Hockey Dad

by Bob Mckenzie

  He, of course, wasn't able to play lacrosse and this was a year where he would have played on the Whitby Warriors' Midget A team, even though he was only a first-year midget.

  He had played extremely well on the Bantam A team the summer before-he led the team in goals, points and penalty minutes and by a fairly significant amount in each category and the Midget A coach was eager to have him as one of only three or four first-year midgets. Shawn had finally arrived on center stage athletically and now he wasn't allowed to compete. As it turned out, that underdog Whitby midget team won the provincial championships that summer and Shawn would have, if he'd been able to play, finally won a championship of some kind.

  Shawn would try to keep busy and engaged in whatever social activities his friends were involved in-playing golf, for example, used to make his headaches much worse-but it was often something that he either couldn't do or shouldn't do.

  But that didn't mean he wouldn't try sometimes. What I gleaned from that was there were occasions when Shawn would get his heart rate elevated and it wouldn't exacerbate his headache or any other post-concussive symptoms. He would ride his bike with his friends and tell me he felt no different during or after the ride than he did before. That, generally speaking, is not consistent with post-concussion syndrome. After we consulted with Dr. Johnston, she raised the possibility Shawn might be suffering from a headache or migraine condition as opposed to actual brain trauma or post-concussion syndrome. What became readily apparent to me was that it was time to start healing his heart and soul more than his brain.

  So we did two things. One, we started to encourage him to be much more physically active, as best he could with the headaches. Play tennis; ride his bike; work out; just try to be as normally active (minus contact sports) as he would have been. We even hooked him up with a personal trainer to get his fitness level back. Two, we decided to pursue medical treatments on the premise this was a headache/migraine problem as opposed to a concussion.

  In September of 2004-a full nine months after the fight in Peterborough-Shawn saw a headache specialist who indicated it was entirely possible that Shawn's initial brain trauma had at some point morphed into a migraine-headache condition. This was somewhat encouraging for us insofar as there were many medications and other treatments that could be used to break the cycle of constant headaches.

  I have neither the time, the space nor the inclination to detail all that went on in our efforts to help Shawn, but trust me when I tell you that starting in September of 2004, Cindy and I spent the better part of the next two years dedicated to finding something or someone to give Shawn relief. He had MRIs; CT scans; blood work. He tried homeopathic treatments; acupuncture; massage therapy; active release therapy; pain management; chiropractic treatment. He had balloons blown up into his sinus cavities; he had Botox injections-sixty needles in one sitting, from his eyebrows, up his forehead, into his scalp and skull and right down to the back of his neck. He took more vitamins, supplements, remedies and prescription drugs than you could possibly imagine. He was treated by some of the best doctors in the world and foremost medical/health care authorities in their respective fields and travelled near and far to see them.

  Still, the headaches remained. Over the course of our undying quest for a solution, Shawn's outlook on life-his fitness level and spirits-improved substantially and some degree of normalcy-if you can call it that with the headaches-returned.

  If we were unable to find an absolute solution to what ailed Shawn, at least we found a name for it. In August of 2005, Shawn and I paid a visit to the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. It allowed a shopaholic like Shawn a chance to savor the giant Mall of the Americas in the Twin Cities and it gave me peace of mind we had tried absolutely everything humanly possible to find a remedy.

  The doctors at the Mayo Clinic weren't able to provide us with anything to break Shawn's headache cycle, but they identified his condition as Chronic Daily Headache Syndrome.

  It wasn't altogether different from what Dr. Johnston and Sunnybrook Hospital headache specialist Dr. John Edmeads had initially hypothesized, but now it had a real name, and superficial as that may be, it made us feel a little better.

  The Mayo Clinic information sheets say Chronic Daily Headache Syndrome can afflict up to four per cent of North American young women and two per cent of young men and it is migraine-related. It is often triggered by minor head trauma or an infection such as mononucleosis. In addition to the headaches, other symptoms can include dizziness, sleep disturbance, pain at other sites of the body, fatigue, difficulty in concentration, decreased mood and increased anxiety and Shawn has experienced a number of them. It can last from months to years and some teenagers simply grow out of it in time.

