A 'Dunnie' from Whitby ensured Canada's pre-eminence on the ice in 1958

Tom Hawthorn, Globe and Mail, Apr. 07, 2010


For one below-freezing afternoon, the front line of the Cold War could be found on an outdoor rink in Oslo. The final match of the 1958 world hockey championship pitted the Soviet Union's best players against an amateur team from small-town Ontario.

The Soviet athletes competed for the glory of their motherland, as well the superiority of their leadership's Communist ideology, while the Whitby Dunlops carried the weight of a nation's fear it might no longer dominate the sport it gave to the world.

The Soviets and Canadians were hockey archrivals, the world championship pitting a nuclear power against a club bearing the name of a tire manufacturer on their sweaters.

It was 60 minutes of what the Toronto Telegram described as "a brutal, rugged, at times vicious game."

It was in this circumstance that Bob Attersley, at age 24, delivered one of the greatest performances by a Canadian player on the international stage. Attersley belongs in the pantheon of hockey heroes with the likes of Paul Henderson, Darryl Sittler, Mario Lemieux and, most recently, Sidney Crosby, all of whom scored dramatic goals.

He died on March 12 at the Rouge Valley Hospital in Ajax, Ont., at the age of 76.

He had success on the ice as an amateur, later proved himself in business and then enjoyed a long political career, eventually serving as the long-time mayor of the city whose name he helped make familiar to hockey fans around the globe.

If his feats were not readily remembered at home, it was perhaps because the stylish centre never played in the National Hockey League.

Robert Alan Attersley carried a lean 165 pounds on a 5-foot-10 frame. A broad nose, full lips, and swept-back hair, as well as a confident air, gave him a pugnacious appearance, though he mostly kept his play within the confines of the hockey rule book. He had good hands around the net and was not averse to passing the puck to a teammate in better position.

Born in Oshawa, Ont., on Aug. 13, 1933, he was a product of the automotive city's minor hockey system. He played two seasons of midget and two more of bantam before lacing up with the junior-B team. He qualified for the Oshawa Generals as a 17-year-old junior-A rookie in 1950-51. His point totals increased each season and, by his third campaign, he recorded 45 goals and 43 assists to lead his team and finish fourth in the league in scoring.

The young centre received the Tilson Memorial Trophy, awarded by sportswriters to the league's outstanding player. The trophy, sponsored by The Globe and Mail, honoured the memory of Albert (Red) Tilson, a former junior player killed in action at age 20 in 1944 while serving with the Canadian Army in Europe.

The Oshawa arena burned down, so the Generals were dispersed throughout the league. The Guelph Biltmores plucked the centre's name from a hat and he went on to record 116 points in 59 games.

Attersley joined the senior Dunlops in 1954 for the first of six high-scoring campaigns. He worked at the tire factory when not on the ice.

The Dunnies, as they were also known, won the league title in his first three seasons, then unexpectedly claimed the Allan Cup as amateur champions in 1957 by sweeping the Spokane (Wash.) Flyers in four straight games. Attersley scored one of the goals in a 5-2 victory in the final game, as the home team delighted 6,259 delirious fans.

The Dunlops, managed by Wren Blair, were selected to represent Canada at the world championship. One of the early announcements from the team was that wives would not be accompanying the players.

"We're not going overseas on a sightseeing tour," Mr. Blair said, "but to play hockey with the sole aim of bringing back to Canada the world hockey title."

Sweden was the defending champ in a tournament Canadian officials chose to skip, while the Soviets had claimed gold at the Olympics in 1956.

Joan Attersley told a reporter the wives were disappointed, but were resigned to being hockey widows for two months.

The Dunnies swept a pre-tournament, 14-game exhibition series with games in England, Germany, Norway and Sweden. Whitby outscored the opposition 162-18.

Led by captain Harry Sinden, a defenceman, the Dunlops wore yellow sweaters with black stripes with a touch of red in the logo. Four veined maple leaves formed a half-moon below the neck of the front of the sweater, while five more could be found on the back, which included the word CANADA instead of a player's name across the shoulders.

The team received a giant telegram signed by hundreds of Canadians back home. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker sent a message. Foster Hewitt arrived to broadcast the game over the radio.

For the deciding game, 11,000 spectators shoehorned into Jordal Amfi Stadium in Oslo, the site of the Winter Olympic tournament six years earlier.

The outdoor rink was surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped grandstand. The fans were joined by King Olav, as well as by 120 reporters, a large turnout in those days.

"The tension built and built," Mr. Attersley told The Globe's Trent Frayne in 1983. "It was the way they ran the tournament; we played every day. We kept winning and so did the Russians. I don't know how much sleep the guys got the night before the final. I know I tossed and turned and fretted."

The Soviets scored in the game's opening minutes, as the Canadians struggled with penalties. They trailed into almost the final minute of the second period when, at 18:42, Attersley pushed the puck past Nikolai Puchkov in the Soviet goal.

The teams exchanged goals in the third period. With less than four minutes to play, Attersley scored what would be the game winner. Just 25 seconds later, he fired a shot tipped in for an insurance goal by Bus Gagnon.

The Dunlops celebrated at the final whistle by hoisting playing coach Sid Smith onto their shoulders.

The Dunlops had won seven consecutive games in the tournament, scoring 78 goals, while goalie Roy Edwards surrendered eight while recording three shutouts.

George Dulmage, sports editor of the Toronto Telegram, admitted to crying as Mr. Sinden stood atop the podium for the playing of O Canada. The editor had high praise for the game's top scorer.

"There was Bob Attersley, the centre, who suddenly you saw skate into the Russian end to combat a still fresh and eager Russian player," he wrote. "He was bumped but he wouldn't go down. His legs were like rubber but he was staying with the Russian and fighting him for the puck ... here was a player who would be there when all the blue chips were piled on the table."

The victory was hailed back home as the only acceptable outcome.

"We Canadians are a modest folk, with a due awareness of our own limitations," opined the Toronto Star. "We do not expect to beat the French at cooking, the Persians at rug-making or the Australians at tennis. But we do, by golly, expect to handle all comers when the game is hockey."

The Dunlops repeated as Allan Cup champions in 1959, defeating the Vernon (B.C.) Canadians. Whitby declined the opportunity to represent Canada at the 1960 Winter Olympics, to be hosted at Squaw Valley, Calif. Instead, the Kitchener-Waterloo (Ont.) Dutchmen got the nod, bolstering their lineup with Mr. Sinden and the Dunnies top-scoring line featuring Mr. Attersley with Fred Etcher and George Samolenko.

The Dutchies' only loss in the seven-game tournament came at the hands of the host Americans, who won 2-1. Attersley's line had a poor game, owing perhaps to his being hobbled by a knee injury.

On the last day, the Canadians once again faced the Soviets, prevailing again, this time by 8-5. Attersley scored the final goal, having already contributed four assists, his victim once again the unlucky Mr. Puchkov.

The Americans claimed the gold medal, the Canadians taking silver. Attersley scored six goals and 12 assists in seven games, the second best total on the team.

His rights belonged to the NHL's Boston Bruins. He tried out twice in camp, but failed to make the Hershey Bears farm team, perhaps owing to his slight stature. At times, his weight dropped as a low as a reported 153 pounds.

The centre spent two productive seasons in the Eastern Professional Hockey League with the Kingston Frontenacs, a Bruins affiliate.

His hockey career ended in 1963 after a season split between the Johnstown (Pa.) Jets and Clinton (N.Y.) Comets. He then chose to open an eponymous tire shop in Whitby.

His political career began in 1964 with election to county council. A long-time councillor, he served as Whitby mayor from 1980 to 1991.

Five years ago, his No. 15 Dunlops sweater was put on permanent display in the lobby of the Iroquois Park Sports Centre in Whitby.

He was inducted into the Whitby Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.

As the Olympics were held in Vancouver, Attersley visited schools to show off his Olympic silver and world championship gold medals. He was still sore about losing to the Americans a half-century earlier.

"We should have bloody well won the gold medal," he told the columnist Brian McNair. "You never forget it. Losing to the Americans really hurt."

He leaves his wife, the former Joan Evans, a daughter, a son and three grandchildren.

Highlight-reel brawl one wild night in referee’s career

Tom Hawthorn, Globe and Mail, Dec. 20, 2011


He once ejected nine players from a game for fighting.

The most notorious incident in Gregg Madill’s career came at the end of a game at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Dec. 23, 1979. After the final whistle, players from both teams milled on the ice in a scrum that grew more heated as players argued. A fan then reached over the glass surrounding the rink to sock Boston’s Stan Jonathan in the nose, drawing blood.

The Bruins, skates still on their feet, climbed the glass to fight with the fans. Mike Milbury wrestled one fan over a row of seats, ripping a shoe off his feet before beating him with it.

