by Bob Mckenzie
There's an obvious message there.
I was quite surprised at the caliber of play. The hockey was pretty fast and quite competitive; the referees did a good job of making sure there was no flagrant contact or nonsense.
There was the odd incident here or there, but violators were suspended and, overall, it was a hugely positive experience.
Because Shawn was still an AAA-caliber player, who just couldn't take contact, he excelled in the house league. He scored lots of goals and after a rough start for his team, they started to win a lot.
Shawn's team made it all the way to the championship finally, a two-game playoff series against a team with which they had quite a heated rivalry. Shawn was a bit of a marked man.
He was unbelievably stoked at the challenge of trying to score and win, knowing the other team was really keying on him. It was quite intense and Shawn's competitive juices were really flowing again. For most of the first game, the other team did a nice job on Shawn. It looked like they were going to take the opener, but Shawn scored a goal with five seconds left in the game to get the tie.
That would make the second game of the series a winner-take-all contest. Even though it was Midget-Juvenile house league, there was an air of electricity at Iroquois Park Arena for the finallye. It had the feel of something special. It felt so good to be driving Shawn to the rink again for a hockey game that mattered to him. And it felt even better when Shawn scored a couple of goals to help lead his team to the championship that day. After all he had been through, it warmed my heart to see him so happy and engaged again, doing what he loved to do.
There was never any doubt Shawn was coming back for his finally season of the Midget-Juvenile house league in 2007-08.
This time around, though, he was on the worst team in the league, which is how it goes in house league. Shawn's team won a game now and again, but most nights they lost and lost badly. Shawn handled the losing part of it fine, but I noticed a big drop-off in the overall caliber of play in the league. Shawn was an easy target on a team with a weaker supporting cast.
The referees were also letting a lot more go; it was a lot chippier than it had been the season before. Shawn was getting run at, hard sometimes, and if no penalties were being called, and on many nights they weren't, he was getting angry and frustrated.
He started to retaliate and it was beginning to get dangerous, for him and others. I didn't like where it was going.
There were a couple of times that season when I thought Shawn was going to quit, and I wouldn't have blamed him. But he hung in to the end, stayed clear of any nonsense and got through it. As wonderful as the first house-league season was, his second year was a huge letdown and, truthfully, it couldn't end soon enough for either of us. Which, really, was too bad.
I was working at TSN on the night of Shawn's last-ever game of minor hockey, but I still got there in time to catch the last half of it. Thankfully, it was a tame affair, the two worst teams in the league. Shawn scored a bunch of goals, his team won and he went out on a high note. He skated off Pad Two at Iroquois Park Arena and gave me a nice, big smile as he came off the ice.
After all he'd been through in the past three years, it was nice to see him skate off the ice for the finally time still smiling. He's a special kid that way.
31: Major Junior Versus College: Making the Right Call
MUCH IS OFTEN MADE OF SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS having to make difficult decisions on their hockey future at such a young age. And I suppose for some players-a distinct minority, mind you-that is true.
But it wasn't for Mike. Not really.
When OHL teams were thinking about drafting Mike and asking if we were prepared to commit to major junior hockey, our answer was honest and straightforward.
It's too soon to say.
Mike wasn't nearly good enough to play in the OHL as a sixteen-year-old. And based on where he was taken in the draft (seventh round), the rules wouldn't have allowed him to play in the OHL that year anyway. So why would we feel obliged to make a commitment, especially if they're not in a position to make a full-fledged commitment back?
A seventh-round pick of the Saginaw Spirit, Mike attended their training camp in the fall of 2002 for forty-eight hours, so as to not lose college eligibility. It was just a taste test, for them and for us, and it was clear he had a long way to go if he was going to play at that level. At just barely six feet tall, and a shade over 150 pounds, he was way out of his weight class.
I am a big believer that a lot of decisions, not just in hockey but in life, tend to get made for us. Or at least if we wait until the proper time to make the decision, the choice becomes a lot more obvious than if we try to force it too soon.
