Hockey Dad (4 page)

5: Big changes and the Grand Deception

THE SUMMER OF 1991 brought big changes for the McKenzie
family-we decided to move, I changed jobs, and Mike started
playing "organized" sports.

Our house in Pickering was nice enough but we were
thinking of getting an in-ground pool at some point and we
had neither the space nor the privacy we really wanted to do it
properly. So we sold the place in Pickering, moving in June of
1991 a little farther east to Whitby and buying a slightly bigger house with a slightly bigger backyard and a ravine lot. We
knew the house well enough, too, because we bought it from
a very good friend-NHL player agent Rick Curran, who was
moving his business and his family to Philadelphia.

I
first
got to know Rick as an agent when I was starting out
in the business because he represented Cindy's brother, John
Goodwin, an outstanding OHL player who won rookie-of-the-year honors in his
first
junior season (1978-79) and then won
the OHL scoring championship in his
finally
year (1980-81).

Rick and I just seemed to hit it off in our dealings and to this
day, we remain the best of friends. One of the reasons for
that, I'm sure, is that Rick is also a Crazy Hockey Dad. Rick's
son Michael is an '84, who played his minor hockey with the
Philadelphia Junior Flyers. Michael Curran went on to have an
outstanding college career, playing club team hockey and setting all sorts of records at the University of Rhode Island.
It's funny how one becomes a Crazy Hockey Dad. Michael
was born late afternoon on December 31, 1984, and at that
time, Rick was absolutely thrilled to get the child tax credit
on the
finally
day of the year. Penny wise, pound foolish, as it
turned out. It wasn't too long after that Rick realized December
31 is just about the worst day for a hockey-playing youngster
to be born because he's guaranteed to be the youngest player,
almost by a year in some cases, on every team he plays on.

We still laugh about it today, that if Rick knew then what he
knows now, his lovely wife Lisa would have been in the hospital pushing Michael into the world and Rick would have been
pushing right back, trying to delay Michael's arrival until the
clock struck midnight to make him an '85 instead of an '84.
At roughly the same time we were moving from Pickering
to Whitby, I was leaving The Hockey News after nine years as
Editor-in-Chief to become hockey columnist for the Toronto
Star. I was weary of being a manager at THN, responsible for
myriad things that had a lot more to do with publishing and
business than hockey and journalism. I also thought the job
change would likely give me more
fl
exibility and time to get
more involved with the kids and their sports.

I was thinking that this move from Pickering to Whitby
would be a positive for Mike's and Shawn's athletic endeavors,
too, because I perceived Whitby to be a very good place for
kids' sports. Even before the move became
official
, we had
already registered Mike for house-league lacrosse in Whitby.

Plus, I had always heard really good things about the minor
hockey organization in Whitby. It was all systems go. I could
see no downsides to it.

It was around April of 1991-the house deals weren't closing until late June of that year-that I discovered how wrong
I was about no downsides to the move. Mike had just
finished
his
first
year in the PMHA hockey school and I was looking forward to getting him registered in the Brooklin-Whitby Minor
Hockey Association (BWMHA). But when I called the BWMHA
to get details on Mike's registration for the next season, I was
stunned and horri
fi
ed to discover they didn't take any players
under the age of six. Unlike Pickering, Whitby had no provisions for four- or
five
-year-olds, no hockey school, nothing.
Yikes, what had I done!

So I did what any self-respecting, manipulative, lying,
cheatin' Hockey Dad would do-I took advantage of early
registration in Pickering for the hockey school there as soon
as it was humanly possible in the spring, using my Pickering
address, which I knew I wasn't going to have after late June
when we moved. I was both naïve and a little paranoid, telling
Mike that if anyone asked him where he lived, not to answer.
I can laugh now, but I do recall being unusually tense about
our little deception.

Though we were busy with the preparations to move into
the new house and the anguish that goes with making a decision on whether to take a new job, we still found time for
Mike's
first
stab at organized sports. The house-league lacrosse
season in Whitby runs for just two months (May and June),
which parents love because it's all over by the time the kids
get out of school and doesn't affect vacation plans. Mike was
just
five
but was thrilled to try lacrosse, a game I played as a
kid-not very well, mind you-in the Scarborough Lacrosse
Association.