As police broke up the battle in the stands, Rangers captain Dave Maloney had a heated argument on the ice with Madill before smashing his stick on the ice. The ref assessed him a game misconduct even though the match had long since ended. Later, Maloney complained to reporters that Madill had sworn at him and accused New York’s Swedish players of deliberately falling down so as to incur penalties on their opponents, an unsportsmanlike behaviour known as diving.

League president John Ziegler suspended three and fined 18 of the Bruins. He took no action against the Rangers, or the referee, though Sports Illustrated blamed Madill for ignoring a trip and a retaliation that led to the scrum after the final whistle.

One of the odder incidents in Madill’s career occurred during a game in Denver, when he banished goal judge Rod Lippman after the off-ice official lit the red lamp signalling a goal even though the puck had hit a goal post. It was the goal judge’s third disputed call of the night.

Though criticized as an NHL referee, Madill had worked his way up to the league after stints in minor professional circuits. He earned praise for his handling of international hockey games, including a successful assignment as an official at the world championships in Moscow in 1979.

Richard Gregg Madill was born in Toronto on July 15, 1944. He died on Dec. 5 at his winter home at Kissimmee, Fla. He also had a residence in the village of Apsley within the township of North Kawartha, Ont. He has been a residential building contractor.

He leaves his wife, Judy; two sons; a stepdaughter; and, six grandchildren. One of his sons, Jeff Madill, a right-winger, played 14 games with the New Jersey Devils of the NHL and had a long career in the minors.

Last year, an online auction house sold one of Madill’s NHL sweaters. The “spectacular set of stripes,” the listing noted, showed “some light staining that appears to be blood.”

Guy Carbonneau: Habs' coach Randy Cunneyworth needs to learn French

The Associated Press, Dec. 20, 2011


Guy Carbonneau understands Randy Cunneyworth's plight, but the former coach of the Montreal Canadiens also knows that the new man in that job should learn to speak French as quickly as possible.

“He's living a dream, which is doing what he loves for one of the best franchises in the NHL, and he's caught in a storm,” Carbonneau said. “It's premature. You have to give him a chance to show what he can do and if he's willing to learn.

“But there's no doubt in my mind that the coach of the Montreal Canadiens has to speak both languages, at least to some extent.”

The Toronto-born Cunneyworth, the Canadiens' first English-only speaking coach since Al McNeil in the 1970-71 season, landed in a swirl of controversy when he was made interim head coach after Jacques Martin was fired on Saturday.

Cunneyworth has said he hopes to learn French. Until then, the debate is likely to rage on.

Many see the Canadiens as not only a hockey team, but as an institution representing the French-Canadian people, and that its coach should speak the language of the majority of its fans.

Former general manager Serge Savard blasted the move, saying the team “belongs to the people.” Team owner Geoff Molson issued a statement that underlined the job is “interim” and that next season there will be a French-speaking coach, whether it is Cunneyworth or someone else.

“Its one thing to say he's willing to learn it and another to actually learn it,” Carbonneau said. “The job he has now is really demanding. You have to prepare the team. You have to eat and sleep. I don't know where learning French is going to fit in his schedule.”

The struggling Canadiens lost their first two games under the new coach, which hasn't helped Cunneyworth's cause. The French-language newspaper Le Journal de Montreal rubbed it in by printing its front-page headline in English: “Another Loss For Cunneyworth” to make sure he understood.

Some suggested that Quebec residents would be more willing to accept an English-speaking coach if it was a big name with a proven winning record, such as Detroit's Mike Babcock, but not a first-timer like Cunneyworth.

Being Babe Ruth's Daughter
His last surviving child remembers growing up Ruth

Jane Leavy, GRANTLAND.COM, DECEMBER 19, 2011

If names are not correct, then language is not in accord with the truth of things. If language is not in accord with the truth of things, then affairs cannot be carried out successfully.
— Confucius


Naming is a privilege of reason and the province of bullies. We name to tame and to maim; to honor the great, the dead, and ourselves. Whom we name and whom we don't (G-d) is an expression of awe, aspiration, and affection. We named home teams after scary animals (Lions, Tigers, and Bears) until high concept trumped anthropomorphism (Heat, Jazz, Soul, Wild). Some scholars attribute the decline in nicknaming to the evolutionary process that turned folk heroes into entrepreneurs. The truth is: George Herman Ruth, the namely-est guy ever, exhausted our supply of hyperbole.

He was the Babe, the Bam, the Big Bam, and the Great (and Bulby) Bambino (or Slambino); the Barnstorming Babe, the Bazoo of Bang, the Behemoth of Biff and Bust; Blunderbuss, and the Modern Beowulf. He was the Caliph and Colossus of Clout and Club, the Circuit Smasher and Goliath of Grand Slam, Homeric Herman and Herman the Great. He was the High Priest of Swat, and before that the Infant of Swategy. Also: the Kid of Crash, King of Clout/Diamonds/Swing, and, until Roger Maris, Hank Aaron, and the steroid marauders came along, the Home Run King. He was the Maharajah/Mauler of Mash, the Mauling Menace, Mauling Monarch, Mauling Mastodon, as well as the Mastodonic Mauler, Bulky Monarch, and Monarch of Swatdom; the Prince of Pounders, Rajah of Rap, Sachem of Slug, and Sultan of Swat; Terrible Titan, Whazir of Wham, Wali of Wallop, Wizard of Whack. And, not to be outdone, Damon Runyon added: "Diamond-Studded Ball-Buster."

The priests at St. Mary's Industrial School, the Xaverian reform school on the outskirts of Baltimore to which he was consigned at age 7, called him George. The parents who didn't visit called him Little George. The boys incarcerated along with him called him Nigger Lips. The Red Sox called him the Big Baboon and sometimes Tarzan, a name he liked until he found out what it meant. The Yankees called him Jidge.

Julia Ruth Stevens, his sole surviving daughter, calls him Daddy. Odd as it is to hear a nonagenarian refer to a man 60 years gone as Daddy, it is also a tender reminder of the limits of hyperbole, how grandiose honorifics obscure the messy, telling details of an interior life.

To others he is a brand, an archetype, a lodestar. His shape is ingrained in our DNA. His name recognition, 96 percent, is higher than any living athlete. (His Q score, a measure of how much the people who know him like him, is 32 percent compared to 13 percent for today's average major leaguer.) And yet, as well-known as he is, the most essential biographical fact of his life, one that demands revisiting what we thought we knew, one that Julia assumed everybody knew, remained unknown.

Julia Ruth Stevens has seen 95 baseball seasons come and go. The most recent World Series held little interest for her. Daddy's teams weren't in it. Yes, she heard about Albert Pujols' Ruthian exploits in Game 3 of the 2011 World Series — three home runs that called to mind the Babe's performances in 1926 and 1928 against the St. Louis Cardinals — but she was not overly impressed. "My mother always used to say, when one of Daddy's records was broken, 'Well, Lindbergh was the first one to fly the ocean, but nobody else you ever heard of seemed to get any attention.'"

She divides her time between North Conway, N.H., where she spends five months each year, and Sun City, Ariz. I met her on the screen porch of her modest New England home, where the athletic trophies belong to her son and the single photo of her father is a framed copy of an original. She wore a pale, paisley chemise dress, a strand of pearls, coral lipstick that complemented the tint of her hair, and a rock on her ring finger that was once Daddy's tie tack. She is a lady.

Macular degeneration has robbed her of much of her vision but little of her long-term memory and none of her sense of humor. A bum hip with a titanium rod had forced the cancellation of a planned visit to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. The occasion? "Oh, anything," she said merrily.

Of course — she is Babe Ruth's daughter.

Babe Ruth didn't become her father until 18 months after he married her mother, Claire, on April 17, 1929, Opening Day of the baseball season. Julia was 12 years old. She had spent the night at a girlfriend's house and learned the news from a wet newspaper she saw on the sidewalk outside her school. "Babe Ruth Weds."

"I said, 'What are they talking about?' When I got home, they could tell by my face I knew what happened. I think they said, 'Well, you must have expected that this was going to happen.'"

The expectation was grounded in tragedy — the death that January of Ruth's first wife, Helen Woodford. Though they had been separated for years and she, too, had formed another liaison, Ruth's Catholic faith made divorce impossible. "She was living with a dentist," Julia said. "She burned to death in a house fire."

The wedding took place three months and six days later, and a half hour earlier than the time announced to reporters by Ruth's agent, Christy Walsh. Babe and Helen's daughter, who was living in a parochial school under an assumed name, was not told about the wedding or her mother's death until months later.

A wedding breakfast was held at the 11-room apartment being readied for the newly blended family. The rain that had dampened the headlines also forced the cancellation of Opening Day, allowing the uninhibited celebration to continue. As one guest noted: "The 18th Amendment did not apply."

The next day at the stadium, Babe hit a first-inning home run and blew a kiss to Claire as he crossed the plate.

