by Ron MacLean
That was the final straw. I got hold of Ivan Fecan—I was ready to move. I had three years remaining on my contract, but there was a ninety-day termination clause available to either side, and I was ready to use it.
Ivan and CTV president Rick Brace arranged to meet me at the Toronto Club on Wellington Street, Canada’s oldest private club, founded in 1835. There are only three hundred members. You have to be invited to join, and five to ten members have to vouch for you. The red-brick clubhouse is built in the Renaissance Revival style, which has an austere, Victorian look, with small square windows on the upper floor. I was ushered in the front door, and the smell of old polished oak and cigars filled my nose. I spotted Ivan immediately. He had the most beautiful hair—a long, white mane, just like Emmylou Harris. The meeting was very hush-hush. The maître d’ was to meet me and bring me to a side room. I tried not to make it appear too obvious that it was my first time there. The food was delicious (I had trout). We ate and worked out the big move. I don’t remember if we talked about money.
Later that day, I sat down with Grapes and ran the conversation by him. He didn’t want us to move to TSN either, but he realized we might have to. Grapes thought he was toast at the CBC.
I called Don Meehan to ask him his thoughts about what had developed. He said two things. First, he reminded me about our contract negotiation two years earlier. He said, “Let me understand where you’re going here, because this was important to you and this is what you gave up then. You gave up the opportunity for much more money then. Why the turnaround now? Why would this option be viable now?” Then he said that Hockey Night in Canada was an institution, and he asked what made me happy. “Do you like what you do, how you support the game of hockey? And what about all of the charitable endeavours you are involved in? Your profile is what helps them.” Of course, none of that mattered, because I was acting out of spite. Then he said, “Any show outside of Hockey Night in Canada would be a notch below.”
I told him I would think about what he’d said.
I needed a break, so I played a game of beer-league hockey and had a couple with my buddies. Chasing the puck is good that way. I went to bed feeling antsy. Meehan’s advice stuck with me. I tossed and turned and finally got up and went to my computer. I emailed Rick Brace at 3 a.m. and said, “Rick, I feel badly, but I just can’t do it.”
Meehan had known Brace a long time. He followed up with an email, being gracious and thankful for their interest, but letting them know that, at that time, I was going to stay where I was.
I’m not sure whether the CBC got a whiff of what had happened, but getting rid of Don was suddenly taken off the table. And life returned to normal.
27
I WALK THE LINE
Grapes and I are like Frick and Frack. We argue just as much on the plane, in the car or at the hotel after the game as we do on the air, but not always with the same energy. It sounds a lot meaner when you only have a couple of minutes to get your point across. The fact that we don’t always agree helps us get along, in a funny way. He sees things as black and white, and has incredible standards and expectations for himself and everyone else. My opinions lie more in the grey areas in between, and I’ve always said, “Never have expectations. Expectations will kill you.” This is my own take on accepting people and things that are outside our control. I always had a sense that the Golden Rule was wrong. That’s just bartering. I think you should do unto others what is right, and expect nothing in return.
Nevertheless, Don and I are similar men. I hate to call us cynics. “Skeptics” would be a better word. I think that has been part of the magic of our relationship.
I considered calling this book Hockey Knights because, although I know it’s audacious, I see similarities between Don and me and the two guys from one of the greatest books ever written, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.
Don Quixote was a knight, and his buddy, Sancho Panza, was his squire. Cervantes wrote about their friendship and their exploits. They set out to perform daring feats in the name of honour, bravery and chivalry to garner the admiration of the masses, and that invited one disaster after another. It’s funny because Don and I can be delusional about our “enemies.” And when we’ve targeted society’s actions and ideals surrounding war, or issues in Quebec or the treatment of First Nations people, we’ve ended up with conflicting, troublesome and at times hilarious results. And when Quixote and Panza’s adventures were complete or the show was over, they entered into a dialogue about it.