And he loved it. What was not to love? It was fun. It was
great exercise. And it was competitive. There is no better summer sport, period, than lacrosse and if you're looking for a
sport that so perfectly complements hockey, well, lacrosse is
the game.

When the lacrosse season ended in June, and we were all
moved into our new house and I was awaiting the new job at
the Star to start in September, we did what most young families
do in the summer-catch our breath, chase two-year-old Shawn
and
five
-year-old Mike all over the new house and enjoy what
was to be our last "sport-less" summer for quite some time.

6: "C'mon, Drop the Damn Puck Already"

FALL ARRIVED and even though we were living in Whitby,
we were driving back to Pickering each Saturday for the
five
-year-old hockey school, our grand Whitby-Pickering residence deception apparently having gone undetected. I laugh
about it now because over the years I saw married couples get
legally separated or rent an apartment or even buy a house
in another community to enrol their kid in a new school
to satisfy a residency requirement they perceived as bene
fi
cial to their children's hockey-playing future. It was hilarious,
actually, that I was fearful of Mike getting busted out of the
five
-year-old Pickering hockey school because we lived in
Whitby.

After a summer of playing games in house-league lacrosse
in Whitby, the PMHA hockey school seemed a lot less exciting
than it had the year before. Mike had gotten a taste of playing games and competing and being on a team with other
kids and he liked it, and so did I. Now he was headed back
to just an hour a week of drills and you could plainly see he
wanted more, though "more" did not include another session
with Larry Marson, much to my chagrin. I knew, though, in
the grand scheme of things, that another year in the hockey
school really wasn't such a bad thing.

This whole issue of when Canadian kids should begin playing games as opposed to learning the skills and
fine
r points was
a raging debate at the time. The Canadian game was under
fire
for being too organized, too competitive at too early an age,
and the Europeans were being lauded for a much more sensible
approach in "developing" kids in sports clubs with little or no
emphasis on competition or games where scores were kept. In
many respects, the PMHA hockey school was in direct response
to the debate of the day.

So while I could see Mike hungered to play games, I told
him it was important for him to learn how to skate, stickhandle and shoot.

As it turned out, Mike's stint in the hockey school was
short-lived that year anyway. The PMHA Squirt House League
(six- and seven-year-olds) was short a handful of players, so a
few weeks into the season they "promoted" the kids from the
five
-year-old hockey school who were best equipped to make
the jump. Mike was one of those who was promoted.

Mike was happy to be joining a team and while I was mildly
concerned about how he might fare playing against kids a year
or two older, I was more excited he was one of those chosen
to move up.

Mike joined a team sponsored by the Pickering Optimists.
They had double blue as their colors-a foreshadowing of the
colors Mike would wear much later in his favorite hockey seasons-and he wore No. 2 in a sweater that was miles too big,
so long he would have tripped on it if Cindy hadn't hemmed
it up.

Mike would have one practice and one game per week
with his new team. Naturally, we videotaped his
first
"
official
"
hockey game at Don Beer Arena but if you watch the video,
you won't see much. Cindy made the mistake of putting me
in charge of the camera. When Mike came onto the ice for his
first
shift, or any shift for that matter, I started with the camera
on him. But as play started, I found myself letting the camera
drift and actually watching the game with my eyes instead of
through the camera view
find
er. The videotape shows herking
and jerking all over the place with only the occasional glimpse
of Mike. From that point forward, Cindy would be our designated camera person.
I'm not sure Mike even touched the puck in that
first
game.
Actually, I am sure. He didn't. He got close to it a few times.

Some would say that's a good reason to have kept him back in
the hockey school, where in an hour of ice he would get all
sorts of puck touches. But Mike skated hard all over the ice in
his game, chasing the puck wherever it went. He didn't look
out of place in relation to some of the older kids, but he didn't
really do anything either.

Hockey, at that age, especially in house league, is so much
about a few kids dominating. The best player on Mike's team
was a little seven-year-old whirling dervish who could skate
like the wind. His name was Darryl Lloyd and he would go on
to have a very good OHL career with the Windsor Spit
fire
s.

