Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (27 page)

WOMEN TO HOCKEY LIKE BLADES TO BOOTS

For women, hockey has offered many more opportunities than other games. Soccer has been a game women have widely played in the postwar years, resulting in a competitive world championship and U.S. women's college program. While softball was played by girls for years, few if any women played baseball. And of course the mention of ladies playing North American football was scorned—even though a few teams were formed in the mid-1990s. But from the time steel blades were attached to boots by clamps, females have participated in skating, and when males first used a stick to knock a ball around the ice, women tried the same thing. Almost as soon as men formed the early versions of hockey, women did, too.

LORD STANLEY'S DAUGHTER

Hockey's most famous trophy, the Stanley Cup, was donated in
1893 by the Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston. Four years earlier, Stanley and his family had arrived in Ottawa from England and enjoyed watching the game with sticks and a wooden puck played on the Rideau Canal, the longest skating rink in the world, during the Ottawa Winter Carnival. A few weeks later the GG's daughter Isobel was playing for the Government House team against the Rideau Ladies Club. When Stanley's term ended in 1894 and the family returned to England, Isobel said that what she missed most from her term in Canada was skating on the canal and “playing a game of hockey.”

A LONG HISTORY, IN BRIEF

Complete records of early women's hockey are rare, but a few newspaper reports list early forays into the game. Annie McIntyre was among the fastest speed skaters in Saskatchewan in 1896 and was behind the organization of a women's team. The paper in Medicine Hat, Alberta, had a report of an 1897 game between women's teams. Teams popped up in various cities across the country and by 1900, three teams from Montreal and one from Trois-Rivières formed the Quebec Women's League. In the era following World War I, women's hockey in Canada grew in popularity with many cities and towns having clubs. While interest was not as widespread in the U.S., a few areas had teams. Through the 1930s, the Preston Rivulettes from Ontario ruled the women's game, winning the championship every year for a decade, losing only twice in more than 350 games.

SCOURING FOR COMPETITION

Conservative views of women following WW II slowed the development of hockey for women but by the late 1960s, the feminist movement had changed attitudes and women were moving into areas considered inaccessible previously. In the Vancouver area, women's leagues were established by the mid-1960s with age limits similar to men's hockey. Soon leagues were organized in British Columbia and women's teams were traveling to eastern Canada and even Europe to find competition. There were several challenges in courts for girls wanting to play in boys' leagues because it was the only hockey available.

HOCKEY HUGE

By 1982, 12,000 females were registered for hockey in Ontario and the women's division of USA hockey had 116 teams registered. Canadian women's college hockey grew quickly with a national championship in the 1980s and, in 1984, the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Association in the U.S. created a league. In the next decade, close to 100 colleges had women's hockey programs and by the end of 1990s, close to 25,000 women were registered for hockey programs in the U.S. In 1993, the NCAA passed rules that produced a national championship by 2001 and in the hockey hotbed of Minnesota, where boys' high school hockey is huge, the number of girls' high school hockey clubs topped the 100 mark by 1998.

NEXT WE TAKE THE WORLD

The first women's world invitational tournament was held in Canada in 1987 and the first World Championship sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation was held in 1990. Women's hockey made its Olympic Games debut in 1998 at Nagano, Japan, as a demonstration sport and was a full Olympic sport in 2002 at Salt Lake, Utah. While the U.S. and Canada remain the dominant world powers, several other countries are making strides to increase the depth of competition, notably Sweden, Finland, Russia, and China.

* * * * *

“I tried to talk my daughter out of going with a hockey player but he's a good kid. He asked me if he could marry Carrie before he asked her. I said: ‘You want to what?' I thought he was just going to ask for more ice time.”

—Phil Esposito, on his daughter Carrie getting engaged
to right-winger Alexander Selivanov

The business of hockey can be distracting…and confusing.

