Stompin' Tom provided soundtrack for hockey

There's not a Canadian who doesn't know at least some lyrics to Stompin' Tom Connors' songs about this country's people and places. Born to a teen mom in Maritimes, handed over to the Children's Aid Society in Prince Edward Island, a runaway who hitchhiked from job to job before finally ending up in a bar in remote Timmins, Ont., where he was a nickle short for a beer, Connors got his musical start at age 28 when the bartender asked him to sing for his beer.
His most famous song was The Hockey Song, used in minor hockey rinks and NHL arenas across Canada. A little ironic because Connors' upbringing and childhood poverty meant he likely never could afford to play hockey, at least in a rink.
We used to play The Hockey Song on a boom box in the dressing room when the kids were atoms, way before they graduated to their choice of rap songs with dubious lyrics. Eventually, so no one was offended, boom boxes gave way to iPods and quiet personal tastes. No matter what the growing-older players listened to, my head always played The Hockey Song.
Last night during the NHL Maple Leafs-Senators game, the played a bit of the song. Some fans stood and sang while the scoreboard flashed the announcement.
Stompin' Tom died at age 77 yesterday, March 6, 2013.
I think I'll celebrate his life by heading to the rink with my son.

Teen goalie pays heavy price for his style

Is the chase of an pro hockey career worth this? A talented, athletic Toronto teen has undergone multiple surgeries with more on the horizon all from playing and practising the butterfly goaltending style, says the Toronto Star.

Minor hockey Star

No one covers minor hockey issues as well as the Toronto Star.
Here's a piece today about making the kids' game non-contact for reasons of safety and fun. It's true: Contact hockey is the realm of elite players on evenly matched teams with the best coaches, trainers and referees. Contact hockey in more loosely organized leagues is at best too discouraging for less gifted kids and at worst too dangerous where serious injuries can and do happen.
Yesterday, the Star published a piece about the cost of hockey and the dreams chased by families of kids on AAA teams, the highest level for tweens and teens in Canada.
The odds of having it pay off with an NHL career worth millions or even an NCAA scholarship worth thousands are long. More likely is a life-long disadvantage from missed school days, lack of sleep, or injuries from over-training or on-ice mishaps.
I've always thought the cream will rise naturally to the top, no matter how many expensive, time- consuming tournaments or personalized training a 14-year-old consumes. Fun, fitness and friends -  not hotels, high-tech sticks and hockey hookey - should be the keywords for kids participating at any level.

Family moves to avoid small town coach

What's the worst minor hockey experience you've ever heard?
This story from Northern Ontario tops my list, where ill will, anger and a refusal to "release" a teen to play hockey in a nearby town left a family with no alternative but to sell their home of 16 years and move so their son could play the game he loves for a coach who doesn't have a track record of senseless screaming at kids.
For those not from Ontario, the province has an outdated geographic system of dictating where kids can play. Only for hockey. Other youth sports are just happy to have young people play, make friends and keep fit.

Empty feeling in Ann Arbor on NHL Winter Classic day

University of Michigan stadium, (Wayne Newton)

Today was supposed to be a hockey fan's utopia with the always-contending Canadian junior team playing in the world championship in Russia and two of the NHL's most storied teams, my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs and the model franchise Detroit Red Wings, meeting in and outdoor game at the Big House of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The NHL lockout ruined the Winter Classic game - it was cancelled weeks ago and the impasse between the league and players continues and might now threaten the entire season again.

I hope the league and players get it together for a full 2013-14 season including the Red Wings-Maple Leafs game at the football stadium Big House - a game which will set the record for largest attendance at a hockey game.

The stadium already holds the current record of more than 100,000 for a NCAA game between Michigan and Michigan State in 2010.

Meanwhile, the many great restaurants and brew pubs of Ann Arbor and area are relatively quiet compared to what was supposed to have been.

Flights of premium brews await hockey fans
at Ann Arbor's Grizzly Peak Brewing Company.
 (Wayne Newton)

Maybe the only good thing about the lockout is that teenagers playing in the NHL such as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are free to play in the world juniors, raising the bar of competition and making Canada the favourites to win.

