by Bob Mckenzie
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."
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 flexibility 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 horrified 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 beneficial 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 finer 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 o
f 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 viewfinder. 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 Spitfires.
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 reffing 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 fixation 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.
7: Crossing the Line; Giving Mike the "Tap"
IF MY EXPERIENCES IN THE SUMMER OF 1992 were any indication, I was more part of the problem than the solution.
There was never any doubt we were going to register Mike for another year of house-league lacrosse. He played Junior Paperweight the first year; this would be the summer of Senior Paperweight. And it wasn't long into his Senior Paperweight House League season that we discovered there was going to be a rep team chosen from the house league. Rep? Did someone say rep? Rep is, of course, short for representative or all-star. Well, whatever you call it, I was certainly game to kick things up a notch and Mike was, too. He quite enjoyed lacrosse. It really is a wonderful game. The kids run hard, work up a sweat and for those of us who appreciate the physical and competitive elements of sport, it has those, too, even at the youngest ages.
In Paperweight lacrosse, the kids are taught to knock the ball out of another player's stick by using their stick. Aggression is by all means rewarded-and encouraged. And unlike hockey-where kids starting out have a tough time mastering skating, so puck control is but a pipe dream for most-kids playing lacrosse are stable on their feet and able to scoop up a ball and really run with it, maybe even throw it to a teammate, with all the other kids chasing after it, trying either to knock the ball out of the stick or knock down the ball carrier. Team play, the ability to complete passes and get some flow to the game, is so much greater in little kids' lacrosse than in little kids' hockey.
Mike could run fast, had a good stick, loved to get involved, was one of the better kids in the h
ouse league and, well, I needed details on this whole rep thing. I was given the name and number of the fellow who would be coaching the rep team. His name was Kevin O'Brien. I recognized his name only because his son, Kyle, a little red-haired kid, was known as one of the really big scorers in the Senior Paperweight league. I gave this Kevin O'Brien a call and told him I had a son who was interested in trying out for the rep team, did he have any information?
This guy was very noncommittal, very cool to my request, almost to the point of being aloof. He asked me what team Mike played on and what number he wore. Then he said he was coaching the yellow team, their next game was against Mike's white team: "I'll have a look at him and see how he does."
I hung up the phone and recall thinking, "Yeah, we'll see all right…"
Do you remember in the prologue, when I tried to make a case that I'm not really crazy? Well, this is the point where it gets hard to do that.
On the way to Mike's next game, which was against Kevin O'Brien's yellow team, I was giving Mike the pregame pep talk in the car. I told him about the rep team, explained the concept-trying out for a team of the best players in his league who would get to go in tournaments against all-star teams from other towns and cities-which he seemed to like a lot. I told him the coach of the yellow team was going to be the coach of the rep team and if Mike wanted to be on this rep team, this would be a good night to play a really good game to show the coach that he was a good player. Then I crossed the line, although that never really occurred to me at the time. I told Mike the best player on the other team was the coach's son, a red-haired kid with a big white Cooper helmet, and that he was maybe the best player in the league. I told Mike that every time this red-haired kid got the ball, Mike should do everything possible to prevent him from scoring a goal-check him, hit him, whack his stick, chase him down, run him over, whatever, but try to stop him from scoring a goal-and that every time Mike got the ball Mike should do everything possible to score a goal.