One Night Only

Ken Reid

Description

From the beer league to the minor league, hockey players from coast to coast often say they d give anything to play just one game in the NHL. One Night Only brings you the stories of 39 men who lived the dream - only to see it fade away almost as quickly as it arrived. Ken Reid talks to players who had one game, and one game only, in the National Hockey League - including the most famous single-gamer of them all: the coach himself, Don Cherry. Was it a dream come true or was it heartbreak? What did they learn from their hockey journey and how does it define them today? From the satisfied to the bitter, Ken Reid unearths the stories from hockey s equivalent to one-hit wonders in the follow-up to his bestselling Hockey Card Stories.

Sujets

• Hockey sobre hielo
• Ice hockey

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 11 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770909113
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

KEN REID
ONE NIGHT ONLY
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE NHL’S ONE-GAME WONDERS



To Jacoby and Langdon — DREAM BIG!


Contents
Foreword by JEFF MAREK
Introduction
Chapter One SCHOOL TIES
BOB RING A Saving Grace
SID VEYSEY Mr. Comeback
GLENN TOMALTY House League Hero
KEN DUGGAN Retired Times Two
BROCK TREDWAY Hockey’s Moonlight Graham
TREVOR FAHEY Coach International
JAMIE DOORNBOSCH What Are You Doing Tomorrow Night?
Chapter Two OLD SCHOOL
HILLARY “MINNIE” MENARD Best Week Ever
LEN BRODERICK It’s in the Cards
PAUL KNOX The Night Horton Got Hit
JACK MARTIN The Friends You Make
Chapter Three LET’S GO, PRETTY BOY
CAM BROWN A Hall of Fame Career
SEAN SELMSER Go Time
PAT MAYER Muscle for Mario
SEAN McMORROW Fighting for a Spot
Chapter Four THE WHA CONNECTION
BOB WHITLOCK The WHA Connection
JACK STANFIELD Coming to a TV Near You
Chapter Five ALL IN THE FAMILY
GREG HICKEY Come on out by the Pool
JORDAN SIGALET Less than a Minute of Magic/The Sigalet Boys (Part One)
JONATHAN SIGALET The Sigalet Boys (Part Two)
DARRYL OLSEN Proud Papa
DARIN SCEVIOUR Proud Papa II
Chapter Six MAKE YOUR MARK
LARRY KWONG The Trail Blazer
DEAN MORTON The Ref
BRAD FAST Making NHL History
RON LOUSTEL One Night and 10 Goals
Chapter Seven JUNIOR STARS
BRENT KRAHN The First Rounder
DAVE CHARTIER Wheat Kings and Bigger Things
DARREN BOYKO Hanging in the Hall
TRENT KAESE The Big Book of British Scoring
MIKE KEATING If I Can Make It There . . .
Chapter Eight SKATING WITH THE STARS
BRANDY SEMCHUK Dining with 99
ROBBIE IRONS A Komet Tucked between Two Legends
DEAN CLARK A Drop of Oil
JEROME MRAZEK A Holy Intervention
Chapter Nine LIFERS
DON WADDELL A Life in the Game
BLAIR MACKASEY The Unintentional Hockey Lifer
MIKE MURRAY I Should Have Shot
KIRK TOMLINSON The Total Package
Chapter Ten THE KING OF THE ONE-GAMERS
DON CHERRY A Night at the Forum and So Much More
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright


JEFF MAREK
Foreword
One.
This is a book about playing one game in the NHL. You know, the stuff any kid who’s ever picked up a stick dreams about. (I know I did.)
What’s it like to get the call?
How do you sleep the night before?
What was it like walking into the dressing room?
Who did you think of the moment your skates touched the ice in a real NHL game?
Hockey is, after all, a fast-paced meditation — there can be no distractions, only an intense, burning focus on a sequence of events — where the game plays you as much as you play it. This is probably why in-game hockey interviews are so horrible. You can’t ask players what happened out there because they don’t really know. Things just happened, and they reacted. Perspective and understanding come later.
It’s a riddle: many of the men you’re going to read about have probably spent their lives wondering what exactly happened. What did I do out there? What should I have done? If I could do it again, what would I change? After all, when you have but one game to dwell on and the rest of your life to do so, you tend to go deep.
The only thing I have a hard time with in Ken’s book is the word “only.”
In the following pages, you’ll read stories of players who played only one NHL game — many wishing for more and feeling that the experience is incomplete because it happened just once. No second act, no encore. Thanks, son, that’ll be all.
And when I hear some of these players use the word “only,” I cringe a little. It’s used to indicate regret rather than celebration. It makes me wonder, “What makes you feel that way?” This is an accomplishment that so few of us ever get to experience. Do you know how many of us wish we could have the word “only” on our hockey resume?
One is the beginning.
One is the initiation.
One is great.
It’s not the loneliest number, as Three Dog Night would have you believe.
These players all brought to that one game their own language of sport, built on the years of sacrifice and repetition that got them there. But as all of them will tell you, it’s still never enough to prepare you for the experience — the real thing. Nothing gets you ready for that jump; your training merely comforts you through any anxiety you have about it.
A second game is never like the first, can never be like the first — which is why we hold the first so sacred and are fascinated by it.
Nobody ever asks how your second game went.
If one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, then to most of us hacks, who bang around glorified frozen cow patties in various adult leagues while our children and spouses have long gone to bed, playing a single NHL game is somewhat akin to scoring a Game 7 overtime Cup winner.
It’s perfect.
Just don’t call it only one game.