Don and I have built a life around conversation over beers at night. We throw several subjects on the table and then, through discussion, decide whether each would be good for Hockey Night. In May 2011, Bob Nicholson ripped into star players in the NHL who did not show up for the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship in Slovakia. Dan Barnes of Postmedia News quoted Nicholson as saying, “I think there is a certain time that players should be here. I’m not going to identify those players, but those players know who they are” and “You know what, Hockey Canada and Canada have been pretty good to those players through the under-18s, the juniors and Olympic Games. I thought they would have thought about that before refusing to come this year. The bottom line is, it comes down to the player. Every player has their own reasons, some of them are very good for personal reasons, some are a little lame.”
Don thought he had a point. But I put a bug in Don’s ear. Because the event is Hockey Canada and the IIHF’s baby, Nicholson has a vested interest. I said I thought it was typical of Canadian hockey to try to curry favour with IIHF president René Fasel rather than sticking up for Canadian players.
First of all, why was there no thought that each player he slammed had just played ninety games, plus a round of the playoffs? Each guy is beat up and battered and desperate for a break. He hasn’t seen his family in weeks. Most were members of the World Junior team that generated many millions of dollars for Hockey Canada. And how much of that money gets streamed back to the players? I would love to know what the cut of that is.
I also find it disingenuous of the NHL to complain about Olympic participation. The NHL always goes on about how it is offering up two billion dollars’ worth of inventory, the products of their own resources, to make the Olympic Games, when really it’s minor hockey that develops these NHL stars. Minor hockey bears the cost of developing the next Sidney Crosby, and yet the NHL has the audacity to say, “We should get special treatment because these are our guys.” Well, they weren’t your guys until they turned eighteen. What does the NHL do to support minor hockey, the program that makes these guys? Very little.
Hashing out the whole issue over Nicholson’s remarks is typical of how the seeds are sown on what we discuss on HNIC. That particular conversation hasn’t yet come up on the show—in fact, it may never come up. But a crack that I make weeks, months, maybe even years ago will be brought back verbatim if I offer a cue. It’s amazing how Don locks away these discussions and just pounces on them every time the bait is thrown.
Not once, but maybe two thousand times, Don has said to me, “Perception is reality, Ron.” When I picked up Grapes at his Mississauga home for the very first time, there was a huge rawhide bone in the front entrance. Don said, “Ron, with you gone so much, you should buy a big bone like this one and leave it inside the front door. The burglar comes, sees that bone and thinks, “Good grief, if that’s the size of the bone, imagine the dog!”
Don and I have had a lot of discussions on the issue of moving franchises back to Canada. One night, I pointed out some problems with having a team back in Winnipeg. Don thought I was crazy and told me he thought the franchise would be a roaring success. He told me I should just shut up and quit whining about it. I agreed he was right for the moment, because the U.S. economy is in desperate shape. “But,” I said, “Don, Don, it’s Winnipeg. There is a chance that if the dollar fluctuates and goes back to 65 cents U.S., the franchise will be in huge trouble. You wouldn’t be a journalist wor
th your salt if you didn’t point that out. And what kind of journalist would you be if you didn’t report that for us at the CBC, the increase of Canadian teams from six out of thirty to seven out of thirty translates to higher ratings for Hockey Night in Canada?” Mind you, that financial windfall is tempered by the fact that we can’t possibly program all the Canadian teams on one channel at the same time, so we have more competition from other channels. My point with Grapes is that a journalist has to look at all the angles. It’s not whining, it’s just being realistic about the concerns.
During the finals, Don and I had quite an argument in the car about tipping. Ken, our limo driver in Vancouver, is quite the card—really good company. Don wanted to take care of paying him, so he handed Ken his plastic and said, “Here, take my credit card and add twenty bucks.”
