Hockey Towns

by Ron MacLean

  After about ten minutes, Garth said, “Listen, could you do me a favour?”

  Brad said, “Sure, what’s that?”

  “I’d love you to bring this guitar up on stage and help me sing ‘Friends in Low Places.’”

  Brad laughed, “No. As cool as that is, there’s not a friggin’ chance.”

  Garth said, “I’m not taking no for an answer. What are you doing right now?”

  Brad said, “I’m just going to wait upstairs for the show.”

  “No, no, come with me.” So Brad went up and hung out with Garth for an hour before his concert. They ate and talked, and Brad thought Garth was just awesome. But the whole time, Garth kept coming back to the subject of bringing him up on stage, and Brad kept saying, “No, but this is the most flattering thing in the world. I can’t believe it. Thank you very much.”

  After a while, one of the security guards poked his head in the door and said, “Garth, we’ve got a bunch of New York Rangers out there who want to come meet you.” Garth smiled. He knew they were Brad’s archenemies.

  Brad said, “Which guys are out there?” And the guard named three guys, including Joey Kocur. Garth looked at Brad, who shook his head no, and Garth said, “Sorry, I’m a bit busy.”

  The show was about to start, so Brad stood to say goodbye. Garth said, “Okay, Brad, I know you said no, but if you change your mind, go find Mickey. He’ll be at the side of the stage, and I’ll be looking for you.”

  Brad went upstairs and ran into Dennis Vaske and Tom Kurvers. He told them his Garth Brooks story and they couldn’t believe he had refused to join the King of Country on stage, but Brad told them he was too embarrassed to do it. “Look, I’m wearing loafers, for God’s sake.”

  Dennis ripped the cowboy boots off his feet and said, “Here you go,” and the boys broke out a few pops to help him summon up a little liquid courage. Fuelled by their support, Brad decided he was going to give it a try. The boots were so small that his toes were folded over, but he did his best to get to the stage in a hurry. The security guards who knew him from hockey were holding his guitar for him, and when he told them he was heading to the stage, they ran behind him like a bunch of excited schoolkids. “Brad’s doing it!”

  It was dark, but as Brad waited backstage, he was feeling sick to his stomach. What the hell had he gotten himself into? He felt like a kid in the stands with a baseball glove, hoping that maybe a fly ball was going to come his way. And sure enough, “Friends in Low Places” started and nothing happened. Then, about halfway through the song, someone put his guitar in his hands and pushed him towards the stage.

  By this time, his toes were totally numb, so he stepped gingerly through the side curtain and saw Garth, wearing an Islanders jersey. He was all the way down at the other side of the stage, which was the width of the ice. So Brad started strumming and singing and tiptoeing to meet him. As he passed one of the guitarists, Brad turned to him and said, “I think I play it differently than you guys.”

  The guy shook his head and said, “Don’t worry. We’re not plugging you in, for Christ’s sake.”

  There was no light on Brad, but he could see people in the first few rows looking at him as if to say, “What is this? Who are you? What is going on?”

  He thought, “Oh crap. I made a mistake. I’m out of here,” and he started to turn back. The guitarist ran up beside him, tucked him under his arm and pushed him down front. Suddenly, Garth came running across the stage and put his arm around Brad, and together they finished off the song. The reception wasn’t the same as if Mike Bossy had come on stage, but the crowd appreciated an Islander playing with Garth.

  By September 1994, the run was over. Brad had developed a connection with coach Al Arbour and appreciated and loved playing for him, but now Lorne Henning was the coach, and as nice as he was, there was less opportunity for Brad with so many new faces like Brett Lindros and Zigmund Palffy working their way into the lineup.

  Brad was back in the position of wondering what colour jersey he’d be getting at practice. He was disappointed, but he understood that teams start peeling and rebuilding every year. And it seemed like he was constantly getting injured.

