Hockey Dad

by Bob Mckenzie

  This is true of all drafts in all sports. I often end up talking to friends' kids who either didn't get drafted or didn't get drafted as highly as they anticipated. I try to make them understand the draft is an artificial process of highly subjective evaluation. It assigns their rights to a team; it doesn't affect them in any appreciable way as a player.

  Example: The OHL draft is held on a Saturday in May. No one is playing any games in May. I ask a player what kind of player he is on the Friday before the draft. I ask him what kind of player he is on the Saturday of the draft, and what kind of player he is on the Sunday after the draft. The answer, of course, is that he is the same player on Friday as he is on Saturday as he is on Sunday, because he hasn't done anything on the ice that could possibly change the way he's played the game or even alter the perception of himself and his ability. All that happened on Saturday is that some people (scouts) made a highly subjective evaluation of that player, which brands him a first-rounder or an eighth-rounder or a no-rounder. This would be fine if the people making this highly subjective evaluation were perfect, but they're not and they would be the first to tell you that.

  There are some first-round picks in major junior who never develop into OHL stars and there are many mid-to-late-round picks who do. It's absurd to allow anyone to hang a brand or label on you as a fifteen-year-old and suggest you should embrace this as your standing in the hockey community.

  Let's also try to keep the whole thing in perspective. In Mike's OHL draft year of 2002, exactly three hundred players were chosen. As of the middle of the 2008-09 season, seven-just seven of them-have gone on to become what I would define as NHL players-Wojtek Wolski (3rd overall in the OHL draft); David Bolland (8th); Tyler Kennedy (16th); Patrick Kaleta (31st); Kevin Porter (60th); Jared Boll (101st); and Benoit Pouliot (207th). That's it, although it must be noted the 1986 birth year in Ontario was not a particularly strong one (keep in mind, Kaleta, Porter and Boll are Americans, so only four Ontario kids from that '86 draft class were regular NHLers seven years after their OHL draft year). Still, it gives you some idea of the odds against your fifteen-year-old, even if he's an OHL first-round flavor of the day, becoming an NHL player.

  The point is, at the age of fifteen, you don't let anyone define you. You are way too young to accept someone else's notion of who you should be or what you're going to be. You do all that yourself. There is plenty of time for self-determination.

  The analogy I like to use is that once a kid goes through what is now known as his minor midget season, and if he has aspirations of playing at the next level, he gets on The Ladder.

  Every other player of any age, sixteen and older, who wants to keep playing hockey at the next level, is on it, too. The Ladder is crowded and it's frenetic, because there is only one rule on The Ladder-you're always moving, either up or down. You can be moving up fast or down fast; up slowly or down slowly; but whatever it is, you're either passing guys or getting passed; if you're standing still, you might as well be going backwards as there's no shortage of guys blowing by you. And for all the players there are who move up or down, there are others who simply fall or jump off for one reason or another.

  My TV analyst pal Keith Jones, who had a good nine-year NHL career, puts it another way, in his usual funny fashion.

  "If you play long enough, all the really good players quit and then you make the NHL," Jonesy says. "That's what happened to me. I go home in the summer and have beers with the guys I played hockey with when I was a kid and they say to me, 'We were a lot better than you were, how did you make it to the NHL and we didn't?' I tell them, 'You quit, I didn't. You should have kept playing.'"

  Now, that's funny. Jonesy is, of course, selling his talent and ability far short for the sake of a laugh-and that's why we love him-but his premise, to a point, has some validity. You play as hard as you can for as long as you can, you don't allow other people to define your limitations and you just never know how far you'll go up The Ladder and how many people you'll pass until you finally fall, jump or get knocked off. And it doesn't hurt if along the way you make good friends with the Hard Work Fairy.

  I know what you're saying. The Hard Work Fairy? Is this guy serious? I don't recall exactly when I started it, but I was driving home from one of Mike's games and he was lamenting his hard luck around the net and how a recent hot streak he had been on turned into the coldest of cold streaks. I told him he had obviously offended the Hard Work Fairy. Where I came up with that one I have no idea, but it just came out. It got a laugh out of Mike, which was the idea. The notion of there being fairies in hockey is, well, it's pretty funny.

