Cornered

by Ron MacLean

  I have just invested $50,000 with a group that’s converting basalt, the rock that is used in all the cobblestone streets in Europe, into fibreglass. My golfing buddies suggested it. It sounds quite interesting.

  33

  THE GOODY

  In March of 2009, when I was first approached to host Battle of the Blades, the CBC Television show that turns hockey players into figure skaters, I thought it would be a colossal disaster. My boss, Scott Moore, asked me to meet with John Brunton and Kevin Albrecht from Insight Productions. We had lunch while they pitched the idea. I thought it was goofy, and as I listened, I thought, “Brutal! It can’t work.”

  The only thing I latched onto was that four-time world figure skating champion Kurt Browning would be the other co-host. I’d never seen anything Kurt had been associated with that wasn’t good. I told the guys at Insight, “If Kurt’s in, I’m in.” I knew the CBC was banking on this idea.

  We got ready for the first show at a boot camp in a small arena in downtown Toronto. It was an unbelievable bluff, because even though the CBC were high on it, they weren’t totally sold. We were basically winging it. It’s astounding how it came together.

  Kurt and I skated and worried while we prepared for the show. Just before the first episode, we found out that Kurt’s pants no longer fit. The preparation was so intense that each of us had dropped fifteen pounds.

  I prepared by renting an hour of ice in Oakville, twice a week for four weeks, that summer. The toe picks that are a feature of figure skates were tricky, because I was used to hockey skates. There are six picks on the front of a figure skate. The big one at the front is used to plant your foot to do a jump. I had those shaved off, which helped, but I still had trouble the first year. I sort of crawled around the ice. But in year two I did a waltz jump and a poor man’s arabesque, or spiral.

  Back in 2006–07, I had done a series of hockey tips called “Think Hockey.” Two of these segments aired every Saturday night as part of Hockey Night Canada, one during the pre-game show and the other between the first and second games of the doubleheader. We shot sixty-five tips, involving pros and coaches. Now, while figure skating, I practised something I had learned while doing the “Think Hockey” segments, and when Ron Davidson from Ottawa saw that I was good on my outside edge, he gave me a piece of advice that Sidney Crosby uses tremendously well. He advised me to power up with the outside edge of my right skate instead of using my left skate to push off. He also taught me to cross under. Crossunders are an integral part of how figure skaters power up, especially when they go backwards. You cannot do crossovers with picks, because you’ll trip.

  The venue for season one of Battle of the Blades was Maple Leaf Gardens, which of course had been retired several years before, when the Leafs moved to the Air Canada Centre. Before each show, Kurt and I sat and waited in two recliners, since there were no dressing rooms. I sat on the left and Kurt had the chair on the right, but he barely sat in it. Kurt’s a ball of energy. HarperCollins publisher Iris Tupholme told me that when she first joined HarperCollins in 1992, Kurt was ready to write his book Kurt: Forcing the Edge. She met with him at his hotel. While they talked, he jumped up and down on the bed and caught so much air she was worried he was going to fly through the picture window.

  When Kurt gets ready for Blades, he is constantly on the move—jumping, stretching and dancing. There is always music playing in his head. We’ll be talking about what we are going to do on the show, and he’ll be doing the zombie from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” routine. Kurt is forty-five years old, but he’s hilarious. It’s like hanging with a hyperactive ten-year-old.

  For the opening of our first show, we planned to start at the Zamboni entrance, skate to centre ice and stop. We would do an arms-out razzmatazz surfer-dude move, with our knees facing each other, and then we’d tear down to the camera at the far end of the arena to do our opening. But the key was that we had to stop at the right moment, look at each other and do that move to the beat of a Bryan Adams song.

  When we tried it, I couldn’t hear the beat. There was just too much else to focus on. Thankfully, Kurt would count in, “Five, six, seven, eight,” just to help me through it. The first show was good, and Kurt explained to me that in the figure skating world, all skaters identify a move they call a “goody” after a great performance, and they replicate this goody before the next skate. In our case, it became our surfer-dude stop. From then on, five to ten minutes before each show, Kurt and I would find a quiet moment backstage and do our goody. It was supposed to bring us good luck. It seemed to work. We got through the fourteen shows, the ratings were great and we were renewed.

