by Ron MacLean
Bill and LeeAnne impressed upon the kids that they were Canadians, and so when Lisa was in Grade 1 in Oakland, she didn’t like school—partially because she didn’t want to sing the US national anthem and didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. One morning, she ran away from school and headed home. Bill gave her a hug and told her to hop into the car. He drove her back to school and walked her into her classroom, where he took a seat at the back. Each day for the next four days, he sat in that same little desk, until Lisa finally told him she was okay and that he could go home.
The team had trouble drawing flies. At most games, there were fewer than five thousand fans in the stands. After three seasons, the Seals were sold to Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley, who renamed the team the California Golden Seals and changed the uniform colours to match those of the A’s.
At the end of the 1969–70 season, the Seals made a trade with the Canadiens—Bill’s younger brother Ernie and Montreal’s first-round pick in 1970 for cash, François Lacombe and the Seals’ first-round pick in 1971. The Seals ended up in last place in 1971, so Montreal wound up with the first-overall pick, which they used to take Guy Lafleur, after winning the Cup that year.
Bill was thrilled to be playing with Ernie. The brothers were ten years apart, but close. Their families even lived in the same Oakland apartment complex. One night, Bill and LeeAnne went to dinner with Ernie, his wife, Barb, and some of the other players. Ernie and Barb left the restaurant first, and on the way home Ernie was pulled over for speeding. He pulled out his driver’s licence, told the cop he was from Saskatchewan and played for the Golden Seals. He was still issued the ticket. Twenty minutes later, Bill and LeeAnne headed for home. Bill was pulled over for speeding by the same cop. When he said his name was Hicke, he was from Saskatchewan and he played for the Golden Seals, the cop held up his hand. “I’ve heard this story before.”
Billy was traded to Detroit before the 1971–72 season but spent most of the year in the minors. He played one last professional season, for the Alberta Oilers in the World Hockey Association in 1972–73, but he just didn’t have the lungs anymore.
Billy loved talking about his days in hockey. He’d often say this guy or that guy had “a heart as big as a bathtub.” In truth, that’s what most thought of him.
Lisa married Jim Ostertag, and they had two boys, Ryan and Dylan. “Papa” became their best friend. He taught them how to swing a golf club, throw a football and, of course, shoot a puck. He’d bring the little boys with him to watch the Pats, and it would take them a whole period just to make it to their seats, because Billy would have to stop and talk to everyone he knew. Dylan looked at him one time and said, “Papa, I can’t believe you’re famous—not with the way you dress.”
In 1998, when Ryan was six years old and Dylan was four, Billy discovered he had prostate cancer. He underwent more than thirty radiation treatments, several surgeries and chemotherapy treatments. He spent most of the summer of 2003 in the hospital but managed to pull through. Two years later, when the Stanley Cup was on tour across Canada, it made a stop at the Hicke residence. Billy showed his grandsons his name engraved on the Cup in three different places. But he was getting sicker.
Near the end, LeeAnne told him how sorry she was that he had cancer because it was taking away his quality of life. He shook his head and squeezed her hand. “Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m one of the luckiest guys ever. I have lived the life of a thousand men.”
The Next Wayne Gretzky
He was supposed to be the West’s Wayne Gretzky. Just three months older than the Great One, Doug Wickenheiser tied Wayne’s bantam scoring record—ninety goals. Wayne’s hero was Gordie Howe, and when Doug skated after school on the backyard rink his dad, Charlie, had made for him, he pretended he was another great stickhandler—Buffalo’s Gilbert Perreault. In his mind, Doug was part of the French Connection line along with his invisible wingers, Rick Martin and René Robert. He’d shoot over and over again. As he got older and stronger, he left more puck marks on the fence, and it would have to be repainted in the spring.
Doug played in the Regina Parks League with his friends from Holy Rosary every week after school on Rink #3 at the corner of Elphinstone Street and Victoria Avenue. Winds off the nearby fields blew icy snow onto the rink, swirling around their leather skates and bright pink cheeks. Now and then, the kids would head into the shack just long enough to feel the burn as their toes and ears began to thaw, and then it was right back out.
