Hockey Dad (3 page)

3: Family Expansion and Our Little Nerd

A
ND LEST YOU GET THE IDEA the
McKenzie’s
led a one-dimensional
life that revolved solely around Mike's love of hockey, I must tell
you there were other signi
fi
cant events in our lives at that time
which are central to the telling of this story.

About
five
months after Mike's
first
time on skates, July 11,
1989, to be exact, Cindy, Mike and I welcomed Shawn Patrick
McKenzie into the family. Another boy. I will spare you the "I
told you so" on that one. Been there, done that. I was thrilled
to add another player. You will get to know Shawn and his
story intimately in due course.

Life started becoming a lot more chaotic in our household.

I've always believed that when it comes to taking care of kids,
one child equals one but two does not necessarily equal two.

When you have more than one, it's like the little darlings work
to a higher power. They wear you down exponentially. One
is one, two might as well be four and, given how much time
I spend on my job, Cindy and I never had any intentions of
fi
nding out what three equalled, but I'm guessing nine. Bless
those who go for it, but one thing you can say about us-we
knew our limitations.

Big changes were happening on the career front for me, too.

In January of 1990, in addition to my fairly onerous responsibilities at The Hockey News, I started doing color commentary
on TSN's weekly Canadian Hockey League (CHL) broadcast on
Sunday nights, featuring a game a week from January right
through to the Memorial Cup in May. I was already working
a lot at THN-sixty-plus hours a week managing a staff and a
couple of publications-and now I was taking on work that
required many more hours of preparation to say nothing of
the travel and time away from home.

If the CHL game of the week was in the West, and on average it was once every three weeks, I would work twelve-hour
days Monday to Friday at THN and then
fly
out of Toronto
around noon on Saturday to go to Medicine Hat or Lethbridge
or Seattle or Portland or wherever. I would usually be able to
catch a red-eye
fl
ight out of Vancouver or Edmonton or Calgary
on Sunday night because I absolutely had to be back in my
office
at THN
first
thing Monday morning, which was the long,
difficult
(often eighteen-hour) day when THN was published.

It was a lot for me and no doubt even more for Cindy
to handle, given she had a busy three-year-old, a demanding
sixth-month-old, and her husband was off gallivanting across
the continent.

All of this work I was doing at THN and TSN was putting
a serious crimp in my efforts to be a Hockey Dad to Mike.
Certainly on the Saturdays when I was at home in that
first
few months of 1990, Mike's hockey activities were limited
primarily to playing ball hockey with me in the basement (which we did a lot) or me taking him public skating-he
had graduated to real skates as opposed to the bobs-at the
Pickering Recreation Complex.

He loved to go pleasure skating with me but would get
bored pretty quickly-round and round we would go-and say
he wanted to go home, but I would appeal to his competitive
instincts and bet him he couldn't beat me around the rink. Off
he would go, pumping away to beat Dad. I'd play that delay
and-distraction card as many times as I could before he
finally
rebelled and made it clear he was outta there. Fine by me, he
was skating well, he enjoyed it. It was all good.

Just before Mike was set to launch his so-called "organized"
hockey career that fall of 1990, at the beginning of his junior
kindergarten year, something happened that in a million years
I never would have expected.

Mike got glasses.
No big deal, right? Au contraire.

Mike wasn't the least bit happy to get the news that he
needed to wear glasses as part of everyday life-he was diagnosed with astigmatism-and for me it was like being hit in
the face with a bag of doorknobs. It never occurred to me a
four-year-old might need glasses.

It's a funny thing about glasses, isn't it? I mean, on one
hand, it's not really that big a deal. When you think of your kid
being diagnosed with something, well, astigmatism and needing glasses is nothing. I know that. But it does change their
appearance and, who's kidding who, not necessarily for the
better. The perception, amongst kids and with a lot of adults,
too, is that glasses equal nerdiness. Glasses on little kids are
perceived as a sign of weakness.

On every level, it's an absurd and ridiculous notion
and the ultimate in super
fi
ciality, but it was as plain as the
glasses on Mike's face. Without them, he was a cute kid.