As for Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, maybe there's more high-profile hockey on the horizon once hosting the Winter Classic happens and raises the city's ice profile. The university's gorgeous and historic Yost arena would make an excellent co-host venue for a future world juniors in conjunction with nearby Detroit and over the border in Windsor, Ont.
We played at Yost when my son was in town for a Canada-U.S. minor hockey tournament a few years ago. It's a spectacular venue, one which the visited Canadian kids and their parents have etched in their minds.

The best attended, highest profile world juniors are those held in Canada or in the U.S. near the Canadian border. It'd be nothing but great to play the tournament at Yost, Joe Louis arena and the WFCU Centre.
For more on Ann Arbor, here's my story for the London Free Press, Toronto Sun and the rest of the Sun Media newspaper chain in Canada.
Update: Here's what the Winter Classic 2013 logos were going to look like.

Back on the bench

Strange things can happen in juvenile hockey, like me finding myself back behind the bench for the first time in years as assistant door swinger and crafter of words of encouragement.
Not counting 3-on-3, I think the last time I took to the bench was seven or eight years ago when the coach was suspended during an exhibition game in Waterloo for asking my son, Adam, if his glasses were OK. Turned out the comment came after a controversial call against our team and the referee's name was also Adam.
I ended up behind the bench last night after the coach's regular 2IC opted to take a client to the major junior Knights game, where the teenagers play at a slightly higher tempo than the juvenile kids.
Not that I object to that, especially when I can't hide behind the glass as sane observers of hockey do.
I made it clear to our defence corps that their No. 1 job was to make sure I wasn't hit by a puck. Juvenile being what it is, shots off the boards don't always go where they are intended. Or, come to think of it, maybe they do.
Pucks to the head were on my mind because before the game I ran into a longtime kids' sports volunteer who's both a cop with lightning-fast reflexes and a trainer. A couple of years ago, he got bopped with a puck off the forehead, creating quite a flood and sending others rummaging through his first aid kit.
Last year, the head coach ducked in time so that his assistant coach, who usually has cat-like reflexes, could take a puck to the noggin. Shots by major midgets have a lot of zip.
Fortunately, last night our defence did its job and no pucks made it to the bench. Of course, we lost the game ... but you have to set your priorities.

Minor hockey minds score big win in London

Kudos to decision-makers involved with minor hockey in London, Ont., for coming up with a better way to organize teams in the heartland of hockey.
Devoted and season-long readers of this blog might recall the chaos, anger and hard feelings born during a money-grabbing, team stacking tryout process last fall in which the London Junior Knights organization exercised its right to skim the best players from the city's neighbourhood hockey organizations with no regard for what families wanted.
The season unfolded as predicted. Junior Knights teams won. Ho hum. Neighbourhood teams were generally (but not always!) mere sparring partners.
Now, as publicly explained today by London Free Press sports columnist Morris Dalla Costa, the Junior Knights will reduce the number of teams it fields to one elite AAA team per age group and one AA "farm team" of skilled competitive players. All other kids get to play for their neighbourhood "A" teams without the silly threat of bouncing them "all the way down to house league."
Of course, due to low registration numbers, A and AA teams will still be lumped together to form viable leagues.
Best of all for families who like to vacation or have kids in summer sports, the tryout process will happen in the spring, not August like last year. Minor hockey volunteers will like this, too.

Fun by the busload

Ten years in minor hockey and we've never done this before.
It's not unique for teams to pay the big bucks to charter a bus, but teams my son has been on have always opted for the flexibility of car conveys to out-of-town tournaments.
I'm not sure what to expect travelling by highway coach. I haven't done it since my poverty days of university since the train to Toronto or flights are more civilized ways to travel when a car isn't the right choice.
It'll be noisy, I expect, but perhaps maybe less so thanks to Ipods.
It'll be whiney. It's 11 hours of driving to Nashville, plus however long it takes to clear US customs at Detroit. Nerves are bound to be frayed.
Nevertheless, we're looking forward to it and approaching it all with a sense of humour and adventure.
Who knows, maybe we'll even win some hockey games.

