by Bob Mckenzie
I didn't think of it as telling Mike to "goon" this other kid. But here I was, taking my bespectacled little six-year-old to his house-league lacrosse game, and I was pumping him up to go mano-a-mano against some other six-year-old, all in the name of making a good impression to make a rep team?
It was ridiculous and shameful, although I obviously didn't think that at the time. In any case, Mike proved to be a good listener. He played a very good game that night. Scored some goals. Worked extra hard to prevent the red-haired kid on the yellow team from scoring too many goals, although anyone who knows anything about lacrosse knows good players always get their goals, even in Paperweight house league, and little Kyle O'Brien did that night.
After the game, Kevin O'Brien told me he had taken a look at Mike and, yes, Mike would be invited to play for the rep team. Yeah, baby.
We, Kevin O'Brien and me, can laugh about it now because the kicker to this story is that the O'Briens-Kevin, his wife, Wendy, son Kyle and daughter Katie-are amongst our very best friends and you will get to know them all too well in the pages that follow. Mike and Kyle played their entire Whitby rep hockey and rep lacrosse careers together on the same team and became great friends and teammates. Within a couple of years of that day I told Mike to take it to Kyle O'Brien, we convinced the O'Briens to move from Oshawa to our street in Whitby. When Kevin coached the boys in lacrosse, I was his manager and/or assistant coach. When I, or anyone else for that matter, coached the boys in hockey, Kevin was always there as the team trainer. Together whatever the weather. But still, the moral of the story is you don't tell your six-year-old to "target" another six-year-old in the hopes of making a rep team. You just don't.
Once we were fully settled into Whitby, we were looking forward to Mike playing hockey there for the first time.
Cindy's brother John, a '61 who had retired from pro hockey following a six-year career in the minors after being a star in the OHL, lived not too far from us in Whitby. He had two boys-Mathew and Thomas-the same ages as Mike and Shawn and would later add a daughter, Kathryn, who would go on to play girls' hockey. So we requested Mike and his cousin Mathew to be on the same team. John put on his registration form that he would help out with coaching. I helped out when I could, too.
Outside of the fact practices often took place as early as 6 a.m. on Saturday at the very chilly but character-laden Luther Vipond Arena in Brooklin, Ontario, it was an enjoyable and largely uneventful year.
You will be happy to know I behaved myself, for the most part. Some of those 6 a.m. practices were hell on wheels, though, especially when Cindy and I might have friends over on a Friday night and, well, there might have been a few times I had a few cocktails and didn't get to bed until 2 or 3 a.m. Mike wasn't difficult to get up at 5 a.m. if it was for hockey.
Me? That depended on Friday night. When practice was over, like all good Canadians, my brother-in-law John and me and the boys would hit Tim Hortons on the way home. There's another one of the simple pleasures in life on a cold morning after practice-hot chocolate at Tim's with the kids. It just doesn't get much better than that.
Games, of course, were a much different story than practices, played on Sunday mornings (at respectable hours too).
Just going to the arena as a family was a great feeling. There's still something really special about walking into a cold rink on the weekend, taking in all the sights and sounds of so many families there off the ice and the kids out there on the ice, the sounds of sticks and pucks echoing throughout the arena. It was wonderful, the highlight of my week. Mind you, I was still allowing myself at times to be highly agitated by teenage refs with no sense of urgency, but now that Mike was six, and playing against kids his own age, he was scoring a little more often.
It's funny how less agitated I was about the shift being lost with the ref at the timekeeper's bench reporting a goal when it was my kid who scored the goal. But it was still one heck of a lot of wasted time.
I really only tried to impart one piece of wisdom to Mike that season-play hard every shift. And I imparted that message morning, noon and night. On the way there. On the way home. When I tucked him into bed at night. When I had breakfast with him in the morning. It's the mantra for the McKenzies in all things we do, then and now. Don't let up.
