Hockey Confidential (6 page)

I clearly remember thinking I was seeing someone and something truly extraordinary, an athlete who was every bit as gifted in his discipline as Wayne Gretzky was in his. I remember going into the parking lot outside the arena between periods and seeing him sitting on a curbstone minus his equipment, quietly gathering himself, sipping on a Gatorade, performing the intermission cool-down ritual that is standard practice at any lacrosse game on a hot summer's night (the dressing rooms are, as a rule, stifling hot, and it's not uncommon for both teams to be out there in the parking lot). I recall thinking how Gretzky-like his body type was, and that anything No. 99 could do in hockey, John Tavares could do in lacrosse.

I was fascinated by him, captivated by what he'd done. I asked the lacrosse fans, “Who is this guy?” John Tavares, they told me. A rising star, a phenom, they added. And they were right.

Tavares led Brampton to the first of his five straight Mann Cups that season. Twenty years later, in the summer of 2012, having played summer box lacrosse with Vancouver, Brampton, Six Nations, Akwesasne (twice), Victoria and St. Regis, J.T. played for the Peterborough Lakers and hoisted the Mann Cup for a record eighth time. Laker captain Scott Self received the trophy, and instead of being the first to lift it over his head, as is the custom for the winning captain, he immediately handed it over to 43-year-old Tavares, who lifted it, quite likely, for the final time. A year later, in 2013, he didn't play summer lacrosse for the first time since he picked up a stick as a young boy, resting his body for what he thought might be his final NLL season in 2014.

Unlike his older brother Joe, 10 years his senior, the first
Canadian-born member of the Portuguese Tavares family wasn't obliged to work one job as a kid, never mind two. So as a young boy, John Tavares was able to pursue his passion for sports. That didn't mean his parents were thrilled with John's sporting life. Money was still hard to come by, and sports cost money. So when John borrowed his older brother Danny's lacrosse stick and wanted to play for St. Christopher's at nearby Alexandra Park—the registration fee was $20—it was tolerated rather than embraced.

“My father didn't dislike sports. He actually liked them,” John said. “He just felt playing sports was taking away from potential income for our family. So, me playing lacrosse, they didn't really want me to play.”

Maybe they would have looked more favourably on it had it been a sport they knew, like soccer, but John played a single game of European “football,” never touched the ball and had no desire to ever do it again.

Lacrosse, though, he took to instantly. It just felt right. Dorotea couldn't always see John from their house on Ryerson Avenue when he went to Alex Park, but she could certainly hear him. For hours at a time, he'd be there, shooting the Indian rubber lacrosse ball against the boards. It wasn't long before he was scoring goals, lots of them, and thrilling the rowdy, enthusiastic neighbourhood crowds who would come out on summer nights to cheer on St. Christopher's at the outdoor box.

He also gave hockey a try. More ball hockey than organized ice hockey, which wasn't readily available at Alexandra Park. But he'd try skating in the winter when the lacrosse box became the community hockey rink.

“I was a real ankle burner,” he said. “I had a pair of old Orbit skates we bought from Honest Ed's. But hockey was never my game.”

In fact, if winter and hockey season were holding on too long, John the lacrosse player would hurry them along.

“I was so impatient for lacrosse season to start, I'd go over once the ice started to melt and I'd chip away the ice with my boots, break it up, help it along so the box would be clear for lacrosse,” Tavares said. “I couldn't wait for lacrosse season to start.”

Tavares loved playing for St. Christopher's at Alexandra Park. It felt like home. It wasn't easy for him when his family left the area near Bathurst and Queen Streets for the suburbs in Mississauga, where he wound up playing minor lacrosse as well as Junior B and Junior A.

Even when he played midget lacrosse, alongside future NHLer Brendan Shanahan, everyone knew J.T. had that special something.

“What I always remember about him is that he was working on his [lacrosse] stick,” Shanahan said. “Constantly. The other thing about him is that he was so smart, so tricky. He was always working on trick plays, hiding the ball, pretending to leave the floor on a line change but then racing back into the play to score a goal. I can't tell you how many times he would score a goal and the game would be delayed because the refs would have to consult and figure out what they just saw and whether it was legal. He was always pushing the envelope on rules, finding loopholes, getting creative.