  In 1995–96, both Brad and Pat Flatley were in the press box for a bunch of games, and they started talking about the Great American Bagel in Chicago. Pat’s brother had started the company, and every time the team was in Chicago, Pat would bring these incredible bagels down to the dressing room. He had sold the master franchise rights for the Great Canadian Bagel, but Pat told Brad the Oakville, Ontario, location was available if he wanted it. Brad had no intention of retiring, but he bought the Oakville franchise and decided to hire staff to run it. He broke his wrist a little while later and used the downtime to get the business rolling. Later that year, the doctors told him he was going to have to retire due to the wrist injury, and so he dove into the bagel business with both feet and got himself a seat-of-his-pants street MBA.

  His store became one of the top five earners in the country. Brad eventually sold the bagel franchise and founded Starshot, a digital and event marketing agency. Part of the reason the company became really successful, aside from partnering with his buddy Brad Friesen, was thanks to what he learned about creating teams from his experiences as Night Train.

  When Brad shared with me the story of how and why Night Train needed to exist for him to fit in, my first thought was he should have just quit and never come back, which would have made a statement. What good was it rejoining the team and then pretending to be somebody else? But Brad disagreed. He saw it as more of a testament to a broader understanding of team and a broader understanding of how to fit in. He thought it was a really great lesson that tied his whole journey together, and as the years passed I came to look at his story in a different light. One night, the whole point of it struck me—the idea that life really is about collecting people you like to be around, and when you come across them, you don’t take them for granted. If you want them to remain in your life, you’ve got to make an effort to keep them in your life. As goofy as Night Train is as a character, it opened up a world to Brad that he didn’t understand before.

  Inspired, I sat down one night and wrote lyrics to a song I asked him to record for me—called “Night Train,” of course. It ends with, The Night Train’s tremor I feel no more, but I’m on track . . . I’m me . . . me fine . . . feeling free.

  The Assigner

  What do you do with someone who has been through the worst experience you can imagine? How do you get involved in someone’s misery? Is it gauche or unacceptable even to ask them about it, knowing you are causing more pain, stepping on an arm that is healing?

  My only answer is respect. And there is no one I respect more than Charlie Lennox. He is a quiet man, humble. Almost all athletes are like-minded in that they are reticent to put themselves forward.

  Charlie and his wife, Diane, have managed incredible pain with love, forgiveness and yes, even humour. When I started refereeing in Oakville, Charlie Lennox was my assigner. He would send me over to the old Oakville arena to do the Blades games, and there was a fan named Schultzy who would really give it to me. “Hey, MacLean! You’re missing a good game!” I’d yell back, “Yeah, I know, but this is the one they sent me to!” Charlie taught me that one.

  Like every ref I know, Charlie Lennox played hockey all his life—peewee hockey in the Toronto Hockey League, three years of Junior B with the Leaside Rangers and Woodbridge Dodgers. He played for forty-five years until his knees got so bad, he couldn’t skate anymore.

  Charlie remembers officiating with Tom Brown, the referee who did the World Hockey Association’s Canada–Russia series in 1974. Tom took Charlie on the lines with him, and together they were at two Allan Cups, both in Calgary. Charlie was on the lines for two Memorial Cups too. His first was in 1968, and the second, in 1972, was the first year that three Tier I Junior A (now called major junior) leagues competed—the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, the Western Canada Hockey Le
ague and the OHA. So the competition was between the Edmonton Oil Kings, Cornwall Royals and Peterborough Petes.

  The Petes were Roger Neilson’s team. It was always interesting to ref his games. Neilson was a passionate coach. Six years later, he would become the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the first of his six head-coaching jobs in the NHL. He died of cancer in 2003.

  According to the Ottawa Citizen, in the 1973 OHA final, when the Petes lost to the Toronto Marlboros on a penalty shot, Roger sat in the empty stands and wept. In his obituary, the Canadian Press said of Roger’s time coaching the Petes, “When he pulled a goalie in the last minute of a game, he’d have him lay his stick across the goal line and leave it there. Once, after an opposing team was awarded a penalty shot, he replaced his goalie with a defenceman and told him to rush the shooter. When he had two players in the penalty box late in a game, he’d sneak on a fourth skater because it didn’t matter how many penalties his team took at that stage since the rules said it couldn’t have fewer than three skaters on the ice. The loopholes were all closed eventually, but Neilson never stopped trying to find others.”

