
full of his drawings from those early years. I'm not sure how
many kids, at the age of
five
, drew a crayon picture of Detroit
defenseman Yves Racine, but Mike did. He had a particular
fascination with Stephane Richer and Patrick Roy and spent
hours with his Panini sticker book, looking to get a complete
set. Sound familiar?

If I said a city name in the NHL, he would say the team
name. If I pointed at an NHL logo, he would name the city and
the team. He would get them all, too, although for some reason the Hartford Whalers were always the "Hartford Blakers."

He would ask question after question and they were always
about hockey. I loved that he loved hockey, but this kid would
wear even me down.

His favorite song was "Big League" by Tom Cochrane.

Hockey, hockey and more hockey. Mike was hockey mad, just
as I
figure
d he would be. Hockey-mad Mike; Hockey-mad Dad.

Lucky Cindy.

2: Breaking the Ice: It's Never Too Early

ONE OF THE MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED questions by neophyte Hockey Dads is at what age should Junior hit the ice for
the
first
time-when is a good time to learn to skate?

As a proud Canadian, and an incurable wise guy, I like to
say, "Well, the child should
first
be able to walk, but that's not
necessarily a hard-and-fast rule."

Remember, we're not talking here about actually playing
hockey in an organized form or even playing hockey at all.

We're talking about what used to be one of the rites of winter
passage for Canadian kids, especially in the good old days when
it was no big deal to
find
an outdoor skating rink or pond close
to home.

To the best of my recollection, I was probably four years
old when my dad
first
took me to the local outdoor rink-no
boards, just a rink-at Bendale Public School to see if I would
be able to stand up. And really, that's all it needs to be. The
first
skate isn't about taking skating lessons or playing a game
of
hockey
. It's not about structure; it should be, if at all possible, a
social event for the whole family that underscores what it is to
be a Canadian-ignoring how cold, windy and snowy it is and
thumbing your nose at Old Man Winter. Go out as a family,
note the momentous occasion of Junior's
first
attempt to skate,
laugh uproariously at his or her
first
pratfalls, pick 'em up and
go have hot chocolate, or maybe something a touch stronger.

For the record, Mike was two years, nine months and
twenty days old when he
first
put on skates, but hey, who's
counting? Some might think that's too young, but like I said,
he could walk, why not try skating? Seriously, what's the point
of waiting? If he didn't like it, he would tell me.

It was Saturday, February 18, 1989, when Cindy, who was
four months pregnant with Shawn at the time, Mike and I
took a drive down to the frozen marshlands near the mouth
of Duf
fi
n's Creek, just a stone's throw north of Lake Ontario in
Ajax. It was cold-blistering cold, with a wicked wind, the kind
that feels like it could cut you in two, howling in off the lake.

We know this was the exact date of Mike's
first
time on
skates-double-runner bob skates, mind you-because we
have the video evidence to prove it. Actually, the video date
and time code show us skating on the morning of Sunday
February 19, 1989, and while it's marked on the video cassette
as Mike's
first
day on skates, I know better. The truth is it was
only after we were coming back from Mike's actual
first
skate
on Saturday afternoon that I stupidly realized we should have
captured this grand occasion on the family camcorder. When
we went out the next day to skate again, we took the camera,
fi
lmed it for posterity's sake and wrote on the tape "Mike's
first
time on skates." Not quite, but close enough.

Mike loved it and I must admit I loved that he loved it. The
video shows him all bundled up in a green and red snowsuit
,
wearing
a toque under my old Cooper SK10 red helmet that I
got for Christmas as a peewee-that, by the way, was a classic
bucket…think Steve Shutt, Dave Gardner and Billy Harris in
their Toronto Marlie days-with his snowsuit hood pulled up
over the helmet and a scarf wrapped around his face.

I put on his skates-they just strapped onto his little winter boots-and gave him the left-handed hockey stick I had cut
down for him. Wait a minute, you're saying, didn't I just say
those
first
steps don't need to be about hockey?
True enough, but the boy said he wanted to play hockey.

Who am I to spoil his fun?

I immediately asked Mike if he was cold. He said yes. I
asked him if he wanted to go home. He said no. I was thrilled,
not that we were going home if he said yes anyway. I may
have been guilty of playing to the camera a little on that magnanimous but wholly insincere offer to go home. I put on my
skates. Cindy manned the video camera and we were out there,
considering the temperature and wind chill, for a good long
time, the better part of an hour. He would whack a puck with
his stick and chase it. He'd fall down occasionally. He'd get up
and do it all over again.

I had kind of expected it might be a failed exercise; that
perhaps it was too early to put him on skates, that he would
cry when he fell or say he was too cold to skate. But he didn't
cry when he went down and he didn't complain about the
cold. Therein lies the answer of when you should put your
child on skates for the
first
time-the sooner the better. If he or
she doesn't like it, they will let you know. If it's the wrong time,
you can try again, in a week or a month or a year. Whatever.
But if they do like it, well, you're off to the races.

And we were.