His peewee coach said he heard parents say, “He skated by my son so fast, he knocked him over.” Doug was ten when he and his brother, Kurt, were scouted up the ranks, through the Regina Sportsmen to the Early Birds. The whole family would drive to the Al Ritchie Arena for games. Doug could pick up the puck from behind the net, skate through the entire team and let go a cannon so hard that sometimes the goalie got out of the way. He had a quick wrist shot, could always find the hole in the net and had a knack for reading the play. He’d look up the ice and know just where to feed the puck for the best chance to score. Everybody whispered the same thing. “He’s just like Gretzky.”
NHL scouts first gave Doug a good look when he was fourteen and playing with the Midget AA Pat Canadians, but his mom, Fran, wanted him to go to school. Doug had a photographic memory and could study or read while watching a hockey game and absorb both. When Charlie asked him what he wanted to do, go to school or play hockey, Doug asked, “Why can’t I do both?” So he signed with the Pats, finished high school and signed up for a few classes at the University of Regina. His first year with the Pats, 1977–78, he came away with eighty-eight points—on the third line.
The Pats spent the summer rebuilding. Bob Strumm took over as general manager and brought in Bryan Murray to coach.
In 1979–80 Doug scored 89 goals and 170 points. In his 1977–78 season with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, Gretzky scored 80 goals and 182 points. Both boys gave a lot of the credit to their teammates. The Pats’ first power-play unit featured Doug, Mike Blaisdell and Ron Flockhart, with Darren Veitch and Brian Varga on the points. During the regular season, the Pats scored on 33.6 per cent of their power-play chances. All five players finished the season with over one hundred points. A couple of years earlier, when Gretzky played for the Soo Greyhounds, the team scored on 29.4 per cent of its power-play opportunities.
Pats fans called Doug “Dream Weaver,” after the Gary Wright song that was always on the radio. The song played in the rink and on the fan buses for away games. But those who knew Doug simply called him Wick.
Wick was always up to something. If he found a book on the bus, he’d cut the last three pages out and watch the face of his teammate as he came to the end. And he was a big fan of the shoe check—crawling under the table to leave mashed potato or Jell-O on top of a guy’s foot. In 1978–79, the Russian Moscow Selects were travelling across Canada to play eight WHL teams. The Selects were out on the ice for a practice skate, so Doug and his linemate Mike Blaisdell decided to watch. Walking by the Russians’ dressing room, they looked in through the open door and saw the team’s ugly matching nylon sweatpants hanging all over the room. For the next five minutes they tied tight knots in the legs of almost all the pants, and then they went after all the shoelaces. They had a big laugh about it until the Selects beat them that night, 7–5.
One night, Coach Murray was mad at an offside call by linesman Darrell Davis. Doug was the captain, so Murray sent him out to talk to Darrell. Davis was Doug’s good buddy, so in a low voice he said to him, “Bryan’s really mad and I have to look like I’m really giving you hell. So I’m going to start yelling at you.” He pointed his finger and yelled at Darrell, “You guys going out after the game?” Darrell yelled back, “Yeah, we’re going to Gino’s for pizza!” “Okay, we might see you there!” Then Doug skated back to the bench and Murray patted his helmet for stepping up.
The Pats lost the Memorial Cup that year, partly because of Doug’s shaky perf
ormance out of the gate. But at six foot one, 195 pounds, Doug had size and talent. He also had skill—three or four speeds, and he used them all effectively when he had the puck. Finally, Doug had an exceptional sense of the game around him. All the greats have it. He was named the league MVP and first team all-star, so his name topped the list of draft picks, along with defenceman Dave Babych, who was six feet, two inches and 200-plus pounds, of the Portland Winterhawks, and Denis Savard, a five-foot-nine, 157-pound forward from Montreal who had played three seasons in the Quebec Major Junior League. Doug hated the attention, but his agent, Bill Watters, wanted him in Montreal at the Forum on draft day.
Doug’s childhood fantasy came true when Montreal Canadiens general manager Irving Grundman and scouting director Ron Caron picked him number one overall. He no longer dreamed he was Gilbert Perreault—he was Gilbert Perreault. Second pick was Babych, who went to the Jets. Quebec star Savard went number three to the Blackhawks. Montreal fans were outraged, and so were many in the media. How could the team pick a big farmer from Saskatchewan over a local hero?
