Putting together a select team is not always as simple as it seems. Allow me to make the stretch between building Team Canada’s hockey entry in the Olympics and rounding up the best house league has to offer, for a tournamant with little over a week’s notice.
This was the only All-Star team of sorts that I ever selected and managed. It was in 1988, and somewhere in a box lies a dusty old runner up trophy that must have cost all of $10 at a local shop. I was an associate Pee Wee A house league coach back then, and I was asked to put together a team of major boys for a minor Bantam tournament. I had been coaching for a little over a year and didn’t know a whole hell of alot, but something in Keenan’s 1987 Team Canada roster must have struck a note, because my mini tryout camp was all about finding the right pluggers.
There were fifteen spots available on the team; two goalies, four defensemen, three forward lines. We would be going against boys aged one year older. I invited about 30 players to try out, and even before we hit the ice, the campaigning and self promoting of sons by parents began.
I’d invited about eight forwards who did not fit the mold at all. I wanted to have at least two full teams against each other before making cuts. The manner in which I split the teams for scrimmages pissed just about everyone off. In short, I purposely put as many good players on one loaded side as a could. I did this because I was seeking some gems on the weaker team, which is the side I coached for these scrimmages.
I had let these guys know exactly what I sought, which were forwards who would becomes thorns in the sides of more accomplished players during games. I found what I was looking for. A kid named Serge Carriere, who played center for my team, held his own against the big boys. He shadowed his adversaries to perfection and won three quarters of his faceoffs. Two wingers whose names I cannot recall won jobs because they were gritty little bastards out there, yapping it up while playing chippy take no quarter hockey and doing all they could to irritate and draw fouls. None of them could score worth a crap, and only Serge could skate with any fluidity, but they had an intrinsic clue of where they should be at all times and what they should be doing. The three were thrilled to be on team, and would do anything they were asked.
When I announced the composition of my team, a few parents went ballsitic that their kids weren’t chosen. I took it in stride, telling them their kids were every bit as good as they believed they were, and that I was looking for kids who did other things well. Mostly I was shat on for cutting the league’s leading scorer, a cherry picker par excellence who didn’t know the meaning of the word backcheck. I had had him on my side during scrimmages and it was impossible to get him to see the light. He rarely played inside our zone. I didn’t care. To me, he cut himself. His father was livid over my explanation.
On my house Pee Wee team, our other coach was a guy named Howard. It was he who had asked me to put the team together. Howard coached a Bantam entry in the tournament, and after my club was selected, he looked at me as though I was a bit nuts.
“Whaddaya doin’ Robert?”
Howard figured that out what in the tournament’s first game when we beat his team 4-1. I decided I would balance my lines out, and only play all three muckers together when looking to hold a lead. They gave Howard’s team fits. Howard had told me all year long who his best players were. He did me a favour. I made sure my three misfits kept them off the ice for the latter stages of the game.
After winning that first game, the boys got an injection of confidence and gave me their faith. We won our other two round games and headed to the semis, beating Howard’s team again, to reach the final. In those four games, my grinder line had given the team a goal in each. We thought we were unbeatable.
I got a chance to look at the team we’d be playing later that Sunday. It was a club from Lancaster that wore yellow jersey’s and wore sponsored by McDonald’s restaurant. My kids loaded up on one liners with that. Every kid on the Lancaster team was a menu item for the hour that game was played.
We ended up losing 3-2, and it was all my fault. I played my three amigos as a line the whole game, and they gave us a 2-0 lead. I don’t think we all became overconfident at all, but I kept a promise to the backup goalie that I would continue splitting games between them. They had rotated games thus far, each winning two, so as the halfway mark I pulled Bobby Scott and put this Crawford kid in. Big mistake, and I should have known it.
On the bench, when I told him to start getting ready, his response was, “You don’t need to put me in. We’re doing good.” I didn’t listen. With about nine minutes left, the Quarter Pounders and Big Macs killed us with 3 quick goals on 5 shots. Crawford pulled himself, saying he didn’t feel good!
Other than knifing us with a burst of third period offense, what the McDonald’s boys did better than any of our other opponents was that they remained very disciplined, not taking one penalty the entire game. What might possibly have enabled that to occur somewhat, was the fact that my line of shit disburbers lost a good bit of their edge when they suddenly became offensively productive. I was stuck. I could break the line up for that reason, and they weren’t as effective when separated.
What do you do?
Another boob I made was absent mindedly ticking off the opposing coach. Before the game he wanted to put a friendly wager on it, saying the loser would buy the winners each a burger, drink and fries at McDonald’s. My response was, when we win, we’d prefer being treated to a real restaurant. I didn’t know that the coach managed his local branch. Calling his goalie “Filet-O-Fish” was one thing, but I gather that used my retort to urge his players on. I heard about it, I tell you.
Overall, getting that far somewhat unexpectedly felt great, and the parents and players were a proud bunch. For a few seasons after that, I was asked when I would coach and assemble a tournament team again, but it never happened.
Entering a Pee Wee team into the Bantam tournament just doesn’t happen. On this instance, a team bowed out 10 days before, and the solution to not have a schedule do-over was to add the best Pee Wee boys. Nonetheless, I might not have done it either way. Sweet as it was to achieve what we did as a team, there were still a dozen players and parents who felt I chose the wrong kids.
Maybe I did.
Still it left a bitter taste. The kids had worked terribly hard. They just weren’t winners in everybody’s eyes.