“When you ask for the house, car, cat, dog and all the fish when you're dealing with a player who's got questions about his health, no GM in his right mind is going to say ‘yes' and offer to clean the aquarium, too.”

—Eric Lindros, on Flyers GM Bob Clarke's inability to trade him

“It's beyond money at this point. They're not even treating him as a member of their family, unless it's a dysfunctional family.”

—Brendan Morrison's agent Kurt Overhardt on contract negotiations with the Devils

“We're looking forward to building the type of team the Rangers are able to buy.”

—Phoenix GM Bobby Smith

“The three important elements of hockey are: forecheck, backcheck and paycheck.”

—Gil Perreault,
former Buffalo Sabres forward

“Listen guys, I only want to be paid what I'm worth. I'm not asking for millions. Uh, excuse me, I meant to say that…”

—Patrice Brisebois,
former Montreal Canadiens defenceman

“Winning is always fun, but the car is more important.”

—Teemu Selanne, on the importance of the All-Star game

“It's not about the money. It's about what I believe in.”

—Sergei Fedorov, on holding out for $6.5 million
from the Red Wings in 1998

Harold Ballard had profit, celebrity and controversy as Maple Leaf owner—doing everything but winning.

F
ew have had as many adjectives to describe them, both laudatory and pejorative, as Harold Ballard. The longtime owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs was called a promotional genius, funny and warm, a philanthropist. He also was called surly, nasty, small-minded, bigoted, coarse and crude, the ultimate chauvinist, a self-serving publicity seeker, a bully and, most often, a loser and a convicted felon.

MAPLE LAUGHS

Selling out Maple Leaf Gardens for every NHL game and generating fat television revenue during Ballard's approximately 20 years at the controls, equalled far more than enough money to build a winning team. But the Leafs—especially in the 1980s, the last half of Ballard's reign—were the league's laughingstock. The club's front office operation was a circus, due mainly to Ballard's endless meddling and his belief that he was a hockey genius. And the on-ice product reflected the management caliber…

WHICH IS WHY THEY HIRED MANAGERS

In Ballard's more-or-less 20 seasons (1971–1991), the team owned by the man who once said, “I've forgotten more about hockey than any of these owners will ever know,” played 1672 games with a 629-817-226 win-loss tie record. It's frightening to think what that mark would have been if the man in charge didn't “know everything about hockey.” But through that time, Ballard's outrageous statements, his often vicious pronouncements and ridiculous ideas on how the NHL Board of Governors should operate kept his name in the media consistently. To Ballard, the stupidity of something he said did not matter; that someone wrote about it in a newspaper did. When he'd exhausted his musings on hockey, he'd earn more notoriety and scorn by turning his attention to politics and feminism.

CAREER KILLER

Ballard's big mouth and his desire to call the shots prevented an assortment of top hockey executives from working for him. Jim Gregory spent 40 years in the Leaf organization as a manager and coach in junior hockey and minor-pro. He was then granted a front-row seat to see the fruits of his labor when he became team GM in the 1970s. The fine group of young talent that Gregory had collected and developed was ready for show time. That was when Ballard stubbornly refused to match any contract offers from the World Hockey Association, and all that talent was quickly lost. Gregory still managed to counter some of Harold's interference, coming up with a brilliant reconstruction effort leading to a solid Leafs team from 1973 to 1978.

A JOB WORTH TURNING DOWN

When Ballard sacked Gregory—he never told Gregory or coach Roger Neilson face-to-face that they were fired—he attempted to hire Scotty Bowman, who had just coached the Montreal Canadiens to four consecutive Stanley Cup championships. “The Leaf job had much appeal because of the finances available and I looked at it very closely,” Bowman said. “Harold Ballard promised me complete control but I felt that he would not keep his nose out of the operation, that he would want to be the guy quoted in the press about the team. I just couldn't see working under those conditions.” Bowman instead became GM-coach in that hockey hotbed of Buffalo.