Don't worry about the score. Just play as hard as you can every time you hit the ice. Give it your all, all of the time. That's how my dad raised me in everything I did and that's how I was going to try to raise my boys, not just in sports either, but in life. No excuses. Work hard. Hard work. On the ice. At school.
At work. One hundred percent effort one hundred percent of the time.
All of that can get a little old or clichéd sometimes but, hey, it's just how I'm wired. It's in the genes. No sense fighting it and of all the things I might consider apologizing for, going overboard on extolling the virtues of hard work isn't one of them.
8: The Straight Poop on Playing Up
IF YOU ARE FULLY COMMITTED to and entirely engaged in the minor hockey experience, there is nothing quite like the seven-year-old season. That's because it is, without question, the busiest hockey season a player or parent can have. It is all so new to you. In addition to playing house league, a player can play select level at the same time. For the uninitiated, select is when they take the best kids from house league and play them together on a select team that competes against other towns or organizations. The net effect is your kid is really playing on two teams at the same time. One practice and one game in house league; usually one practice and at least one game in select, sometimes more. The player is on the ice at least four times a week, often more than once a day on the weekends. It's awesome. It's also nuts, although nuts in a good, what-would-you-rather-be-doing kind of way.
For those parents whose kids play select and house league for their entire minor hockey careers, not just the seven-year-old season, I applaud you. You deserve a medal because it's even more demanding and time-consuming than the AAA, AA or A levels.
But for the truly ambitious hockey parent-and yes, that would be me-it was possible to bypass the seven-year-old house-league/select year and go directly to rep, which did not normally commence until the eight-year-old, or minor novice, season.
The Brooklin-Whitby Minor Hockey Association had a policy that allowed seven-year-olds to try out for the minor novice AA team, that is, "play up" a year, but not all the way up to the minor novice AAA team. The seven-year-olds had to be very good players, beat out some eight-year-olds to make the minor novice AA team on merit, and no more than three seven-year-olds could play on the AA team.
In Whitby, in Mike's age group of '86s, the first two spots were spoken for. The best player in Whitby at that age was Liam Reddox, and he was head and shoulders better than any other '86. Steven Seedhouse was clearly the next best.
That left just one potential opening and I was, to put it mildly, eager for Mike to get it. But there was competition from some other talented seven-year-olds, as well as the eight-year-olds, so it was far from a slam dunk. It all came down to the finally tryout. It looked to me like the third seven-year-old spot was going to go to either Mike or a boy named Brandon Davis.
I kind of thought Mike had the edge going into the finally try-out, just as I'm sure Brandon's dad, Scott, figured his son would get it.
On the day of the finally tryout, which was scheduled for 5 p.m. at Iroquois Park Arena, Mike came home from school at lunch and complained of a tummy ache. Before long, it was worse than that. Diarrhea. He had really bad stomach cramps. Poop. Literally.
Mike said he didn't think he could go back to school because he was afraid he might get caught short, if you know what I mean. I didn't like where this was headed.
"But you'll be okay for hockey tryouts, won't you, Mike?" I said plaintively.
"No," he said. "I can't go. My tummy hurts. I might have to go to the bathroom."
Aw, crap.
"Oh, you'll be fine," I said, but he wasn't.
It was all over but the crying. And it was me who felt like crying.
So while Liam Reddox, Steven Seedhouse and Brandon Davis were the three '86s who played up on the minor novice AA team that season, Mike was left to play house league and select. Whatever my initial disappointment at Mike not being on the AA team, it passed quickly, because for all my faults, and I have many, I tend to believe everything happens for a reason. And besides, I do firmly believe that kids find their own level and, generally speaking, it's better to play and play well against kids your own age than to be less of a factor against older kids. Now, if the powers that be had come along and said Mike could play up on the AA team, we'd have been gone so fast it would make your head spin.