When Grapes played, hockey players were notoriously tight with a buck. And when Grapes would go out to the bar, he had rules. You don’t go drinking if you don’t pay your way. If Don saw somebody sneaking away without putting in his twenty bucks, he’d call him out. He’d stand up and say, “Hey! You’re not leaving. I didn’t see you put in a twenty.” And a big fight would ensue. So he thought he was doing well with the tip, and thirty years ago he’d be right. I said quietly, “Grapes, you can’t just add twenty bucks to whatever it is—it could be a $400 bill.” He said, “No, no, for each trip I want him to add $20.” I said, “I know, Don, but if the game goes into triple overtime and Ken is sitting outside in the limo waiting for us, that’s not enough.” Grapes was getting hotter and hotter as we talked about it. He felt I was being ridiculous and that he was being perfectly fair. But the next morning, he came to breakfast and said, “All right, all right, forget it. You take care of the limo.”
The night of the last game of the Stanley Cup final, Don gave himself a self-talk. “Don’t take the bait if Ron spouts off one of his stupid left-wing, liberal philosophies. Just don’t bite. We’ve had a great run here, let’s not go out fighting like we always do.” He came up to the room for beers with a resolve to behave. He admits that he tends to get quite miserable toward the end of the season. We are both tired, and I think he has withdrawal symptoms. I’d ordered up two Whistler lagers to toast the completion of our twenty-fifth year on Coach’s Corner together. When there is cause for celebration, I like to order “cocktail” beers.
After four or five pops, he got into a bit of a lather about our opening. He took me to task for the music that was chosen for the show that night. He especially hated “One” by U2, which ran under the closing montage. He felt it was girly—a bunch of guys who sound like teenage girls, singing about how sad life is. And then he mentioned a commercial that Telus was running. It features two gorgeous birds, cockatoos or parakeets. The music under it is AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”—a great rock and roll riff. The commercial is magnificent. The birds land with their wings spread like capes on superheroes. And the song adds rock and roll and energy. But Don disagreed. “You and your friggin’ artsy fartsy thing!” He banged his head against the wall with each word for emphasis.
Don gets really wound up about the music. Years ago, during the 1993 final between Montreal and Los Angeles, I chose the music for the opening of the fifth and final game: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by the Tokens. After the game, he gave it to me in spades. I tried to explain that I’d chosen that song because the Canadiens are called the Lions of Winter, and in the song the lion is somewhere in the jungle. You can just imagine me trying to tell this story. We started in on the beers and he took a swig. “Oh, I got it. Now give me this again? The trees. The lion in the trees has been sleeping. Is that it? And now you’re telling me ‘o-weem-o-way.’ What the hell is o-weem-o-way? And how does it fit in to the Stanley Cup final?” I tried to explain, but he carried on, refusing to let it go until we were laughing so hard that we were spitting beer.
Harold Bloom, in his book Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, says that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza figure out the truth through conversations. Bloom says people have great trouble breaking out of the “prison of themselves.” But in Cervantes’ book, Quixote and Panza really hear one another, and they can change. Drinking beers in hotel rooms with Grapes after a game has provided some of my most illuminating moments.
Quixote and Panza, like Grapes and me, have a pattern of arguing and then reconciling, and we never fail one another in love, loyalty or mutual respect.
Sometimes the lively hotel-room banter spills over to the show, and the results can be messy. I don’t know why, but I feed on trouble. It’s my meat. On March 8, 2007, Chris Simon, a tough left winger with a scoring touch who was in his fourteenth NHL season, was playing a home game with the Islanders against the Rangers. In the middle of the third period, he was checked by Ryan Hollweg, who was trying to make a name for himself as an enforcer. Hollweg had twenty-one fights with the Hartford Wolf Pack of the American Hockey League in 2004–05, the year before he made it to the Rangers. And in 2006–07, his first full season with the Rangers, he ended up getting into thirteen scraps altogether. Simon had just five fights that same year, and spent 75 minutes in the penalty box to Hollweg’s 131.
Hollweg came at Simon from behind, knocking him face first into the boards. There was no whistle on the play, so Simon took matters into his own hands when Hollweg skated by, catching him on the chest under the chin with his stick.
