by Bob Mckenzie
On the coaching front, my friend Mark Rowland had decided to go back into retirement. Stu Seedhouse returned as an assistant, so the Three Amigos-Kevin, Stu and I-were back together once again. Steve Hedington stayed on to help us. We added Bob Anderson, whose son Matt was our captain, as another assistant coach. (Bob, by the way, is the brother of Atlanta Thrashers' head coach John Anderson.) Our goalie coach, Bucky Crouch, was on board from the get-go. Ron Balcom was back as the manager. We had a bigger staff than the University of Michigan football team.
We had some key additions on the ice, too. I neglected to mention another factor in our struggles in minor peewee: one of the best offensive players in Whitby, Zack Greer, had decided to take a break to play AA for a year. Zack's first love was lacrosse and why not? He and Peterborough's Shawn Evans were the two best lacrosse players for their age in Canada. Zack went on to get a scholarship to play field lacrosse at Duke University-yes, that Duke University lacrosse team (but don't even get me started on how unfairly those poor kids were treated)-and all Zack did in his four years there was to establish myriad NCAA scoring records. A superb athlete, Zack was a bit of a heavy-footed skater but had a heavier shot and could really put the puck in the net. It was huge to get him back on the team.
We also had a new goalie, Blake Cross, who jumped up from the Whitby A level. He stepped in and immediately provided some top-notch netminding and Kyle Clancy returned to be on top of his game, too.
Mike was also slowly but surely making his way back. For all that he went through in minor peewee, Mike was still one of our top scorers that year. His skating still required major work, but he was at least showing signs of being on the right track. So was the whole team.
Getting into the Quebec tourney isn't easy. It's the crème de la crème of minor hockey events, the trip of a lifetime for any kid who plays the game.
I played in the 1969 Quebec Peewee tournament when I played for Bob Park's Scarborough Lions. Our team normally wouldn't have been considered good enough to go, but Bob Park coached the team that won the very first Quebec Peewee tourney in 1959, with his future Hall of Fame son Brad and Syl Apps, Jr. on the roster. He had an open invitation to go back and he took our team.
The Peewee tournament isn't just a hockey event for the kids. It's a life experience. It's as much about the team train ride there, being billeted with French-Canadian families, trying to make time with teenage girls from Quebec and playing in front of 14,000 fans at Le Colisée, the building that Jean Beliveau made famous in his days with the Quebec Aces, as it is playing hockey.
I knew I could use my connections in the hockey world to open some doors to get us considered for Quebec, but I also knew they weren't about to accept a crap team because it was coached by the Hockey Insider. And if only one team from our OMHA ETA league was going to go to Quebec, it was going to be the defending champions from Richmond Hill, who were head and shoulders better than everyone.
I talked to Patrick Dom, who runs the Quebec Peewee tourney, explained the situation (bad team last year) and the lofty goal (get invited to Quebec this year). He had me fill out an application, made no promises and suggested the team better start winning some hockey games for us to have any chance.
We did exactly that. In our first tournament of the year, we went to the finallys and lost a close game to a very good Brantford team from another league. Brantford which was an automatic to go to Quebec. That sent a strong early message-we could play with the high-end teams.
What a difference a year made. The kids were really dedicated to an off-ice program of plyometrics. We got extra ice time to continue working on their skating. They still weren't what you would call a high-speed or high-skill team, but they were smart, coachable and becoming a hard team to play against.
When we played Bill Carroll's high flyers from Ajax-Pickering, we would make like Ken Hitchcock's Dallas Stars, take away the middle of the ice and put the game on the boards, where we made teams fight for every inch of ice. Our kids backchecked ferociously; they were always trying to get themselves on the right side of the puck when we didn't have it. It was beautiful in its own ugly way. Most highly skilled teams simply didn't have the appetite to play that type of hard game, not for three periods. I think I even won the Rum Cup with Bobby Lalonde that season.