  At least that's what we were hoping for. I suppose we still are.

  30: On the Comeback Trail; This Is No-Contact Hockey?

  THERE WAS NEVER A DEFINING MOMENT in time when a doctor ever directly told Shawn he would never again play high-level competitive contact sports such as hockey or box lacrosse. It was certainly implied, though, and as long as Shawn was suffering from headaches, it was really kind of a moot point. With his concussion history, the absolute given was that he would suffer another if he continued to play contact sports.

  As bad as the headache condition was, we all knew it could be much worse in terms of acquiring other post-concussive symptoms that could further jeopardize his quality of life.

  So for the 2004-05 season, or what would have been Shawn's minor midget "draft year," while Cindy and I were on our quest to find a remedy for what ailed our boy, Shawn was still a member of the Wildcats AAA team, in a manner of speaking. We thought it was important for him to maintain his ties to his team, and his friends. Louie Atkinson and the coaching staff/management were terrific in that regard. Shawn was treated as a full-fledged member of the team in every way.

  He just couldn't play in any games or take any contact drills in practice. But he attended a lot of practices, did the skating and flow drills, took stats during the games and took part in a lot of team functions. If Shawn had something better to do, he wasn't obliged to attend anything but more often than not he did.

  On one hand, it was great. Shawn desperately needed to be part of a team and stay busy and physically active. On the other hand, it was obviously difficult. Being that close to game action and not being able to play was torture for Shawn. But it was either that or totally divorce himself from the minor hockey lifestyle and neither Shawn nor I could see any huge upside to that. And I am sure Shawn was still holding out hope he might one day play again.

  I would have been thrilled if Shawn had come to me and said he didn't want to do this anymore in order to go in a completely different direction, say, take up skiing or whatever.

  But if Shawn were ever going to do a snow sport, it wouldn't be skiing; it would be snowboarding. Anyone who knows anything about that activity understands his chances of getting concussed would be as great on the slopes as on the ice in a hockey game.

  Shawn always had recreational interests outside of hockey.

  He played volleyball. He liked to golf. He loved playing tennis. He enjoyed riding his mountain bike. He dabbled with road biking. He liked all of them and did them, from time to time, but was never as passionate about any of them as he was hockey and lacrosse, especially hockey. He just wasn't going to do those others things consistently or competitively.

  I wanted to protect Shawn from anything that might worsen his condition so I was pretty vigilant in what he could or couldn't do, but I also recognized we couldn't put the poor kid in a bubble either.

  So when I saw an advertising brochure for a noncontact three-on-three summer hockey league at Oshawa Ice Sports, I asked Shawn if he would be interested in giving it a shot.

  He was all for it and was able to recruit enough of his former teammates and friends to put in a team entry. He was making a comeback of sorts and I was going back behind the bench, too.

  I wasn't
about to ask any of Shawn's doctors if it was okay to do this because, quite honestly, I didn't want them saying he couldn't. Some might think that makes me negligent, running that type of risk. I think it's all about what I, for lack of a better term, call "acceptable/manageable risk." Sure, Shawn could lose an edge and slide into the boards or collide at high speed with another player, but he was probably as likely to bang heads with his brother when they played "hall ball" at home (it was a game they created, using the palms of their hands like hockey sticks to try to shoot a small spongy ball through their facing bedroom-door openings as they tried to make like a goalie). And getting to play this type of hockey would do wonders for his heart and soul and that was important, too.

  I have never been a big believer in kids playing summer hockey. My personal philosophy is that kids, even those who are intensely passionate about the game, need a break from it. That's why we always put the skates away as soon as the hockey season ended.

