Hockey Dad

by Bob Mckenzie

  "Those men were mouthing off at me."

  "What did they say?"

  "Oh, the normal stuff, stuff about you, TSN, me. They were swearing at me."

  "What did you say?"

  "Nothing, at first, but then I said something."

  "Is that why the one dad went nuts?"

  "Yup."

  "What did you say to him to make him go crazy?"

  "I told him to go fuck himself."

  Pause.

  "Good boy."

  And with that, Shawn and I bid adieu to A-level hockey.

  24: Teach Your Children Well On the "Balance" Beam

  I MUST HAVE LOST MY MIND; there is no other explanation for this rare moment of clarity and common sense. It was fairly early into Mike's minor bantam AAA season and I was watching him and the Wildcats get destroyed by their hated rivals from Oshawa. This game wasn't pretty. The finally score was 10-2 or something along those lines. On this night, the Wildcats looked soft and slow-not unlike that dreadful minor peewee season-and the Oshawa '86s were, individually speaking, quite a handful.

  As a side note, I was always amazed this group of Oshawa kids didn't accomplish more as a team-they were hard-pressed to win a few playoff series over eight years, never mind a championship-because they were loaded with individual talent. No fewer than five kids from that Oshawa team went on to be front-line players in the OHL-Adam Berti, who was a second-round pick of the Chicago Blackhawks, and Michael Haley (both of whom had played lacrosse with Mike from the time they were six), as well as Mike MacLean, Andrew Gibbons and Derrick Bagshaw. Three of them (Berti, Haley and MacLean) went on to play pro; Gibbons and Bagshaw went to Canadian university hockey after graduating from the OHL. When this group was "on," they could dominate and this was one of those nights.

  Mike's game had, for the most part, improved markedly from that horrible minor peewee year, but there were still some nights when it was back to the bad old ways for him and his teammates. This was definitely one of them.

  I don't want to say it was a revelation, but it did kind of hit me like a ton of bricks as I sat in that cold, damp, poorly lit North Oshawa Arena late on a weekday night-we were wasting our time here.

  Come again?

  You heard me.

  I wouldn't go so far as to say it was like a brilliant stream of light coming into the building with a deep voice resonating from above, saying: "You're wasting your time here." But whatever it was, it had that kind of impact on me.

  I started thinking about how much time, effort and money we had, as a family, committed to this minor hockey experience. Then I looked out onto the ice to see my kid and his team feebly trying to keep up. What was the point? Where was it leading? Was I nuts? I answered my own questions: There wasn't one; nowhere; yes, definitely.

  Of course there were some outside forces at work here, too. Cindy, bless her rational heart, had always maintained we needed more balance in our lives. I'd ignored that message long enough, but there was some stuff happening on the school front for Mike that was quite disconcerting, even for myopic me.

  Mike had always been a very good student. School was never an issue. His marks were excellent, his conduct exemplary. But now he was in his first year of high school at Father Leo J. Austin Catholic Secondary School and it wasn't going particularly well. This was a tough time for secondary school education in Ontario. Then-premier Mike Harris had pledged to revamp the educational system and Mike's year was the second to experience what was referred to as the "new curriculum." Basically, school got a lot harder. The workload was much heavier; the course content much more difficult and demanding, especially in mathematics (which, by the way, is Kryptonite to all the McKenzie boys, starting with me). Compounding the problem was that the teachers and their union were basically at war with the premier and the government. So at the time Mike was entering high school, his teachers were on a work-to-rule campaign with no after-school activities at all. There was also a huge overcrowding issue; there were more than 2,200 students at Austin, and a fleet of portables.

  Mike got his midterm marks and we were thunderstruck to learn he had a forty-two in math. The other marks were much better, but not what we were used to. It was also plain to see that Mike wasn't really enjoying his first year of high school in any way, which was painful for us because he'd always loved everything about going to school, from the classes to the social and athletic aspects of it.

