Table of Contents
Hockey Dad
True Confessions from a (Crazy?) Hockey Parent
Bob McKenzie
To Cindy, Mike and Shawn,
the best family a man could have.
To Mom and Dad,
I think you would have liked this.
To Graham Snyder and Hockey Dads who have
experienced the most painful loss imaginable,
bless you and your families always.
PROLOGUE
IT WAS MY COLLEAGUE and good friend Gord Miller from The Sports Network (TSN) who first started it. The Crazy Hockey Dad thing, that is.
Through a good part of the 1990s and into the new millennium, Gord and I spent an ungodly amount of time together covering junior, pro and international hockey events all over North America and Europe. You spend that much time with someoneon planes, trains, automobiles and buses; in hotels, bars and restaurants; in arenas and TV studiosand you get to know that person really well. Maybe too well, much to my chagrin.
So as the proud father of two boysMike, an 86 (thats minor hockey slang for being born in 1986), and Shawn, an 89 (there you go, youve already got a big part of the lingo figured out)Gord heard countless stories of the McKenzie boys hockey-playing exploits, to say nothing of my foibles and follies as both a minor hockey parent and coach.
Armed with all that inside knowledge and dirt on the so-called Hockey Insider, Gord took great delight in inserting the needle. He and I would be in conversation with someone and at some point the fact that I had two boys playing minor hockey would come up.
When it did, Gord would raise one hand with the back of it facing me and, with the index finger of his other hand, repeatedly point towards me into the palm of his raised hand and say to our guest in a mocking tone with exaggerated enunciation as he rolled his eyes: Cra-zee Hoc-kee Dad.
I would chuckle along with Gord and our guestselfdeprecation is one of my great strengths, though in the McKenzie household its more a survival skilland not wanting to be guilty of he doth protest too much, I would put up only token resistance.
Im not really crazy, I would say. Well, not too crazy.
On cue, like clockwork, Gord would keep it going: What about the time you called the stick measurement?
The guests response was invariably the same. You called a stick measurement in a kids hockey game? (Insert level of incredulity here.)
Twice Gord would quickly add, smirking at me triumphantly and then pausing for effect, in the same game.
Yeah, but I would say. Yeah, butindeed. That was it, game, set and match. Thanks for coming.
I would vainly try to tell our guests the same thing I will try to tell you now: I am not a Crazy Hockey Dad. Well, not too crazy. Yeah, sure, there was that stick measurement game in Barrie when I was an assistant coach in Mikes atom year and, yes, it was two stick measurements in the same game, but only because the head coach of our team wouldnt give me the green light to call a thirddamn you, Stu. But you cant possibly judge me and what I did that day until you have all the facts, the context and, most important of all, the knowledge it was payback for something really horrible the other teams coach did to our team a couple of years before that.
Why do I feel like Im getting myself in deeper here?
For most people who see my face on television, they see Bob McKenzie, the Hockey Insider. Thats fair. Its what I do. I go on TSN and radio stations across Canada and talk hockey, or I write about it on the internet. I have been doing this broadcasting thing, to varying degrees, for more than twenty years. I started in the newspaper business thirty years ago.
Its a great jobif you can call it a joband I would say Im passionate about it because Im passionate about the game of hockey. It was that way when I was a kid, it was that way when I graduated in journalism from Ryerson Polytechnic Institute to my first full-time job, covering junior hockey for the Sault Star in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.; it was that way in my nine years as Editor-in-Chief of The Hockey News, my six years as hockey columnist at the Toronto Star, another three years as Associate Editor of THN; and now that Ive been wholeheartedly immersed in broadcasting as the Hockey Insider on TSN since the year 2000, its been the same. I dont expect that will ever change.
But I will make one small distinction. Hockey Insider is what I do, not necessarily who I am.
The truth is, I see myself more as a Hockey Dad.
Crazy? Perhaps, though even on my worst days I would plead temporary insanity.
Yes, Hockey Dad is what I am. As passionate as I am about my job, as passionate as I am about hockey, I am even more passionate about my family. I have two fine sons who have grown up to be terrific young men and who share my obsession for all things hockey.
For as long as I have had kids, I have been leading this double life. My job is more or less all-encompassing. So, too, though, is being a Hockey Dad. But if you promise not to tell anyone, especially the good folks at TSN, I will let you in on a little secretIve devoted at least as much time and energy (probably more) to being a Hockey Dad over the past twenty-plus years as I have to being a Hockey Insider.
Truth be told, its a poorly kept secret, especially at TSN, where they have been unbelievably supportive in allowing me to do both.
Being a Hockey Dad hardly makes me unique. Hockey Dads are everywhere, all over the world, bless them. Most of them anyway. A lot of them get a bad rap. Hockey Dad has come to have sort of an ugly connotation to it, for all the obvious reasons for anyone who has followed some of the ridiculous things that have happened and continue to happen in hockey arenas across Canada and the United States.
So, why write a book on being a Hockey Dad?
Good question. Four answers come to mind.
One, to my knowledge, there has never really been a book written on this particular subject. (Maybe theres a message there.)
Two, to provide a public service for fellow Hockey Dads, and Moms, who perhaps can learn a thing or two from my mistakes before they make the same errors themselves (although scientific research suggests Hockey Dads truly are slow learners, if not incorrigible), as well as offer some broader insights on the good, the bad and the ugly of minor hockey.
Three, to celebrateyes, celebrate, for the most parta way of life, a Canadian way of life, an all-too-expensive way of life, where the game of hockey becomes the social and cultural epicenter for many families who can somehow wade through all the nonsense to find what is right and great about the game and its place in their hearts and their communities and their lives.
Four, therapy. Writing this book will be like a confessional and I suppose Im looking for some form of absolution. It should be nothing if not a cathartic exercise. I look forward to cleansing my soul.
This story of Hockey Insider being Hockey Dad is primarily my story, and I am not going to lie, its a deeply personal memoir. I would estimate almost all of the writing Ive ever done in my professional career does not contain in it the word I. Its never been my style to put myself in the story. This time, however, that is just not possible. This is a first-person account and theres no avoiding that. I have to tell you, though, its not always easy to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and spill it back out, good and bad, for all to see. And in order for me to tell my story properly, I cannot help but tell some of the story of my familyMike, the 86, Shawn, the 89, and my wife, Cindy, thewell, the birth-date identification is really only for the kids.