Introduction
This is a book for beer leaguers. For every kid who ever laced up their skates. It’s for everyone who had to pick up a net and move it when somebody else yelled, “Car!”
This is a book for everyone who ever dreamed of making it — but didn’t — and for everyone who ever dreamed of hitting the NHL ice for just one night or just one shift.
Like countless other Canadian kids, I dreamed of one day playing in the NHL. Those dreams quickly disappeared, when at the age of eight, I was assigned to a Novice 2 team instead of the uber-talented Novice 1 squad (at least I thought they were uber-talented). It was around that time that I decided to find a way to still be a part of the hockey world even though I wasn’t good enough to play in it. Luckily for me, I found my way into sports broadcasting.
But that idea of strapping on the blades at the game’s highest level has never really left my imagination. As a kid, you dream of scoring the winning goal in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, but as you grow older reality begins to set in. Not everyone will get to do that. And then maybe you settle on just making it to the NHL for a few years. But not everyone can do that either.
I’m sure there were many others who, like me, settled on this thought: “I’d give anything to play just one game in the NHL.”
In fact, about 350 men, give or take, managed to do just that — play in a single NHL game, not one game more . One Night Only comprises the stories of men who made it all the way to the best league in the world — if only for the briefest hockey moment.
So, was their one game a dream come true? Or did they feel more like Cinderella, their dreams cruelly snatched away? Were they bitter? Or were they simply satisfied to have defied the odds by making it to the sport’s pinnacle?
Back in my minor-hockey days, a hockey school would visit my hometown in Nova Scotia at the start of each season. It was called Coach International. Every year, we were told an NHLer who had some Nova Scotian roots, Trevor Fahey, ran the school. I don’t remember ever seeing Mr. Fahey, but I’m sure he was there — he just didn’t stand out among the other instructors decked out in their maroon Coach International track suits. It wasn’t like it is now; after a session with the guys from Coach International, we couldn’t just head home and google the names of our instructors. I knew Bobby Heighton played for the Pictou Jr. C Mariners — but Trevor Fahey always remained a bit of a mystery. Many years later I learned that Trevor Fahey played in one contest for the New York Rangers in 1964–65. It was his only NHL game. He went on to play university hockey (imagine that, suiting up in university after making it all the way to the NHL) and was one of the first Canadians to head over to Russia to study how that country produced such great hockey players.
Fast forward to just a couple of years ago. I was up late one night, racking my brain for ideas. Hockey Card Stories was in stores and I was rummaging through my past, looking for something else to write about. I had been debating between writing another hockey-card book (I’m going to, for those who have been asking) or taking a different path. I was thinking of some of the guys from my neck of the woods who had made it to the NHL, when I thought of Trevor Fahey again. Suddenly I wanted to know more about him.
What was it like to make it all the way to the NHL for one game? A dream come true? Or was it heartbreaking? Could he even remember the actual game? Does it in any way define him all these years later? A quick online search showed me exactly how many men had played just a single game. I figured I was on to something.
A few days later in our wardrobe room at Sportsnet, Jeff Marek asked me about my next book idea and I told him. He said he’d had exactly the same idea. The original plan was for Marek and I to write this book together, but that didn’t happen. Jeff’s a busy guy. Luckily for me he did write the foreword. (Thanks, “Palm Isle.”) It was good to find out that, like Jeff, I’m not the only freak out there who’s not only obsessed with the superstars of the game but also the super stories of the game.
So I started making phone calls, tracking down the men who suited up in the world’s greatest hockey league for just a single night. Playing detective and finding out where these guys are now was a lot of fun, but the true thrill of putting together a book like this is getting to know the men who, if for only the briefest moment, fulfilled all of our childhood dreams.
But does a dream really come true when it only lasts for a few hours, or, in some cases, a few seconds? Let’s find out.


CHAPTER ONE
SCHOOL TIES


BOB RING
A Saving Grace


The Boston Bruins, Acadia University and the Vietnam War. Those three things are part of Bob Ring’s a