  Cindy and I went to the parent-teacher meetings in the gym-which were more like a cattle call because of the overcrowding issue-with line after line of parents waiting to talk to their kids' teachers for no more than three or four minutes at a time before moving on to the next line. Our focus was obviously on seeing the math teacher and the exchange went something like this:

  "Our son is Mike McKenzie and he has forty-two in math."

  "Yes," the teacher said, looking down at her book of grades.

  "That's correct."

  "Well, that's not so good, so what do you think we can do about that?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Why don't you ask Mike Harris?"

  I bit my tongue. Hard.

  "Let's not bring politics into this. The issue is my son and what we're going to do about this mark of forty-two."

  "I don't know," she said. "I didn't finish teaching the whole curriculum last year because I stopped to help the kids who were struggling with the concepts. Because I spent that time going back over the material to make sure they understood it, I wasn't able to finish teaching them everything I was supposed to. I got in trouble for that. I'm not going to do it again."

  "So you're just going to forge ahead with the course and if kids don't understand the material, too bad, they get left behind and that's their problem?"

  "Yes," she said.

  Cindy and I were livid. Partisan politics aside, Mike was clearly caught in the crossfire between the teachers and the provincial government. He was basically on his own; that was this teacher's message.

  This was unacceptable to us so we charted an immediate course of action. One, he would get what extra help was available from his math teacher (two mornings a week, twenty minutes at a time, before school started). Two, we would get him math tutoring from one of the many independent companies that had sprung up all over the place because of the obvious need. Three, we would start exploring the idea of enrolling Mike in a private school for Grade 10. We weren't going through this experience again.

  So that was my mental state at the time-temporary insanity perhaps?-and all of these thoughts were bouncing around that night in North Oshawa Arena, when the substandard performance of Mike and his team made me see the light. On the way home, I broached the subject with Mike, told him that as much as we all loved hockey perhaps the time had come to broaden our horizons a little. I ran the idea of going to a private school by him and, surprisingly, he didn't reject it. He was intrigued. I was selling him on the fact that maybe it was time to get involved in more sports-play some football, run cross-country-and get an education that would really prepare him to be successful in whatever he chose to do with his life.

  We are not the boarding school type of people-our attitude is the longer you can keep your kids under your roof, the better-so our options were fairly limited because of geography. We homed in on Trinity College School in Port Hope, a very fine private co-ed school with a population of about five hundred, including a couple of hundred day students who were bused in from surrounding areas. Port Hope is about twenty-five miles due east from Whitby, or a thirty-minute drive right along the 401. If he were to go there, Mike could catch a bus at the Whitby commuter train (GO) station each morning at 7:15 and it would drop him back there after the day's activities, including the many extracurriculars, around 5 or 6 p.m. It wasn't cheap-in the $15,000 to $20,000 range for a year-but we thought it was a good investment in his future.

  There was a wide variety of extracurriculars and students were not just encouraged but obliged to participate in them. I checked out
the TCS hockey team-they had their own rink and while the school was top-notch, there was no question the hockey was going to be a major step down from AAA for Mike. This was something of a concern for me. Sports are a big part

  of TCS life, but in a school with about only 250 boys, many of whom hail from foreign countries, it goes without saying their football and hockey teams, among others, didn't always stack up well in the wins and losses against all-boys' schools with powerhouse athletic programs such as Upper Canada College, St. Andrew's and St. Michael's College.

  But if hockey and athletic results were the focal point of this exercise, we would just keep playing AAA, so the three of us-Mike, Cindy and I-decided this was the way to go, that education and a well-rounded experience were paramount. Mike was going to go to TCS for Grade 10, but he did have one request or condition-he wanted to finish his Whitby minor hockey career the next year in major bantam.

  It was a reasonable request. He had played AAA hockey in Whitby every year from minor novice all the way up to minor bantam. There was just one more year to complete the eight-year cycle and he wanted to finish it with the four remaining kids he started it with-Kyle O'Brien, Kyle Clancy, Steven Seedhouse and Matt Snowden.