  Someone else might call the Hard Work Fairy the hockey gods.

  Whatever. I only know I have an unwavering faith that if an individual works hard enough long enough at anything, good things will happen and there will be a reward. But the problem with that philosophy is that every hockey player of any age or ability always thinks he's working hard, and most of them aren't. Not even close.

  So I suppose I feel there needs to be this mythical figure-the Hard Work Fairy-who takes stock of who's actually working hard and who's not, and doles out rewards and/or punishment accordingly. You can't jive the Hard Work Fairy. He(?) knows. He always knows.

  Laugh if you like, but you show me a hockey player who's on a roll, scoring goals in game after game after game, and I'll show you a player who somewhere along the line during that hot streak allows complacency and comfort to creep into his game. At some point, he forgets how hard he worked to be successful and even though he may still be filling the net, he's on borrowed time. There's a day of reckoning coming. At some point, the Hard Work Fairy says "enough is enough" and steps in and now that player is in big trouble. It may not be nice to mess with Mother Nature but you definitely don't want to screw around with the Hard Work Fairy.

  Then the stick goes cold and even after the player realizes he has to work harder to get back into the good graces again, it's going to take some time to build up the account and for the player to find himself on the right side of the ledger again.

  That's when, and only when, the Hard Work Fairy will see fit to bestow a reward. I have seen it happen with individual players. I have seen it happen with whole teams. Complacency and comfort are the enemy. Hard work is the ally.

  I'm not saying the Hard Work Fairy doesn't sometimes work in mysterious ways and I'll admit there have been a few occasions when I've wondered if the Hard Work Fairy has abandoned me and my kids in their time of need, but my faith remains resolute: You work hard enough for long enough and you'll be rewarded.

  The point of all of this-for us anyway-was that Mike had, seemingly against all odds, played well enough in his major bantam year that there was no chance in the world he was prepared to close the door on playing hockey at the next level. He wanted to get on The Ladder; he wanted to please the Hard Work Fairy. Football? Cross-country? Volleyball? High school hockey?

  Balance? You could have summed it up in just one word. "Scouts?"

  26: Discretion Isn't Always The Better Part of Valor

  I WASN'T SURE where Mike's hockey renaissance was taking him, but it goes without saying, as a Crazy Hockey Dad, I was most certainly enjoying the rather unexpected ride.

  What was supposed to be his farewell tour had seemingly become a launching pad. It was kind of surreal, to be honest, and I kept thinking this would be the day the clock would strike midnight and the party would be over.

  For kids who are going to play at the next level, the days and weeks immediately following the minor midget season are like a whirlwind. First up, once the actual team's season is over, is the regional tryout camp for the provincial Under-17 program. For us, it was on an April weekend in Peterborough.

  They create six teams; play a round-robin type tournament; do a lot of physical and fitness testing; try to give the kids a sense of what it will take to continue playing at a higher level and then pick a dozen or so kids to move onto another camp.

  I kind
of figured Mike was a long shot to advance, but that was fine. It was just fun to be there.

  Mike played well enough over the course of the weekend, scored a few goals and didn't look out of place, but something happened in his next-to-last game that I thought sealed his fate. Mike was coming back through the neutral zone towards his own end when a defenseman on the other team turned and, out of nowhere, pitch-forked Mike with a major-league spear to the midsection. I was really worried that he might be seriously injured, it was that vicious. The attack was totally unprovoked in the context of that game, but it was a rival defenseman from another ETA team who Mike had a running battle with over the course of the season. This player definitely wasn't going to get to the next level so I suppose he decided to give Mike a going-away present in what was probably their last-ever on-ice meeting.

  There have been times in Mike's hockey-playing days when I have perfectly understood opposing players' desire to annihilate him because there were occasions when he may have said or done something to justify it. But this attack was indefensible.