We got off to quite a good start in league play. Our record was comparable to the other ETA teams-besides Richmond Hill-that also had aspirations to go to Quebec.
In early November, I got a call from Patrick Dom telling me there was a spot for Whitby in the Quebec tourney. I was shocked. I asked him which other team from our league was going and he told me there wasn't any other team. To this day, I think he was just testing me, but for Richmond Hill to not be the one team going from the ETA was a travesty and I told him so.
"Bob," he said to me, "you realize you are turning down an invitation to the Quebec Peewee tourney? You realize no one does that?"
Tempting as it may have been, it was an easy call. Richmond Hill was head and shoulders better than any other team in our league. I wanted to go to Quebec but not that badly.
Not long after that, Patrick Dom called me back and told me Richmond Hill had been accepted into the tournament and that if we still wanted to go, they would take a second team from the ETA. Before accepting that, though, I asked him if I said no, what team would go in our place? St. Catharines (SCTA), he said.
As fate would have it, we were playing St. Catharines that weekend in a tourney in Peterborough, so I told Patrick: "Tell you what, if St. Catharines beats us on the weekend, give them the spot; if we beat them, we're coming."
I thought that was fair. If the Wildcats went to Quebec, there had to be some legitimacy. That said, our kids went into that St. Catharines game knowing a trip to Quebec was on the line; the St. Catharines' players had no clue. We hammered them, beat them by five or six, and they started gooning it up, so I didn't feel the least bit bad about taking that spot in Quebec.
Getting the team ready to go to Quebec, on and off the ice, became a full-time job for me. Crazy Hockey Coach was spending hours-seriously, hours-every day on preparations-sorting out the train travel, van transportation once we got there, hotels, billet lists, getting third jerseys made up, commemorative patches, right down to what kind of hats the kids would be wearing there, to say nothing of setting up practice and exhibition games once we got there. This will come as a surprise to those who know me (not!), but I can be a bit of a control freak at times.
But that was only because I wanted to make sure it was done properly. Too many teams go to the Quebec tournament and make it just about the hockey. They don't take a train or they don't billet their kids with families or they pack up and leave as soon as they're eliminated. I desperately wanted this to be a total life experience for our kids and their families, not just another hockey tournament.
And it was. The train ride there was the party of all parties as we had our own railway car. The kids were having fun but maybe not as much fun as the parents.
As for the hockey itself, our first game at Le Colisée is one the kids and parents will remember forever. There were at least 12,000 in the stands. We were playing a team from Fredericton, N.B. I had told our two goalies they would split the game down the middle. That's not the norm, but if we lost this game, it would be our only game in Le Colisée and I thought both kids deserved a chance to play in the big building in front of the big crowd.
Our kids were unbelievably nervous and I dare say the coaches were a little uptight, too. The kids were getting dressed and it was a far quieter dressing room than ever before. I noticed one of the players, Stephen Foston, was sniffing and rubbing his eyes as he got dressed. If I didn't know better, I would have thought he was crying. And he was.
"Stephen, what's the matter," I said. "Nothing," he sniffed.
"Well, something has to be wrong, you're crying," I said. "I'm fine," he said, wiping away tears.
One of the other kids said to me: "He's upset because
he lost his Quebec Peewee tournament ring."
Prior to the game, a lot of the kids had gone out and bought souvenirs and some of them splurged for pretty nice commemorative rings. Stephen had apparently lost his and now he was upset.
"Stephen," I said. "Stop crying right now. We will find your ring. If we don't find your ring, I promise you I will buy you another %$#&*!% ring as soon as this game is over. I will buy you five %$#&*!% rings. Stop %$#&*!% crying right now because we're all so %$#&*!% nervous right now that if you don't stop crying, we're all going to start crying."
That broke the ice. Repeatedly swearing in front of thirteen- year-olds isn't standard protocol but it can be an icebreaker. Steven cracked a smile, the other kids started laughing uproariously and we were a little more relaxed after that.