Julia didn't call him Daddy right away. "No, I continued to call him Babe," she said. "Mother said to Dorothy, 'You're going to have to teach your sister to call him Daddy.' So it was Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and it has been ever since."

Claire Hodgson, born Clara Mae Merritt, was the daughter of a prominent Georgia attorney who had once represented Ty Cobb. She was still a teenager when she married Frank Hodgson, a gentleman caller nearly twice her age. "My grandmother didn't like him," Julia said. "She went off to marry him and left her schoolbooks behind the door as if she was going to school. She and my biological father went off to get married, and then she went off to school. That afternoon, he came to pick her up and my grandmother said, 'Frank Hodgson, I told you I never wanted to see you again around this house.'

"He said, 'M'am, I came to pick up my wife.'

"That stopped my grandmother."

Claire was 16 when Julia was born in 1916. "He was alright up until I was born," she said. "I came along and he started spending his nights at the Elks club. She said, 'I've had enough of this.'"

She went to see a sympathetic elder, Uncle Joe, who was well disposed to her marital plight. "I think he was an uncle of mother's husband who was very fond of mother and thought she was getting a bum break from her husband," she said. "She said, 'I'm going to leave Frank and go to New York. Will you give me the money to go there?'

"He gave her $100 and said, 'Good luck.'"

Claire would later describe herself as a model and a three-or-four-line actress. Her daughter says, "Mother was a dish. She came to New York and lived with some girlfriends. Someone suggested she try Howard Chandler Christy" — the bon vivant illustrator with an eye for dishy dames. "So she went to the door with me. She was carrying me. He said, 'Good god, don't tell me it's another one of mine.'

"She told him she just wanted a job. He said, 'Well, come right in and let me take a look at you.'

"He used her as a model. She had a friend who was on the stage, and she told her, 'They're having a casting call tomorrow, why don't you go and see if they can use you?'

"She went to the casting call, and they picked her for the chorus line. Some people have said she was with the Ziegfeld Follies. Mother was very petite. The Ziegfeld girls were big girls. She worked for the Shuberts in New York City. The show went to Washington, D.C., for an out-of-town run. The star of the show was Barton. He and his wife, Kitty, took her under their wing. She was so young, so innocent, probably 18. He said one day, 'Do you like baseball?'

"She said yes, and he took her to a game. He knew Daddy. He came over and said, 'I want to introduce you to Clara Mae Merritt.'

"She went to [calling herself] Claire after a while. Daddy said, 'I'm having some people over. Why don't you come over?'

"She said, 'I have a show.'

"He said, 'Come after the show. It'll still be going on.'

"She said, 'I will if I can bring my girlfriend.'

"She went to the party. After, he said, 'May I call on you in New York?'

"She thought about it and said, 'You may.'"

It was May 1923, a month after Ruth inaugurated Yankee Stadium with its first ever home run. His bat sold in 2004 for $1.265 million. With it he declared his intentions for the new year and the new digs — "Some ball yard," Babe said. The previous season, the Yankees' last as squatters in the Polo Grounds, had ended with ignominy. Ruth was suspended four times and batted .118 in the World Series. Claire Hodgson, the new woman in his life, would be widely credited with instilling discipline that no lawyer, manager, beer baron, or commissioner had been able to impose. Julia guffawed at the legal circumlocutions inserted (by hand) in Ruth's 1922 contract, which I saw at the home of a collector in Florida.

"It is understood and agreed by and between the parties hereto that … the player shall at all times during the terms of this contract and through the years 1922, 1923 and 1924, and through the years 1925 and 1926 if this contract is renewed for such years, refrain and abstain entirely from the use of intoxicating liquors and that he shall not during the training and playing season in each year stay up later than 1 o'clock A.M. on any day without the permission and consent of the club's manager, and it is understood and agreed that if at any time during the period of this contract, whether in the playing season or not, the player shall indulge in intoxicating liquors or be guilty of any actions of misbehavior which may render him unfit to perform the services to be performed by him hereunder, the club may cancel and terminate the contract and retain as the property of the club, any sums of money withheld from the player's salary as above provided."

In the margin, Ruth smartly initialed his consent: GHR.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Julia said.

Along with fiscal restraint, Claire brought "baggage" — "Her mother, two uncles, and me," Julia said.

The intact family he had never had was completed on October 30, 1930, when he adopted Julia and Claire adopted Dorothy. "Probably he would have liked to have some kids," Julia said. "I don't think Mother wanted any more. Marrying him at her age in 1929, I don't think she wanted to be tied down."

She doesn't remember the day she met Babe Ruth. He was for her, perhaps for all of us, a priori. "It seems like he'd always been there."

Her son, Tom Stevens, a civil engineer visiting between contracting stints abroad, offered a gentle nudge — "He gave you a watch" — and Julia brightened. "A watch to me was something extraordinary. He loved roughhousing. Next thing I knew the crystal was broken. He said, 'Don't worry, I'll get you another one.'

"He was such a great guy. To adopt me! I developed a strep throat when I was 21. The doctor said, 'She needs a blood transfusion.' We were side by side on gurneys while he gave me a blood transfusion."

He used her grandmother's sewing machine to make her a bedspread for summer camp at Camp Shanewis on Crystal Lake in Barton, Vt. "It was floral, a blue background with flowers on it. He said, 'Don't tell anyone I made that.'"

It was the only time she ever saw him employ a needle and thread. Babe Ruth did not sew on his own buttons. Carloni, the tailor, did that.

Sometimes for breakfast he fixed one-eyed eggs. Sometimes he cooked up a batch of barbecue sauce to take along on hunting trips for barbecued venison. Her grandson, Brent, tried The Babe's recipe once. "It didn't taste good at all," she said.

The domestication of the Babe was never complete, but he was a strict father with very definite ideas about how to raise a daughter. "I had to be home by midnight, or else — even after I was in my 20s," Julia said.

Ruth's birth date was uncertain, off by a year and a day, a fact he didn't learn until he applied for a passport in 1934. He misspelled his mother's maiden name in his authorized biography and couldn't remember it when he and Claire applied for a marriage license. He said he had an older brother, John, who "died before he was any use to me." His late sister, Mamie, said George Jr. was the oldest.

The attention granted him as firstborn dissipated in short order as Kate Ruth, a diminutive woman, gave birth to seven more children in less than six years, including two sets of twins — only Babe and Mamie survived infancy. His barkeep father didn't give him the time of day because he didn't have the time of day to give. "His parents were first generation in this country," his granddaughter Donna said. "He was brought up on the Baltimore waterfront with all these dying kids — they ought to make a movie about that!"

Family life was itinerant at best and violent at worst. Various accounts describe physical abuse by both parents. "Daddy used to whip him something terrible," Mamie once said.

George Ruth operated a saloon on Camden Street from 1906 to 1912 in what is now short center field at Oriole Park. "When I wasn't living over it I was living in it," Ruth once said.

When the stadium was built in the neighborhood then called Pigtown, the State of Maryland hired an archeological firm to excavate the bar's foundation. With Mamie's help they located the family privy and a portion of the chamber pot.

Left to his own devices, George Jr. roamed the waterfront dodging truant officers, hurling stolen tomatoes through plate glass windows, chewing tobacco, dipping into his father's till, and emptying the glasses left behind by his patrons. "In those days, they tolerated a kid in a saloon but not truancy," Donna said.

In 1902, the State of Maryland outlawed child labor for minors 12 years of age and younger and mandated compulsory education for all children 5 to 16 years of age. That spring, a city magistrate declared him "incorrigible or vicious" and committed him to the St. Mary's Industrial School, founded by the archbishop in 1866 to care for orphans, paupers, and others "beyond the control" of their parents.

Today's language for unmanageable boys is a diagnostic code: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Donna believes her grandfather had ADHD, which she saw in her late brother. A conversation with a family friend, Juanita Jennings, fueled her suspicions. "She described the social life, showing up at 11 p.m. for dinner parties, the round-the-clock partying," Donna said. "He slept a couple of hours a night, and a couple of hours was good."

Tom Stevens' wife, Anita, a special-education teacher, concurs. "I think they could wear women out," Anita said of the Ruth men. "Kate must have been very tired."

On Friday the 13th, 1902, George Ruth and his 7-year-old son boarded the Wilkens Avenue trolley and rode it to the end of the line. There was another reason beyond rambunctiousness and the newly enacted truancy laws for his incarceration at St. Mary's. "His mother and father separated," Julia said. "He stayed with his father until he couldn't control him anymore and sent him off to St. Mary's."

That was news to Tom — as it was to curators at the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. "It was never mentioned," she said. "It must have been a blow to him to have his mother and sister go off and leave him, and his daddy put him in St. Mary's and hardly ever came to visit him."