With them, still sort of cute but, uh, what's the word I'm
looking for? Poindexter? Yeah, that's it. If that view is held
generally in society, and I would suggest it is, multiply it by
ten in the athletic world. Like all good parents, we went to
great lengths to convince Mike wearing glasses was no big
deal. Cindy found a children's book that dealt with this very
subject-Tipou and His New Glasses-and read it to Mike.
Which is all well and good, but last time I checked, Tipou, a
little French mouse, didn't have to play hockey or lacrosse
wearing glasses.

I am no child psychologist but I would say now that Mike
getting glasses had an impact on his self-image at that time.

I am not sure I noticed it as much then, but looking back, I
really think he was a little different after he started wearing the
glasses, a little more self-conscious, a little more introverted
with people outside of our family.

I only brought up Mike's glasses because it's funny how
many times over the years in hockey they became part of the
story or, for some time, even his identity. As a quick aside, I
am
firm
ly convinced that Mike's glasses were the catalyst that
prompted him, the summer after he turned eighteen, to get a
(hockey-oriented) tattoo on his left shoulder and bicep. I am
not going to lie, Cindy had a tough time with that one. Me, I
wasn't sure what to think, but I will tell you this: I'm blaming
the damn glasses. A classic case of compensation if ever there
were one. All those years of perhaps being perceived as a little nerdy, the
first
chance Mike had, he was going to show his
bad-ass side. And now he has, as the kids like to say, "a sweet
tatty" to prove it.

4: "I hate Larry Marson" and Dissing Mr. Hockey

WHERE WE LIVED-IN PICKERING, Ont., the
first
community east of Metropolitan Toronto-was probably as good
as, if not better than, any place for Mike to begin his minor
hockey journey in the fall of 1990. While the Pickering Minor
Hockey Association House League didn't start with actual
game competition until a player was six years old-there was
a Squirt Division, which combined six- and seven-year-olds-it had programs in place to accommodate kids as young as
four and
five
.

They called it the PMHA hockey school. There was one session, an hour a week, for four-year-olds and another session for
five
-year-olds. They ran them back to back on Saturday afternoons at Don Beer Arena. It was obviously modeled on the
Hockey Canada Initiation Program, which was introduced in
1986. The Initiation Program was in response to the criticisms
that Canadian hockey was too structured too early and that
kids who couldn't even skate were being dropped into game situations and never touching a puck, never developing their
skills. The Initiation Program was a blueprint for a less structured, more sensible approach to introducing
first
-time players
at young ages to the fundamentals of the game (skating, stick
handling, etc.) in a fun, positive atmosphere devoid of pressure
associated with winning or losing.

The PMHA had a couple of brothers, young guys in their
twenties, who oversaw the hockey schools and they did an
excellent job. These guys knew what they were doing. They
asked up front for as many parent volunteers as wanted to be
involved. This, of course, was right up my alley and I was out
there with Mike each Saturday, at least the ones when I wasn't
out of town working.

Mike loved it. So did I. Mike was fully decked out in his
Montreal Canadiens gear-red Habs sweater, red, white and
blue gloves, blue pants, Canadiens socks and a white CCM helmet, which is kind of funny for a Toronto-area kid. But since
I had no real rooting interest for the Leafs or any team in the
NHL, Mike just sort of formed his own likes and dislikes as far
as teams. At that time, for whatever reason, Mike was absolutely loopy for Stephane Richer, who was reeling off
fi
fty-goal
seasons for the Canadiens, and netminder Patrick Roy.

As good as the PMHA hockey school was, and it was outstanding, I didn't think it was quite enough. One hour a week?

Nope, not nearly enough. Now, as "crazy" as I might be about
hockey, I am also one of those people who believes if you
want to do well at anything-it's not enough to just do it; you
should try to excel-you go the extra mile.
Welcome to the Larry Marson Power Skating School.

Like a lot of people, especially the really crazy Hockey Dads,
I believed, and still do, that the foundation for everything
in
hockey
is in the skating. So it only made perfect sense to me
that while the hockey school was good, an extra hour a week
of specialized instruction in just skating was exactly what Mike
needed.

Larry Marson was a good college player who played at Ohio
State. Larry is the younger brother of Mike Marson, who became
the
first
black player to be taken in the
first
round of the NHL
draft when he was chosen by the Washington Capitals in 1974.

Larry was teaching skating to kids of all ages, although they
didn't have to wear hockey equipment or use a stick. It was just
helmet, gloves and skates. It was held Saturday at 8 a.m. This, I
decided, was precisely the kind of basic training Mike needed.