  As soon as Kurt finished the first season of Battle of the Blades, he headed for Lake Placid, New York, to join the cast of the touring show Stars on Ice. He’s been a key player in that show for about twenty years now. In the 1990s, he was a headliner along with Katarina Witt, the two-time Olympic gold medallist from Germany. Katarina came in as a judge on Battle of the Blades as a favour to Kurt.

  After every Stars on Ice performance, Kurt and Katarina would get dragged away to do photo spreads or interviews. The other skaters would wait around for them to finish up so that they could get on the tour bus and head to the next city. But the cast began to get a little resentful and bored of all the waiting around, so one of the guys said, “Kurt Browning is treating us like mushrooms here on Stars on Ice.” He was referring to the old expression that mushrooms are like secrets—they grow when they are kept in the dark and are fed … manure. This particular cast member thought it would be funny to take off his clothes and do a naked headstand against the wall. His idea was that, when a man is naked and stands upside down, his package looks like a mushroom. So whenever they waited for Kurt and Katarina to finish interviewing, a couple of the guys would hang out naked and upside down in the dressing room. The girls heard about it, and they started doing the same thing in the women’s dressing room. Everyone got a big laugh out of it and it helped while the time away.

  In December 1998, when Katarina Witt did a photo spread for Playboy magazine, she insisted—as an homage to her colleagues—on including a photo taken upside down against a tree. And that was her little goody, as the figure skaters call it.

  During the final show of season two, I caught a glimpse of the judges, Olympic bronze medallist and Canadian Olympic Hall of Famer Toller Cranston and British Olympic gold medallist and four-time world champion Christopher Dean. They were really focused on the ice while they were judging. Here I’d thought the show was going to be a dud. On this occasion, I looked at these icons of the figure skating industry, on the edge of their seats, and thought, “Wow, was I wrong again!”

  34

  TAKE ME TO THE RIVER

  In June 2010, we were in Philly, covering the Stanley Cup final between the Flyers and the Chicago Blackhawks at the Wachovia Center (now the Wells Fargo Center). On Wednesday, June 2, Philly beat Chicago 4–3 in overtime. The next game was on Friday, so I had Thursday off. It was the day after my interview with Gary Bettman on club ownership.

  It was a really funny day. Don was shooting the twenty-second edition of his Rock’em Sock’em videos. I just went along to keep him company—what else was there to do? We went down to the old Spectrum, where the Flyers had played until the end of the 1995–96 season. I met Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, who was there to tape an item for the video, and then I just watched them shoot. The building was boiling hot. There was no air conditioning, and Don was wearing a yellow-and-black checkerboard jacket. He looked like a jester. It was so hot, it was ridiculous. I was dressed in a suit and had to take off my coat, but Don has a tremendous power of mind over matter. I was in a lather just sitting there with my feet up. Looking at Don, I thought, “How in the world is he not perspiring?” But he wasn’t. They shot until noon, and then we went back to our hotel, the Hyatt Regency at Penn’s Landing.

  At about 1:30, we sat down in the restaurant, which overlooks the Delaware River. Ther
e were doors leading to an outdoor patio, and there were only two people sitting out there—a couple in their early forties. The man was wearing this white Ralph Lauren polo shirt with an indigo horse and rider embroidered on it. As I sat down, I glimpsed the logo and it reminded me that I had a horse race—the Queen’s Plate, Canada’s oldest thoroughbred stakes race—to host for the CBC on July 4. The hand of anxiety gave my heart a little squeeze when I realized I hadn’t started prepping for it. As soon as the playoffs were over, I would have to get my head into horse racing.