She never heard him speak about his mother. As is the case so often with the unspoken, Julia assumed everybody knew. Donna, Dorothy's daughter from her first marriage, knew. "Mamie told me they were divorced," she said.

Neither she nor Julia knows exactly when or why Kate left. "I guess she didn't see enough of her husband," Julia said. "She took Mamie and went to live with her mother."

Donna suggested another possibility. "There's no way to know if that was her choice. When she said she was leaving, maybe the father said, 'You can take her but not him.'"

Either way, the effect on even the most incorrigible 7-year-old boy would have been the same. Parental abandonment would be the defining biographical fact of his or any childhood. It is the lens that clarifies; the mystery that explains. "It shaped his life," Donna said. "Heartbreaking, isn't it?"

Viewed through this darkened filter, the first line of his as-told-to autobiography takes on a different hue: "I was a bad kid."

Little wonder he authorized Bob Considine to write: "I think my mother hated me."

An idealized version of family life and his arrival at St. Mary's appeared in a 1920 first-person essay ghostwritten by the usually unsentimental Westbrook Pegler. It begins with Ruth crying himself to sleep his first night in the newly electrified dormitory. "I could see the family gathered about the table for supper and my chair empty, and I was wondering whether they missed me as much as I missed them. I looked up from my pillow in the darkness there, to see a great six-foot-six man standing over me. He said it in a whisper because he knew that one kid would be sensitive about having the others know him to be homesick …

"'What's the matter, Babe?' Brother Matthias whispered.

"I don't remember having been called Babe before that. Perhaps that's where the name originated."

Brother Matthias, the prefect of Discipline, was large enough that the door to his small sleeping quarters had to be rehung in order to accommodate the extra length of his bed. He commanded respect on and off the baseball field. But this is the first time he has been credited with divining the most famous of baseball nicknames. (Credit usually devolves to an unnamed teammate when Ruth joined the Baltimore Orioles and was dubbed Jack Dunn's baby.)

"Anyway, he told me he was coach of the ball club and advised me to come out and try for a place on the team," the United News Service feature continued. "I knew I was going to like this kindly, understanding big friend. But I couldn't foresee, of course, that he was going to coach me along into the big leagues and make the home run champion."

Ruth spent 12 years of his life in and out of St. Mary's, a Victorian institution in attitude as well as architecture. For generations of Baltimore's Catholic schoolboys, St. Mary's was a threat. Behave, or else you'll get sent where the Babe went when he was bad. "He did say one time that St. Mary's was his salvation," Julia said. "Left on his own with his father he would have ended up in jail. It was not the greatest place to be, but a good place for him."

Punishment was corporeal, and the diet would have been familiar to Oliver Twist. Lots of gruel, and two hot dogs on Saturday, which, Donna said, could account for her grandfather's well-documented appetite for ballpark franks. He told Julia one night over dinner that he was "never really hungry at St. Mary's but never really full either."

The boys called him "Nigger Lips" or "Nigger" or just plain "Nig," a crude acknowledgement of his thick lips and wide nose. "Between his looks, and being called 'Nigger Lips,' none of it could have been easy," Donna said. "He was gangly. He looked different from anyone else."

Visits home were often brief and ended badly. Parole became infrequent and visitors were few — one Sunday a month. "I guess I'm too big and ugly for anyone to come see me," he told his classmate Louis "Fats" Leisman, who published a pamphlet in 1956 called "I Was With Babe Ruth at St. Mary's."

Julia takes umbrage at that description. "He really wasn't ugly," she said. "I can remember when he was going to a Newspaper Guild ball or something like that he'd get all dressed up in a tux and his high silk hat, and mother and Dorothy and I would stand at the front door to say good-bye to him and he'd say, 'Am I a handsome fella or not?'"

Mamie recalled making monthly visits with her mother. Julia said: "I don't think Kate ever came to visit. He was allowed out to go to her funeral."

Kate Ruth died at age 38 on August 11, 1912. She was living with her sister. No mention of her husband is made in the death notice. The official cause of death: exhaustion. Also, she had lung disease. Kate was buried on August 14 in her parents' plot at Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery on Belair Road in Baltimore. "I was summoned home from school too late to be with her," Ruth wrote for the United News Service in 1920.

Her grave was unmarked until 2008 when it was discovered by Paul Harris, a Baltimore attorney and author whose father had played sandlot baseball with and against Ruth. "I woke up one night, and it just hit me: No one has visited her grave since 1912," Harris told the Baltimore Sun in 2008. The Babe Ruth Museum contributed $1,200 toward a headstone. "Shame on the Babe," Harris wrote in his account of Ruth's early years, Babe Ruth, the Dark Side.

The Xaverian brothers attended to his soul and gave him a calling. They taught him how to make a shirt — he would always have an appreciation for a well-turned collar. According to a dissertation about St. Mary's written by Notre Dame Ph.D. candidate Cyril Witte in 1955: " … The classroom was of slight interest to him, but his boundless energy found release and healthy application in the shops and on the playing field. When he had completed the eighth grade he spent full time working with the maintenance crew, in the tailor shop, and in the shirt factory. In the last named, he willingly spent time doing work in excess of his quota, thereby earning a sizeable sum. Naturally competitive and impetuous he was always in some kind of mischief, rarely returning to the dormitory in the evening with a whole shirt …"

The brothers imposed order on energy, channeling its abundance into baseball. In 1909, St. Mary's fielded 28 uniformed baseball teams; one game attracted 3,000 spectators. Ruth went missing the week before the first biggest game of his life, a contest between the good lads of Mount St. Joseph College, a private Xaverian school, and St. Mary's inmates. He returned in time to pitch a 6-0 shutout before a crowd that included Jack Dunn, owner of the Baltimore Orioles. On September 20, 1913, the St. Mary's Saturday Evening Star reported: "Ruth, one of the 'stars' star slabmen allowed but one hit, that being a two base hit. He also struck out twenty-two and issued but one pass. During that same game he hit safely four times."

By 1913, the Brothers had begun allowing Ruth to play for local amateur and semipro teams on weekends. They also allowed him to transfer to another Xaverian institution in town where students were granted more freedom in preparation for life on the outside. That experiment lasted about two months. "He appeared in the school yard in a gray suit and a black baseball cap, head down. … He did not seem to hear the voices of the three or four hundred boys who were screaming, 'Welcome back, Nigger Lips!'"

Leisman became an unlikely figure in the Cold War persecution of American Communists when he testified on behalf of Alger Hiss during his trial on charges of perjury stemming from his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The government discredited Leisman, saying he had "in the past used aliases, has been twice convicted, is a heavy drinker, and in general is irresponsible." His recollections of Ruth's life at St. Mary's have never been disputed.

One Sunday, Ruth told Leisman — perhaps to cheer him up because he, too, had no visitors — that he hadn't seen his father in 10 years. From the time of his mother's death until February 27, 1914, when Jack Dunn fetched him to play for the Baltimore Orioles and became his legal guardian, Ruth received no visitors. "Obviously, Daddy never held it against his father, because as soon as he had money to buy his father a bar he did," Julia said. "He even went and helped out."

The only known photograph of father and son was taken at the saloon Ruth purchased for Ruth, the elder during the winter of 1915-1916. "It's now the Goddess strip club," Tom said.

The bar is decked out for the holidays. Christmas balls and tinsel dangle from the tin ceiling, the festive effect augmented by the reflection on the bar behind which Babe and his father stand. A gleaming punch bowl and empty glasses await the evening crowd. There is only one patron, a black waiter, a barman, and a dog perched on a wooden chair near a raw bar.

Although father and son are identically attired — striped shirts, black vests, unblemished aprons tied about their waists — accentuating the familial similarity, they stand apart. The father, grim, unsmiling, unused to being photographed unlike his burgeoning son, dominates the foreground, a lit cigar burning between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. A dead, stuffed animal, teeth bared, is mounted on the wall behind his head. The photo was sold at auction in 1998 for $14,914.

"He was not one to hold a grudge," Julia said of Babe. "He was sorry his father died the way he did, trying to stop a fight outside the bar."

On Saturday afternoon, August 24, 1918, Ruth beat the St. Louis Browns 3-1 at Fenway Park. While he was scattering five hits in Boston, an altercation between two of his father's new brothers-in-law, relations of his second wife, began in the bar. That evening, George Ruth Sr. followed one of the combatants outside to the curb. Blows were exchanged; one found his left temple, causing George Ruth Sr. to hit his head against the sidewalk. He died the next day at University Hospital. An inquest exonerated his brother-in-law, ruling that he had acted in self-defense.

George Ruth Sr. was buried in Loudon Park National Cemetery, less than a mile from St. Mary's Industrial School, beneath an impressive granite stone identifying him as "Beloved husband of Martha E."

