by Bob Mckenzie
I left Mike, who was peeling off his equipment, to check on Cindy and Shawn in the stands. They were fine, as fine as we all could be under those circumstances. The advice I gave to Mike I took for myself as I walked through the crowd. I tried to ignore a lot of the wisecracks and smart-ass remarks, just smiled at them all. I wasn't about to give anybody the satisfaction of a reaction. It wasn't easy. There aren't many days in my life when I wish I wasn't on TV, but this was definitely one of them, when a little anonymity would have been nice.
Georgetown won the game and moved on to the RBC Cup.
Mike was out there on the ice at the end, in the handshake line. That's hockey for you. There's never any place to hide.
Oh, well, what is it they say, if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger?
I can laugh about it now. A little.
33: Play Every Game Like It's the Last; It Just Might Be
YOU LIVE AND LEARN. If you do it properly, you become older and wiser and get some much-needed perspective on what's important, what's not and how to tell the difference.
I would say there were only two things that happened in my Hockey Dad years that had a truly profound impact on me, that really rocked me to my core.
One was obvious-Shawn's situation, with the constant headaches, having to quit playing the game competitively at age fourteen and everything that went with that. If that didn't provide perspective on what's important and what's not, nothing will.
The other came in the summer of 2006, just a few months after what I refer to as the Dudley Disaster. It was a bright, sunny August morning and Mike decided to drive to a casino in Port Perry for a poker tournament. He hadn't been gone ten minutes when our phone rang.
"Dad, I've been in an accident," he said shakily. "It's bad, really bad."
"Is anybody dead?" I asked.
"Just come now," he replied.
Cindy and I raced the few miles to the scene of the accident. There are no words to explain how you feel when you pull up to a car-crash scene involving one of your children-flashing lights from the ambulances, fire trucks and police cars.
Had someone been killed? Was Mike okay?
Fortunately, the answers were no and yes, in that order.
Mike had been driving eastbound on a single-lane road behind a very slow-moving cement truck when the truck moved into a right-turn-only lane at an intersection. With the truck no longer directly in front of him, Mike began to accelerate slowly, not realizing the cement truck was effectively blocking Mike's view of a stop sign at the corner. Mike went through the intersection totally unaware he should have stopped. Mike's car was broadsided by another car, travelling northbound.
He was quite fortunate. The contact was on the passenger-side rear quarter panel. The driver of the other vehicle, an elderly gentleman, wasn't driving too fast. It could have been so much worse. Large gravel trucks traveling at sixty miles an hour routinely roar up and down that road. He easily could have been killed; he easily could have killed someone. As it was, Mike's car spun wildly out of control, sheered off a large signpost on the corner, and ended up thirty feet into a field northeast of the intersection.
Miraculously, there were no serious injuries-Mike had bruised ribs-but he was in a total state of shock when we arrived. His car was totalled.
It could have been tragic. If ever there were an incident that provided perspective on what's important, this was it.
Whatever the reason, Mike played every game that season like it was his last. He took his game to a new level. He became a dominant player in the OPJHL.
I can think of a lot of reasons it happened. In some ways, he was just picking up where he left off from his great run in the OPJHL championship finally against Georgetown. But there had been a lot of talk that Mike's playoff success had more to do with his line mates, Andrew Cogliano and Matt Halischuk, than it did with him. Mike was highly motivated to prove his critics wrong.
A lot of people also said the Buzzers would never be able to repeat as champions without Cogliano and some of the other fine players who had graduated, so as a co-captain (the first time Mike wore the C since Select 7), Mike figured the whole team had a lot to prove.
Also, after St. Lawrence had committed a scholarship to him, a lot of people had said Mike wasn't worthy; that he wasn't Division One material. He heard a lot of "if it wasn't for his dad" talk, which had fired him up to play so well at the U-17 camps a few years earlier. Mike also wanted to show St. Lawrence he wasn't about to get complacent or coast now that he had a scholarship in his back pocket.
