by Bob Mckenzie
Generally speaking, though, I'm not a fan of the GTHL model. Recruiting players is big business in the GTHL and before one season is even over, many of the players have already committed to playing on a different team for the next season. The old joke is that when the two best teams in the GTHL meet in the championship at the end of the year, half the players on one team are already committed to playing on the other team, and vice versa, and everyone knows it. It's like prepubescent unrestricted free agency gone wild. That said, the best players and best teams in the '86 age group were definitely in the MTHL.
Meanwhile, the minor atom AAA Wildcats were a reasonably competitive, middle-of-the-pack team in the OMHA's ETA (Eastern Triple A) league. We would usually get the same twenty-five or thirty kids trying out most years. There was no recruiting or anything like that. You'd get three or four tryouts to pick the team and that was that.
Whitby was still one of the smallest AAA centers in the province at the time and we had to play a new minor atom entry, the York-Simcoe Express, which drew on a very large region that includes Aurora, Newmarket and north all the way to Lake Simcoe. That's a big area, with a large population base, and the Express were a very good team in their first year in the league. They beat us badly in our first meeting so, as a coaching staff, we were brainstorming how we might make it closer for the coming rematch.
York Simcoe seemed so much faster than our kids. We were working hard at making our kids better skaters and puck handlers but the truth of the matter was that York Simcoe's athleticism was simply superior.
So I made a suggestion: How about we throw a little different look at them?
I'll get in big trouble with this story-from Wayne Gretzky to Bobby Orr-because what I did is considered one of the cardinal sins of coaching kids in minor hockey. So be it. I'm a big boy, I can take it.
We taught the kids to play a "system" for the next game against York Simcoe. There, I said it. Others would call it "neutralizing skill" and say it's a symbol of everything that is wrong with minor hockey.
Fair enough. All I knew is that our kids didn't have any fun getting beat by double digits the first time they played York Simcoe, I knew we were doing everything humanly possible in practice to make them better skaters and puck handlers, but I still didn't like our chances of doing it fast enough to not get blown out in the next meeting. Winning and losing is not the end all, be all-I understand that-but ask a bunch of ten-year-olds how much they enjoy getting blitzed 10-1.
We called it "The Trap," but it wasn't really the trap system employed by NHL teams that clog up the neutral zone. Our trap was a little more aggressive and worked as follows: The two forechecking wingers would go in hard and "lock off" the other team's wingers, who were waiting on the boards for the breakout pass. Our center would go in a little bit passively to forecheck the other team's defenseman with the puck and try to steer or angle him towards the boards, preferably on his backhand, as he came out from behind his own net with the puck. One of our defensemen would step up aggressively and lock off the other team's center, who was usually curling in the middle of the ice awaiting a breakout pass. Our other defenseman would stay back and assume a defensive posture at the offensive blue line. Keep in mind, this was back in the bad old days before zero tolerance on restraining fouls. If executed properly, the other team's puck carrier had no passing options at all. If he was angled towards the boards, he had nowhere to go.
The kids on our team maybe weren't quite as athletic as the York Simcoe players, but they were smart, coachable, eager and they followed instructions well. Whitby 8, York Simcoe 3.
The poor kids and the coach on the other team didn't know what hit them. York Simcoe kept turning the puck over. We kept scoring. It wasn't even close.
Now, I'm not saying there wasn't a temptation to use "The Trap" over and over again, because it initially confused the hell out of opposing players and coaches at the minor atom level.
But Stu and I both favored aggressive, two-man forechecking. Besides, it wouldn't take long for opposing coaches to figure out the easy way to beat our trap. That is, don't set up behind the net, just wheel that puck as soon as you get it and skate by the first forechecker.
But we did trot it out from time to time when we thought we were really overmatched in the talent department. We were playing Detroit Compuware, one of North America's best teams,
in the Kitchener-Waterloo tournament in November. There was no comparison between our team and theirs. They were the crème de la crème of minor hockey. It was a double-digit disaster just waiting to happen.
So we employed our version of the trap and kept it close. Compuware won 4-1. I think they outshot us 55-5, but we confused and confounded them long enough to keep it closer than it should have been. When it was over, Stu and I looked at each other on the bench. We were just drained. I shook Stu's hand and said: "Never have so many worked so hard for so long for so little." Our kids felt like they won the game, they were that happy not to have been blown out.
When the game was over one of the Compuware coaches started to give me the business about our "system" and lecturing me on how wrong it is to teach that to ten-year-olds. I let him have it right back; I didn't need a lesson in minor hockey values from this guy.
"I'll tell you what's wrong," I said to him. "Recruiting ten year-olds from all over the state of Michigan and beyond, giving them skates and sticks and free equipment and putting together a team of little superstars that wins most of their games by twelve goals, with a bunch of obnoxious A-hole parents in the stands cheering every goal like it's the first, that's what's wrong."
I would like to tell you we were perfect coaches in our first year, but when things aren't going well, it's easy to get going down the wrong road.
Late in the regular season, the Wildcats went on quite a losing streak, up around eight or nine games. With each passing game of that streak, we became more and more desperate.