  I talked to TCS headmaster Rodger Wright-brother of former Canadian Football League commissioner Tom Wright and one of the more impressive people I've ever met-about Mike's desire to finish this chapter of his life before he wholly committed to the TCS experience. Rodger was great, he said that Mike's AAA hockey would, for that one year, count as an extracurricular activity and so long as Mike made an effort to do what other extra activities he could, an exception could be made.

  So that settled it. Mike would go to Trinity College the following school year; he would finish his major bantam season playing AAA hockey in Whitby and he would embark on a new journey with an emphasis on education and becoming a more multidimensional person than his father ever was.

  Though I have to tell you, Dad was feeling pretty good about finally seeing the light and realizing there's more to life than hockey. What is it Cindy called it? Oh, yes, balance. Yes, that's it. Balance.

  Well, that was the plan anyway.

  25: The Draft Year: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

  "SCOUTS?"

  It's just a one-word line from a movie, but if you're an aficionado of Slap Shot, you instantly get the picture. The thuggish Charlestown Chiefs have seen the light and decide to stop gooning it up to play real hockey-until team owner Joe McGrath barges into the dressing room and says: "You're blowin' it, boys! Every scout in the NHL is out there tonight with contracts in their pocket, and they're lookin' for talent, for winners!… They come here tonight-to scout the Chiefs! The toughest team in the Federal League! Not this bunch of…pussies!"

  To which playing-coach Reg Dunlop (Paul Newman) raises an eyebrow and says: "Scouts?"

  The next scene, of course, shows absolute mayhem on the ice as the Chiefs immediately revert to their old goony ways.

  It's a classic illustration of how good intentions, honourable as they may be, just sometimes aren't meant to be, especially where hockey is concerned.

  And so it was for the McKenzies in Mike's major bantam AAA season of 2001-02. It was supposed to be Mike's farewell season to high-level competitive hockey. Our newfound emphasis with Mike was going to be on education, Trinity College School in Port Hope, where it was time to start focusing on balance (football, cross-country, volleyball, culture, academics, personal growth) as opposed to living the one-dimensional minor hockey life.

  Well, it was a nice thought while it lasted.

  Actually, we didn't entirely abandon that quest. Mike was, in fact, enrolled at TCS for Grade 10. Education had become a higher priority for us. He would dutifully get up each day just after 6 a.m. and be on the bus to Port Hope by 7:15. That wasn't always easy either, especially if he had a weeknight game in Barrie at 9 p.m. and wouldn't get home until well after midnight. Mike found the academics to be much more challenging-they even had classes Saturday morning to make up for time lost playing sports on Wednesday afternoon. He made many great friends there, loved the teachers and was thriving in spite of the heavier workload and extra travel time.

  The fly in the ointment was that the aliens had returned with the real Mike McKenzie who they took away when he was twelve years old.

  I'm not saying Mike was an elite-level player as a fifteen-year-old, because he wasn't. But "old Mike" was back in a big way, with confidence and performance I hadn't seen since major atom. Still not the greatest skater in the world, he was competing consistently hard, showing no fear or hesitation, getting physically involved at every turn. He was putting up great numbers-I recall two games where he scored five goals in each game and he finished the season with close to fifty-and his feet never stopped moving. His work ethic was off the scale. While he had sort of settled in as an average to slightly below-average skater, all the other parts of his games were back at a high level.

  Hockey people will tell you there comes a time in some players' lives where they just wake up one day and "get it," which is a euphemism for the player figuring out what it actually takes to play the game and play it well (feet always moving, competing hard every shift, winning more battles than they lose and just coming up with a consistency of effort that maximizes whatever talent they possess).

  Mike, for reasons I still can't comprehend, "got it" in major bantam. Like many kids at that age, he started to attract interest from Ontario Hockey League teams and scouts.

  What's now known as the minor midget AAA year (Mike's major bantam season) is unquestionably the most bizarre year of minor hockey because there's a whole new dynamic at work-the foreboding presence of the next level. The entire focus, unfortunately, changes for everyone-coaches, players and parents-because there are scouts and general managers and agents to deal with.