I also think Shawn's situation, his inability to play competitive hockey, had a profound influence on Mike, too. Mike took to writing Shawn's initials-S.M.-on all his sticks. Or maybe Mike just realized, between his brother's situation and his car accident, there were no guarantees in life; one should make the most of whatever opportunities one was granted.
I know that's how I felt. Whatever it was that motivated Mike, it worked.
A month into the season in a game at Oshawa against his old team, the Legionaires, Mike was credited with scoring three shorthanded goals in thirty-two seconds. That's what the game summary said, but it wasn't really accurate. St. Mike's was leading Oshawa 3-2 in the third period, but not playing very well.
Mike scored a shorthanded goal to make it 4-2 at 6:18 of the third period. Nine seconds after that, he scored another short-handed goal to make it 5-2. Four seconds after that, though, Oshawa took a minor penalty to nullify the Legionaire power play. Twenty-three seconds after he had last scored, Mike got the natural hat trick-two shorthanded goals and one four-on-four goal in thirty-two seconds.
It was still pretty remarkable, any way you look at it. When the game was over and Mike came out to the lobby, he received hearty congratulations from all the other parents.
"Great game," they told him.
He looked at me, knowing I'm a tough marker. "Great shift," I said, with a smirk and then cracked up laughing. It was true he only played one good shift that game, but what a shift it was. Even Crazy Hockey Dad had to give him a free pass.
Mike played so well that season a lot of the colleges that had shunned him in the past came back to make sure he was fully committed to St. Lawrence. Other schools that had never shown serious interest in him suddenly checked into his availability, suggesting a full four-year scholarship could be had. But St. Lawrence was the only school that believed in Mike enough to offer him a scholarship the season before. We were totally committed to SLU. I believe a person's word has to be worth something; the value on our word was more than $40,000 (U.S.), which was how much money we could have saved if we reneged on the commitment to SLU and took an offer from another school.
Mike finished the 2005-06 regular season with 39 goals, 77 points and 110 penalty minutes (PIMs) in 40 games, including 8 shorthanded goals (SHG) and 8 game-winning goals (GWG). He was named South Division MVP and was the division's leading scorer. He finished the playoffs with 13 goals, 32 points and 60 PIMs in 25 games, including 6 GWGs. He helped lead the Buzzers to their second consecutive OPJHL championship; beating the Markham Waxers for the South Division title; the Bowmanville Eagles for the South-East Conference title; and the Stouffville Spirit for the OPJHL championship. The Buzzers came up short, once again, at the Dudley-Hewitt Cup in Thunder Bay, but at least Mike finished his last Junior A game on the ice.
Mike would have certainly set a Buzzer franchise record for goals that season-he came up one short-if he hadn't been injured in early December and missed nine games. One of his own players hit him in the ankle with a power play dumpin. X-rays were initially negative. He played five games badly hobbled and it was obvious he wasn't right, but he had been named to play in the Canadian Junior A Hockey League Top Prospects' game in Yorkton, Sask. Nothing was going to stop him from getting to that game in front of the NHL scouts.
But the day before he was scheduled to fly to Yorkton, in a Sunday afternoon game at North York Centennial Arena (yes, that same cursed a
rena), Mike separated his shoulder on a hit when he couldn't properly brace himself because of the weakness in his ankle.
So there he was, sitting in the hospital with his arm in a sling, getting confirmation his ankle was indeed broken, looking about as glum as glum can be. There would be no trip to Yorkton the next morning, no game to impress the NHL scouts.
He was crushed.
If ever there were a time when perspective was required, this was it. In the grand scheme of things, weighed against what Shawn had been through and Mike's car wreck a few months earlier, this little setback wasn't such a big deal. But that doesn't mean it wasn't still a bitter disappointment. For Mike and his Crazy Hockey Dad.
It's not like Mike or I were ever focused in on the NHL draft as some sort of goal for him. That's simply not how we operate.
Remember, you don't play hockey for the scouts. That said, based on how well Mike had played that season, it wouldn't have been outrageous for him to be considered a late-round candidate, a project of sorts. Other college-bound players from the OPJHL were taken in the later rounds of the draft that year, and Mike was in the same universe as them. And yet I, better than anyone, knew his ugly-duckling skating style would be a huge impediment. As a hockey player, my kid is definitely an acquired taste. Scouts will quickly determine what a player can't do, but sometimes have difficulty seeing the possibilities for a player like Mike. And that's fine, whatever Mike gets from hockey, he will have earned every bit of it.