There are, of course, two options for young players wanting to go to the "next level." One is the Canadian Hockey League (the CHL; it includes the Western, Ontario and Quebec leagues).
The other is U.S. college hockey in the NCAA. There is this perceived battle between them for the services of the players.
In Ontario, it's not much of a fight. With the odd exception, the OHL crushes the NCAA in terms of getting the high-end talent, the players who are chosen in the first few rounds of the OHL draft.
There are a number of reasons.
The first is practical. A high-end player can graduate out of minor midget and go directly to the OHL. If that same high-end player decides he wants to play U.S. college hockey, he first has to graduate from high school, or wait another two years, or two full hockey seasons. Not many players are willing to be that patient.
The other reason the OHL crushes the NCAA in competition for elite players is that it's such a well-run league. OHL commissioner Dave Branch, a fellow Whitby resident and a longtime friend, is one of the most progressive hockey minds in the game. Some old-school hockey people bristle at Branch's safety and antiviolence initiatives, but he does what he thinks is right and parents like that.
Plus, the primary attraction of playing U.S. college hockey is getting a free education. Well, CHL teams pay all educational costs while a player is in the league and high-end OHL grads get all their postsecondary education paid for (as long as they don't sign a pro contract). If a high-end OHLer wants it, he can get a free education. It's really up to him.
The farther down the food chain you go-or the draft list, actually-the more interesting and complicated the decisions become on this whole junior versus college thing. So it was for Mike.
Mike had a good first Junior A season with the Oshawa Legionaires. He scored nineteen goals (second on the team), thirty-nine points (third) and was plus-thirteen (fourth), which was one of the better rookie seasons in the league.
Maybe it was his new contact lenses. Mike had discarded his glasses for athletic competition long ago, when he was 13, but it wasn't until he was 16 that he started wearing contacts.
I'm not quite sure how he saw anything in those intervening years, but it didn't seem to hurt him.
Saginaw, which owned his OHL rights, was encouraged with Mike's first Junior A season. But Mike was also attracting some interest from U.S. colleges.
So, upon completion of that first Junior A season, it was decision time. Sort of.
The Spirit said they would sign Mike to a contract but, of course, he would have to make the team. They offered an educational package of $5,000 (Canadian) a year. That is, for every year Mike played in the OHL, he would get $5,000 towards his postsecondary education. They would, of course, cover all educational costs while he was actually playing in the league. The $5,000 per year was a far cry from the $15,000 to $25,000 it can cost (all in) for one year at a Canadian university, but it was something. And I'm sure we could have negotiated for a a little more.
But I still didn't think it was the right time to make a decision. Mike was scheduled to go into Grade 12 at TCS that fall.
We agreed it was a good idea to finish what he started at TCS before potentially moving away from home to play hockey.
Mike was also still working hard to pu
t on weight and get stronger and I told him he likely still wasn't strong enough to play regularly in the OHL at that point.
Whatever level of hockey you play, the indisputable truth is that if you are not physically strong enough or fast enough to compete, the coach isn't going to put you on the ice. It's that simple. Now, if it's an elite-level prospect, the coach will sometimes force himself to live with the growing pains, knowing there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But if you're a small fish, and seventh-rounder Mike was a minnow, it can be a killer.
Plus, while Mike had played well in his first year of Junior A, it's not like he dominated. It wouldn't hurt him to spend another year with the Legionaires. A number of U.S. colleges Bowling Green, St. Lawrence, Clarkson, Mercyhurst, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Western Michigan, Michigan State and UMass Lowell-had expressed varying degrees of interest. We agreed we would let this play out for one more year.
It seemed like a plan.
But six games into Mike's second Junior A season, he suffered that nasty concussion that would keep him out of action for three months. All those schools that had shown interest quickly fell by the wayside. Who knew if they were ever coming back?
I was concerned for another reason. Wayne Marchment, who had done such an outstanding job of coaching the Legionaires, had stepped down in the off-season. A lot of the good young players who came in with Mike a year earlier had gone off to the OHL.