Lost but a win

Eleven years of driving to minor hockey rinks, obscure and obvious. I'd never gotten lost - delayed in Waterloo once, maybe - until last night.
We were headed to Lions Park Arena in Brantford last night to make up a game cancelled because of last week's storm. We've never been to Lions Park before - usually we play at the Gretzky - so I dutifully checked and printed out instructions from an online arena finding service. And no, I don't have a GPS.

The bench was a short for the West London Hawks midgets
 in Brantford. They ended the game with seven skaters.

The driving was good and we arrived so early that we stopped at a Taco Bell for a dinner, phase 2, then continued on our way to the arena. Or so we thought. When we reached the city limits, I figured something was amiss. Asked one person, who had never heard of the arena. Asked another who thought it was in Paris. Asked a third who said we were going exactly the wrong way - it's close to downtown Brantford.
As we were getting back on track, the cellphone rings. It's our manager calling from the arena lobby wondering where we were and if we were coming. It was a bit of crisis as we only had nine skaters and one goalie, thanks to travel plans, work commitments and injuries. Fortunately, there was a map in the arena lobby and he guided us in - then pointed out a sale price on a great GPS.
Of course we didn't expect to win the game and a short bench soon became shorter. Our captain re -aggravated his knee and upper thigh early in the first period. One of the four defencemen - OK, it was my son - took a hefty penalty and missed half a period. Another forward took a puck off the helmet. Another defenceman was pushed heavily into the boards on the first shift of the third period and managed only a shift or two after that.
Still, the pucks went in for us - five goals. Brantford hit the post at least four times and scored four, the last with their net empty in the final moments. A 5-4 win and only seven skaters by the end of the game.
A Christmas miracle to be sure.
And if there's a GPS under the tree on Christmas morning, I'll understand why.

Head shots in minor hockey

Pencil him in

Not all photo manipulation tricks work well for minor hockey shots, but I like what pencil effect did for this shot from two years ago of my defenceman son clearing the front of the net for his goaltender. Always a good day when the puck is in the shot.

OK, so that didn't go so well but the milkshakes were good

The last time I saw a kids' team implode into the depths of dismal was when my son was playing major peewee AE.
Thinking we had swagger, we entered the team in an OMHA 'B' tournament in Aylmer, about 45 minutes away.
We should have known it would be an odd weekend from the way it started.
The first round robin game was at 7 am, bright and early for even pre-teens, and it was against a minor peewee AE team from neighbouring Oakridge. Younger kids. Should've been a win. We knew it might not be just based on the tone of the kids when they arrived. We didn't count on getting thoroughly trampled by younger players who came to compete.
So dismal was the effort from a lack of backchecking to any sense of team play that the head coach decided to use Game 2 to make a statement. Everyone who was usually a forward played defence. Everyone who was a defenceman played forward. Fortunately, he didn't relocate the goalies.
That game had a predictable outcome, even though everyone went back to their familiar positions for the third period.
Game 3 of the round robin found the coach absent with a self-inflicted flu and a befuddled group of West London kids smoked by the host team.
Amid it all was an attempt at a team meal where the manager arranged a discount at one restaurant while the grandmother of a player thought she'd make arrangements at another. The kids who showed up at the right team meal laced their meals with multiple orders of milkshakes, with predictable results.
The tournament was early in the season and the team did start clicking and had some success later.
So confident were we that we arranged an exhibition game late in the season against the same Aylmer team with which we were not competitive during the tournament, just to prove how far we had progressed.
Smoked again.

Can a losing teen team be fixed?