His father's death severed any umbilical connection to Baltimore and the unhappy child he had been there. The racial epithets — and rumors about Ruth's ethnicity — would follow him throughout his major league career. After the Giants swept the Yankees in the 1922 World Series, Ruth stormed into the opposing locker room and confronted the loudest of his tormenters, Johnny Rawlings. "You can call me a dick and you can call me a cocksucker," Ruth said, according to biographer Robert Creamer. "Just don't get personal."

Race was a subtext in the one-month suspension handed down by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that spring after Ruth's unsanctioned offseason barnstorming tour, which included games against Negro League teams. In 1934, he would invite Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, part owner of the New York Black Yankees, into the Yankee clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, making him the first black guest to cross that threshold. Robinson would be an honorary pallbearer at The Babe's funeral. "Joe Louis invited him up to his training camp in the Catskills to thank him for what he did for racial relations," Julia said.

But St. Mary's and Brother Matthias remained recipients of his largesse. He bought "Big Matt" automobiles and raised funds to help rebuild the school when it was gutted by fire.

Today, the field on which Babe Ruth became Babe Ruth sits abandoned, its future in jeopardy, as Richard Sandomir reported last year in the New York Times. Cardinal Gibbons High School, which occupied the site after St. Mary's closed in 1950, was shuttered at the end of the 2010 academic year. The Archdiocese allowed a group of parents and alumni to open the gym one day last winter for a charity basketball game to raise money for the children of a deceased coach. The heat was not turned on.

The only remaining evidence of The Babe is a tile mosaic hanging above the counter in the abandoned snack bar. There he stands, at home plate, in Yankee gray, his pinstriped body corkscrewed in the aftermath of contact — bat on shoulder, chin up, gazing at the flight of an unseen ball.

"I'm as proud of it as any Harvard man is proud of his school, and to get crude for a moment, I will be happy to bop anybody on the beezer who speaks ill of it," Ruth told Considine.

Julia was 33 years old and living in New Hampshire with her first husband when her father died in August 1948. As the daily deathwatch bulletins grew grimmer, she came to New York to be with her mother, who was staying at a hotel near the hospital. "On good days, he'd sign these little cards and give them to the nurse and say, 'Take these down and give 'em to the kids,'" Julia said. "He was always thinking about other kids, probably because he didn't have much of a childhood. There were always seven or eight under his window. Those were the last signatures."

She saw him last on August 15, the day before his death. "A fella called and said, 'I think you'd better get over here.' I'm trying to remember if he even knew us. He had so much medicine, I don't think so."

He died of pneumonia secondary to nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a cancer that was not accurately diagnosed until his autopsy. He was treated with radiation and surgery that, for a time, left him unable to swallow, necessitating a feeding tube, and was among the first Americans to receive an early form of chemotherapy — now standard treatment.

His death was an undeclared day of national mourning. So many New Yorkers wanted to pay their respects that his body was brought to Yankee Stadium to lie in state. She had never seen anything like it — nor had the Stadium. The august rotunda was prepared for him as for a head of state. Pete Sheehy, the devoted clubhouse man, scrubbed the floor on his hands and knees.

Throngs of mourners ringed the stadium, tens of thousands of people in attire suitable for an afternoon game. The line was so long the Yankees had to extend the hours of the viewing. For Julia, it brought to mind the mob that besieged Frank E. Campbell's funeral parlor on Broadway in 1926 after the death of Rudolph Valentino, when traffic was snarled, 75 mourners were injured, and two women committed suicide.

No one died mourning The Babe. "There was no pushing or shoving," Julia said. "It was all very quiet and sedate. Orderly."

Julia and her first husband and her mother arrived through the press gate. She doesn't remember much about that day. "It's almost like I was sleepwalking through it," she said. "It was bare. Absolutely bare. There were flowers. There was light."

Three New York City patrolmen stood sentinel along with urns of gladiolas and a 6-foot crucifix. The open casket, positioned between pillars adorned with a jaunty Yankee top hat, lay 100 feet from home plate. It was made from African mahogany and lined with eggshell-colored velvet; a huge spray of flowers from Dorothy adorned its lower half.

"Poor Daddy, he looked so awful. I hated to think of all those people going by and seeing him like that. I didn't like the viewing. I did look at him. Yes, I did. He looked so old, so sad."

He was 53 years old.

Most of his personal baseball effects went directly to Cooperstown. She remembers the day officials from the Hall of Fame came calling. Claire kept them waiting while she searched the apartment for a few items to keep. "Just a minute, just a minute," Julia remembers her mother calling. "I'll be right there in a minute."

Claire saved a loving cup trophy and a few bats stowed in a duffel bag in a closet. Tom remembers trying to hoist one of them as a boy. "I had to choke up almost to the trademark," he said.

Claire would keep her title as baseball's Most Famous Widow until her death in 1976, attending important occasions at the Stadium, including the night Roger Maris broke the Babe's record when, Julia says, "She might have shed a tear."

"Mother would never have given up the name of Mrs. Babe Ruth," Julia said. "She would never have married again. She was Mrs. Babe Ruth 'til the day she died, just like Eleanor was Mrs. Lou Gehrig to the day she died."

He will be Daddy until the day she dies, which she is not planning to do anytime soon. She made her last public appearance at Fenway Park in May, making the honorary first heave on the occasion of the Cubs' first visit since her Daddy pitched the Red Sox to the 1918 World Championship. The Red Sox are her team. They have been very good to her — tickets are always available for The Babe's daughter.

She also threw out the first pitch at the last game played at the old Yankee Stadium in 2009. She has no interest in visiting the new joint. It is not the House That Ruth Built.

Success breeds success in U.S. hockey

VINCE BURKE, QMI Agency, December 20, 2011


CAMROSE, ALTA. - A world junior hockey championship training camp is nothing new to Emerson Etem. The Medicine Hat Tigers forward and 2010 Anaheim Ducks first round draft pick has been through this process before.

Etem is among those on the 2012 U.S. national junior team preliminary roster, training in Camrose this week in preparation for the 2012 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship starting Boxing Day in Calgary and Edmonton. But Etem was also part of last year’s bronze medal-winning squad and is touted as one of those to watch this year. With a lot of new faces at this camp, Etem said his role with the team has evolved.

“I was like the 13th or 14th guy last year, so I had to pay special attention to detail on the defensive side of the puck,” he said.

“It was mostly on the penalty kill, but I would look for offence on the penalty kill and use my speed whenever I’d see open ice. This year I am paired on the top line and it’s all about creating chances — have that defence-first mentality but move your feet, and get a lot of shots on net when you do get the puck.”

Etem took a little heat at the 2011 World Juniors for a tweet about Buffalo, the host city. The 19-year-old from Long Beach, Calif., posted on his twitter account, “buffalo is a ghost town!! the worst city ever, it makes medicine hat look like paradise, never thought ide (sic) say that.”

As for Camrose and the Edgeworth Centre, Team USA’s base of operations for its training camp, Etem said the people and the city have been great.

“It’s a great western town and great little community, especially the facility here. I think a lot of the guys are pretty impressed with where the (Camrose) Kodiaks play each and every night. It’s exciting for us and all the people I have talked to have been nice and we feel at home,” said Etem.

That’s echoed by Team USA general manager Jim Johannson, but he said with a lot to get done in a short amount of time, most of what they are seeing is at the rink.

Johannson said after several practices it’s still difficult to see some separation between players vying for spots on the final roster.

“The good news is that it has been hard to separate because the guys have actually performed quite well in all of our staff’s minds. They have all come playing the game they play for why they are here, so for us it has been good so far and hopefully the (exhibition) games will help separate some of that out.”

USA Hockey has been successful at the world junior in recent years, with a gold medal in 2010 and a bronze this past year. Johannson said it’s a matter of success breeding success.

“Everybody comes in with a pretty high expectation of performance. Several of the guys have had success, so I think they build from that a little bit and it adds a little bit to the peer pressure within the culture,” he said.

“All of that, combined with the fact that we just have more better players (than before), and we should have some success. That has led to it being more difficult to make the team and that is showing itself in camp this year.”

Many of those players come from what would be considered traditional U.S. hockey markets — Michigan, Illinois or New York — but with returning talent like Etem from California, forward Jason Zucker from Nevada and others from Florida and Texas, Johannson said hockey has expanded south of the border.

“I think the NHL has been a big part of that, with the Sun Belt expansion into California that led to facilities and to kids saying, ‘Hey, this hockey looks pretty interesting, I’ll give that a try,’ ” he said.

Team USA takes on Team Switzerland for its second exhibition game Dec. 21 at the Edgeworth Centre at 7:30 p.m.

New hope for Great Britain: Son of Rod Stewart, Rachel Hunter aims to make his own mark

LUCAS AYKROYD, IIHF.com, 20-12-11


SPOKANE, USA – Coming from celebrity parents, Liam Stewart doesn’t have the traditional pedigree for Canadian major junior hockey. However, that’s not stopping this 17-year-old Spokane Chiefs centre from pursuing his dreams of a pro and international career.