We won the game, which was great because it would guarantee at least one more game in Le Colisée, which was very cool for the kids. Our next game was against a hometown team from Quebec so the place would be packed and we would be decided underdogs, but the winner of that game was going to face a Russian team next.
We lost that game 4-1 to the Quebec team-which eliminated us from the tournament-but the notable story, for the purposes of this book, happened before the game. As I said, we had these really nice third sweaters made up just for Quebec, like the St. Louis Blues' dark blue sweater but with our Wildcat logo. We wore them in the first game; the kids loved them.
Prior to our second game at Le Colisée, we had to determine who would wear what color sweater and the Quebec team also had third jerseys and theirs were black. One team would have to wear their regular white uniforms and neither wanted to do that. So the tourney organizers said there would be a coin flip to settle this highly contentious issue.
The tournament official tossed the coin. The other coaches, there were two of them, called it heads. Sure enough, it came up heads, but before the coin had landed on the ground, it hit the top of my shoe. The two Quebec coaches were high-fiving each other after winning the coin toss and I'm saying, "No %$#&*!% way, bad toss, interference, do it over again." The tourney official shook his head and I'm saying, "Screw that, we have to do it over." No chance. So while these two imbeciles from the Quebec team were celebrating a victory in the coin toss of all things, the other imbecile-that would be me-was storming out there with a torrent of "%$#&*!% bullshit toss, interference."
I don't imagine those two guys who coached that Quebec team get TSN in Quebec City, but if they do, I've often thought if they ever turned on the TV after the fact and saw me, they would say: "Voilà le maudit fou qui nous a fait perdre le pile ou face."
Rough translation: "There's that crazy bastard who called interference on the coin toss."
Yup, that would be me…but you have to admit, it was a B.S. toss.
The Quebec Peewee experience was everything we thought it would be, and then some. The hockey was terrific, but as I fully expected, it was just one aspect of it. If you ask any of the kids or parents now, they're likely to tell you the most memorable and enjoyable day was spent at the giant Snow Parc just outside Quebec City, which is like a full-fledged ski resort but with rubber tubes. It was an all-day venture and if any team goes to the Peewee tournament and doesn't get to the Snow Parc, well, shame on them. Between that excursion and just walking around the walled old town in Quebec City at night is something none of us will ever forget.
But Phase Two of our Dream Season still awaited us. We had accomplished our goal of getting to Quebec but now the focus was on making it to the OMHA tournament. And it was going to be a quick turnaround.
Our train from Quebec pulled into Oshawa on a Friday night at midnight. We were physically and emotionally drained, but our first game of the playoffs, against the first-place Quinte Red Devils, was the next day at twelve noon in Belleville's Yardman Arena, home of the OHL's Belleville Bulls.
It was ridiculous scheduling and we weren't happy about it, but it was the price to be paid for Quebec. C'est la vie.
Somehow, we won that first game in overtime. It was a terrific back-and-forth series that ended up going to a fifth-and-deciding game in Quinte's barn. The game went into overtime and Zack Greer buried the game winner to send us on to the next round.
Next up was the York-Simcoe Express. It was an intense series that, at times, looked like it might get out of hand.
We had played, and won, in Aurora and after the game was over, one of their parents, incensed about something that happened during the game, tried to get into our dressing room.
Bob Anderson, who is as thick and as strong as they come, intercepted this idiot. This guy foolishly decided he was going to mix it up with Bob. Not a smart thing to do. A bunch of us got in to break it up before any real damage was done. When I got home that night, I called the Whitby AAA convener, Larry Dancey, and told him of the trouble in Aurora that day and how he might want to arrange for a little extra security for the next game at Iroquois Park. Sure enough, Larry attended the next game to keep a lid on things. We lost that game. It was an emotional finish. I was standing outside our dressing room unwinding and as the spectators were leaving the stands on the other side of the rink, one of their fans started heckling me.