Mike loved playing the games, tried hard to keep up and
whatever he gave up by not touching the puck much he may
have made up in being pushed to skate harder to stay up with
the play. Plus, he was still getting a full hour of practice time
with his team in addition to that one game a week, so you
could argue he was getting more ice time than he would have
had he stayed in the hockey school.

Mike scored at least one goal that
first
season. While I
don't remember exactly how the goal was scored-wait, ah,
yes, it's coming back to me, a shot along the ice from the high
slot that the goalie fanned on-and I can't honestly tell you
whether he scored more than once that year, what I do clearly
recall is Mike saying to us on the way home after his
first
goal:
"I was smiling under my face mask for the whole game because
I scored a goal."

I guess that is what they call the simple pleasures in life.
For him, and for us.

All things considered, I was a reasonably well-behaved
Hockey Dad that hockey season, at least outwardly. But I do
recall getting agitated by a few things.

One, Mike developed in his squirt year this annoying habit
of dragging his right skate blade behind him every few strides.
He would get up a head of steam and then slow himself by
dragging the toe of his right skate blade behind him. Take
three strides and drag. Take three strides and drag. It drove
me crazy. I would tell him on the way home not to do it, and
next time out, he would be dragging it again. Where the hell
is Larry Marson when you need him? (Note: somewhere along
the line Mike just stopped doing it and there's probably a message there-kids sometimes
figure
it out on their own.)

The other thing that used to drive me crazy was refereeing.

The refs were just kids themselves, thirteen or fourteen years
old. House league, of course, is on the buzzer system. Three-
minute shifts, running time. So if a player scored a goal-and
trust me, little Darryl Lloyd was scoring more shifts than not-the referee would, way too slowly for my liking, go pick the
puck out of the net, amble over to the timekeeper's bench to
report who scored the goal and the assist and then make his
way back to the center face-off dot to get the kids lined up.

Then,
finally
, if the *^%$#*@ buzzer hadn't gone to change
lines, he would drop the puck for whatever few seconds were
left of the shift.

I was beside myself, especially if it was Mike's turn on the
ice when a goal was scored. The teenage kids ref
fi
ng had no
sense of urgency at all, which is about what you would expect,

not that I was prepared to accept that. I would mention this to
Cindy-I had to tell someone how I felt and, crazy as I might
be, I wasn't yelling out loud at some poor teenager wearing
the stripes, although I might have once said loud enough for
someone to hear, "C'mon, drop the damn puck"-and Cindy
would look at me with strong disapproval, tell me to zip it up
and relax.

Honestly, I would like to tell you now that I feel differently,
that I was out of line back then, but I don't and I wasn't (except
maybe the one time I used my outdoor voice when I should
have been talking to myself). This is precisely what was wrong,
and probably to some degree still is, with little kids' hockey in
Canada. We are a little too organized sometimes. We do worry
too much about protocol, about lining up correctly for face-offs. Ice time is precious. It's expensive, it's hard to come by
and far too much time is spent coaxing kids to get on the right
side of the circle for a face-off. I know there have been some
changes since Mike was a squirt, but with a three-minute running time shift for six- and seven-year-olds in house league,
why not simply give possession to the team that got scored on
and let them skate it back up the ice? Or just toss it back down
the length of the ice and let them all chase it?

I know some house leagues back then went to two-minute, stop-time shifts to combat this very problem of precious
seconds ticking off the clock while the ref did his business at
the timekeeper's bench. And while that would salvage the odd
shift here or there for the kids who were on the ice, this face-off protocol, the reporting of who got the goals and the assists,
still ultimately cut short the amount of actual playing time in
a one-hour slot.

Of course, critics of the Canadian way and our
fix
ation with
structure would say we should go a step further-that with kids
of that age it's ludicrous to be playing full-ice, ten-skaters-at-a-time games with double that number on the bench, that we
would be far better off with three simultaneous cross-ice mini
games that involve twenty-
five
to thirty kids on the same sheet
of ice at the same time. But we Canadians can still be a hard-headed bunch when it comes to change.

When it comes to hockey, I tend to be a little schizophrenic-some days I'm a dinosaur; some days I'm a visionary,
or so I think-and I suppose the line between them is sometimes a
fine
one. Let's just say there were days back then when
I couldn't
figure
out whether I was part of the problem or part
of the solution.