  In 1968, after Charlie worked his first Memorial Cup, the NHL offered him a job, starting in the Central Hockey League in Dallas, but the pay was five thousand dollars per year. It wasn’t enough. Charlie and Diane had three kids and a mortgage, and at the time he was working for Air Canada, making eight thousand. He would have loved to accept the offer but just couldn’t afford to take the financial hit.

  Michael was born in 1964, Paul in ’66 and Susan in ’68. Michael and Paul were born on the same day two years apart—September 16. Paul was the spitting image of Diane’s father, very Irish-looking with thick, black curly hair and bright green eyes. Michael was dark-haired as well, but he had dark brown eyes, more like Charlie’s.

  Michael got sick when he was three and a half. Diane saw that there was something wrong. He would be sitting with the kids on the front porch, and when they’d all take off running, he’d start to run with them but immediately slow down and come back and sit on the step. She knew this wasn’t normal for a child that age, and at night, when they’d get ready to say prayers, he’d say, “Mom, is it okay if I sit on the bed? I can’t kneel.”

  She and Charlie kept taking their boy from one doctor to another, and every one had a different opinion. He was a big, healthy-looking, sweet little boy who never complained, so none of them thought it was serious. One of the doctors suggested it might be his tonsils, so he was admitted to hospital and had some blood work done. Charlie and Diane didn’t hear back until two months later, when Michael had just started kindergarten. She and Charlie were called in to speak with a doctor at Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital who sat them down and told them Michael had a rare muscle disease called juvenile dermatomyositis. And in Michael’s case the outcome was fatal. There was nothing they could do. Charlie said, “Tell me, is there any place in the world where they’ve done some work with this disease where I can take him?” He was told there was a team at the UCLA Medical Center doing some research on the disease. So Charlie flew with Michael to California. They had so little money, there was just enough for airfare and a rental car. So while Michael was under care, Charlie slept in the car in the hospital parking lot. Every morning, he’d get up and head to the public washroom, where he’d clean up and shave. With the money he saved, he was able to take Michael to Disneyland. Watching Michael spinning on the teacup ride, with his head back laughing, was worth every minute in his rental car bed.

  But the diagnosis was the same.

  Michael was constantly in and out of Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital. The doctors there knew so little about the disease that they were always taking him for tests and bringing other doctors in to examine him. Finally, Charlie stepped in. He said, “Look, leave the little guy alone. I know you have to do these things, but give him some peace.”

  Refereeing was good for Charlie, because for those three hours on the ice, he didn’t have to think about Michael’s swollen hands and feet and how much he was suffering. It was a tough time, and even worse when Michael died five years later, in 1974.

  Thank God Charlie had his daughter, Susan, and surviving son, Paul. Paul was a good little hockey centre. Charlie loved going to his games and picking out sticks and gloves and other equipment with him. Paul played rep hockey and rep soccer for years, so the family spent a lot of time at the rink and travelling with the rep teams. Any time the family drove to games, Paul would call the backseat. He liked to sit behind Charlie. One year, they made a trip all the way to Florida.

  In the spring, Paul played AA baseball as well. He was a happy, positive kid and a good student who always had a job, like a paper route, or he’d offer to paint people’s fences. He liked doing things to help out.

  Charlie and Paul were best buddies. Charlie coached his hockey teams, and they started reffing ball hockey together. Paul had set his sights on reffing ice hockey in the future. It was Charlie’s dream to work an OHA game with Paul one day.

  One of Paul’s buddies had a dad who worked at Ford, and the teen was permitted to test-drive new cars. It was a cool thing to be able to do, and he often took his buddies out for rides. Paul would come home and tell Charlie all about the neat new contraptions and upgrades.