  Mike was down on the ice for a bit and then the trainer took him in the hallway beside the bench in Peterborough's Memorial Centre. I made my way down to make sure he wasn't seriously injured, but aside from a big red welt across his stomach, he seemed to be okay. I could see by the look on his face he was furious. He never said a word to me, he didn't have to; I knew exactly what he was thinking and wondering: Should I forget about what had just happened and focus on trying to advance or should I seek some vigilante justice at the expense of moving on?

  I knew what I was voting for and it wasn't detente. "You do what you want," I said to Mike, "but if it was me, I'd give it to him. It's your call, though."

  I went back up into the stands, but I knew what was coming next. On Mike's next shift there was a dump in for a line change and Mike was first onto the ice. The defenseman who had speared him was going back to retrieve the puck. Mike flew in there full steam and ran the defenseman hard into the end boards with a vicious, nasty and high hit into the glass. As they both rebounded off the boards, their gloves were off and they attempted to fight but with full cages on it wasn't much of a battle.

  Afterwards, between that game and Mike's finally game of the weekend, a lot of the other kids at the camp told Mike he was stupid for fighting because the rule was if you fight, you won't move on. After his finally game of the day, we headed home and Mike was regretting what he had done, upset that he had no chance to move on.

  I disagreed. I told him, in the grand scheme of things, moving on at the U-17 didn't matter as much as standing up for himself, that the chances of him actually making the provincial Under-17 team were nonexistent-it is almost exclusively the domain of first-round OHL draft picks. I told him I would much rather see him defend himself the way he did than allow some dirty bastard to try to seriously injure him and that if he had done nothing to respond to the spear, it would have sent a message to others that they could go after him any time they like without reprisals. I told him there are occasions when turning the other cheek is the smart thing to do-discretion is sometimes the better part of valor-but this wasn't one of them. I told him I was proud of him and there would be times in life when he had to stand up for himself, make sacrifices for the sake of principle and accept whatever consequences came his way. This, I said, was one of those times. I believed it then; I believe it now.

  The funny thing is we got a call that night from the U-17 camp director, who informed us Mike was moving on to the next level of U-17 camp for the entire OMHA, in Guelph in May. I expressed surprise that they picked Mike after the fight and the camp director said: "I would have been disappointed if Mike hadn't responded."

  Mike was ecstatic at the news he was moving on, but within the hockey circles we traveled, there was a lot of chatter about Mike's selection. Not much of it was kind. Other kids told Mike he only made it because "his dad was on TV," that he violated the rules by fighting and they still picked him. The message boards on internet sites that the kids and many parents frequented were full of stuff about the inequity of Mike McKenzie getting to the finally OMHA camp at the expense of this good player or that good player.

  None of this was new for Mike, or me, although it was a little more intense and personal than usual this time. Mike never said a word to me, but I could tell going into the second OMHA U-17 camp in Guelph that he was a man on a mission.

  I try to say this without sounding like an Overbearing Hockey Dad, but Mike and Michael Haley from Oshawa, who Mike had played lacrosse with since they were Paperweights, dominated the entire weekend in Guelph. They were teammates and linemates. They were virtually unstoppable, although the camp administrators made them play on separate lines for a couple of games to see if it would slow them down.

  It didn't. They continued to score and lead the way.

  Bear in mind that no one from that camp has made it as a regular in the NHL, and the OMHA crop of '86s was really quite weak compared to the GTHL players (who had their own U-17 camp), but this was nevertheless a stunning development for me. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. I had never seen Mike play so well, skate so fast, compete so hard and elevate his play to that level. It was the first time I ever actually believed Mike might be able to play at a level as high as the OHL or perhaps U.S. college hockey.

  I asked him on the way home, "What the hell got into you?" "I wanted to prove to everyone I deserved to be there because of me, not because of you," he said. "All of that talk I didn't deserve to be there pissed me off."

