What a few days we’ve had.
So we were hosting the Montreal Canadiens Alumni here in Kitimat, and we added a few components to the weekend. The first was a “Habs Hockey Camp” on Friday. Icetimes started at 7AM and ran through 3:30PM and covered off all the minor hockey age groups - Midget, Bantam, PeeWee, Atom, Novice and Initiation. Most groups had two ice times running concurrently in both rinks.
The Habs were set to arrive at about 7PM on the Thursday night. Plenty of time to get some good rest before an early rise the following day! Right? Except for there’s the old saying about best laid plans...
I got a call Thursday morning from their manager that their flight out of Montreal had been cancelled, and they had been placed on a later flight. There was still a possibility they’d make their connection to Terrace from Vancouver, but they wouldn’t know until they were in Vancouver. Cue a long, long wait (their flight to Vancouver was six hours) before we found out.
Only one player made it on time, and that was Steve Shutt. He flew in from a Florida and connected to Terrace on a different airline.
So they arrive in Vancouver, and worse than missing a connecting flight, their connecting flight was cancelled altogether due to weather. They were told they’d try to get them on the 9:10 flight later that evening.
But, there was two guys on the team who had flown out individually, and so they were on individual tickets. They were told they wouldn’t be able to be placed on a flight up here for three days, which would miss the whole weekend, and so they were ultimately sent home. That was Brian Skrudland and Marc-André Bergeron.
So I arrive at the airport in Terrace to pick up Shutt. After introducing myself, he deadpans “I think we’re screwed!” He said the weather in Vancouver was lousy when he flew out, and it didn’t sound like it was getting better. We talked the whole way into town - he didn’t have skates or anything, but our “emergency backup plan” took shape - worst case, he’d direct drills and mini games from the bench and let the local coaches do on ice organizings. We’d make the lemonade out of lemons if we had to.
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, after more delays they boarded their flight at 10:40. At 11:45, they were still sitting on the tarmac, and for a few terrifying moments their flight showed as cancelled on the tracker - but they finally got out at 1:30am. I proceeded to get an hour and a half of sleep before they landed in Terrace with the news that most of their bags hadn’t made it, and none of their hockey sticks had. I made some arrangements then to have someone go out and retrieve the gear when it landed later in the morning, and then I got up for the day. I went to their hotel at 5:40 in the morning to load the gear they did have into trucks to take to the rink to get ready for the hockey camps.
From here, everything got a whole lot better.
The camps were attended by 280 kids from the Kitimat and Terrace areas. On very little sleep, these guys ran clinics and were absolutely great with the kids. My boys had Pierre Dagenais and Jesse Belanger run their ice times. Dagenais is quite the character - very intense guy, but absolutely fabulous with kids. All of the Alumni were great with the kids - everyone who attended the camps (which were free) got a camp jersey, a free swim pass and a free lunch in addition to having ice times run by guys that used to play in the NHL. Pretty damn awesome.
That night we had a banquet that benefitted the COREY Safe foundation (group that advices motorcyclists about road safety) where tables were paid for by companies as a fundraiser. Chris Nilan was a guest speaker as well and talked about his life and struggles with addiction and the power of asking for help. A huge highlight for me was that I got to bring both my parents to the banquet, as they flew into town for the game, and the event sponsor invited me to bring them. That same sponsor (LNG Canada) then got me to stand up and take a bow for all the work I had done for the weekend, so having my parents be there for that was special!
Next day, minor hockey coaches got to attend a clinic with Steve Shutt, we had a public autograph session, and then it was game time. And I was suiting up with the Habs along with two more people who were planned team members, and two who weren’t.
When we found out about Skrudland and Bergeron, the other organizers and I had a quick conference and hatched the idea about asking a couple of female players to join the team. I went and checked with the Habs to see what they thought, they were totally onboard, and I made the calls to invite the girls to join us - they were over the moon.
A very surreal moment for me was walking into the room and seeing my name and number on the jersey. Totally unreal.
The pre game talk was pretty simple rules for us newbies: don’t stand in front of the net! We don’t want to be worried about hitting you. Go to the far side and keep your stick on the ice, we will find it.
Myself and another Kitimat player played with Jesse Bélanger. As promised, he pretty well banked a goal in off my stick (he’d done it once earlier and I hit the post - Brisebois joked on the bench “Mikey, what’s the matter, you don’t wanna score?”. I set up a couple of goals too - one by a Kitimat player and one by a Hab. Before the third period, Shutt said to me “you know, just saying, the REALLY good players score after the first period (I had scored in the first).” I bagged one more in the third (a bit nicer than the first one, I actually had to finish it) and that earned Coach Shutts approval.
There were some great pranks during the game. When the local team scored its first goal, they gave the scorer a pie in the face. Late in the game, a Hab play went down along the boards and seemed to be hurt. Players on both benches were standing up to see, and then Dagenais comes roaring in with a bucket of water and catches all of them as their heads are over the boards.
The game was 11-4 Habs. After the game, we got told we got to keep the jerseys, which the guys autographed for us. Another cloud 9 moment - but the best part is that the building was sold out and I’m pretty sure we eclipsed $30,000 raised for KidSport.
What a weekend. Today I had a long nap mid day. Didn’t realize how tired I was until I got them on their way to the airport (blue skies here so all of their departures went OK).
The guys who were here were Shutt, Dagenais, Bélanger, Petrov, Brisebois, Deblois, Nilan, Lemieux and Sevigny.
Such a great time.
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