Anchorboy (8 page)

“
EVER BEEN IN A BAR FIGHT?
” asked Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett to TNT NBA reporter Craig Sager after a particularly contentious win over the Orlando Magic in early 2012.

I’ve had my ass kicked in a bar once or twice. Most recently, it happened just before I left my first wife. Our relationship had truly hit the skids, and I was out with Dan O’Toole and a few of his friends one night. I’m not a person who has ever enjoyed nightclubs very much, but they insisted on hitting a typical douchified Toronto establishment, the name of which I will withhold to protect the innocent. Having had a few too many cocktails, I was susceptible to engaging in conversation with people I shouldn’t have, and when a beautiful blonde woman recognized me from the show I couldn’t help but lap it up a bit. I was feeling lonely and miserable and fully aware I was probably about to get divorced. The lovely blonde and I made our way upstairs to continue our conversation in private in the VIP room.

After what was probably a half-hour of serious flirting, and perhaps even some light petting, I suggested we take the party to
a nearby hotel. While the blonde was trying to figure out how to reject my offer as painlessly as possible, I was suddenly attacked out of nowhere. I didn’t even get a good look at the guy, but the next thing I knew I was being punched square in the forehead four times. Fortunately for me, my forehead is a massive target. Any other part of my face would have been much more susceptible to real damage. A bouncer rushed over to pull the guy off of me but it was too late. The dude had been wearing a ring and cut me wide open. I started bleeding everywhere. While the guy screamed and yelled at me while being bear-hugged by a King Kong Bundy look-alike, I glanced over at the blonde, who gave me a sheepish “I’m sorry” look. Jealous ex-boyfriend. I should have known. I guess that was karma for the whole “attempting to cheat while you are married” thing. Not my best night out on the town in Toronto but a lesson learned: You should always be prepared for something bad to happen.

A couple of years before that I got my ass kicked even worse. And here’s the rub: It happened on live television, and the person who kicked my ass was a very, very powerful woman. In both cases I was not prepared for what was about to happen. In both cases I suppose you could say I got what I deserved.

If people regularly watched me host
The Big Breakfast
in Winnipeg, the first thing they ask me about is the time I was beaten up by Dominique Bosshart. Dominique had just won a bronze medal in kickboxing at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney and had returned home to a hero’s welcome, fielding plenty of national and local interviews about her success. Eventually, she was kind enough to show up on
The Big Breakfast
one morning to not only answer a few questions about her time at the Games but also do a quick demo with me on kickboxing technique.

We liked to “do things” on the show, and what could be more fun than a powerful, athletic woman showing off her greatest kicks? We planned it out before the segment started: Dominique and I
would talk for a minute or so about her experience in Sydney and what it’s like to return home an Olympic bronze medallist, and then she and I would stand face to face and she would demonstrate a roundhouse kick, with me holding up a thick pad about waist-high to protect myself. No head gear, no other padding, just me and my Backstreet Boys outfit and my heavily gelled frosty tips to protect me. What could possibly go wrong?

Before the segment started, Dominique showed me how to hold up the protective pad, and by “protective pad” I mean a rather thin gym mat you would expect children to do somersaults on in kindergarten. For some reason this seemed perfectly reasonable protection to me. Did I mention before that I’m not much of a details guy? Dominique and her coach, who had joined her that morning, wanted me to hold the protective pad up high, so that the bottom was around belt-level and the top was just around my chin. But I was having none of it—I had visions of her perhaps losing her footing and kicking a bit lower than normal, with her foot ending up promptly wedged into my balls. Instead I insisted on holding that pad just a
little
bit lower to protect myself in the nether regions. After a few practice kicks during the commercial break, in which Dominique gave about 22 percent effort, we figured we were ready to go. We had to be ready to go … we were
live
.

The plan, which, yes, seems flawed now but at the time seemed brilliant, was to have Dominique go
all out
with her roundhouse kick like she would in a competition.
All out
. Again, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan to me. No one ever accused me of being smart. The segment started off beautifully: She was a seasoned pro and had given a million interviews, so she was friendly and comfortable on camera. Once I saw the “3 minutes left” sign from my floor director, Chris Albi, we were off.

“Let’s demonstrate a roundhouse kick,” I said with the confidence of a much smarter man. For whatever reason, instead of
standing in a ready position with one leg firmly planted behind the other and knees bent like I was about to start a race, I decided the better option was to stand straight up with my feet right next to each other. It was as if I thought I was waiting in line for Tragically Hip tickets. Any reasonably strong human could have walked by me in that stance and shoved me over onto the floor.

“I’m ready!” I said with a smile.

They might as well have been my last words.