The week before the NHL entry draft, my player-agent friend Rick Curran told me an NHL team was thinking of drafting Mike in one of the late rounds. I assumed, correctly, it was the Carolina Hurricanes because I know GM Jim Rutherford pretty well. I talked to Jim a few days before the draft and told him if he was thinking of drafting Mike to please not do it. I told him people would say Mike only got drafted because Jim and I were friends; that he wouldn't be doing Mike or me any favors; that Mike was far better off going into his first year of college under the radar. Jim confirmed his scouts were thinking of drafting Mike; said that Mike deserved to be a consideration based on how well he played at St. Mike's and knowing he would have another four years of development time at college.
Jim said he would think about my request to not take Mike, but he challenged me to name a prospect who I thought would be a better pick than Mike in the sixth or seventh round.
I told him Nick Dodge, an '86 from Oakville, Ont., who had just completed his sophomore year at Clarkson, was a better player and prospect at that point than Mike. Dodge was always one of the better '86s in Ontario and went to college as an eighteen-year-old freshman. He was, as far as I was concerned, more deserving to be drafted at that point than Mike.
And that, as it turned out, is what the Hurricanes did, taking him 183rd overall in the 2006 draft. When Dodge graduated from Clarkson in 2008, Carolina signed him to a contract and he played the 2008-09 season with Albany of the American Hockey League.
After the draft, I told Mike about the Carolina possibility and how I had lobbied against it. He said he was happy with it, that he was looking forward to making his own way at college without any expectations beyond his own. He was just happy to still be on The Ladder-moving up, too-and if his own experiences had taught him, or me, anything, it was that he moves a lot faster when he's hungry and trying to prove people wrong.
34: Crazy Hockey Dad's Magical Mystery Tour
AS WELL AS MIKE played at various times in his life, whether he was seven or nineteen, I was never one of those Hockey Dads who took anything for granted. I always wondered, and worried a little, how he would fare at the "next level."
He and I developed a little routine. When he was fifteen, and a year away from perhaps playing junior, I took him to a Junior A playoff game between Wexford and Pickering to get a sense of what it was like.
"Think you can play this next year?" I asked him.
"I don't know," Mike said. "I think so. I'm not sure."
Neither was I, to be honest.
When Mike was seventeen, and desperately seeking a scholarship, we used the downtime during the dark days of his concussion to visit Clarkson and St. Lawrence. It was probably as much to keep up Mike's spirits because he wasn't sure when he would play hockey again, but it also gave us both a chance to see our first ever U.S. college hockey game. Mike saw Cornell play at Clarkson on Friday night (I was working).
I joined him to see Cornell play SLU on Saturday night. Cornell, as is Big Red tradition, was huge. The hockey was fast, unbelievably so. Many of the players were as old as twenty-four and twenty-five. I was totally blown away by the whole experience.
So there I was looking at Mike-seventeen years old; a little pencil neck, all of 160-odd pounds; not quite sure when he would play again because of the concussion; a bit of a tough skater to begin with-sitting there, him looking at me through his glasses. (That, by the way, was the only time I've ever seen Mike angry with Cindy-she accidentally threw out his last set of contact lenses, forcing him to wear his glasses for his one and only U.S. college "official visit.")
Then I was looking out onto the ice at SLU and the behemoths from Cornell and then back again at Mike. I am not going to lie; he was looking very much like a boy in the presence of men.
"Think you can play this in a couple of years?" I said. "I don't know," he said. "I think so. I'm not sure." Neither was I.
But a little less than three years later, a twenty-year-old freshman, wearing No. 27 in the scarlet and brown of St. Lawrence University, stepped onto the ice at Appleton Arena against the Rochester Institute of Technology for his first-ever NCAA Division One college hockey game. I didn't shed a tear at that moment but it wouldn't have been difficult to work one up.