This was the season when Mike actually started to wear glasses when he played hockey. Up until then, even though he had been wearing glasses for almost three years, he hadn't been wearing them for sports, but the truth is he couldn't see very well without them. I'm not sure why we allowed him to not wear glasses when he played hockey or lacrosse as a six-year-old, but it probably had a little to do with vanity-we, I mean I, didn't like how it would look under his face mask-and a lot to do with safety. We weren't keen on him wearing his conventional gold, wire-rimmed glasses with glass lenses-think Harry Potter-in a contact sport and we had not yet found sport glasses that would fit a boy that young.
I finally located a pair of sport glasses that looked as though they might do the trick. They were a little on the large side, rather heavy looking but with thick, clear plastic frames with large and fairly thick plastic lenses, the same sort of shape as aviator sunglasses. I think they were designed for racquetball or squash. I'm not sure words do this picture justice. Just think of a seven-year-old Kurt Rambis. Or maybe even a young Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys. (Sorry about that one, Mike.)
Hey, he could see. They were safe. They fit, barely, under his cage, it's not a frickin' beauty contest. He may have looked a little, or a lot, like a nerd that season but he didn't play like one.
With his uncle Johnny as the head coach and me helping out, Mike ripped it up in the seven-year-old house league. He would score more games than not and it wasn't unusual for him to get two, three, four, or sometimes even five or six goals a game. Regardless of how many he did or didn't score, I was preaching to him the value of consistency-play hard every shift, don't take shifts off, give it your all, all the time. Lest you get the wrong idea, I was also stressing to him the importance of passing the puck, helping his teammates score goals. And I was also telling him he should skate as hard on the backcheck as he did to score a goal.
Honestly, even now, I'm a little conflicted about how to handle a situation like this one. But only a little. I suppose a good sport, or a more easygoing guy than me, might instruct his son who is scoring a lot of goals to back it off at some point, but my attitude then, and I suppose not much has changed now, is how do you tell a seven-year-old kid not to try? I mean, in a forty-five-minute running-time house-league game, there were a total of fifteen three-minute shifts. So with three lines of skaters, that's no more than five shifts per game per player. Five shifts. Think about that. And now you're telling a kid to back it off or take it easy on some of those five shifts? I don't think so.
I know there are many Hockey Dads who just take their kids to the game and tell them nothing more than to have fun. Nothing wrong with that. Heck, I told Mike that every game he played-I still do now-because if you're not having fun when you play, hockey is way too much like work. But I'm not going to apologize for the way I am either. My dad, who had an absolutely voracious work ethic, preached to me every chance he got the value of hard work. I've tried to do the same with my kids, even when they were seven years old.
I know there were some parents who weren't too thrilled to have a player score as often as Mike did that season. But most took it for what it was, the same as I took it when little Darryl Lloyd was making a shambles of the squirt house league in Pickering. But one mother was so incensed that she phoned and complained to the league about Mike. There was some talk she was going to start a petition to get Mike kicked out of the house league, although I'm not sure where exactly he was supposed to go.
All I knew is that if it was the minor novice AA team with Liam Reddox, Steven Seedhouse and Brandon Davis, I'd have been the first one to sign that petition. Diarrhea, pfffft.
9: It's Fair to Say We're Not Morning People
FOR A HOCKEY-CRAZED FATHER AND SON, Mike and I were livin' the dream that seven-year-old house-league/select season. Mike was the captain of the select team (we didn't know then he wouldn't wear the "C" again for another twelve years). The schedule was hectic, nuts at times, and that was fine by us. There were the obligatory house-league practices on Saturday mornings and games on Sundays. There was at least one select practice and one select game each week. We were pretty much guaranteed four times on the ice each week.
The Whitby Select 7s were coached by John Velacich, who was Mike's coach for the next two seasons after select. John, whose son Jason played on the team, liked to win (that, by the way, is not a criticism), but he treated the kids well. They were having fun.
