Hockey Dad (23 page)

Hmmm, what's a man to do?
Easy. Everything.

Crazy Hockey Dad drove on Friday afternoon to Detroit,
checked into a hotel there. Shortly after that, I drove to East
Lansing for Mike's game against the Spartans, drove back to
Detroit and stayed there Friday night.

Meanwhile, Cindy got Shawn to Hamilton on Saturday
morning for the beginning of his tourney.

I got up very early on Saturday morning in Detroit, made
the three-hour drive to Hamilton and watched two of Shawn's
three games that day. As soon as the second was over, I drove
back to Detroit to watch Mike's game that night against Wayne
State University. Immediately after that game ended, I drove as
far as Sarnia, Ont., grabbed a motel room and
five
or six hours
of sleep. I got up early Sunday morning, drove the two plus
hours to Hamilton and watched Shawn's team win two more
games to capture the provincial
field
lacrosse championship.

In all, I think I put about 1,000 miles on my truck that
weekend. But I was able to watch both my boys do something
they loved.

It doesn't get any better than that (although if you want
to know the truth, the time Cindy and I watched Mike play
at Harvard in Boston on a Saturday night and got up at 4 a.m.
to drive to Ithaca, N.Y., to watch Shawn play a full day of
field
lacrosse and
finally
make our way home to Whitby at midnight
on Sunday evening, well, that was a lot more challenging).

On the driving stuff, you either get it or you don't. Some
will read this and deliver the insanity verdict. Others, and I
know a lot of them, would say, "Pffft, you call that driving?"

Shawn could have played U-19 lacrosse in 2007, but chose not
to because he was busy with his high school co-op program,
interning as a sports reporter at Rogers Community Television
in Oshawa before being accepted into Fanshawe College's
broadcast journalism program for the fall of 2008. The way I
saw it, it was nice that Shawn chose to not play lacrosse that
year. He got to dictate his terms and conditions for not playing. I liked that he made the call, not someone else telling him
he couldn't play.

Thanks to a decision by the Whitby Minor Hockey
Association in the summer of 2006 to make all age levels of
house-league hockey non-contact, Shawn was able to mount a
winter hockey comeback of sorts for the 2006-07 season.

To be honest, Shawn's personal situation aside, I believe
all house-league hockey should be non-contact. For kids who
are interested in a game with truly equal ice time and no pressure or preoccupation with wins and losses, I'm not sure what
purpose contact serves in house league. For anyone who wants
the real hockey deal, there's contact in Select, A, AA and AAA.
And when the WMHA went to non-contact, they saw their registration numbers for Midget-Juvenile house league skyrocket.

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
fl
agrant 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
fl
owing 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
finally
e. 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-
fle
dged 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 put 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 ef
fi
ciently 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
fi
gured 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
fi
t 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 vili
fi
cation 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.