Lang Jim - Everyday hockey heroes: inspiring stories on and off the ice

Praise for

EVERYDAY HOCKEY HEROES

You can never truly know a country until you know the game that defines the people. The U.S. has football, Brazil soccer, India cricket. If you want to know Canada, or if youre Canadian and want to know yourself, Everyday Hockey Heroes is for you. In these moving, inspirational, and entertaining stories, Bob McKenzie, the Mr. Hockey of insight and analysis, and sportscaster extraordinaire Jim Lang have found the pulse of Canadaand the beat is as strong and healthy as ever.

Roy MacGregor, bestselling author of Wayne Gretzkys Ghost and The Home Team

Inspiring. Truly hard to put down. Bobs and Jims great storytelling abilities prove that hockey is so much more than just a game. Loved it!

David Chilton, bestselling author of The Wealthy Barber

Hockey never ceases to amaze me with the quality of the people in the game. This book is full of hockey champions who will inspire you and show you the true depth of the people in and around this game.

Brian Burke, former NHL executive

These heartwarming stories illustrate the power hockey has to unite us and inspire us to be the best we can be.

James Duthie, TSN Hockey host

My friends Bob McKenzie and Jim Lang have a lifetime of stories from covering the great game, and these pages are wonderful evidence of what theyve collected over the years. Youll laugh at times, youll be inspired at times, and you may even cry as well, but through it all youll know that Canada is hockey and hockey is Canada. It really is our game.

Peter Mansbridge

Compelling accounts of personal strength and the power of hope. Everyday Hockey Heroes gives a spotlight to important issues that people are dealing with and exhibits their ability to not only overcome these obstacles but, more important, to try to make positive change in the wake of them.

Sheldon Kennedy, former NHL player and founder of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre

Bob and Jim shed some fantastic light on a coast to coast truth: there are hockey heroes in every rink in Canada. Names like Westlake, St. Denis, Singh, Potvin, and Cunningham are what drive the success and our love of the game. Everyday Hockey Heroes reminds us that you dont need to make a million to be a real hockey hero.

Ken Reid, Sportsnet Central anchor and author of Hockey Card Stories 2

By seeing hockey at the margins, Bob McKenzie and Jim Langs work shines with a kind of log-cabin storytelling, illuminating the sports humanity and showing that every path is crooked no matter where you end up in the game.

Dave Bidini, author of Keon and Me and member of Rheostatics

To Jonathan Pitre, the Humboldt Broncos, and all the everyday hockey heroes out there.

Whos gonna be the hero?

If youve ever played hockey, odds are you have heard that line before. On the bench, in the third period, of a tense, taut tie game. Or maybe in those anxious moments just before the beginning of sudden-death overtime.

Who wants to be the hero?

When youre asked to put your name on a book titled Everyday Hockey Heroes , it does make you pause and think a little about what it takes to be a hero, to be heroic. And what exactly is a hockey hero anyway?

It could be the player who gets the game-winning goal. There are few feelings in the game that rival that incredible rush of energy and excitement. I mean, lets be honest. Who doesnt love a little adulation and adoration, to be put up on a pedestal? To be the hero.

As I got to thinking about heroes and hockey, it struck me that while there may not be many things as exhilarating as scoring the game-winning goal, does that action really qualify as heroic? A truly heroic act should not be so fleeting as a game-winning goal. It should have a deeper meaning or a greater sense of purpose than a random act in a random game.

When I was getting ready to write this introduction in early April 2018, I was pondering just that, trying to figure out the whole hero thing as it applies to hockey and the title of this book. Then I received some inspiration. Not welcome inspiration, mind you. But inspiration nonetheless.

Now, you may or may not immediately recognize April 6, 2018, as a particularly good or bad day in your life, but let me tell you why it was such a sad and tragic one in the hockey world. That morning we woke up to the heartbreaking news Jonathan Pitre had passed away. He was just seventeen.

If youre not familiar with Jonathan Pitre, his story first came to national prominence in Canada in 2014 when the Ottawa Citizen wrote a story about a hockey-loving teenager from Russell, Ontario, who had a rare but excruciatingly painful genetic skin condition known as epidermolysis bullosa (EB). Those born with EB, known as Butterfly Children because their skin is as fragile as a butterflys wings, suffer painful blisters all over their bodies. Theres currently no cure, and depending on the severity of the condition, EB can be fatal.

The moment we got to know Jonathan Pitre, he became our hero. He loved sports, especially hockey, and his favourite team was the Ottawa Senators, who embraced him as one of their own. He got to be an NHL scout for a day and spent time with the Senators management and players. He effectively became an adopted member of the team and a truly beloved member of the NHL community.

In 2015, The Sports Network (TSN) produced and aired The Butterfly Child , a touching yet difficult-to-watch documentary about Jonathans battle with EB. His story went viral. The last time I checked, the YouTube video had close to twelve million views. The videoif you havent seen it, you really should take the timeintroduced the world to a very special boy and his mother, Tina Boileau, whose love and unfailing dedication in caring for Jonathan most certainly qualifies her for some form of sainthood, to say nothing of her own heroism. Jonathan was a true inspiration, who, in the face of second-by-second, minute-by-minute suffering, somehow managed to rise above everything and be cheerful and optimistic, a shining light of life. An example in the art of forging ahead no matter the obstacles, he was wise and philosophical, but also funny and warm, and all of that at such a tender age.

Its always that battle between pain and not, Jonathan said.

He may have been known as the Butterfly Child, but as he so plainly told us, he had the heart of a warrior. Indeed he did. Every day, just trying to live was a battle for him, but he was still dedicated to a greater causeraising awareness and funds for EB.

Theres your hero. Theres heroism.

All of which made the news of his passing so sad, though it was also hard not to allow that Jonathans suffering was over, and perhaps he had, finally, found some peace.

That was how Friday, April 6, began. There was no way of knowing how wretchedly tragic it would end.

That same Friday, in the late afternoonearly evening hours, on northbound Highway 35 just north of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, the bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos Junior A team of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey Leagueheading to Nipawin for game 5 of their league playoff seriesand a semi tractor trailer truck travelling westbound collided. The resulting carnage at the prairie highway intersection was unimaginable.

As soon as the news of the crash filtered out that evening, we knew it would be bad. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police indicated fairly early that there were fatalities. As we waited for more details to emerge, we were reminded of December 30, 1986, when four members of the Western Hockey Leagues Swift Current Broncos died when their bus hit black ice and overturned, and of January 12, 2008, when a van carrying a boys high school basketball team in Bathurst, New Brunswick, crashed in wintry road conditions, killing seven students and the wife of the teams head coach. How could this happen again?