  But my first experience with three-on-three summer hockey made me understand how easy it would have been to be seduced by it. It was terrific. The lack of structure was refreshing. As the name implies, it's three skaters versus three skaters. The only face-off that takes place is to start the game or the period. There are no offsides. It's played wide open and when a goal is scored, the team that is scored on fishes the puck out of the net and begins attacking immediately. There's no time to even celebrate a goal or you're likely to get burned for one against. There are no penalties, only penalty shots.

  There are no whistles of any kind for line changes, so everything is done on the fly. No one overstays their shift because it's too damn tiring. Shawn loved it and so did I. Incidentally, I don't understand why all minor hockey organizations in Canada don't use this as a developmental blueprint for any leagues involving kids aged five to seven.

  They could play it four-on-four-go with four units of four skaters per team-but the key is getting rid of all face-offs, offsides, penalties and just letting the kids air it out in a less structured environment. It would make better use of the limited ice time and the kids would have more fun, become more creative. There would still be plenty of time to teach kids eight and older how to play the five-on-five game and the rules/structure that go with it.

  Of course, the noncontact part of Shawn's three-on-three experience was an issue sometimes. And that's just hockey, isn't it? You can have all the noncontact rules in the world, but if one player, and this is true of any level from little kids to old-timers, does a little something to another player, it can set off a chain reaction that goes like nuclear fission. Which is another way of saying things can get stupid in a hurry.

  There was one game where I was going to be late. Mike said he would fill in as coach. I got there halfway through the game and had fully intended to just watch from the stands, let Mike coach his first full game, but it was all-out war by the time I arrived. The kids on both teams were hitting each other all over the ice. The threat of fights, and a brawl, was very real.

  I was absolutely mortified because of Shawn's situation.

  I could see one of the reasons things were as they were-the guy coaching the other team was a capital-A A-hole, who was up on the bench, yelling and screaming and swearing at everybody, including his own players, my players and the referees.

  Once I got a quick sense of it, I immediately went to the bench and took over for Mike, who was trying his best to keep a lid on things. I walked onto the bench and the other coach instantly recognized me. He stopped going nuts for a moment, put on a big smile and said, "Hey, Bob McKenzie, the Hockey Insider, awesome, nice to meet you." I thought he was going to ask me for my autograph, so you can only imagine how crushed he appeared when I said: "Shut the %$#& up, don't talk to me, don't talk to my players, quit being such an asshole."

  Somehow we got through the game-I briefly considered pulling the team off the ice and forfeiting to avoid any serious injuries. If I came back from Shawn's noncontact hockey game and he'd been in a fight, Cindy would have been playing full-contact divorce with me and there would have been injuries for sure. If only that were the end of the story.

  One of the fathers from the other team had been well overserved in the arena bar during the game. As we came off the ice and were headed to our dressing room, he came down to ice level and accosted me, swearing and going on about the Hockey Insider this and the Hockey Insider that. I was trying to ignore him but Mike was getting incensed with this guy. I couldn't have that. I told Mike to go to the dressing room with the team. Then, I lit into this guy-verbally.

  Understand one thing-I knew this was a fight I couldn't even start, never mind win. No matter what he said or did, I couldn't get physically involved with him in any way, as tempting as that was. Regardless of how it started or who was at fault, two things would happen and neither of them was good. One, I would end up as a front-page headline in the Toronto Sun (HOCKEY INSIDER IN RINK RAGE EPISODE).

  Two, I would likely lose my job at TSN. That, unfortunately, is what it means to be a public figure. You can't always act like other people, which maybe isn't such a bad thing because it forces you to engage in a little common sense when emotion may otherwise take over (although I must add, on at least one occasion you will soon hear about, I forgot to apply this logic).

  So even when this SOB faked like he was going to punch me in the face, I didn't flinch or react, other than to explain how foolish he was acting and that if he really wanted to hit me, I would be happy to call the police, my lawyer and anyone else I could think of to help me ruin his life. I mean, I charged Phil Esposito with assault; I would not think twice about taking down this lout.