After all Mike had been through in his hockey-playing days-the ups, the downs, all that time and effort-to say nothing of the trials and tribulations of his brother-I truly thought it was all quite remarkable Mike had made it to the "next level." That night kicked off Crazy Hockey Dad's version of a four-year Magical Mystery Tour.
Thanks to some very understanding folks at TSN-a big shout out to my very good friends and colleagues Steve Dryden and Darren Dreger, among many others-to say nothing of some really inspired juggling on my part, as well as ridiculous amounts of driving, expense and Aeroplan reward miles, not to mention an all-world wife and son, I haven't missed much.
If Joe Marsh's St. Lawrence University Skating Saints were playing a game between the fall of 2006 to the spring of 2010-pretty much anywhere, anytime-chances are I was there. So, on many occasions, were Cindy and Shawn, because hockey has always been nothing if not a family affair for the McKenzies. Shawn, for all he has been through, has never begrudged his brother's success and has supported him every step of the way. For all the sacrifices everyone in our family had to make because of the demands of my career, sneaking away on so many weekends with Cindy and/or Shawn to watch Mike play was a terrific payback for the many times and opportunities missed in the past.
Personally, I love college hockey. It's fast and entertaining, played at an incredibly high level most nights. The games are usually finished in a shade over two hours. There's little or no nonsense or goofiness, virtually no fighting but lots of contact.
I had been warned the college game was chippy and dirty with rampant stickwork and hits from behind because the players wear full cages and can't self-police the game due to the antifighting measures (fight and you're out of that game, plus two more). But I saw little or none of that most nights. All levels of hockey, college included, have incidents or problems at times, but I would submit college hockey has fewer than most. The vast majority of nights I walked out of Mike's games thinking what a terrific athletic spectacle I had just witnessed.
For a Crazy Hockey Dad living in southern Ontario, there's no better place to have a son playing than at St. Lawrence, because it's so easy to get to. It is thirty minutes off Highway 401 and the Prescott-Ogdensburg international bridge crossing. SLU is a small but quite lovely
liberal arts college that reminded Mike very much of Trinity College School. When he was seventeen and we drove onto St. Lawrence campus for the first time, and visited Appleton Arena, with its traditional wooden church-style pew seating, Mike said: "This is where I want to play; this is where I want to go to school." It would be a toss-up to say who enjoyed it more-me or Mike.
To visit campuses like Cornell and Colgate, Yale and Brown, Dartmouth and Harvard and Princeton-well, that was the only way I was ever going to get to any of those Ivy League schools. I don't know that there's a better college hockey experience anywhere than watching the Cornell Big Red at the Lynah Skating Rink. To get to places like Boston University, Yost Arena at the University of Michigan (and slip in a visit, tailgating and all, to the Big House to watch the University of Toledo upset the Wolverines in football), Munn Ice Arena at Michigan State, the Whittemore Center at the University of New Hampshire or The Gut at the University of Vermont…I tried hard not to take a single minute of it for granted. I marveled every time I went into Princeton's Hobey Baker Arena, a hockey rink that used to be a church; I was always awed by the unique design of the Whale at Yale, from the same architect who gave us the famous St. Louis Arch and managed to incorporate an element of that into a hockey arena. There was always something a little special about walking by an empty and frigid Harvard Stadium en route to Bright Arena; getting to know the lovely little town of Hanover, N.H., home of Dartmouth College; or feeling the air of hostility on any visit to Cheel Arena and that "other" school just down Route 11 from SLU and Canton, N.Y.
Mostly, though, I will never forget the special feeling of walking into Appleton Arena, my hockey home away from home for four years, so bright and inviting and traditional with its small-town, North Country charm and sensibilities.
It certainly didn't hurt that Mike demonstrated, in spite of my fears, he could actually play the game at this level, and play it quite well. He scored the game-winning goal in his very first college game against Rochester Institute of Technology though he would be the first to tell you he didn't even realize he had tipped the puck in and played like he was in a fog most of that night. He finished his freshman season with very good numbers-twelve goals, including seven game-winners (tied for second in the country), and twenty-five points in thirty-one games.