Awesome, I was pumped.

There was just one problem-Mike didn't seem to share my
enthusiasm. In fact, he hated the entire concept, every minute
of it. Once he realized he was going to a skating school where
he didn't get to carry a hockey stick or wear hockey equipment, it was a little too much like work for him. Larry and his
group of instructors were
terrific
. But Mike quickly decided it
wasn't "fun."

We would get up early every Saturday morning and drive
to the arena and most weeks Mike would start whimpering in
the car on the way there. "I don't wanna go to Larry Marson,"
he would say. Occasionally, the odd tear would even roll down
his cheek. I would try to pump him up, tell him, "It's fun, you
will enjoy it once you get out there." He would do it, reluctantly, but on the way home in the car, he would pout, grimace
and tell me, "I hate Larry Marson."

This scene would, more or less, play itself out week after
week all winter long and you might be wondering what kind of
monster makes his four-year-old go to power skating when the
kid has made it clear he doesn't want to. That kind of monster
would be me, and even now, upon sober second thought, I am
not about to relent.

I am a big believer, for the most part, in once you start
something, you
finish
it. As long as it doesn't apply to me,
of course (I lasted six weeks at Wilfrid Laurier University in
my
first
year of post-secondary education). So unless Mike
absolutely refused to get into the car with me on those
Saturday mornings, he was going to
finish
that
first
year of
Larry Marson Power Skating. Mike was still loving to go to the
PMHA hockey school on Saturday afternoons, so it's not like
the power skating was so turning him off that he didn't want
to play hockey. I was thinking he would eventually buy in.
Hey, it could have been worse. My parents put me in piano
lessons…and we didn't even have a piano. So as far as Larry
Marson was concerned, Mike was going to
finish
out the year.

Tears on the way there? Not nearly good enough. Suck it up,
sonny boy. Life is tough. Besides, it's not like he wasn't getting
some perks along the way.

Even before that 1990-91 season, four-year-old Mike
had already been to his
first
Stanley Cup
finally
game. I had
Cindy and Mike-Shawn stayed home with family because he
was just ten months old-
fly
into Boston for Game 2 of the
Bruins-Edmonton Oilers 1990 Cup
finally
. Two funny things
happened on that trip that I bring up when I want to embarrass Mike a little.

The
first
was that Mike, wearing his No. 4 Bruins sweater
I had made up for him with MIKE on the back, found the
crowd noise so loud at the old Boston Garden he told Cindy he
wanted to leave the arena and go back to the hotel before the
first
period had ended. Mike just shakes his head at that now.

The second was Mike's
first
and very memorable meeting with Gordie Howe. I ran into Gordie in the Boston hotel
lobby just as Mike and I were heading to the Garden for the
game-day skates. Mike was eager to get to the rink because,
a day earlier, Bruin defenseman Greg Hawgood had been
nice enough to give Mike a stick at practice, and Mike was
all revved up to go back to see his new hero, Greg Hawgood.

But when I saw Gordie Howe, I stopped to chat. I introduced
Gordie to Mike and Mike to Gordie. Gordie being Gordie, he
was
terrific
with Mike, but Mike was starting to get impatient,
tugging on my arm.

"C'mon, Dad, let's go," Mike said.

"In a minute, Mike," I responded.

"Dad," he pleaded. "I want to go to the rink; I want to see
some hockey players."

Gordie's eyes were twinkling.

"You want to go see some hockey players, do you?" Gordie
said to Mike.

"Yup," Mike said to Mr. Hockey.

"Well, it's too bad there's no hockey players around here, eh,
Mike?" Gordie said as he winked at me. "You better get going."

Good job, Mike, way to diss Mr. Hockey.

It was in the middle of that season of Larry Marson that
Mike also got to go to the 1991 World Junior Championships
in Saskatoon. It would be the
first
of seven trips to the World
Juniors over a ten-year period for Mike, so it's not like I felt the
Larry Marson experience was going to scar him for life.

As it turned out, though, that was his
first
and last year of
Larry Marson Power Skating.

The irony of all of this will become painfully apparent.

Let's just say that if there is one part of Mike's game that was,
and still is, found wanting, it would be his skating. I still like
to give him the gears about it today:
"You should have stayed at Larry Marson."