  Now, reality did strike at the finally U-17 camp at York University in June, when all the best players from the GTHL, the Ottawa area, northern Ontario, southwestern Ontario and northwestern Ontario got together. Mike played reasonably well but he had hit his ceiling. His play there showed he still had a lot of work to do if he was going to play at the next level.

  While this U-17 process was unfolding in April, May and June, lots of other things were happening as well.

  In April, the Oshawa Legionaires Junior A team was holding its spring tryouts. For a sixteen-year-old Mike, that was the very definition of his next level at that point. He tried out and made the team that could take no more than six local sixteen-year-olds. Mike and Zack Greer made it from Whitby; Mike MacLean, Derrick Bagshaw, Andrew Gibbons and Daniel Larocque made it from Oshawa. The coach of the Legionaires was Wayne Marchment, the brother of NHL defenseman Bryan Marchment, and the GM was Peter Vipond, a local Brooklin, Ont., lacrosse legend who once played NHL hockey with the California Golden Seals. They were terrific guys. Wayne Marchment was a very good coach with a great feel for the game. Mike was thrilled to be moving into Junior A hockey, where he would play against players as old as twenty-one.

  In May, Mike was chosen in the seventh round of the OHL draft by Saginaw, a franchise that had just relocated from North Bay, Ont. Mike had thought he might go as high as the fifth round and was equal parts disappointed and relieved while sitting in front of the computer (the OHL draft is conducted on the internet) to see he had been chosen 125th overall.

  All of this-the U-17 experience, making the Junior A Legionaires as a sixteen-year-old and getting drafted into the OHL-was really quite unexpected, especially for a kid who had, one year ago, been on the verge of giving up high-level competitive hockey.

  Go figure.

  27: Making the Big Time: Shawn Steps It Up

  LIFE WAS GOOD for Crazy Hockey Dad in 2002. Very good.

  Mike had effectively been born again, in the hockey sense, and was looking forward to his first season in Junior A. Shawn, meanwhile, was playing AAA hockey for the very first time.

  I've never gotten too hung up about the number of As attached to a team name. Shawn played AA for three years and I thought that was great because he thought that was great.

  Shawn played A for two years and I was cool with that because Shawn was cool with that. But Shawn was sincerely thrilled to be part of John Annis's AAA Whitby Wildcats for 2002
-03 and, well, I don't need to tell you how I felt, especially since I was going to help out as an assistant coach.

  I talk to a lot of people about their kids playing hockey and I often get dads of younger kids saying, with an overtone of disappointment or resignation, "My boy doesn't really care that much about hockey, he doesn't take it that seriously, he's not that good." I have two responses for that. One, there's nothing wrong with any of it, as long as the kids are happy and healthy and having fun playing the game. Two, you never know when a kid will suddenly develop a greater passion for the game or play it at a level you never would have imagined possible. Shawn would be a prime example of that.

  The timing of all this for Shawn was especially exciting because this was supposed to be his major peewee (thirteen-year-old) season and that's the year of the Quebec Peewee Tourney. If I got Mike's hard-working-but-not-very-talented peewee team to Quebec, it would be a slam dunk to do it for this highly ranked team that Shawn was on.

  But Hockey Canada had other ideas. This was the year Hockey Canada revamped the age groups to make them consistent across the country, so a thirteen-year-old player in Ontario became known as a minor bantam instead of a major peewee. Shawn's team was out of luck for Quebec on what amounted to an administrative technicality, a name change.

  Shawn liked playing on the AAA team. He was good friends with a lot of the kids on the team. He was enjoying his newfound confidence at that level. He played a solid physical game and his puck skills were decent enough that he could make plays. He could keep up just fine as he was a much better natural skater than his brother. Shawn wasn't nearly in the same class as the top two players on the team-Patrick Daley, who would go on to have a good OHL career, and Louke Oakley, who would go on to get a scholarship at Clarkson University-but he often played on their line. Whether Shawn was alongside the two big guns or playing a role on the third line, he was happy and fitting in.