Simon received a twenty-five-game suspension, which is huge. It covered the rest of the season and five games of 2007–08. Just two games after the suspension ended, Jarkko Ruutu was chirping at Simon’s teammate Tim Jackman. Simon skated up from behind, pulled Ruutu down and stomped on his leg with his skate. Ruutu is a pest who deserves some trouble, but maybe not that.
When Simon stomped Ruutu, there was a big stink about it. Ken Campbell of The Hockey News said, “What Simon did Saturday night should finally get him expelled from the NHL for good. And if the league doesn’t have the gumption to do it, then the New York Islanders should.”
I emailed Matt Brown, who is a teacher at the Edge School in Calgary. He’s also an expert in both sports psychology and physiology. I’d read a novel Matt had written called Shift, about a rising hockey star who almost loses his career when he loses his values. Matt is a confidant when I want to talk about the psychology of athletics.
I asked Matt for his opinion on repeat offenders. He raised the point that First Nations children (Simon’s dad is Ojibwa) often feel that they don’t get a fair shake in life. Therefore, Simon might not have thought that the first suspension was legit. He may have felt he had been racially profiled.
On Coach’s Corner on December 23, 2007, five days after Simon’s second suspension, for his attack on Ruutu (he got thirty games), Grapes defended Simon. Dressed in a big, shiny, red jacket with a huge tie featuring Santa in an opalescent beard, Grapes began, “Now listen, kids. We love Santa. We have to say it. I have to say it. We love Santa. Everybody loves Santa. But remember December the twenty-fifth … baby Jesus’ birthday. We must keep that in mind. We love Santa, but it’s baby Jesus’ birthday. I had to get that in. We love Santa, but let’s not be silly.”
I wished everyone a Merry Christmas, and then we went to video of Chris Neil of Ottawa getting two minutes for shoving Jarkko Ruutu’s brother Tuomo. Grapes hated the way the Ruutu brothers chirped at other players, and thought they deserved to be taught a lesson. “Watch him laugh—look, look, look, look. Wouldn’t you like to go up and smack that guy? I gotta be careful. When Simon got in trouble, a lot of people said a few things, and I said a few things, but those guys asked for it and they got it.”
Grapes cautioned the “kids out there” not to stomp other players with their skates. “You never do anything like that. Never, ever do anything like that. But you can understand it somehow.”
Then he chastised the league for being too tough on Simon. “And by the way, I have to say something. Those last two incidents that he’s done, he’s got fifty-five games. You know how many games his victi
ms missed playing?” Grapes made a big zero with his index finger and thumb. “None. I’m not making an excuse for it—none—I just thought you’d like to know that. Now, I have said many, many times—how many times have I said, going back thirty years, I try to talk to people—you know, I see these media guys and stuff like that and jack-of-all-trades … I try to tell people that if Chris wanted to hurt him, he could have hurt him bad. The same thing with … Hollweg, was it?”
I nodded, “Right.”
“Hollweg, when you try to say that if he wanted to hurt him, he could’ve, and the hockey people—I know it sounds terrible, but he let up and he hit him on the chest. Now, this could’ve been avoided, all this stuff could’ve been avoided, this last one here, if they had listened to me thirty years ago. Why they have the benches on the same side is beyond me.”
I held up my finger. “Before we continue, can I just say the thing that I wanted to say to add to that? ‘Cause people say, ‘How in the world can Colin Campbell and the league give him just thirty games when he got twenty-five and the message didn’t sink in?’ And I have a theory on that too.” And I brought up the idea Matt Brown and I had discussed. “You’ll have to ask Chris Simon if this is how he feels, but a lot of First Nations kids go to bed at night and wake up in the morning feeling they won’t get a fair shake in life, and he may not have thought that twenty-five—”
Don groaned.
I pointed at him, “Just what you said about Ryan Hollweg! He may have thought [the suspension] was ridiculous.”
Don held up his hand. He had a list of things to talk about and wanted to get on with it. “Well—”