  Don was digging into his Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich and washing it down with a beer. In a feeble attempt to eat healthy, I had the stir-fry with a Diet Pepsi. Don was telling a story about Dave Bolland, a centre for the Chicago Blackhawks. I’d heard it about twelve times already, so I was kind of on autopilot. Grapes was going on about how he loved Bolland and how he’d enjoyed watching him play for the London Knights. And he told me how he’d seen London coach Dale Hunter at the game the night before and had talked to him about Bolland and the Knights. He was describing Bolland’s scrappy play and running over Bolland’s stats. “Listen to this, willya—2005–06, 140 points and 104 penalty minutes.” And he started in about how Bolland got under Joe Thornton’s skin in the San Jose Sharks series. “Bolland stuck to Joe and used his stick and—”

  Suddenly, this woman ran up onto the patio. She looked panic-stricken, and in a thick French accent she began yelling, “Help! Help! Someone is in the river!”

  My first thought was, “What’s the big deal? Someone is swimming in the river.” She hadn’t said, “Someone is drowning in the river.” But then I recognized her as the woman who had been sitting on the patio, and it dawned on me that her husband, the guy in the Ralph Lauren shirt, wasn’t with her.

  I started to connect the dots. “Oh, maybe her husband is in the river.” Then I wondered, “How the hell did that happen?”

  Anyway, I knew from the amount of boating I had done that you can’t easily pull a person out of the water. It’s a difficult thing to do. I spotted two stanchions connected by a green velvet rope that the hotel used as a divider between the bar and the restaurant. I unclipped the rope and ran down the patio. There was a boardwalk across from a pier underneath, but it was about a thirty-foot drop from where I was standing. I had to find a way to get there. I jumped over a fence off to the side and was able to work my way down some planters and steps to the big cement pier.

  I noticed the polo shirt lying on the ground. Again, my mind turned to the Queen’s Plate. “Damn, I gotta get ready for that race.”

  I spotted the French woman’s husband in the river. He was swimming toward shore, dragging someone behind him. They were near a little wooden pad that looked like a forklift pallet or a skid, the size of a mandarin orange crate.

  Below me, there was a two-by-twelve piece of wood that ran along maybe a foot off the waterline. I decided I could stand on that. It was about eight feet down. I bent and held the top of the pier, then used one foot to find the kind of grip you would use when rock climbing. Finally, my full body was hanging, and I let go from about two feet up and landed on a narrow wooden platform that edged the wall.

  I stood, one foot in front of the other, on the platform and watched the rescuer bring this guy over to the raft. As they got close, I could see that the guy who had been drowning was African-American and had packing tape wound around his throat. He also had a yellow rope circling his shoulders and legs. I thought, “It looks like someone tried to kill this guy.” I had a quick look around, wondering if someone was watching us.

  The rescuer plopped the potential victim onto the small raft, and wearing only clingy wet underwear, he jumped up onto the platform and hustled off. He’d done the heavy lifting. Now it was my turn.

  I held out my hand, and the potential drowning victim took it with his free hand, but I was unable to pull him out because he was fully clothed. He was extremely grateful to be saved, and kept saying, “Thank you, man, thank you,” over and over again. This reinforced my attempted-murder theory.

  I had to let him back down half into the water and half onto the little raft. He managed to free his other hand, and that allowed him to wiggle out of the rope and remove his coat. It looked like army surplus, but it was grey more than tan. He also removed the tape around his neck. He was wearing jeans, shoes and a T-shirt. I would guess he was thirty years old, and quite strong and fit. Two other men joined us and were standing on the pier above me. I handed him one end of the green velvet rope and helped pass the other end up to the new people on the pier. Then I grabbed his right hand again, and the three of us were able to pull him up out of the water onto the platform, and from there onto the pier.

  Paramedics and police arrived, and a crowd gathered. He continued to say, “Thank you, thank you!” I wasn’t sure whether his was a suicide attempt or he had been a victim of foul play, but before I headed back, I patted him on the back and said, “Better days ahead.”

  As I approached the hotel, I could see that Don watching the scene from the balcony. He called down, “Look, don’t tell people I couldn’t get there! Just tell ‘em I was having a beer.” I gave him the thumbs-up. Don was very fit for seventy-six, but there was no way he could have jumped the fence and climbed down to the platform. We finally sat down to finish lunch after this frenzy took place, and Don narrowed his eyes at me and sipped his beer.