In minor hockey, desperation usually means shortening the bench, playing your best players more and your weaker players less. It's an insidious thing, really. We never planned on doing it-equal ice time was going to be our foundation-but the losses piled up and suddenly the good players were getting all the power play time and some of the weaker players weren't seeing ice in the finally few minutes.
I've told you enough embarrassing and stupid things about myself that I won't be accused of trying to make myself look too good here, but I do recall phoning Stu one night and telling him we needed a coaching meeting. So we got everyone together and I basically said we were losing sight of what's important, that equitable ice time was the platform on which we ran as coaches and we were getting away from that. It wasn't right. I said I would rather lose all our remaining games than coach a team where we regularly shortened the bench.
Not surprisingly, everyone agreed. We would go back to doing it the right way, regardless of the results.
Which was not to say we would sit idly by and lose every game without pushing some buttons. Being a rookie coach, a rookie assistant coach at that, I felt I needed input from a veteran, so I called Roger Neilson, who was coaching the St. Louis Blues at the time. Roger, by the way, was one of the greatest people ever involved in the game of hockey and he's sorely missed after passing away in 2003 after a valiant battle with cancer. Typical of Roger, he was absolutely thrilled that I thought to call him and immediately began peppering me with questions about how we were losing games.
Roger, of course, was a great tactician and after pondering the data I gave him, he came up with a prescription for what he thought ailed the Wildcats-better puck support, especially on the breakout.
It was really just a little tweak to the standard controlled breakout, having the center come over to support the winger on the boards with the puck and keeping the weak side winger from flying the zone until he saw the other winger or center was safely on the way out of the zone before leaving himself.
We taught it to the kids and called it the "St. Louis Bl
ue breakout." They thought it was cool to have a breakout named for an NHL team. We rediscovered our winning ways, to a point, and though we didn't make it to the OMHAs, it was, all in all, a successful year. The kids had fun; so did we.
16: Vengeance Is a Dish Best Served Curved
IT WASN'T REALLY CHILD ABUSE. Not really, although I suppose I could see how some might see it that way.
I have already told you Mike was a good kid, a good player but, at times, a little on the volatile side. Gee, I wonder where he got that?
It was Mike's major atom AAA (eleven-year-old) season and we were in Kitchener for a tournament. We were down to our last round-robin game on a Saturday afternoon and were playing the Detroit Little Caesars, who were being coached by Viktor Fedorov, father of then-Red Wing Sergei Fedorov. All the Wildcats needed was a tie to advance, but midway through the game we were down 2-0 and our prospects looked a little bleak.
Stu Seedhouse was, of course, still the head coach, but I was responsible for changing the forward lines. Mike had just completed a shift where things hadn't gone particularly well for his line. He came off the ice in what I would call a "mild to moderate" state of agitation.
"Relax, Mike," I said to him cheerily, sensing he needed to be calmed down. "You're not playing bad, the team isn't playing bad, there's lots of time left, just relax and we'll be fine."
It was not only textbook coaching, it was textbook parenting. Potentially volatile situation; take the emotion out of it; everybody take a deep breath and relax. I was kind of proud of myself because I'm not usually that calm, cool and collected.
But Mike didn't feel like relaxing, apparently. He turned and looked at me through those big glasses of his and more or less snarled a few words, waved his arms in my direction and suggested he didn't need to relax and I didn't need to remind him to relax. He started getting bent out of shape.
It was on. What follows, it goes without saying, was not textbook coaching or parenting.
Mike had his back to me, I put my hand on his shoulder and, much more forcefully and emphatically, told him to not talk back, keep his mouth shut and don't get excited. Well, Mike didn't like that too much. He twisted his shoulder to get my hand off him, started talking a lot of emotional nonsense and kicking one of his skates against the boards. He was having quite a little tantrum, he was on the way to out of control and my fuse was lit, too.
I hopped off the bench and stood just behind it. I reached around to the front of Mike, grabbed two fistfuls of his hockey sweater right in the middle of his chest and picked him up off the ground, feet up and over the bench, and deposited him in front of me as I pivoted to put my back to the game.
Mike continued to squirm and fuss a bit as he stood there so I tightened my grip on his sweater with both hands and pulled him in really close so my face was right up against his cage. I was trying to use eye contact to snap him out of wherever he was and I really blasted him, telling him only one thing-"Settle down!"
As quickly as it got heated, it suddenly cooled. Just like that, the two of us were there, face to face and not saying a word to each other. I realized that whatever had possessed him to lose his cool, and mine as well, had passed. Recognizing we needed a quick reconciliation-there was still lots of hockey to be played-I very calmly explained to Mike I wasn't mad at him, that he had been playing fine and I only wanted him to focus on playing the game, that we were down two goals and we needed him to be at his best if we were going to get a tie and move on.
All of this transpired in less than one minute-it started and ended in a flash-while the game was still going on. I patted him on the back, he took his place on the bench and was ready to go again. It was almost as if it had never happened. As I jumped back up on the bench, though, I started to worry who in the stands might have seen me pick up Mike by his sweater and get into his face.
