Hockey Dad (28 page)

A good sports chiropractor/active release/soft tissue therapist, for example, is worth his or her weight in gold to treat or
even help prevent injuries.

I obviously have an advantage over most Hockey Dads, but
I like to think that even if I weren't the Hockey Insider I could
still track down good people to treat my kids. My boys like to
give me a hard time about my medical "hookups" because I
have this team of experts, depending upon what is required.

I am sure these "experts" all go running for the hills when
they see my name and number pop up on their call display,
but I don't know where I would be without this network of
health-care professionals. They all know who they are-K.J.;
Dr. Tim; Mark the chiro/ART/soft tissue wizard and Duane,
too; Dr. M for imaging; Jeremy the massage therapist; Matt for
strength and conditioning; and so many others too numerous
to mention.

In another lifetime-the one where I'm born with a brain-I would love to do what they do. They all take such great pride
in helping and healing and going out of their way; it really is
quite extraordinary what they offer and accomplish. I am often
awestruck, to tell you the truth, not just at their expertise, but
their willingness to share it and go to such great lengths to
help and heal as best they can. So while I can't do what they
do, I try to make an effort as much as possible to help other
Hockey Dads, and Moms, navigate their way through the
difficult
world of injuries and the like.

So many wonderful people have been so giving of their
time, expertise and experience to me and my boys, I feel like
I should do the same whenever and wherever possible. I can't
count how many people I've referred to doctors or therapists;
I only want to do whatever I can to help others.
Because if I've learned one thing as a Crazy Hockey Dad, it
is this: It's no fun when your kids are hurting and not playing.

36: You Try Cutting the Grass of a Quality Control Inspector

I WILL LEAVE it to far greater minds than mine-do you think
Sigmund Freud is available?-to make sense of who I am and
how I've behaved, or misbehaved, over the years. But if there's
one thing I know, it's this: I am what I am largely because
of my parents. And for that, I'm actually eternally grateful
and proud, even though they're no longer around to see how
their life's work has turned out. I would hope they're not disappointed. I am certainly not blaming them for any of my
shortcomings.

It's just that everything in my life, including my wacky
obsession with hockey, is pretty much viewed through the
prism of how I was raised by Bob and Maureen McKenzie in
Scarborough, Ont.

I was an only child, which some might say explains a lot,
but that was only because my mom was af
fl
icted with severe
rheumatoid arthritis when I was one year old. Having any
more children for her was out of the question. I don't know
how much you know about rheumatoid arthritis, but it's a
vicious, debilitating, crippling, incredibly painful disease that
attacks the joints and causes swelling, intense pain and often
dis
figure
ment. I would estimate my mom had surgery on at
least
fifteen
to twenty occasions and pretty much every joint
in her body was red, swollen and/or severely dis
figure
d. She
was, every minute of every day I knew her, racked with pain.
Yet for a good many years she still managed to drive herself to
a full-time job. She eventually ended up in a wheelchair for the
last fourteen years of her life and, quite suddenly really, died
of complications from this dreaded disease at the age of
fifty
-nine in 1992.

My mom loved hockey, too. Her brother, George Rowan,
was a decent player back in the day. She used to watch it as a
young girl and I was home with my mom watching it when
Paul Henderson scored The Goal on Sept. 28, 1972.

My mom was sharp, smart and well-organized. She did
not suffer fools and was never afraid to speak her mind. She
had enough experience with doctors to know there are good
ones and there are bad ones and you better
figure
out which
one is treating you; that you don't automatically accept what
they say without at least questioning or challenging them. As
tough as she was on so many levels, she was an incredibly
loving mother who always put her only son
first
. She never
complained about her lot in life; never had any pity parties,
and if anyone ever had a right or reason to feel like they got a
raw deal, it was her. What I learned from her, aside from everything, was this: You don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself
because everyone has a sad story.

My dad was born in Windsor, Ont., but only months after
that moved to Northern Ireland and was raised in the east end
of Belfast. He had the Irish accent to prove it, too, although he
was always quick, and extremely proud, to point out he was
a Canadian. As a kid who grew up not too far from the shipyards of Belfast, he survived the German blitz of World War
Two, though he once returned from the bomb shelters to
find
not only his family home was gone, but so, too, was his entire
block. He was a rarity, I'm sure, in that he actually played ice
hockey in Belfast as a young man, as well as soccer, and he
would show you his vintage Kangaroo leather Tacks and tell
you he wasn't too shabby at either.

He came to Canada in the 1950s and proudly worked forty-three years at DeHavilland Aircraft in Downsview, Ont.,
first
as a production worker on the assembly line, then as a quality
control inspector and
finally
as a production supervisor. You
would have thought he was personally responsible for every
Beaver, Otter, Buffalo, Dash 7 and Dash 8 that came off the
line there, that's how proud he was of his work. He wore a
tie to work every day of his life, even when he worked on the
line, and as a quality control inspector drove everyone there
crazy with his ridiculously high standards and expectations of
perfection. He had a voracious work ethic-when the roads
to DeHavilland were impassable because of a snowstorm, he
once got out of his stuck car and walked the rest of the many
miles through the snow to get there-and he always had two
jobs to help make ends meet. Between his job(s) and countless hours as a caregiver to my mom, I'm not sure how he
had any time for anything else. But he still loved to wash and
wax his cars-the 1963 Impala Super Sport; a 1966 Impala SS;
his big boat, the white 1968 Buick Wildcat convertible with
the black roof and the 430 four-barrel; the 1971 Monte Carlo;
and the 1973 Grand Prix-and he would take care of his front
lawn like it was a fairway at Augusta. Like a lot of Irishmen-I
mean, Canadians-my dad was a little quirky. He used to say
"Whether you're rich or poor, it's nice to have a buck," and he
was a
terrific
singer, an Irish tenor who could bring down the
house and a tear to anyone's eye with "Danny Boy." There's
a New York City hotel where they still talk about the crazy
Irishman who sang it so well in the packed lobby just before
Ireland played Italy in the 1994 World Cup soccer game at
the Meadowlands. That was my dad, the exasperated Toronto
Maple Leaf fan who never hesitated to call them "a bunch of
bums," the same guy who had a
fine
wardrobe (including the
always stylish fedora, suit and tie) and a sparkling gold jewelry
collection that would have been the envy of Don Cherry. He
loved golf and holding court over a pint in the pub, right up to
when brain cancer claimed him in the summer of 2003.