Doug was overwhelmed by the pressure in Montreal when he arrived that fall. He was supposed to be the next Gretzky. The team gave him Jacques Lemaire’s number, 25, and in the dressing room he sat between Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt. He started out hot, scoring in his first two preseason games. And then, in the team’s first regular-season game against the Blackhawks, which was on Hockey Night in Canada, Coach Claude Ruel decided not to dress Doug. It was a blow to his confidence, especially when Denis Savard scored a first-period goal to put the Hawks up 3–2. He also assisted on their fourth goal in the third and was named the game’s first star.
Coach Ruel was hard on Doug. He dressed him for forty-one out of eighty games. When he went home that summer of 1981, Doug told the Regina Leader-Post that a lot of his first year in Montreal was spent in the press box. He had no idea how he was supposed to get better by doing that. What Doug was going through was not all that unusual. When I talked with Guy Lafleur on Rogers Hometown Hockey in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, in 2015, I asked him about his sudden emergence in year three of his Habs career. He said it was not that he changed—it was that the Canadiens finally gave him the ice time.
Meanwhile, Savard had accomplished his goal—he had seventy-five points versus Doug’s fifteen. This was all very hard for Doug’s dad, Charlie, to swallow. He thought Doug was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wished Doug had been drafted by Winnipeg or Chicago, the next two teams to choose. Things might have been different on a team with less talent and in a dimmer spotlight. But Doug told him, “Don’t blame Montreal. Blame me. I’m the guy who isn’t playing the way I should.”
At home, Doug wasn’t an NHL player. He was just Doug. He played baseball until Ruel found out and told him he had to stop. He helped his dad and his brothers in construction, but the Leader-Post took a picture of him leaning over an eavestrough with a hammer, and when Ruel saw the picture, he told him he had to stay off rooftops. It seemed the team was messing with his head. Montreal’s big defensive star, Larry Robinson, is on record as saying that the way Ruel treated Doug might have been a way to protest Montreal’s picking him instead of Savard.
Doug’s rocky first year was waved off as nerves, and by his third season, under coach Bob Berry in 1982–83, his line with Lafleur and Ryan Walter looked like the emergence of a new French–English Connection. But it didn’t come to fruition. By December of 1983, Montreal was sitting right around the .500 mark and the team wanted to shake things up. Ron Caron, who had scouted Doug for the Habs and had always been a fan, was now the general manager of the St. Louis Blues. He’d hired Jacques Demers to coach, and together they were rebuilding the team. The Blues traded Perry Turnbull to the Habs in exchange for Doug, Greg Paslawski and Gilbert Delorme. Doug felt Montreal had done him a favour by trading him.
St. Louis was laid-back and Midwestern. It reminded Doug of home. In St. Louis, he didn’t feel fan disapproval, and with his pranks and sharp wit he was popular in the dressing room. He was an excellent faceoff man and scored a few goals even though he was in a more defensive role, but he still hadn’t regained his mojo. He didn’t have the confidence he once had as a junior player, except in practice, where he’d often play like a superstar.
Doug was having his best NHL season in 1984–85, with twenty-three goals and twenty assists in sixty-eight games. On March 10, 1985, in a 6–2 win over the Detroit Red Wings, Doug scored three goals, the second hat trick of his career. He was moved to the first line and ready to show what he could do.
The Blues had an annual rookie initiation ritual where they’d go on a “snipe hunt,” looking for “a rare Missouri weasel.” On March 13, they loaded up the vehicles and drove forty kilometres west to Eureka. Doug kept his face neutral as the vets told rookies Kevin LaVallee and Gil Delorme that they had to come back with a snipe. Then they arranged for the local cops to arrest Kevin and Gil for hunting snipe without a licence. The vets went to a nearby restaurant to eat and have a few pops while the rookies were locked up. Afterward, Doug was hoisting himself into the back of a pickup when he lost his balance.
A passing car tried to swerve and brake but skidded, slamming into Doug’s left leg and destroying his knee—ligaments, cartilage and part of his quadriceps. Doug was rushed into the hospital, and Dr. Jerome Gilden, the Blues’ team physician, had to rebuild it in a four-hour operation. The chance of him playing again was about 60 per cent. That was good enough for Doug. He gave himself nine months to get back on the ice.