Dominique and I stood face to face as planned, and suddenly I had this feeling of terror wash over me. She exhibited the stance of a real kickboxing champion, and I quickly realized I may have made a horrible, horrible mistake. Too late to turn back now, however, as we were
live
. Live television doesn’t wait for the man who finally realizes he’s about to be humiliated in front of his audience.

Her coach counted her down: 3 … 2 … 1 …

With the speed of a young Ben Johnson, his blood filled with illicit substances, Dominique spun around. Next came her powerful, powerful leg, swinging toward me like I was a piñata. Her foot hit me square in the protective pad, and I felt like I was an extra on
Bloodsport
and had just taken one straight in the gut from a young Jean-Claude Van Damme. But it wasn’t just the kick. It was the momentum of her pure power that simply overwhelmed my very slight frame. This was not going to end well …

The woman had so much power, and I was so very weak and barely awake, that I was sent barrelling backward ten feet, stumbling and trying to maintain my footing along the way. There was no stopping it. In hindsight, I should have tried to fall to the ground, but in the split second it happened there was simply no way to change my momentum. I was heading straight backward, and the only thing that was going to stop me was a big brick wall. Attached to that big brick wall? A beautiful, expensive, and somewhat brand new neon sign that lit up and said
The Big Breakfast
.

I was heading straight for that sign.

Purely by instinct, I reached out for the wall as I was falling into it, putting my hand straight into the sign and smashing it upon impact. That was followed by my entire body colliding with the sign, smashing it further and rendering it relatively unrecognizable. The bulb was destroyed, the massive neon coffee mug was destroyed, and “Big” and “Breakfast” were destroyed. Only “The” remained from an otherwise horrible mess.

After I had completed mass destruction (all of this taking place within about five seconds), I fell to the ground in a heap on top of a couple of amplifiers that had been set up for that morning’s musical guest. It took about one and a half seconds for everyone in the crew, everyone in the newsroom (which faced our studio and offered a beautiful view of the entire incident), and everyone who was a guest on the show to digest what they had just seen. That was followed a half-second later by all of them bursting into uncontrollable laughter. They had just witnessed the ultimate live TV moment: a morning show host getting his ass kicked by a woman and destroying property in the process. Again, I’m amazed this clip hasn’t ended up on YouTube somewhere, and I imagine that someday it will.

I slowly made my way to my feet as floor director Chris Albi showed the only concern for my well-being. You could hardly blame everyone else for standing back and enjoying my humiliation. It was hilarious and clearly my life wasn’t in danger—only my pride and my gut were in pain. The real victim was that neon sign. It was destroyed beyond repair and had to be replaced. Dominique wasn’t too concerned. She had known what was going to happen. The segment appeared on every “best of” show we ever did after that, and eventually they replaced that sign.

I
WAS ABLE TO RETURN
to Winnipeg in early April of 2012 for the Winnipeg Jets’ final regular season game in their first year back in Manitoba’s capital. When I lived in Winnipeg in the late nineties and early aughts, there was never any speculation about the team’s returning, because no one thought it was even remotely possible. They were gone, and they were gone for good. My favourite local Winnipeg band, jazz/hip hop/instrumental collective, the Hummers, even called one of their albums
Save the Jets
in 2001 as a joke about being late to the party to keep the team in Winnipeg. I never got the feeling the city was still devastated about the loss of the team when I lived there, because enough time had passed and I think Winnipeggers had fully come to grips with it. It was only when NHL Southern-belt teams like the Atlanta Thrashers and, yes, the former Jets-now-Phoenix Coyotes began to struggle that suddenly there was a glimmer of hope.

The city had built the 15,000-seat MTS Centre for their American Hockey League team, the Manitoba Moose, as well as for concerts, and it was a tremendous success, but there was a perception that the rink was simply too small to lure an NHL team back north of the border. There was also a perception, and I fully believe this was held by NHL senior executives like Gary Bettman, that the city was simply too small and obscure a market in this day and age to house a pro team in one of the four major sports.

Luckily, a guy who happens to be the richest man in the entire country and one of the twenty richest men in the entire world thought otherwise. When David Thomson saw the way principal owner Mark Chipman was handling the day-to-day business of running the Manitoba Moose of the AHL, he soon bought out all the other partners until it was only Chipman and Thomson writing the cheques. Thomson’s family had donated the land the MTS Centre sat on downtown, and he clearly saw the potential of an NHL return in the city.

Meanwhile, during the summer of 2010, Dan and I hosted a live
SportsCentre
show as part of the Kraft Celebration Tour in Pinawa, Manitoba, about two and a half hours east of Winnipeg. The show was marred by heavy rain, which didn’t dampen the spirit of the incredible crowd that showed up (sorry, sometimes I can’t help but write like a guy who has worked in television news for almost twenty years). We noticed a couple of people wearing Jets jerseys and asked that they be moved up closer to the stage. Then we decided to jump into the crowd while everyone chanted “BRING BACK THE JETS!” as the credits rolled. It was one of the more memorable show closings
we’ve done, and it reminded me of the passion that Manitoba sports fans had for their team. Turns out I was just scratching the surface of that passion.