Not only is Stewart garnering attention as a Western Hockey League (WHL) rookie, but he’s also recently been declared eligible to compete for Great Britain internationally, providing another intriguing twist in his story.

Born in London, England, Stewart is the son of British rock singer Rod Stewart and New Zealander actress-model Rachel Hunter, but grew up in Southern California. He caught the hockey bug after attending a New York Rangers game at Madison Square Garden as a tyke, and has been skating since age 5.

Now, the great thing about this sport is that you have to work for whatever you get. For instance, neither of Wayne Gretzky’s pro hockey-playing brothers, Keith and Brent, got a free pass simply due to their oldest sibling’s fame.

Accordingly, Stewart relishes the challenge of carving out his own identity. His father is noted for kicking soccer balls into the audience at his concerts, while his mother favours rugby. Hockey? That’s Liam’s passion. That’s why he left behind the palm trees of Hermosa Beach, California to suit up in Washington State’s second-largest city and experience the 72-game WHL grind.

“I think of myself being as normal as anyone else,” explained Stewart in an interview at the Spokane Arena. “I’m known for my parents, but I’m trying to focus on being known as my own person, not having famous parents.”

Despite sniping 24 goals in 34 games last year with the Los Angeles Junior Kings, Stewart knew he’d have to improve his strength, conditioning, and intensity to compete in the WHL. He’s currently listed at 6-1 and 180 pounds (185 cm and 82 kg).

“The physicality of the game, the speed, the strength of all the guys – it’s a lot different from last year,” Stewart said. “In the summer, I did a lot of explosive leg training to get my speed up. I also worked on my shot. And here, I’ve learned a lot from [head coach and ex-NHLer] Don Nachbaur. He really preaches work ethic and hard-nosed play.”

The work Stewart’s put in so far has earned him third-line duties with the Chiefs, who last captured the Memorial Cup in 2008. Striving to get his offensive game going, he’s recently centered wingers like Carter Proft and Connor Chartier.

Early reviews have been positive. Shane Malloy, the Vancouver-based author of the 2011 book The Art of Scouting, stated: "Stewart is a promising two-way centre with solid skating and good work ethic in all situations. Even with limited ice time this season, he's showing good hockey sense and puck skills. He's also not afraid to pay the price to make a play, and that's encouraging to see.”

Since Stewart often attended Kings games while growing up, it’s not surprising some of his NHL role models come from that franchise. “I try to play a little bit like Jarret Stoll,” he said. “He’s more of a defensive player, and he has a good shot on the power play.” Stewart has also enjoyed playing volleyball in the off-season with the likes of Drew Doughty and Matt Greene.

However, while any hopes of stepping on NHL ice lie several years away, Stewart could get to wear the jersey of Great Britain as early as the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division II Group A (March 31-April 6, Netherlands) if he’s available.

Earlier this year, his mother, who has leased a house in Spokane, investigated the possibility of having him declared IIHF-eligible to wear a British jersey.

This unusual case presented interesting complexities. Although residing in the United States, Stewart holds dual British and New Zealand citizenship. He couldn’t play for the Americans since he is not a citizen. And according to international eligibility rules, he couldn’t represent Great Britain or New Zealand either, since he hadn’t played a minimum of two years in either country.

So where would this leave him?

In writing, Stewart expressed his wish to play for Great Britain. This initiative was backed up by Andy French, the General Secretary of Ice Hockey UK, who told IIHF.com: “It was something that [British U18 coach] Mark Beggs had asked me to pursue, submitting all the relevant information I could obtain after speaking with Rachel Hunter and gathering everything that was required for the IIHF Council.”

With the authority given to them in the IIHF eligibility bylaw, the Council (the IIHF’s executive body), which met during the IIHF Semi-Annual Congress in Istanbul, Turkey in September, made an exemption under the extraordinary circumstances article so Stewart could play internationally for a country he is a citizen of.

In order not to have any bias, the information about Liam’s well-known parents was withheld from the Council when the issue was presented. Only after the Council approved the exemption did IIHF Sport Director Dave Fitzpatrick mention their names.

This development should benefit both Stewart and Great Britain, which will aim to get back to the U18 Division I after suffering relegation in Division I play in Latvia last spring.

The British haven’t made the top-level IIHF World Championship since 1994 – the year Stewart was born – and could potentially use him in both the near and long term.

“With Liam playing in the WHL, it would be anticipated that he’d be one of the marquee players at the U18 tournament and should provide the necessary offense for Great Britain,” said Beggs.

Meanwhile, New Zealand is known for many things – the Lord of the Rings movies, whitewater rafting, glow worm caves – but thus far, hockey hasn't emerged as a calling card for this Southern Hemisphere nation, which sits 38th in the IIHF World Ranking. So it just made more sense for a player of Stewart’s talent to opt for his father’s homeland.

“I’m really excited about it,” said Stewart. “Hopefully I’ll be able to go over there when our season in Spokane is over and hopefully my dad’ll come watch too. He’ll be really proud of that.”

Rod Stewart is, of course, more of a Celtic Glasgow football fan than a puck aficionado, and his son shares his love of the Scottish club, although adding: “Cristiano Ronaldo is probably my favourite soccer player.”

Overall, Liam Stewart has typical teenage tastes. He quips that playing the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 “consumes most of my day after practice”, and likes chilling out with music ranging from hip-hop star Notorious B.I.G. to country performer Rodney Atkins.

When asked where he sees himself in five years, Stewart gives an answer that could have come from thousands of hockey-loving youngsters worldwide: “Hopefully either in the AHL or NHL. One of those would be a dream. If not, hopefully playing in Europe somewhere. Just playing hockey.”

What We Learned: The best general manager in the NHL

Ryan Lambert, Yahoo! Sports, 2011-12-19



Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

By any measure, Don Maloney worked Bryan Murray pretty good this weekend.

He somehow traded known-malcontent Kyle Turris, who admittedly had a very moveable contract, to Ottawa for David Rundblad, a highly-regarded and very young rookie defenseman, and a second-round pick that's probably going to end up being pretty high.

Of course, if we're being completely fair, this wasn't entirely the result of Maloney being phenomenal at his job. For some reason, the media has spent much of this season treating Turris's holdout not as it actually was (a sub-mediocre player asking for an absurd amount of money over a silly term) but as though this was a legitimate talent whose absence from the lineup was somehow having an adverse effect on his team.

Somewhere along the way, Turris became a guy who just needed a little bit of help to unlock his potential, whatever that might be. He'd posted a career high of 11 goals and 14 assists in 65 games last year, though he did so on just 11 minutes or so a night. Theoretically, given extra time could result in that number increasing significantly. But the magic of what Maloney did here is to maximize and take advantage of the hype surrounding Turris's holdout, which presumably came simply because no one holds out that long any more.

Wrangling a second-round pick on top of a 21-year-old former first-rounder (whose biggest mistake in Ottawa seems to have been not being as immediately good as Erik Karlsson) that's supposed to be able to lug the puck in a manner not unlike Sergei Zubov. Adding him to a D group that already has Keith Yandle and Oliver Ekman-Larsson could make the Coyotes' backline terrifying in two or three years.

Maloney let the Senators (and reportedly two other teams) come to him, even after repeatedly insisting that Turris wasn't going anywhere, and in fact telling the center himself that he wasn't being traded the morning before the swap was made. But the Senators, resolute in wanting to acquire Turris in an attempt to acquire every foundering young talent in the league, were not to be deterred.

Not that fleecing Bryan Murray in a trade is especially praiseworthy in and of itself. The tragicomic way in which he mismanages his organization's assets is well-documented. But what makes Maloney exceptionally good at his job is that he has built from having a very successful team on a shoe-string budget in 2009-10 and has continually been improving it even if the odds have continually tilted away from his favor.

(Coming Up: Why does Pierre Gauthier still have a job?; Barry Trotz, villainous character; Dan Boyle's fantasy team-hampering injury; Sean Couturier hit with a puck; Pegulaville losing its sunshine; Sutter time in LA; Tom Renney is obsessed with Ales Hemsky's stick; Mike Green's importance to the Capitals; the rare Erik Johnson goal; Selanne is a pro, but one Jets fan is delusional; the goal of the weekend; Elias makes Devils history; Stamkos should fear Kessel; and a terrible trade proposal for Shea Weber.)

Let's not forget, this is a team that is, at any moment, about 24 hours away from getting moved out of the desert and to who-knows-where, and it must be incredibly difficult to attract free agents to play there. This is particularly true given that Phoenix's budgetary restrictions are widely known to be quite severe (for instance, the Coyotes were 29th in the league when they won 107 points and their division in 2009-10). And in a way, getting that kind of success under budget has even held him back further.