The guy was really giving it to me; stuff about the team, about losing, about me being on TSN, stuff about my kid. Not nice stuff, although it wasn't anything I hadn't heard before on countless occasions. I ignored it for awhile but he was relentless. Finally, I'd had enough and I yelled across to him, "If you want to talk to me so bad, come on over here."
He yelled back: "Why don't you come over here?"
I was off like a shot. Just as I got around to the other side, in the stands, with me going towards this loudmouth and him coming towards me, I was intercepted by none other than Larry Dancey.
"Geez, Bob," the AAA convener said to me as he put his hands on my shoulders, "I knew you thought we needed extra security for the game; I didn't think it was for you."
Larry's stab at humor made me laugh a little and I saw the foolishness of it all. I just turned around and walked back to the dressing room.
Like the Quinte series before it, this one with York-Simcoe was going the distance, to a fifth and deciding game, but because of the way points were awarded, York-Simcoe could win the series with an overtime tie and we had to win the game outright to get it to a sixth game. We were on home ice and, sure enough, the game went into overtime. With a minute left, Zack Greer had a wonderful chance to end it, but he was foiled by their goalie. Time expired. The game and the series were over, and our dream of getting to the OMHA tournament was dead, too.
We had come so close, but when one took into account where this group started at the beginning of the minor peewee season and where they were at when the major peewee season ended, it was an incredibly gratifying experience.
It was the best year of my life in minor hockey.
22: Rejected: The Parents Always Take It Harder Than the Kid
THE TIMING WAS NOTHING if not impeccable.
No sooner was I done as Mike's coach than my services were desperately required elsewhere-with Shawn.
That was always the plan anyway. I knew once I finished coaching Mike I would turn my attention fully to Shawn for as many years as I could. And let's just say the light was never greener.
It seems young Shawn was a man without a team.
Shawn experienced what a lot of kids go through in minor hockey-he got cut. There was not going to be a spot for him on the major atom AA Wildcats for the 2000-01 season.
This was a whole new experience for the McKenzie family. In all the time Mike played hockey-right into junior and college-he was never once cut from a team, unless you count his diarrhea-induced, underage minor novice AA tryout absence when he was seven years old, or not making the Ontario Under-17 team (which was never a realistic possibility to begin with).
And because Shawn had chosen not to even try out for the AAA team in novice or minor atom, this was his first time experiencing legitimate r
ejection.
If Shawn was upset, he did a good job of hiding it. Don't get me wrong, he was a little disappointed. You could see and sense that on the way home in the car the night he was cut.
No one likes to be told they're not good enough. No one likes to be told, "You're no longer on the team." And when your friends you've played with for a few years are still there, it can be a little tough.
But I was probably more upset and disappointed than he was.
Which, as a rule, is pretty much par for the course. Parents almost always take getting cut much harder than their kids.
I will grant you there are times when a kid is legitimately devastated. These extreme cases usually involve a player who has played on the same team for many, many years, forged incredibly tight friendships and then-usually in one of the older age groups, bantam or midget-gets the unkindest cut of all. That can certainly seem like the end of the world to a teenager because it's not just about hockey; it's about social standing and being part of a peer group.
But most kids, especially in the younger age groups, are incredibly resilient. They bounce back and bounce back quickly, a lot faster than Mommy and Daddy.
The truth was that as much as I may have been piqued the night Shawn was cut, I was hardly surprised. You could see it coming.
As I told you earlier, Shawn was a good little AA player from the time he started playing at that level in minor novice. But as he progressed into major novice and then minor atom, he certainly wasn't getting better. He started to go longer stretches without scoring goals or getting points and while he was never a liability and never looked out of place, he wasn't always accomplishing a whole lot either. If I were the coach of the team, I might have cut him, too, figuring it's sometimes better to take a chance on a lesser-known new player who might have a bigger upside than to take the middling same-old, same-old with a kid like Shawn.