Toward the end of the following NHL season, the word had gotten out that the Atlanta Thrashers were in serious financial trouble and that a move to Winnipeg was imminent. By now it was impossible for Gary Bettman to prevent one of his prized Sunbelt teams from heading back north, even if he did show up at the press conference announcing the purchase of the team with a scowl on his face that made him look like a petulant child. “This doesn’t work if the building isn’t full,” he sneered to Jets fans. Jets fans promptly sold out the entire 2011–2012 season in thirty minutes. There was money in the Jets ownership; the fans had proven their lust for NHL hockey by purchasing tickets in droves; and the building was in place, even if it was small by NHL standards. The Jets were back.

But would they be called “the Jets”?

Amazingly, before the deal was finalized to move the Thrashers to Winnipeg, rumblings throughout the hockey world began to occur indicating that Mr. Chipman might not want to call the team “the Jets” for various reasons: Having built up the “Moose” brand over the past few years in the Winnipeg market, there was some speculation that True North wanted to retain that moniker for the new team. There was also speculation that the owners were concerned that if the team was called “the Jets” and they wore the old uniforms, no one would buy team merchandise—probably the single dumbest argument I’ve ever heard. I’m pretty sure that after fifteen years of the team being away, people needed to buy themselves new Jets jerseys because of weight gain and potential lingering odour issues. There was also talk of a “fresh start” and that the “Jets” name had technically left with the old franchise that was now in Phoenix. It was genuinely thought that the new NHL team
in Winnipeg would be called something other than “the Jets,” and that was simply not acceptable to me.

The tradition of the “Jets” name goes back to the days when the team was a member of the World Hockey Association in the ’70s. The city’s long aviation history of both aerospace development and housing a Canadian Air Force base was the reason for the name, and it had a great ring to it. When the Jets moved from the WHA to the NHL they kept the name, just as the Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques, and Hartford Whalers had done.

The team enjoyed some great years throughout the ’80s and early ’90s with players like Dale Hawerchuk, Teppo Numminen, and Teemu Selanne. Unfortunately, the Jets never competed for a Stanley Cup because they were stuck in the Smythe Division with the all-powerful Oilers and Flames teams of the ’80s. When I thought about pro hockey in Winnipeg, I immediately thought “Jets.” To consider calling them something different was turning one’s back on the history of hockey in the city. There were some in Winnipeg who thought a nice compromise might be to call the new team “Winnipeg Falcons” after the senior men’s amateur team that won the first-ever Olympic gold medal for men’s hockey back in 1920. It still made little sense to me.

Had Mr. Chipman and Mr. Thomson simply declared at the press conference announcing the purchase of the Thrashers that the new team would be called “the Jets,” the entire city would have been thrilled and never even speculated about an alternative. Instead they said that a name had not been decided. There was talk that like the AHL team, they wanted “Manitoba” in the title and not “Winnipeg.” I was seriously concerned. It was great that NHL hockey was returning to Manitoba’s capital where it belonged, but the idea of that team not being given the name “Jets” was strangely upsetting to me. Even though I had never been a Winnipeg fan growing up, it simply
didn’t seem right
.

When the city of Cleveland lost the Browns in 1996, the city negotiated a deal with the NFL to retain the Browns’ name, colours, awards, and archives for three years until a new stadium could be built and the NFL would return to the city. When the city of Seattle lost the SuperSonics in 2008, civic officials also negotiated to retain the Sonics’ name and colours for when the NBA returned to the Pacific Northwest. The concept of calling these teams anything else was patently absurd to all their fans.

The thought of having the NHL return to Winnipeg without them being called “the Jets” so infuriated me that I went on
SportsCentre
one day and indicated to Dan that if True North did not refer to the team as “the Jets,” then I would, in fact, “lose it.” I still get asked to this day what exactly that would have meant. I’m still not sure. It’s not as if I was going to hop on a flight to Manitoba and try to find Mark Chipman so I could beat him up or something. He
did
grant every Manitoba hockey fan’s greatest wish by returning the city to the NHL, after all. Let’s just say I would have been very, very disappointed and would have very likely referred to the team as “the Jets” on
SportsCentre
even if they were called “the Falcons” or something else. Much as I often refer to the Minnesota Wild as “the North Stars” when reading their highlights.