Had the Coyotes not made the playoffs last year for the second consecutive season, Maloney almost certainly would have offloaded outgoing world-class goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov for more than the third-round pick his negotiating rights eventually garnered.

But having faith in his own club — and Dave Tippett's system, specifically — led him to enter this season with the tandem of Mike Smith and Jason LaBarbera between the pipes. Everyone laughed, said it was a remarkably deft decision. Defensive systems work great when you have an excellent goaltender, but Smith and LaBarbera are anything but.

He also has gone about trying to lock up some of the team's better players for the future while not trying to weigh it down too heavily for new ownership. Yandle and Martin Hanzal are on the books for the next four and five seasons, respectively, both at fair, affordable rates, and one suspects that there will be more of the same in the future for the younger member of the team's core.

So here we are, with the Coyotes admittedly ninth in the West, but also just two points out of both a playoff spot and the division lead despite a really poor team shooting percentage of 8.3. This team could very well go on a strong run here, put together more than a few wins and make a very strong case for itself when it comes to the postseason.

If the Coyotes qualify for the playoffs for the third straight season, Maloney is going to have had a hell of a lot to do with it. And even if they don't, he's building a really strong set of youngsters who could become a low-cost force in the NHL for years to come.

VIDEO: Kings Anze Kopitar paving the way for Slovenian hockey

The Hockey News, 2011-12-21


In a league dominated by North Americans, it was a monumental moment in hockey history when the Los Angeles Kings selected a young Slovenian with their first pick in 2005. Anze Kopitar wasn’t an unknown commodity heading into the draft, but even the Kings couldn’t have predicted how spectacularly he has developed.

In 426 games, Kopitar has amassed 148 goals and 388 points. It’s no wonder he’s earned the Bill Libby Memorial Award as the Kings MVP three times since joining the team in 2006.

THNTV’s Danielle Emanuele takes an in-depth look at Kopitar’s road to the NHL.

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Coaching moves not equaling success

RANDY SPORTAK, QMI Agency, Dec 22 2011



CALGARY - It’s not even Christmas yet and the NHL has already completed a six-pack.

Six coaches gassed, five replacements — and one to come. It’s incredible to think 20% of the coaches who started the season are no longer in their posts.

What’s harder to imagine is how all those teams think that will make a difference.

Certainly, the Los Angeles Kings believe former Calgary Flames GM and head coach Darryl Sutter can change the fortunes of their middling team, having taken the reins from the now-departed Terry Murray, but it hasn’t worked out too well for almost all the other teams who have tried it this season.

The St. Louis Blues have caught fire since gassing Davis Payne and replacing him with Ken Hitchcock, having posted a 13-3-4 mark since the move, but the Blues are in lone-wolf territory in that manner.

When the Washington Capitals fired Bruce Boudreau and put Dale Hunter in the post, they had lost eight of 11 to fall to 12-9-1. They have a 5-5-0 mark since.

The Anaheim Ducks were floundering when Randy Carlyle was boss (7-13-4) and haven’t taken flight under Boudreau (2-6-1 prior to Thursday night’s clash).

The Carolina Hurricanes axed Paul Maurice when their record was 8-13-4. Since then, they’ve posted a 2-6-2 mark with Kirk Muller at the helm.

The Montreal Canadiens went into Thursday’s game at Winnipeg having lost all three games in the post-Jacques Martin era with Randy Cunneyworth at the helm until they can find a bilingual bench boss to fill the post.

As for the Kings, they went 2-2-0 with John Stevens as the interim coach.

Struggling teams all too often remain struggling teams.

Sure, there are exceptions to the rule — the Pittsburgh Penguins when Dan Bylsma took over and the Capitals when Boudreau joined them — but it’s not an exact science.

That said, as somebody who watched how Sutter works, don’t be shocked to see the Kings become the second-best team in the Pacific Division by the end of the season.

It won’t hurt him that Mike Richards is healthy again, but Sutter — for all his follies as GM, especially the inability to separate himself as the coach — knows how to push buttons.

Lord knows, he’ll have plenty of buttons to push with a Kings team too talented to flounder this way.

By the way, when Kings GM Dean Lombardi said in the aftermath of firing Murray the players were going to wish it hadn’t come to this point, he sure meant it.

French group organizes anti-Habs protest

QMI Agency, Dec 22 2011


Cunneyworth needs a fighting chance

http://bcove.me/jgt3vq2z


The grumbling continued Thursday over the Montreal Canadiens’ appointment of a unilingual anglophone coach.

The latest to denounce coach Randy Cunneyworth was the Mouvement Quebec Francais (Movement of French Montreal), which issued a statement that a peaceful demonstration would be held before the Canadiens’ next home game, Jan. 7.

Cunneyworth was promoted to interim coach last Saturday after the bilingual Jacques Martin was fired by the Canadiens.

MQF president Mario Beaulieu said Thursday it was “time to take to the streets and demonstrate,” adding that Quebec flags would be distributed to protesters.

He said Cunneyworth’s appointment came on the heels of other disturbing elements, such as the fact there are few francophones on the team and there is too much English music played during games at the Bell Centre.

Cunneyworth has said he would try to learn to speak French.

Age doesn’t matter; Yeo proves to be a heck of a coach
Low-scoring Wild among top four NHL teams in points

Jim Matheson, edmontonjournal.com, December 22, 2011


EDMONTON - Coach of the Year contender Mike Yeo, the baby of today’s NHL bench bosses, might be able to get a handle on the teenagers and twentysomethings on most of the rosters better than Scotty Bowman, if he decided to go back behind the bench in his 78th year.

“Scotty Bowman’s a heckuva coach. I’m not going to say I’d do anything better than Scotty Bowman,” said the Minnesota Wild’s first-year head man.

Age is a state of mind as much as a line on a birth certificate in Yeo’s eyes.

“I’m not going to sit here and say the young coaches relate better to the young players compared to old coaches ... there’s some good young coaches out there and some great older ones. It depends on the individuals,” said Yeo, 38.

He’s right that coaches are good or bad no matter when they were born. But, in today’s NHL, a third of the coaches are 45 or younger. Guy Boucher (Tampa Bay Lightning) and Glen Gulutzan (Dallas Stars) were 40 going into the season and Dan Byslma in Pittsburgh was 41. Peter DeBoer (New Jersey Devils) and Joe Sacco (Colorado Avalanche) were 43.

Ken Hitchcock, who turned 60 last Saturday, is the oldest NHL coach right now. Terry Murray was 61 before the Los Angeles Kings fired him recently. Tom Renney of the Edmonton Oilers, Ron Wilson of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Bruce Boudreau of the Anaheim Ducks were all 56 coming into the season.

Nobody’s saying that older coaches can’t talk to today’s players, but the game’s getting younger on the ice and off.

“Maybe, now, teams will consider hiring a younger coach with less NHL experience because of the success of Dan Bylsma or Guy Boucher last year. Hopefully, 20 years from now, they’ll be thinking of me as old,” said a chuckling Yeo.

Yeo was Byslma’s assistant when the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009, then signed on as the Wild’s American Hockey League farm team coach in Houston. He has done a bang-up job in Minnesota. He’s a people person, he has a message and he delivers it clearly. There’s a way to play, and everybody understands right from wrong.

It’s not quite halfway through the season, so it’s too early to say who’s the leading candidate for the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year, but Yeo is in the running with Kevin Dineen of the Florida Panthers. They’re likely on most short lists.

John Tortorella of the New York Rangers, Byslma, Claude Julien of the Boston Bruins, Joel Quenneville of the Chicago Blackhawks, Peter Laviolette of the Philadelphia Flyers, Mike Babcock of the Detroit Red Wings and Alain Vigneault of the Vancouver Canucks should be in there, too.

Yeo played in the AHL for Phoenix Coyotes coach Dave Tippett, who was a fan then and now.

“He wasn’t the best player, but he was our most reliable player with the sacrifices he made to trying to win games. He epitomized how our team wanted to be perceived and that was one with a work ethic and one that did things right. That’s what he’s become as a coach,” said Tippett.

“I’ve tried to pattern myself after how Dave coaches and how he deals with people,” Yeo said.

So far, Yeo is getting the most out of a team that went into Thursday’s game with the Oilers as one of the NHL’s top four in points. The Wild don’t score much, but they don’t give up much either. They get in on the forecheck more than in past years.

Yeo preaches accountability, attending to details and he’s very well-liked. His door is always open.

“I feel very comfortable talking to Mike. It’s nice to have that, like after a game, if you’re not sure what he thought of your game, you go and ask,” Wild centre Kyle Brodziak said.

Brodziak had never met Yeo before this season, but he’d heard rave reviews from the players on the Houston farm team.

“It was pretty exciting to hear how well he communicated with guys ... I didn’t look at it as he’s a young guy who has to prove it. I looked at it as ‘Is he going to be the right guy for our team?” said Brodziak, who is flourishing under Yeo.