Like my mom, my dad didn't believe in complaining or
feeling sorry for himself. He got up in the morning, did what
had to be done and then did it all over again the next day.

Through all of that, though, my parents always made sure
I didn't lack for anything, especially when it came to hockey.

In spite of the fact we were a decidedly middle-class, blue
collar family, I always had the best of everything-the best
skates, the best equipment; my dad believed you buy quality. And they always managed to get me to my practices and
games. It would be fair to say I was the apple of their eye,
but for anyone who might think that or being an only child
equates to a life of privilege, think again. It wasn't always
easy living in the home of two perfectionists, each of whom
was either blessed or cursed with an extreme case of the old
Protestant work ethic. You try cutting the grass of a quality
control inspector.

Growing up, I was absolutely crazy about hockey, not that
my passion for the game ever amounted to excellence playing
it. My
first
year of organized hockey was when I was eight years
old in the Dorset Park house league, although I recall playing
it long before that for hours at a time on the outdoor rink at
Bendale Public School. Of course, my friends and I played road
hockey every free minute of every day. I played two years of
Dorset Park house league on the outdoor pads at McGregor Park
Arena. Then I moved up to play two years with the Agincourt
Lions rep team in the old Scarborough Hockey Association. I
played my peewee season with the Scarborough Lions of the
old Metro Toronto Hockey League (Scarborough, Leaside, Ted
Reeve, East York and Wexford) and Frank Mahovlich's dad used
to sharpen my skates at Leaside Arena.

I tried to play at the highest level possible in minor bantam
but was cut from the Agincourt Canadians partway through
the season. I licked my wounds and went back to house league
for two seasons before giving the lower levels of MTHL rep
hockey another try, playing with a bunch of my buddies for
independent minor midget and midget teams. I fancied myself
a bit of a late bloomer. I played two years of juvenile hockey
for the West Toronto Hawks and they were the two best seasons of my hockey-playing life. I tried out for Wilfrid Laurier
University's varsity team but I lasted a lot longer at the school
as a student (six weeks) than I did in the tryouts (about sixty
minutes).

It was a decidedly unremarkable minor hockey career but
I loved every minute of it. I knew that whatever I was going
to do with my life, it was going to be connected to hockey in
some way.

Even my romantic interests as a teenager were in
fl
uenced,
to some degree, by hockey. Before Cindy and I started dating
in high school, I was already taking her little brother John,
five
years younger than me, to shinny. When Cindy asked him
what kind of player I was, John said: "Really good, I think
he's good enough to play Junior. B." John's scouting prowess
most certainly could be questioned-I was actually cut from
Sherwood Bassin's Pickering Panthers' Junior. B team when I
was seventeen-but there was no doubting John's ability to
play the game.

As much as I learned about life from my parents and about
hockey from my own experiences as a player, and as much as
I've learned of both from being a journalist who covers nothing but hockey, I learned so much from being around my
brother-in-law in his formative hockey years and his time in
the professional ranks.

When Toronto Telegram reporter John Iaboni wrote on
Oct. 28, 1971, what is considered the
first
major newspaper
article about (ten-year-old) Wayne Gretzky, after watching him
score
five
goals and two assists in a 7-4 win over the MTHL's
Toronto Kings, my future brother-in-law got a mention in the
article. Iaboni wrote:
"[Gretzky's] Steelers were in front after the second period,
but center John Goodwin, by far the Kings' best player, tied the
score after 32 seconds of the
finally
period. But Gretzky won the
game with goals at 9:08, 12:28 and 14:59."

John played the game at a high level, but he wasn't a prototypical minor hockey star. He was as skinny as they come and
he certainly wasn't the fastest skater, but he had vision and
smarts and skills and could always score and create offense.

I
first
watched him play minor bantam with the Don Mills
Flyers and saw his teammate, a young Larry Murphy, prepare
to embark on a Hall of Fame career. I watched him play bantam and midget with Wexford, playing against Paul Coffey,
Steve Ludzik, Daryl Evans, Greg Gilbert and others.

It seemed to me that life in the Goodwin household-father Tom and mother Mary, the baby Johnny and his three
sisters, Joanne, Susie and Cindy-pretty much revolved around
John's hockey. My father-in-law Tom was a (Crazy?) Hockey
Dad. John can still hear him yelling, "Skate," and threatening to tape John's gloves to his stick if John insisted on skating
with one hand on it all the time. My mother-in-law, Mary,
may suggest otherwise-sorry, Mrs. G-but she can still tell
you which coaches cut John from which team.

John's minor hockey even impacted on my career path. I
ultimately ended up at the Sault Star, in large part because I
was in Sault Ste. Marie with John's Wexford team for the Air
Canada Cup midget championship playoffs. John was taken
in the sixth round of the OHL draft by the Soo Greyhounds
and he made the team just as that Gretzky kid left to play in
the WHA.

For a kid who couldn't skate, John did all right, and then
some. He beat out Sudbury goalie Don Beaupre for OHL rookie-of-the-year honors in 1978-79, scoring 43 goals and 125 points
to
finish
top
five
in OHL scoring for the last-place Greyhounds.