“He was in minor lacrosse what Pavel Datsyuk is now, a guy you just like to watch practise to see all the creative things he would try.”

Shanahan loved lacrosse, too, but knew he would have to give it up to focus on hockey. Tavares, though, was a pure lacrosse player, although Shanahan laughed at what might have been had Tavares been inclined to skate or play hockey.

“John Purves, who was a very good hockey player, played lacrosse with us too and [he] would rent ice in the summer,” Shanahan recalled. “John [Tavares] would come out for fun. He couldn't skate very well at all, but you could see he was taking everything in, sizing up what everyone was doing, where they were on the ice. It was like he was studying us. So even though he couldn't skate, it wasn't long before he was starting to dangle guys and make plays. [Purves] always said, ‘If [Tavares] ever decided he wanted to be a hockey player, he'd be better than all of us.' He had that kind of mind to really process things.”

Tavares won a Founder's Cup national Junior B championship with Mississauga in 1986. Statistically, he ripped up Junior B (scoring 132 goals in 17 games in one season) and Junior A lacrosse. He played and starred in high school football and wound up going to Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, playing defensive back on the varsity football team.

He graduated from Laurier with a desire to become a teacher. He wanted to go to teacher's college, but didn't have the money. He found work at the high school he attended as a student, Philip Pocock Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga. He was hired as an educational research worker with special-needs kids and did that for a couple of years. It was while he was playing for the Buffalo Bandits that he got hooked up with D'Youville College in Buffalo, where he got his teaching certificate. Ultimately, he landed a full-time teaching job at Pocock.

Technically, one of Canada's most gifted athletes is a high-school math teacher.

It wouldn't be accurate to say Tavares made no money playing lacrosse, but it's never been nearly enough to call it a livelihood. In 2014, he was getting the maximum NLL salary of close to $40,000 for the five-month season. Officially, the summer leagues in Ontario and B.C. are amateur loops, though everyone knows there's a little cash to be made—“expenses” to be paid. But even for a superstar like Tavares, a 14-game regular season, and maybe that many more playoff games, might yield around $500 a game, if that. By anyone's best guess, the most Tavares has ever made in one year from lacrosse would be around $50,000, and keep in mind, when he started playing in the MILL in 1992, he got $125 per game for the eight-game season.

“Yeah, but it went up to $150 a game in my second year,” he said with a laugh.

If such an extraordinary athlete ever felt bitter about his career lacrosse earnings being a mere fraction of what the lowest-paid NHL player would get for one season, never mind what superstar athletes of Tavares's ilk earn in other sports, he doesn't show it. Or that he had to spend hours in rush-hour traffic, driving the 160 kilometres from Mississauga to Peterborough for summer games rather than travelling in style on an NHL charter.

“It would have been nice to make more money, but lacrosse has brought a lot of good things to my life,” Tavares said. “It would have been great to make a livelihood at it, but that wasn't possible. I am a math teacher. When I was growing up, I played lacrosse because I loved it. There was no pro league to aspire to. I never set out to be a lacrosse player, so I can't be disappointed. I'm fortunate to have been able to play at the level I've played.”

Now he takes great pride in being a father. He and his wife, Katrina, had son Justin in 2006 and daughter Breanne in 2007. J.T. coached Justin in tyke lacrosse, but Justin suggested he might want to play baseball.

“If he likes [baseball] better,” Tavares said, “I don't mind.”

But when Justin suggested he's interested in being a goalie, the father had to put his foot down.

“I told him when he can afford to buy goalie equipment, he can play goal,” Tavares said. “I've never liked goalies.”

As he prepared for the 2014 NLL season, he knew there was a good chance it would be his last. His body had been breaking down. His 2012 summer season and 2013 NLL year were marred by injury, micro-tears of his calf muscles that made it difficult to run. If it turns out 2014 was his final season, he's at peace with it.