“He tells you this is how you’re going to play your best and you go and do it and, all of a sudden, it’s working,” said the former Oilers forward. “It works and you go ‘OK, that makes sense.’ ”

The hockey coaching gods smile on Bruce Boudreau

DAVID SHOALTS, Globe and Mail, Dec. 23, 2011


Depending on what time of day you are reading this, Bruce Boudreau may have started and finished his Christmas shopping by now.

“I never do it until between 3 and 4 o’clock on the 24th anyway,” the new head coach of the Anaheim Ducks said with a laugh.

That is just about the only thing that remained normal for Boudreau over the last month. He says yes, sometimes he still feels breathless, less than three weeks after he became the NHL coach to set a record for the shortest period of unemployment – six days from his last game with the Washington Capitals to his first game with the Ducks, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

“There’s been times when you think that,” Boudreau said. “I catch myself in meetings when I talk about Anaheim and call them ‘you guys’ and refer to Washington as ‘when we were doing this.’

“The turnaround is so quick you didn’t have time to draw a deep breath. But I’m not complaining about it.”

How could he? Boudreau, 56, spent 15 years coaching in the minor leagues, watching lots of other head coaches get the call to the NHL before he got one himself at 52 from Capitals general manager George McPhee. Then it was taken away, and while he was still in shock, he was back in the show again.

“Me and my wife really didn’t talk about it too much,” Boudreau said. “We didn’t put too much thought in it other than, ‘Oh yeah, an NHL coaching job. Do it.’ So I jumped on a plane.”

Starting Friday, the morning after the Ducks lost 3-2 in a shootout to the Los Angeles Kings to leave Boudreau with a 2-6-2 record with his new team, which is still better than unemployment, even highly paid unemployment, Boudreau will get some time to relax. His wife Crystal and their 13-year-old son Brady, the youngest of Boudreau’s four children, planned to fly to Anaheim for a family Christmas before Boudreau goes back to work on Boxing Day to face the Sharks in San Jose.

Given that there were officially six days between Boudreau’s coaching gigs, it might appear it wasn’t quite “the whirlwind,” as he calls it. But the actual turnaround was much shorter.

Boudreau was fired by 7 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 28, and he can tell you to the minute when he knew the jig was up. Until then, Boudreau brushed aside talk of his firing because the Capitals were among the best teams in the Eastern Conference until a precipitous fall in the previous three weeks.

“I can tell you the exact time was 6:09 a.m. I was driving to work,” Boudreau said. “I always have my phone beside me. You know how you get the buzz for a text? I said, ‘Who would be texting me at this hour in the morning?’

“It was George [McPhee]. He said call me when you wake up. I knew right then what was happening.”

Boudreau made the call and McPhee asked him to come to his house. Since Boudreau lived nearby he was there in five minutes. Then he was out of a job and back at his house, sitting “dumbfounded” on his couch. His phone alternated between buzzing and ringing. Boudreau ignored it.

“I wasn’t getting off the couch,” he said. “I didn’t want to answer anything. I didn’t feel like being the nice, talkative guy.”

But six hours later, at 1 p.m., Boudreau saw McPhee’s name come up on his phone when it rang so he answered it. After asking how he was doing, McPhee “asked if I wanted to coach in the NHL again this year. I thought, oh geez, he’s had second thoughts. He said no, an NHL GM, who he wouldn’t name, had called and asked for permission to speak to me.”

By that night or early the next morning – Boudreau isn’t sure of the timing – Ducks GM Bob Murray called. He offered the job after a brief conversation.

“I went, ‘Whoa,’ ” Boudreau said. “So I said yes, obviously. This is what we do, we want to work, especially when you get fired. You want to work as quick as you can.

“I do, anyway. You want to get in that I’ll show you I can get a job, you did the wrong thing [frame of mind].”

How it felt
What it's like to lift the Stanley Cup in your hometown and other stories

Globe and Mail, Dec. 23, 2011


This is part of The Globe’s ‘How it felt’ series that collects the stories of people who found themselves at the centre of this year’s major news events. See more ‘How it felt’ stories in Toronto, World, British Columbia, National, Arts, Sports and Business
Newsmakers 2011: In their own words

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How it felt: to raise the Stanley Cup after beating your hometown team?

In June, Boston forward Milan Lucic, a native of Vancouver, helped lead the Bruins to a Game 7 victory over the Vancouver Canucks at GM Place.

“It was [David] Krejci who handed me the Cup. It was one of those moments where you’ve been thinking of this your whole life and wondering what it’s going to feel like when you finally get it in your hands. And then to get it in my home town and, even though it was against the road team, I still got a cheer.

You get chills just thinking about it. I remember I had chills at the moment and I just raised it up as high as I could and knew that this has got to be one of the best feelings in the world.

You think about your family and what they did to give you the opportunity to fulfill your dream in being an NHL hockey player. Obviously, they gave me the love and support and also the opportunity to be where I am at today. So you think about that. And you also think about the minor hockey and into Junior B and then into Junior A.

There’s just so much you’re thinking about. And then, you almost have to stop and think, ‘Wow – we actually did it. There’s no more games left to be played, there’s no more harder opponents.’ All those emotions go through your mind.

I handed it off to Rich Peverley and I’m sure he had the same feelings that I did.”

As told to Roy MacGregor

If you build it, they will come...

Luke Fox, Sportsnet.ca, December 23, 2011


Are you a sucker for time-lapse videos?

Watch as speedy little ant-men transform a baseball stadium, Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, into an outdoor hockey rink.

A 53-foot-long ice truck housing the majority of the equipment needed to create the temporary rink in preparation for the 2012 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic arrived in the City of Brotherly Love this week, and a team of workers got busy.

Originally, the fifth annual outdoor regular-season NHL game, which pits the hometown Flyers against their Atlantic Division rivals, the New York Rangers, was to be held in the Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field. But because the Eagles are slated to play there on Sunday, Jan. 1, there wouldn’t be enough time to prepare the ice. The NHL needs at least a week of setup time for such a transformation. The 2012 edition of the Winter Classic will also be the first time that the game will not be played on New Year’s Day. Because New Year’s falls on a Sunday, the NHL chose to avoid a TV conflict with the slate of important NFL matches.

Between this time-lapse clip that flips the home of the Phillies into the home of the Flyers and HBO’s golden 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic series, we couldn’t be more excited for the Jan. 2 open-air afternoon showdown. Check the expiry date on your egg nog and settle in.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2011/12/23/time_lapse/

Before I Made It: James van Riemsdyk
James van Riemsdyk was the second overall pick in 2007 by the Flyers.

With Kevin Kennedy, The Hockey News, 2011-12-24


I played my first hockey where I grew up in Wall, New Jersey. I started in a program called Initiation and they would split three hours of ice time between three age groups, but I started loving hockey so much that I’d stay out for all three hours. I grew up in a hockey family because my dad was actually born in Montreal so he already had hockey in his blood. We had this Wayne Gretzky DVD called Above and Beyond and it was always on when I was younger.

I had a lot of great coaches along the way and they all taught me different things. I had one coach from squirt all the way through midget and he was a real fiery guy and was all about hard work and battling. When I got to high school my coach was all about skills and finesse. After playing for both those guys I got a little mix of both.

My best memory from playing hockey as a kid was when I got to play at Madison Square Garden. I scored a goal and it was really cool because I was a Rangers fan growing up and to play there was incredible.

As a kid I’d spend most of my free time playing street hockey with my brother and some neighbours and if I was in net I’d be Mike Richter and if I was out I’d be either Brian Leetch or Adam Graves. I wore the No. 16 for most of my life for Brett Hull. He was a cool guy - he was outgoing and he had a sick shot. Eventually I played on a team where a guy already had No. 16 so I switched to 21 and did that for Peter Forsberg.

Street hockey is not a big part of my free time these days, but I still get together with my buddies in the summers. Not a lot has changed from back then, but during the season my free time is a lot different. You don’t really want to waste too much energy running around doing that extra stuff, but in the summers when I get home, I got the same group of buddies and we pretty much do the same type of stuff we did as kids. We play a little soccer, a little whiffle ball. A lot of my buddies are still in school and if I wasn’t in the NHL I’d probably be doing the same thing. Education was a top priority in my household and after hockey I’d love to still be involved in the business side of the game.

I remember my first NHL shift and I was so nervous that I could feel my heart pounding through my shoulder pads. I remember just cruising around. I got the puck and fired it on net so I got my first shot on goal, which really helped me get a lot of the nerves out. I was playing with Claude Giroux and Darroll Powe. Giroux and I are actually about the same age and I had met him a couple summers ago at a Flyers’ rookie camp. We also played against each other at the world juniors. I remember seeing him lift the gold, which was good for him, but it was a tough loss for me. But now it’s great we’re playing for the same team.