Nobody likes losing or being part of a team considered a league doormat. But doormat might soon be the label attached to this year's edition of my son's team if the players don't soon buck up.
A tie Sunday night against the last place team in the league could be the sign of a long winter to come, especially considering Oakridge tied it with 1.1 seconds left to leave the rink with a 5-5 draw. And to think defence, just like the Toronto Maples Leafs, was supposed to be the hallmark of this year's West London Hawks major midgets.
It followed a 6-1 loss in Sarnia in which the teams started the third period tied 1-1. And before that, two losses to both versions of the elite London Jr. Knights AA teams and the impressive North London Nationals.
A sad, losing record is new territory for many of these kids. Several were part of West London teams that won or were runners up for Minor Hockey Alliance of Ontario championships. They've won or were runners-up in a fair share of tournaments over the past few seasons.
But injuries and other commitments frequently mean a short bench. Pitiful attendance at practice is yielding the predictable results. And a spiral of losing means individual efforts are taking over from synchronized team play  (the art that makes hockey a great team sport). When the short, quick pass dies, so does a team. When battles are lost along the boards, so are games. When forwards ignore their defensive assignments, goaltenders and defencemen are left hanging out to dry.
No worries, the coaches can fix it. But only if the kids are interested.

A Sarnia defenceman falls, their goalie drops his stick, but it's still not a big enough advantage for the West London Hawks against the Jr. Sting on the weekend. A 1-1 tie heading into the third period turned into a 6-1 triumph for Sarnia..

Play hockey - please

Seems strange to see such a plea for minor hockey players in Canada, but get used to it as costs rise, other sports become more popular and so on. This was published in a newspaper from British Columbia.

Taking a run at minor hockey

A cool day for family athletics - providing personal thrills and lessons for minor hockey.
It started with a high school cross-country meet at Springbank Park bringing together the best of the best from London and area to compete in the WOSSAA (Western Ontario Secondary Schools Athletics Association) championships.
Our younger son, who shunned minor hockey despite his older brother's uncurbed enthusiasm, barely qualified by finishing 15th last week in the city championships. He might have finished higher, but he ran the last third of the 6 km race in his socks after taking off his shoes when one lace became untied. He did it not thinking of himself, but because completing the race was important for the team.
At WOSSAA, running with about 150 high-placing athletes, he finished 19th, the best among juniors from his high school and one of the best in the city, but not nearly good enough to advance to the Ontario final.
Still, there were congratulations, applause, admiration and pride. No parents screamed insults. No peers tried to injure him.
Now comes the contrast.
At my older son's midget hockey game, respect, honour and sportsmanship were given the short shrift.
Adam, who has not been playing at 100% and has always been a defence-first defenceman, scored his first goal of the season. He was very involved in the play, drawing one deserved penalty and one that was a bit of a mystery. And he was, late in the game, part of a two-on-none breakout on an empty net and let his teammate pot the goal.
It was after than empty net goal when the lack of minor hockey sportsmanship reared its head. An opposing Stratford Warrior slashed my son on the arm as he and teammates were skating back to their bench. The game was 5-2 with only seconds left to play. What was the point, other than to assault?

Maybe if minor hockey wants to continue to attract families and the best young athletes, the sport needs to take a lesson in athletics from high school cross-country runners.
As is uncanny tradition, I missed taking a photo of my son's rare goal. I was at the far end of the rink. But I did snap this shot of one of his teammates scoring on Stratford.

Winning never gets old

It's sweet feeling to win the first tournament the team enters - and we're having it for the first time since my son started playing minor hockey in 1999.
His West London Hawks midget team won the St. Thomas tournament this afternoon in a classic minor hockey game that gave full value to everyone. The Dorchester Dragons, a gifted skating club, scored first on a power play and held the lead until the third when my son's team scored three unanswered goals, plus a fourth into an empty net.

My son's team survived two injuries, one to a player's leg after he was hit and the other to the assistant coach who took an errant puck to the jaw. (Our head coach saw the puck coming and ducked.)
When he first started playing minor hockey, it took years before my son was finally part of a team that won a tournament, league title or championship. Savor the moment when it happens because no matter what level you are playing at, winning is sweet.

Minor hockey lacks major sportsmanship - sometimes

I wrote this column for the London Free Press a year ago. Every season brings a fresh start. I'm optimistic sportsmanship will percolate throughout minor hockey teams everywhere this season.http://www.lfpress.com/comment/2010/02/05/12762211.html It starts with parents.