“When you're old, you can't be playing hurt,” he said late in the summer of 2013. “[Injuries] caused me to struggle the last few years. [The Bandits] still seem to think I can help out, and I'm still loving to play. I'm not sure why they want a 45-year-old on the team. I look at it that there are stages of being retired. Like, when you're at home and you don't want to go to the arena, but once you get to the arena, you like being there. That's when you know you're near retirement, but not there yet. That's me [going into 2014]. I've still got some fire left. But the next stage, the one where you know it's time to retire, you just don't want to go to the arena at all. That's when you know it's time. I'll know. That won't be a problem for me.”

If the 2014 season was his last, Tavares enjoyed it. The Bandits lost to eventual NLL champion Rochester in the semifinal, and that was disappointing. But he played and produced well early in the season, battled through a midseason lull and rallied for a strong individual finish. In July 2014, he sounded like a man who was leaning towards retiring but wasn't quite prepared to make it official. He wanted to wait a bit longer before committing.

As for his place in the game, his legacy as the greatest player of all time, the comparisons to Gretzky, he doesn't get too caught up in any of it, his humility shining through it all.

“I've got numbers others don't, but the numbers don't tell the whole story,” he said. “That doesn't make you the best player.

“Gretzky?” he said with a grin. “I was dirtier than Gretzky. I'd stick guys or fight. Wayne was a Lady Byng guy. Me, not so much. For me, hands down, Gary Gait is [the best lacrosse player of all time]. Paul was no slouch, either. John Grant's name should be in there, too. There are so many great players. I'm just fortunate to have played for as long as I did.

“You know what I'll remember more than any championships, any accomplishments or goals I scored? My early years, my minor lacrosse, just playing in the box at Alexandra Park, with the rowdy crowd, just looking forward to go there with my stick. I wanted to play lacrosse because my brother Danny played and I'd take his stick. That's what I'll remember most.”

John Tavares the lacrosse player was never going to be a
hockey player, but John Tavares the hockey player most definitely could have been a lacrosse player.

Young John's mother, Barb, remembered her brother-in-law Danny suggesting she put four-year-old John in peanut lacrosse, which she did. Uncle Danny took little John to his first game, brought him home and told Barb they would have to put John in an older age group with his Danny's six-year-old son Ryan.

“In John's first lacrosse game, his team won 17–1,” Barb Tavares said. “John scored all 17 goals.”

As natural as John was with a lacrosse stick in his hand, hockey was his first and enduring love. He first skated at Clarkson Arena when he was two and a half years old.

“At any given time, it was hard for me to say what I enjoyed more, hockey or lacrosse, but I know I fell in love with hockey first,” the NHL star said. “I can still vividly remember learning to skate, not wanting to use the boards, going to the middle and trying to not fall down. I had a hockey stick in my hand when I was two years old. My first connection was to hockey, but as I got older, I wanted to be [Uncle] J.T.”

Uncle John remembered a Young John who was crazy for hockey. “He'd rather watch Wayne Gretzky videos than cartoons,” J.T. said. “I'd come over to his house and we'd play hockey in the basement. If I didn't let him be the commentator, he would cry. I wouldn't let him beat me, either.”

But seeing Uncle John play for the Bandits had a huge impact on Young John, who, with his collection of cousins, would make the drive on Friday nights to see the Bandits play at the old Aud in Buffalo.

“I was only three or four years old and it was so loud,” Young John said. “What I remember is how steep the seats were in the Aud.”

“His mom [Barb] would tell you [Young John] would just stare at the game, even as a four-year-old, and take it all in where a lot of kids would be running around all over the place,” J.T. said.

In the summer months, Young John would go to the old Memorial Arena in Brampton and watch Uncle John in the OLA Major Series. That, too, left an indelible imprint on him.

“It was such a great atmosphere in a real old barn,” Young John said. “The lacrosse was so good. I would watch it and say, ‘Wow, I can't believe I play this game.' It was fantastic. I loved it.”

It didn't matter which sport Young John was playing, he filled the net in both, always playing up one age group in hockey, but since lacrosse age groupings span two years, he was even more advanced—in peewee, for example, he was a ten-year-old playing against 12-year-olds. It just didn't matter. In the highly competitive peewee, bantam and midget provincial qualifiers and championships, the underage kid would still dominate and often lead everyone in the province in scoring. In hockey, he was the kid the other teams would go to extraordinary lengths to stop.