I sidled up to Stu on the bench, folded my arms across my chest to look really casual and relaxed, I tilted my head in Stu's direction while I watched the game and said, "Stu, uh, could you do me a, uh, little favor? Just have a look up in the stands and tell me if Cindy is staring at me right now?"
"Nope," Stu said. "She's watching the game."
Whew. Close call. Cindy hadn't seen what happened with me and Mike and that was just as well.
No coach should ever, and I mean ever, lay hands on one of his players. It's just not acceptable. But in that instance, for that moment, I wasn't Mike's coach as much as I was his father. Some will say it shouldn't matter; it was unacceptable in any case, or that's a good reason for parents not ever coaching their kids.
Fair enough, but I did what I felt needed to be done at the time and the moment passed and we all lived happily ever after.
After that, though, Stu and I agreed in the future he would handle all "situations" with Mike and I would do the same with his son Steven because there was no question the father-son dynamic complicated things that day.
Now, here's the kicker to the story.
After he got refocused, Mike assisted on one goal and scored the tying goal himself. The game finished 2-2; we advanced, knocking out the Little Caesars.
Perhaps there was something in the air in that Kitchener arena that day because in the lobby right after that game, a couple of parents from the Little Caesars' team tried to physically accost their coach, Viktor Fedorov. It was quite a nasty scene.
"Wow," I said to one of the other Detroit parents in the lobby after the melee, "that's crazy. Why did they go after the coach, their kids not get enough ice time?"
"No," the Detroit parent responded, "those were the parents of the good players who thought he [Fedorov] didn't shorten the bench enough to win the game. They were mad because he played everyone, we tied and we're not moving on." Go figure. Another day in the paradise we call minor hockey.
The finally word on this episode, though, goes to Mike himself, who even today still likes to needle me: "Hey, Dad, remember that time you physically abused me in major atom?"
To which I say, "Yes, Mike, I do remember."
And, without fail, with a big grin, he replies: "Thanks, Dad, I needed that."
Again, I find myself having to make sure you don't think one snapshot of a Mike-Bob "snap show" was in any way indicative of the whole major atom AAA season, because it wasn't. It was a great year. The kids, the coaching staff and the parents had a great time. The team was reasonably competitive most nights and, from a personal perspective, Mike was scoring a lot of goals, racking up points and playing quite well. As coaches, we put a lot into it and I believe the kids got a lot out of it, too. The funny or memorable moments are too numerous to recount but there are two stories that have to be told.
Whitby was playing Quinte at Iroquois Park. It was a great game, really intense. We scored the go-ahead goal with less than a minute left, but a talented and somewhat theatrical Quinte defenseman answered back with the tying goal just seconds later. He celebrated it by skating to the center ice dot, turning towards our parents in the stands and bowing to them. Well, that got everyone all worked up, on and off the ice.
With four seconds left we had a face-off in the Quinte end and Stu called time out, pulled the goalie for an extra attacker and drew up a play for the kids to try to get the winner. But when he finished explaining the play to the kids-and this is just one reason why Stu is a very good coach-he told the players in no uncertain terms that he did not want any shenanigans, whether we scored or not. He instructed every player on the bench to stay there when the game ended. Anyway, long story short, we scored a miraculous buzzer-beater goal right off the face-off, just as time was expiring, to win the game. While the kids on the ice were celebrating like crazy, Stu and I were making sure to hold our bench.
The next thing you know-and this image is indelibly burned into all of our minds-we see our trainer Kevin O'Brien, in his blue and gold Whitby track suit, running full speed off the bench and onto the ice towards the on-ice celebration.
He dropped down onto both knees a
s he passed the Quinte bench-sliding, hootin' and hollerin'-all the while waving his white trainer's towel over his head in a circular motion. Stu and I looked at each other and completely cracked up. The kids on the bench were laughing so hard at "Mr. O'Brien"
that they were almost crying, especially since he had lectured the kids before the game on "good sportsmanship."
I guess there was one "big kid" Stu forgot to talk to about staying on the bench.
The other story that has to be told from the same season is the one that inspired this book and the whole notion of Crazy Hockey Dad.
We had been knocked out of the OMHA playoffs and had dropped down to the ETA (Eastern Triple A) playoffs, or "ringette round," as we called it. It was the finally game of a series with Barrie in venerable Dunlop Arena and we were losing 5-2 with about five minutes to go.
"Hey, Stu," I suggested, "why don't you let me call a stick measurement to see if we can't score a power play goal to try to light a little fire here?"
Stu thought about it and although the look on his face was one of reluctance, he said, "Go for it."
In one of the previous games against Barrie, I had been looking at their kids' sticks in the rack between the benches and noticed about half of their team was using wildly illegal curves.
I had one of our players, an alternate captain, Kenny Henry, ask the referee for a stick measurement on a Barrie player. The referee looked at poor Kenny like he was nuts and then shot me a dirty look on the bench. You could tell he was really ticked a coach was calling a stick measurement in major atom.
He asked Kenny, "What kind of measurement do you want?"
This ref was playing it by the book, because when you request a stick measurement, apparently you have to specify if it's for the curve or the length or whatever. Kenny guessed "curve" and the ref was obliged to do the measurement.