The Legionaires, struggling badly on the ice, were either going to miss the playoffs or be one and done in the first round. With Mike missing much of the regular season, he desperately needed a good, long playoff run to reestablish interest from the colleges. And he wasn't going to get that in Oshawa.
I was always a big believer that once a player graduates out of minor hockey, he's basically his own man. If he has issues with the coach or the team, my advice is to handle it himself, speak to the coach or the manager one on one. Parents, for the most part, should not be seen or heard beyond minor hockey.
But this development with the Legionaires caught me by surprise. I had to make a philosophical change on the fly. Mike needed to be traded out of Oshawa and I wasn't convinced a seventeen-year-old kid would be able to get that done as cleanly or efficiently as I could. I felt sick about the prospect of asking for a trade. When Mike signed there, I assumed he would play there until he went off to college or the OHL. I really liked and respected GM Peter Vipond, but Mike's concussion and the collapse of the Legionaires, and Marchment's departure, changed everything.
I very quietly made two overtures-one to St. Michael's Buzzers' GM/coach Chris DePiero and the other to Bowmanville Eagles' GM Perry Bowles-to see if they would be interested in Mike once he was healthy. Those were the two best Junior A franchises within commuting distance of our home and I figured they would both have a chance of going deep into the playoffs. DePiero had some interest but could make no guarantees. Bowles said they would love to have Mike. Bowmanville was a much better fit because of geography-it's on the way home from TCS in Port Hope.
I'll never forget going into Pete Vipond's office that night in December. I was shaking, not enjoying this at all. I laid it out honestly to Pete, who handled it like the gentleman that he is. The trade to Bowmanville went through.
It turned out to be a great move. Mike played with some fantastic players in Bowmanville-James Neal of the Dallas Stars, among others-and was reunited with his longtime minor hockey linemate Steven Seedhouse. And the Eagles had a long, deep run into the playoffs. They won the Eastern Division championship, knocking off the Wellington Dukes in the Dukedome, which is the OPJHL equivalent of beating the Montreal Canadiens for the Stanley Cup at the Forum.
Bowmanville subsequently lost a hard-fought OPJHL semi-final against St. Mike's, but the trade had served its purpose.
Mike had a good playoff; the U.S. colleges started showing some interest again.
As far as the OHL was concerned, it was time to fish or cut bait. I told Mike the finally decision rested with him. He had graduated from TCS, if he really wanted to go to Saginaw to play two years (or three, with an overage season), that was fine with Cindy and me. But I also gave him my considered opinion of him as a hockey player. I told him he had a lot of great qualities that would serve him well-hockey sense, playmaking ability, goal-scoring ability, work ethic and competitive fire-but that his skating and physical strength were still going to be liabilities. I told him I thought he was a classic late bloomer; he would most likely be at his best when he was into his twenties and more physically mature. But I also told him there was no guarantee he would even get a scholarship.
Mike decided to take a chance on the scholarship route, which I personally thought made sense for him. That, to me, is the real essence of the major junior versus college decisionmaking process. It's very much a personal thing, tailored to the needs and circumstances of the individual, not a blanket endorsement or widespread vilification of one system or the other.
Then, once the season was over, I had to figure out how to tell the Eagles Mike was requesting a trade to St. Mike's, the team that had just beaten them in the playoffs. That was tough, because Bowmanville was a first-rate organization. But Mike was enrolled at the University of Toronto part-time (to maintain his U.S. college eligibility). He got a part-time job working at TSN in Toronto. The geography made more sense for St. Mike's in Toronto than it did for Bowmanville, which is east of Oshawa. It didn't hurt that St. Mike's was expected to have a strong team.
So Mike became a Buzzer. I'd done all I was going to do; the rest was up to Mike.
The quest to get an NCAA scholarship seems to me to be an incredibly random exercise. There's no real rhyme or reason to it, as near as I can tell. Well, I suppose there is if your kid is a blue-chip prospect. But for a kid like Mike, it was really a bizarre dance.