The select team played in what was known as the North York League, which basically meant all the games were played in arenas in the expansive suburb/city that runs both east and west of Yonge Street just north and south of Highway 401 across the top of Metro Toronto. But here's the kicker. In the North York League, which wasn't so much a real league as it was a clearinghouse for select-level exhibition games, you never knew when you were playing until the night before you played. Seriously.
So we'd be sitting around at home on a weekday night and the phone would ring about 9 p.m.-Mike and Shawn were long gone to bed-to find out that Mike had a game at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. the next day somewhere in North York. It was like a fire alarm going off, suddenly rushing to make arrangements to get to the game the next afternoon. All that was missing was the sliding down the pole, the siren and the flashing red lights, and we could have used the flashing lights and siren. There's no easy way to get to any arena in North York for 5 p.m. on a weekday. Toronto rush-hour traffic was horrendous.
It wasn't all smooth sailing for the McKenzie’s in that select season.
There was quite an ice-time crunch happening in Whitby at the time and there were weeks when the Select 7s' assigned practice time was from 7 to 8 a.m. on a weekday at Iroquois Park. That's not ideal on a school day, but hockey parents tend to resign themselves to their fate.
Besides, children who swim, for example, have long used early-morning workouts before school as the standard training times, so one weekday morning hockey practice now and again wasn't such a hardship, was it? Uh, yeah, it was for us.
Cindy was never fully on board with the concept from the beginning-she feared Mike would be too tired at school to do well-and I didn't necessarily disagree with her, but what choice did we have? Mike was the captain of the team; he needed to be there. So he was.
He attended the first practice and we rushed him straight from the rink to school. That wasn't so bad, was it? Uh, yeah, it was for us.
Mike came home from school for lunch and he was a mess.
Tired and cranky, he was done like dinner. He was barely functioning. He was so out of sorts he fussed big time about going back to school and once we finally got him back, which required no small effort, Cindy said we couldn't go through this routine every time there was a morning practice. We decided right then that was that, no more weekday morning practices for Mike.
Still, I felt sheepish. I explained the circumstances to John Velacich. He wasn't too thrilled, not that I expected him to be.
When these weekday morning practices were scheduled, they were the only practice for the select team that week. So if Mike the captain, refused to attend, it wouldn't be long before other players on the team might follow suit and what's the point of having a practice if only half the team is there?
John's concern was understandable. I knew we had
put him in a tough spot, but this one was for us non-negotiable.
Things were a little-or maybe even a lot-tense for a week or two. I do recall this being the dominant issue in our lives for a few days, but fortunately the weekday morning practices were not an every-week occurrence and the whole issue eventually blew over. If you have never been through the minor hockey experience, this may seem like no big deal but it's one of those issues that can snowball and cause major headaches on a team and lots of hard feelings. Somehow, we avoided it ballooning into a major problem, but that was Mike's first and last before-school practice that season.
Still, it would have been difficult for anyone to question our commitment. I'll never forget the one weekend that season when Mike was on the ice six times, including five games, on Saturday and Sunday alone. There was a house-league practice early Saturday morning and the house-league team was entered into a tournament in Bowmanville. There were two house-league tournament games on Saturday. There was the regularly scheduled house-league game in Brooklin on Sunday morning, followed by the tournament finally in Bowmanville and then a select game all the way in Toronto at North York Centennial Arena.
There was a little breathing space between the Sunday morning game in Brooklin and the midday tournament game in Bowmanville. But there was, when you take into account travel time, virtually no time between the Bowmanville game and the select game in North York. I remember taking Mike off the ice as soon as the game in Bowmanville was over, literally tossing him over my shoulder in full equipment, including skates and helmet, and putting him in the front seat of the car that way for the fifty-mile drive to North York. When we arrived there I just picked him up out of the car with his skates on, threw him over my shoulder and dropped him on the ice just in time for the select game.
When it was all over, we were driving home and Mike was completely exhausted, hair matted down with sweat, cheeks bright red but he was still smiling after being on the ice six times, including five games, over two days and he said to me: "That was a really fun weekend. I love to play hockey."