  It changes everything. It shouldn't, but it does.

  Sadly, the value system I've always maintained should exist in minor hockey (have fun; teach values; improve individual skating and skills; teach team concepts, strategies and tactics) goes out the window when the kids are fifteen years old and draft eligible for major junior hockey.

  On Mike's team, we were fortunate to have a level-headed coaching staff. My pal Bucky Crouch, who was the goalie coach when I was Mike's peewee coach, was in his second year as the head coach of the Wildcats and he had experience with kids of this age. Mike's cousin Mat was on the AAA team and Cindy's brother John (Mat's dad) was an assistant coach with Bucky. Having been a star OHLer and pro player himself, John had been through all of this; he knew what it was all about.

  And it's not like the Wildcats had a lot of hot commodities for the draft. Mike was probably considered the team's top OHL prospect and he was predicted to be a fifth- to- eighth-round candidate, strictly middle of the pack (he ended up being chosen 125th overall, in the seventh round, to the Saginaw Spirit).

  But even on a lower-level team like Whitby, "draft fever" occasionally made an appearance.

  The big mistake coaches and parents inevitably make in the draft year is to repeatedly use the S word, thinking it's a catalyst to great performance, when, in fact, it's quite the opposite.

  "Scouts."

  It should never even be uttered in the presence of a fifteen-year-old player. I believe it is the cardinal sin to do so. If coaches and parents would just realize the impetus for a fifteen-year-old to play hockey, and play it well, should never be to do it for the scouts, the world would be a much happier place.

  Yet most minor hockey coaches say it without even thinking.

  "Lotsa scouts in the building tonight, boys," the coach will inevitably tell the lads in the pregame speech, thinking he's motivating them or pushing their buttons and the result will be a big win. Oh, he's pushing the kids' buttons all right, but not the ones that should be pushed.

  If a player is playing to impress the scouts, that player first has to think what it is that will impress a scout. The
first response from the kid, or his parents, is usually "score a lot of goals," which means that player is thinking that is the measure of success. He is not thinking about doing all the small things necessary to not only score a goal, but help his team win the game. Which is too bad because scouts, while statistics certainly aren't ignored, often do look for the little things and intangibles that make up a hockey player. But players, and their parents, often don't understand that. They think it's all about goals and, not surprisingly, this leads to unprecedented levels of selfishness.

  Hockey is a team game. It is supposed to be seventeen players (two goalies and fifteen skaters) dedicated to a common cause, doing whatever it takes for the team to do its best.

  Playing for scouts is simply playing the game for all the wrong reasons. If the players play for each other first, the scouts will go home happy and satisfied. Trust me on that, because ultimately that's what they're looking for. And if the coaches of minor hockey teams would only realize that, they and their players would be so much better off.

  Yet the competition and jealousies within a team-and this involves mostly players and parents-can rip it apart.

  If some players on the team get letters from the OHL clubs saying they're interested in them, the ones who don't get them feel slighted and out of sorts. When the mid-season OHL draft list-you have to be on the list to be drafted and it ranks players according to AA, A, B and C levels-inevitably makes its way into the public domain, imagine the furor when Johnny is on the list but Billy isn't; or Steve is a AA prospect and Bobby is a mere B; wait until Peter shows up at the rink with an agent and the other players and parents think if Peter has an agent, surely we need one, too.

  Forget Slap Shot; this can be, in its most extreme form, the minor hockey equivalent of an X-rated flick, a depraved orgy of immoral excess and self-satisfaction.

  The culmination of all of this, of course, is the OHL draft each May. I don't have any problem with the draft itself, or how the OHL does its business. It is a wholly necessary function to equitably distribute or assign players' playing rights to allow for the league to exist with a reasonably competitive playing field. My problem is how, for better or worse, kids and their parents perceive the draft as if it defines a kid at age fifteen.