In the end, the fan base made sure their voices were heard, and even though I’m not convinced he was completely happy about it, Mr. Chipman relented to popular opinion. When taking the microphone to announce the selection of Mark Scheifele in their first NHL draft since returning to the city, Mr. Chipman announced the pick on behalf of “the Winnipeg Jets” as several Jets fans in Jets gear who had driven down to St. Paul from Manitoba for the draft cheered in delight. I don’t think my thinly veiled threats on national television tipped the scales or anything. Oh, let’s be honest, of course they did. You’re welcome, Winnipeg. You got your Jets back.

After the Jets’ return had been set in stone for the fall of 2011, Dan and I once again hosted a live
SportsCentre
show in Manitoba, this time about an hour west of the city, in MacGregor. The new Jets logo had already been revealed and merchandise was flying off the shelves. We expected a few new Jets caps in the crowd of about 1,000 people, but we were not fully prepared for the rowdiness of said crowd. They were nuts, and they were nuts about their newly reborn NHL team.

Bryan Little, who had played in Atlanta and was set to become one of the Jets’ top forwards that fall, had agreed to come up to MacGregor and sign autographs for people in the crowd. The line to get his autograph was ridiculously long, snaking around the stage. Sean Thompson, one of our lighting guys on the Kraft Tour who looks identical to Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger and played him in sketches on our show, was placed next to Bryan and was also signing autographs. What a bizarre little world we had created. We then brought Bryan onstage so he could soak up the atmosphere a little bit. At various points during that afternoon as the crowd chanted “BRY-AN LIT-TLE,” I saw Bryan, a very shy guy, glance over at us with a look that said “What the heck have I gotten myself into?”

It wasn’t until the end of their first season back that I made it to a Jets game in Winnipeg. By then I had witnessed the incredible crowd on television. Everyone was blown away by the reception they gave Teemu Selanne when he returned with the Anaheim Ducks; the team’s home record was substantially better than their road one; and they were at a disadvantage on the road, having to play in the Southeast Division and travel regularly to Florida and
Carolina. By season’s end the Jets had fallen just short of their playoff goal, but I was still excited to finally see a game in person at the MTS Centre. I caught a last-minute flight with my girlfriend, and we checked into the Fairmont and made our way down Portage Avenue to the Jets’ new home. We were escorted to the press box and had the chance to sit next to our TSN Winnipeg bureau chief, Sara Orlesky, who was a born-and-raised Winnipeg girl and had been delighted with the opportunity to work in Winnipeg full time and return to the city to raise her young daughter.

Needless to say, I was absolutely blown away by the passion of the crowd. Before the puck even dropped the team handed out several year-end awards. The reception Jim Slater got for winning a community service award was louder than any goal celebration I had heard that year at Rexall Place in Edmonton or the Saddledome in Calgary. Simply put, the Winnipeg crowd was putting
most
other Canadian hockey crowds to shame, with the possible exception of those at the Bell Centre in Montreal. There are many skeptics out there who wonder if the Winnipeg crowds can sustain this passion, and even some Winnipeggers wonder that as well. It’s a fair question.

Steven Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning came into the game with fifty-nine goals and was roundly booed every single time he touched the puck, but when he actually buried number sixty, the crowd gave him a standing ovation! I had the chance to draw the winning 50/50 ticket (the purse: $55,000), and I received an incredibly warm reception when my ugly mug appeared on the Jumbotron. Dave Wheeler, a local radio guy and friend of Dan O’Toole’s, was also the in-game host, and he asked me to introduce myself to the crowd. “Jon Ljungberg,” I replied, to a few laughs.

The Jets didn’t get the win that night, but later, in Osborne Village where I used to live, I saw tons of Jets jerseys and hats on young and old people who had just been to the game and were now unwinding with a drink or two afterward. There was no question
that the team had given the city and many of the downtown businesses an economic boost.

When the Edmonton Oilers made their unexpected run to the Stanley Cup Final back in 2006, then owner Cal Nichols made the comment that the playoff run had been good “for the soul of the city.” I think everyone in Edmonton knew exactly what he meant by that. For years before a salary cap was introduced, Edmonton faced the almost constant prospect of their team leaving for a market south of the border, just as Winnipeg’s team had done. Finally, after years of wondering if they would even have a team at all, fans who cared about their hockey team more than anything else in their community were able to watch the Oilers have some success again without the threat of losing them when the season was over. It made everyone in Edmonton happier, closer, and probably more productive. There is really nothing like a winning team to bring a city together.

The return of the Jets to Winnipeg was also good for “the soul of the city.” A city that is still used to being the butt of jokes across the country. Maybe that’s why the crowd is so loud. They don’t want anyone to question their loyalty to this team. The Jets players were clearly not prepared for the reception they were given, and when the season was over, team captain Andrew Ladd remarked that players across the league had commented on how cool it was to play in front of fans like that, prompting speculation that the crowd itself might be a draw for future free agents. Let’s hope so. Winnipeg is a great city, and now it’s got soul again.