  I said, “What’s wrong?”

  He said, “You sure know how to put a damper on a great story.”

  35

  THE STATE OF THE GAME

  Different subjects in hockey catch fire at various times. Right now, it’s concussions. I’d like to begin by saying there have been several positive tweaks to the game recently. The NHL has worked hard trying to get it right, but I think when we tried to retool the game in 2004–05, there were all these unintended consequences, and now we have to see whether they work or whether some of them should be scrapped.

  The new interest in concussions reached its nadir with the January injury that forced Sidney Crosby to sit out the balance of the 2010–11 season. Then the whole issue was further brought into the light with the revelation that heavyweight enforcer Bob Probert, who died on July 5, 2010, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. Bob donated his brain for medical research, and when they dissected it, they found small contusions that had begun to grow. These contusions meant he would almost certainly have faced brain issues in the future, issues that could’ve included headaches, depression, memory loss and dementia.

  The league’s history is full of tough guys who had health issues during and after their careers, often including addiction to painkillers and substance abuse.

  The rationalization is that we are beginning to understand concussions today because we have better diagnostic tools, but that’s silly. I was in Whitehorse in February 2011 for Hockey Day in Canada and spent time with some of the NHL alumni. A few of them told me that a lot of former players are messed up now. Nobody wants to talk about that. It’s a big, dark secret.

  Often, we blame the concussed victim. When Flyers defenceman Randy Jones checked Bruins centre Patrice Bergeron from behind in October 2007, Jones got a two-game suspension instead of a twenty-gamer because Bergeron had his back to the play. At the time, Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli objected, saying, “You can’t mitigate the dangerousness of the Jones hit simply because Patrice was in a vulnerable position.” His message, basically, was, “Would police decide not to charge an assailant just because the victim walked through a bad neighbourhood?”

  Many superstars have had their bells rung in the past, especially in the days before helmets. Gordie Howe had a run-in with Ted Kennedy on March 28, 1950. Howe missed a hit, or maybe he was tripped, and crashed into the boards. He suffered a severe concussion, had a lacerated right eye, fractured his cheekbone and sustained a broken nose. In 1962, Jean Béliveau hit his head during a semifinal game with Chicago. He missed the rest of the playoffs a
nd suffered headaches for two years. When Bobby Orr played for the Bruins in a playoff game on April 2, 1969, Leafs defenceman Pat Quinn rocked him with a vicious hit. Bobby Gould cold-cocked Mario Lemieux on March 30, 1987, and Scott Stevens crushed Eric Lindros in game seven of the Eastern Conference final in 2000.

  In the Ontario Hockey Association, we went after a perpetrator guilty of punching a guy in the mask. It’s easy to throw a punch at those big cages and think your opponent isn’t going to be hurt. But with the impact, the brain can still crash around inside the skull. There may be no facial cuts, but there can be neck and brain trauma. Before facial protection, when the sticks came up a little bit, everybody was a little more wary. But try explaining why it’s better to have stitches and teeth missing than scrambled grey matter, and people think you’re crazy.

  So, what are the options?

  In 2010, the NHL’s senior vice-president for public relations, Gary Meagher, gave a presentation to the general managers. He showed that the legal shoulder checks to the head that caused injury from 2007–08 through 2009–10 were split 50/50 between those that were lateral hits and those that were head-on, or what they call north-south hits. The GMs felt the victims should have been more aware in the north-south situations. I don’t agree.

  NHL players suffered about 100 concussions in 2011, with some of the best players in the game ending up on the shelf. On January 1, when the Penguins were playing the Washington Capitals in the annual Winter Classic, Capitals forward David Steckel blindsided Crosby, shouldering him in the head. Then, against Tampa Bay on January 5, the Lightning’s Victor Hedman took Crosby into the boards headfirst. Whether Crosby suffered the concussion after Steckel’s or Hedman’s hit, the fact that the career of the greatest player in the game today was put in jeopardy has generated a lot of discussion. Does it matter if the impact to the head was intentional or an accident? Should you be responsible for not messing up a guy’s head with your body, the way you’re supposed to be responsible for your stick?