PUNCH IN BALLARD'S FACE

To fill the hole, Ballard hired Punch Imlach, who was GM-coach of the Leafs in four Stanley Cup titles in the 1960s before being sacked by Ballard and ownership partner Stafford Smythe in 1969. Imlach had built the Sabres from 1970 expansion team to Cup finalist in 1975 but hadn't taken the team past the quarterfinals the three years since. Of course with Ballard involved, Imlach's hiring evolved into a fiasco. Punch signed a contract as Leafs GM one evening with a press conference to announce his return scheduled for noon the next day. Next morning, Ballard breezed into Imlach's office with some suggestions for strengthening the team. “Harold, let's get one thing straight: I call the shots for the
team, I decide what might make them better and I make the statements to the media,” Imlach said. “I'll tell you what I think you need to know about the operation and if you can't live with that, then I might as well leave right now.”

YOU WANT TO
DO YOUR JOB
? YOU'RE FIRED!

Ballard immediately contacted his accountant and lawyer to try to find a contract loophole (and quick!) to get out of Punch's “ink-is-still-wet” contract. Imlach ended up as Leafs “boss,” but apparently neither man was too happy about it. Imlach not only went to war with the owner but with every Leafs player, plummeting a competent team into the league's basement. Early in the 1980–81 season, Imlach arrived at Maple Leaf Gardens one morning to find his name deleted from his parking place. “I had no idea just how big a roadblock Ballard was in trying to run an NHL team, how his shooting off his mouth to his friends in the press, much of it dead wrong, made it impossible to do the job,” Imlach said.

THE GLORIOUS SEA FLEAS

In his youth, Ballard was a speed skater and powerboat racer, moving into a business owned by his father that built sewing machines for the garment trade and also produced a high-selling ice skate. Ballard became actively involved in the operation of hockey teams as a young man, serving as GM-coach of the Toronto National Sea Fleas when they won the Allan Cup as Canadian senior champs in 1932 and a silver medal at the 1933 World Championship. He was GM of the West Toronto Nationals when that team won the Memorial Cup as Canadian junior champs in 1939.

SHOULDA STUCK TO THE JUNIORS

As president and financial backer of the Toronto Marlboros junior club and a chain of minor teams, Ballard made a strong mark in hockey. Working with his close friend Stafford Smythe, the son of Conn Smythe (who had built Maple Leaf Gardens and the NHL Leafs into one of the great sports franchises in existence), Ballard turned the Marlies into a top junior organization, winning the Memorial Cup six times under his ownership.

When Conn Smythe decided to sell the Leafs in 1961, Stafford and Ballard, with a large bank loan, headed the group of
wealthy Toronto businessmen known as the Silver Seven that bought the franchise. With Imlach at the helm, the Leafs went on a great roll, winning four Stanley Cups in five seasons from 1962 to 1967, perhaps giving the owners a notion that they were above and beyond the normal call. They turned the Gardens into a money machine, adding a restaurant and private boxes with advertising in every available space.

TAKEOVER STRATEGY #1: BE A CROOK

In 1971, Ballard and Stafford Smythe were charged with theft and fraud, mostly for using money from Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd., a public company, for personal use, and for tax evasion. The other Gardens directors thought it might be a good time to cash in their assets (and run!), many of them selling the shares they owned in the building to Smythe and Ballard. Before he could go to trial, Stafford Smythe died of a bleeding ulcer and despite his family's efforts to retain control of the company, Ballard, with the help of a bank, money-whipped them into selling their shares to him.

JAIL NOT BAD COMPARED TO HIS MESS AT MLG

In 1972, after a long trial, Ballard was sentenced to three years in prison, serving a year before being granted parole for good behavior. During a three-day pass, he told reporters that prison was “like living in a good motel: steak for dinner and good service, too.” Of course, when that was reported, Members of Parliament were bombarded with questions about “soft” conditions in Canada's prison. Ballard could create trouble from anywhere.