It's the exact opposite of the OHL draft, which is both comprehensive and finite. OHL scouts come out in droves in the minor midget season to watch all the prospects. They evaluate them and on one Saturday in May, they render judgment. The kids get drafted, or not, but everybody knows where they stand.
The trying-to-get-a-scholarship process is a lot less defined. If schools have interest, they make contact. But there are myriad rules and regulations on when they can contact, how much they can contact and even how many times they can watch a player play.
The college recruiters come and go like apparitions. Sometimes they're there; sometimes they're not. Sometimes they talk to your kid after the game; sometimes not.
By my count, there were at least half a dozen schools that I thought were seriously interested in Mike as he prepared for his third year of Junior A. We were pulling out all the stops, too. Mike went off to a two-week power-skating school in North Dakota to address the No. 1 weakness in his game. He was working out at Gary Roberts's Station 7 gym in Toronto.
There was one college in particular that had maintained fairly regular contact over the summer-letters, phone calls with both Mike and me, leaving us with the distinct impression they were perhaps on the verge of offering Mike a scholarship.
Mike came back from the power-skating school and went immediately into training camp with St. Mike's, which was a grueling experience. The Buzzers took pride in being the best-conditioned team in the league; training camp was like boot camp. There was also an ambitious schedule of preseason games, with a string of five in seven days. Because the team had a bunch of kids away at OHL camps and their star player, Andrew Cogliano, was taking a little time off after playing for Team Canada at the U-18 tournament in the Czech Republic, Mike found himself playing in all these preseason games. I could immediately see he was fatigued even before the preseason games. Maybe power-skating school right before training camp wasn't such a great idea. Oops. After the third game in three nights, the college recruiter who maintained contact with us all summer walked by me in the arena lobby. When I said, "Hey, how you doing?" he nodded at me and just kept on walking. Strange, I thought. Oh, well, m
aybe he's busy.
A few days later at another game, he was there again. It was the same deal. This guy was blowing me off! I couldn't believe it. He had done a complete one-eighty from the summer. I could only guess it was because he'd seen a very weary Mike playing those preseason games and determined he wasn't what they were looking for. Two things really ticked me off about that. One, all he had to do was tell me that to my face. Two, it's the %$#&*!% preseason. They make decisions on scholarships based on a few preseason games? You gotta be kidding me.
Mike was playing decently for the Buzzers, but not as well as he needed to. Instead of the list of prospective schools getting longer, it was getting shorter by the day. Our last two hopes were down to St. Lawrence University and Clarkson University-upstate New York rivals separated by only ten miles. Clarkson decided it wasn't sold on Mike's skating but were honest and up front about that, which I greatly appreciated.
So now it was down to only St. Lawrence. If Mike didn't get an offer from SLU, Plan B was to play the following season in Division III at Oswego University on the southeast corner of Lake Ontario, northwest of Syracuse and northeast of Rochester. St. Lawrence had been watching Mike since he was a sixteen-year-old with the Legionaires. While they seemed fairly interested over those three seasons, and maintained cordial contact, they were totally noncommittal through the entire process.
SLU associate coach Chris Wells was at back-to-back Buzzer games in late November/early December. Call it fate or whatever, but almost any time SLU was in the building, Mike scored a goal and played well. So it was on a Friday night in early December Chris Wells told Mike, and then me, they were prepared to make Mike a scholarship offer.
Hallelujah!
But standing in the lobby of St. Mike's Arena that night, Chris Wells told me that it was for two years. I quickly did the math. Two years of scholarship would mean two years of paying for school. And, at $40,000 (U.S.) per year (tuition, room and board), that was way out of my snack bracket. I told him that's a lot of money for us, at which point he indicated he wasn't talking money; he was talking about when he wanted Mike to attend the school; in two years, or the fall of 2006. He was trying to say he wanted Mike to play one more season of Junior A before going to college.