  Charlie was in Cambridge, Ontario, in October 1982, working a Junior B game, when Paul’s buddy and two friends picked Paul up in a brand new test car. Their school was playing a football game at another high school in Oakville, so the four boys decided to grab a bite at McDonald’s between quarters. On their way back to the field, the driver took a curve on a residential street a little too fast. The kid went to hit the brake but hit the gas instead, and the car collided with a telephone pole that fell down on the car, crushing the roof over the backseat on the driver’s side—where Paul was sitting.

  Diane had gone to bed early with a bad cold, but the doorbell wouldn’t quit ringing, so she came downstairs to answer it. Susan was right behind her. A police officer and Paul’s friend’s father were standing there. As soon as she saw them, before they said a word, she said, “Oh no, not Paul,” and turned and ran upstairs to his room. She was sure he was in bed sleeping, but of course he wasn’t.

  Charlie was on the ice refereeing, so he couldn’t be reached, but he came home shortly after. He was always after Diane to lock the front door, and when he saw all the cars, he thought, “Oh boy, now she’s done it. She’s left the front door open and we’ve had a break-in.”

  When he walked in and heard the horrible news, he was devastated. He had to quit reffing in the OHA. He couldn’t watch the boys coming into the arena with their bags and sticks and laughter and not think of Paul. And the guilt. It didn’t really make sense, but he couldn’t help thinking that if he hadn’t been refereeing that afternoon, Paul might have been driving his car instead of driving around with his friends.

  The teenage driver was injured in the accident and spent some time in the hospital—nothing too serious, but he was having trouble because it was his mistake that killed Paul. When he got out, Charlie called him and said, “Come on, let’s go out for a skate.” So they went out on the ice and skated and talked. It went a long way toward helping the boy recover.

  A couple of years later, in 1984, Sue had just started university in Toronto, and when Air Canada moved its computer centre to Montreal, he and Diane didn’t really want to leave her by herself. So Charlie took an early severance package and decided to try selling real estate up north near the family cottage, but the market had dipped and sales weren’t exactly booming.

  John McCauley, whose son Wes is a top NHL referee, was the NHL assigner. At the age of just forty-four, John passed away after emergency gall bladder surgery. It was a devastating loss for hockey, and it created a big hole in refereeing. His assistant, Bryan Lewis, who was assigning for the AHL, moved up to his position, and Willy Norris, a retired NHL linesman who had been assigning for the OHA, took over for Bryan, which meant the OHA needed someone to r
eplace him.

  Charlie was offered the job. At first, he was hesitant. Paul had been gone only two years, so his death was still with Charlie every other breath and it wasn’t getting easier. But refereeing had been a good distraction after Michael died, so maybe this job would help.

  It was a long commute to Cambridge, where the job was headquartered, but Charlie took it. He became an assigner and stayed there for twenty-two years. No one has done it longer. When he started, the system was primitive. There were no computers or anything like that.

  Assigning was a lot of responsibility. He had to make sure there were officials at every game, and lots of times there were snowstorms or some personal emergency would come up, so he’d have to find a way to get an official on the ice. For one game, they needed a local to fill in, and Charlie found a female. It was the first time a woman ever reffed a junior game.

  Assigning was an intense job, but it did help Charlie feel better. He’d meet young referees just out of school and watch them get their first jobs, get married, have kids and go through personal tragedies and triumphs. Coaches would be screaming about this referee and that referee and accusing Charlie of being biased, and he would simply answer, “You’re a coach, you have your players for three or four years. I’ve been with these guys four or five times that long.” Because he worked with them so closely and stepped up for them so much, many of the refs he assigned became like sons. Four of the eight officials tapped to work the Stanley Cup finals in 2015 came through Charlie in the OHA—referees Kevin Pollock, Wes McCauley and Dan O’Halloran and linesman Derek Amell.

  I was with Charlie for thirteen years. Truth is, he was always after me to be tougher on the players. He would say, “Ron, you like to let ’em rock and roll a bit more than we like to see.” Charlie used honey and vinegar to send the message, but he allowed for my version of communication and gave me big games. He and his boss, Brent Ladds, the president of the OHA at the time, were gentle, caring bosses. The kind you would do anything for—except call more penalties.