  Common sense ultimately prevailed-in fact, the guy apologized to me a week later when he was sober-but it was a reminder, as if I needed it, of how hockey can really make people lose their minds. Leave it to Shawn, of course, to put a great

  big bow on the day on the way home.

  "That," he said, laughing, "was wild."

  Shawn and I were encouraged by how his return to somewhat competitive (supposed noncontact) sports had gone. Other than that one game, the three-on-three hockey was outstanding. It had allowed Shawn to experience competition again and to be part of a team, playing a sport he loved. Now, Shawn and I were prepared to consider something else.

  Shawn wanted to play for the Oshawa Blue Knights in the Ontario U-19 field lacrosse league. Technically, field lacrosse is a contact sport-when the ball ends up on the ground there can be some very big hits-but if a player plays the attack position, contact can be fairly limited. Was there risk involved?

  Absolutely. But Shawn was well aware of his unique situation and confident he could play field lacrosse and play it well without exposing himself to a great degree of risk. He was right on that count. He played in the fall of 2005 and 2006, winning his first-ever provincial championship in '06, and he also played high school field lacrosse for those years.

  I was thrilled Shawn was playing (field) lacrosse again, but I was a little conflicted heading into an October weekend when Shawn and Mike both had big-time events on their respective 2006 calendars. Shawn's provincial tournament was in Hamilton on Saturday and Sunday. Mike, in his freshman season at St. Lawrence, was playing Michigan State at Munn Ice Arena on Friday night in East Lansing, Mich.

  Hmmm, what's a man to do? Easy. Everything.

  Crazy Hockey Dad drove on Friday afternoon to Detroit, checked into a hotel there. Shortly after that, I drove to East Lansing for Mike's game against the Spartans, drove back to Detroit and stayed there Friday night.

  Meanwhile, Cindy got Shawn to Hamilton on Saturday morning for the beginning of his tourney.

  I got up very early on Saturday morning in Detroit, made the three-hour drive to Hamilton and watched two of Shawn's three games that day. As soon as the second was over, I drove back to Detroit to watch Mike's game that night against Wayne State University. Immediately after that game ended, I drove as far as Sarnia, Ont., grabbed a motel room and
five or six hours of sleep. I got up early Sunday morning, drove the two plus hours to Hamilton and watched Shawn's team win two more games to capture the provincial field lacrosse championship.

  In all, I think I put about 1,000 miles on my truck that weekend. But I was able to watch both my boys do something they loved.

  It doesn't get any better than that (although if you want to know the truth, the time Cindy and I watched Mike play at Harvard in Boston on a Saturday night and got up at 4 a.m. to drive to Ithaca, N.Y., to watch Shawn play a full day of field lacrosse and finally make our way home to Whitby at midnight on Sunday evening, well, that was a lot more challenging).

  On the driving stuff, you either get it or you don't. Some will read this and deliver the insanity verdict. Others, and I know a lot of them, would say, "Pffft, you call that driving?"

  Shawn could have played U-19 lacrosse in 2007, but chose not to because he was busy with his high school co-op program, interning as a sports reporter at Rogers Community Television in Oshawa before being accepted into Fanshawe College's broadcast journalism program for the fall of 2008. The way I saw it, it was nice that Shawn chose to not play lacrosse that year. He got to dictate his terms and conditions for not playing. I liked that he made the call, not someone else telling him he couldn't play.

  Thanks to a decision by the Whitby Minor Hockey Association in the summer of 2006 to make all age levels of house-league hockey non-contact, Shawn was able to mount a winter hockey comeback of sorts for the 2006-07 season.

  To be honest, Shawn's personal situation aside, I believe all house-league hockey should be non-contact. For kids who are interested in a game with truly equal ice time and no pressure or preoccupation with wins and losses, I'm not sure what purpose contact serves in house league. For anyone who wants the real hockey deal, there's contact in Select, A, AA and AAA. And when the WMHA went to non-contact, they saw their registration numbers for Midget-Juvenile house league skyrocket.