By Christmas, he had returned to full practice. On January 23, ten months after the accident, Doug was back in the lineup against the Los Angeles Kings, but he didn’t have the same mobility. His beautiful skating stride was gone.
The Blues finished third in the Norris Division. After beating the Minnesota North Stars and Toronto Maple Leafs, they faced the Calgary Flames in the Campbell Conference final. Down 3–2 in the series and facing elimination as they took the ice at the Barn in St. Louis on May 12, 1986, the Blues trailed 4–1 after two periods. A lot of fans found it too painful to watch and left the building.
Just before the start of the third period, Coach Demers came into the dressing room and looked at the dejected faces of his team. He talked about their assistant coach, Barclay Plager, who was fighting to live despite inoperable brain tumours. Demers loved him like a father and a brother. All Barclay asked was that his players come out every night ready to play.
The message hit home for the players. Six minutes into the third, Doug scored unassisted. Brian Sutter, a player Barclay nurtured, guided and coached from junior to the NHL, scored a few minutes later.
The fans were back and the Barn was shaking. After seven minutes and thirty seconds of overtime, Bernie Federko took the puck from between Paul Reinhart’s skates. He and Mark Hunter took off down the ice on a two-on-one. Hunter shot on Flames goaltender Mike Vernon. Vernon blocked the puck, but Doug found the rebound and fired in the winning goal. The Barn exploded. It felt like the building was going to topple over. On the radio, the announcers couldn’t hold back their cheers. It was called “The Monday Night Miracle.” The Blues lost Game Seven in Calgary, but to this day Wickenheiser’s goal is replayed annually on TV in St. Louis.
Doug never again saw the same success on the ice. He loved St. Louis and moved there full time, but his performance was in a slow decline, and after the 1987 training camp he was placed on waivers. He squeezed out a few more decent seasons with the Vancouver Canucks, New York Rangers and Washington Capitals, playing up and down.
Doug wasn’t surprised to see his NHL career come to an end. He moved on to Europe and then to the IHL. He’d fallen for a Texan, Dianne Pepple. They were married on August 8, 1992, in St. Louis.
Doug returned to North America that fall with the Peoria Rivermen, followed by a season with the Fort Wayne Komets in Indiana. That fall, after the birth of his twin girls, Rachel and Kaitlin, Doug went in for minor surgery to remove a sma
ll growth on his left wrist.
A biopsy showed that the cyst was malignant. Doug had a rare form of cancer called epithelioid sarcoma, a cancer of the body tissue. Only about fifty cases a year are recorded in the United States. The ten-year survival rate is 42 to 55 per cent. The disease usually starts in the hands and forearms, and in about half of patients, it moves to the lungs, lymph nodes and scalp. Doug was treated with radiation, which seemed to destroy any cancer cells. And then Dianne gave birth to Carly, their third baby girl.
In August, Doug was pestered by a small, hacking cough that he couldn’t get rid of. He thought it was an allergy and went to a specialist who found nothing wrong. Doug went for an X-ray. Dianne was at her mom and dad’s house with the girls when Doug called her from work. She nervously asked how his appointment had been. “Come on home and I’ll talk to you,” he said. He had a lemon-sized growth on his right lung. It was inoperable because it was positioned around his airway.
Doug began chemotherapy in St. Louis. Every four weeks, he spent two to three days on an IV, but the mass in his lung was still growing. There were no more options. He had an incredibly high pain threshold. Mike Blaisdell says that when he played, Doug was a target, bruised head to toe and always getting chopped and hacked, but he never said a word about it. And even though the cancer was painful, he refused heavy painkillers because he wanted to be present for his kids.
The family went home to Regina, where Doug dropped the puck at the WHL’s All-Star competition. As he stood at centre ice, looking up and waving, more than five thousand Pats fans were on their feet, cheering for a man who had so much character, a man who gave them so much hope.
Hot Stick
There’s a saying, “Belief lifts talent.” You need desire and skill, but beyond that, the single greatest determinant is to simply believe it’s possible. When Brian Sutter made the NHL, his five younger brothers felt they could make it too, and they did. Lots of people say the best thing an athlete can do to succeed is to choose his or her parents wisely. DNA goes a long way, but for believers, there’s another key factor not found in the blood—it’s in the water.