Remembering Mr. Hockey

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family, gordie howe, hockey

I’m repeating something I wrote here nine years ago about one of the greatest nights of my childhood.

Me, my dad, my cousin and Gordie Howe.

Howe died last night. We are not likely to see anything like him again and I wish my boys could have seen the way he played the game. The word “great” is used too easily these days. Howe really was great.

I remember . . .

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Sometimes that happens

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competing, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, junior hockey, training, working out

Parenting isn’t rocket science or brain surgery, but once it starts it’s a life-long commitment. Obvious, but true.

The front end is heavy lifting, the back end is more fine tuning. And after about 15 or 20 years – if you have any honest self awareness at all – you start to see how things are really going.

This will not be a soliloquy on the brilliance of my kids or our greatness as parents. There always things to do better, things we might have done differently. They still don’t know how to cook, do laundry, shovel snow, pickup clothes, or buy beer if there’s someone else in the house to do it instead. But, overall they’re better-than-okay kids and we love them.

No, today is about understanding that your kids will look at your example for a long, long time. The paths you choose, your conduct, your lifestyle, your generosity, honesty, work ethic, kindness, friends, choices. In short, your character. As the old saying goes, the way you behave when you think no one is looking.

Sweating it out today on a spin bike with 23 other people at 6am, I reflected a bit on this if only to distract myself from the heat of the room and punishing regime to be completed.

A price worth paying

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competing, family, fitness, hockey, Olympics, paddling, training, working out

There are benefits to social media beyond being able to show you what I had for dinner or complaining about the challenges of commuting in the largest city in the world that doesn’t understand commuting.

Social media is sort of like a never ending class reunion. You run into people you haven’t seen in a long time, you catch up, you meet their families. And sometimes you share a moment.

We have friends in Halifax who we were once quite close with – we worked together, shared dinner parties, that sort of thing. We moved away, life goes on. They have two kids – now young adults, a boy and a girl. Both were competitive paddlers, and one – the daughter – is a nationally carded athlete.

She won multiple gold medals at last summer’s Pan Am Games and is a tenacious competitor. Trains hard, competes hard, studies hard. Ever since she can remember, she chased the dream of being an Olympian.

And this week her life’s work came down to one race and she didn’t make it. Pause and think about the only goal you have had for a dozen years coming down to one race, a few seconds of your life.

A first

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AUS Hockey, competing, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

Well, that wasn’t so bad.

I completed the World Vision Canada 6K Run for Water on Saturday morning, under brilliant sunny skies and comforted by the chill embrace of sub-zero temperatures. Moments of it were actually fun and rewarding.

There were about 200 runners at our location in north Mississauga. I’m not a runner and now I remember why. One kilometre into the run, we passed a sign marking the distance. It was one of the most demotivational moments I have had in recent times.

Really? I have to so this five more times? The first kilometre was the worst.

My route strategy was simply to run until I felt uncomfortable and then walk a bit. I never needed to walk.

The six people I ran with, all also members of The Athlete Training Centre, were younger and faster and better runners and I was content to let them sprint away from me. The fastest finished the run in about 33 minutes. I toddled in about seven minutes later, respectably in the middle of the pack.

One day more

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competing, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, Minor hockey, training, working out

Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!

— One Day More, Les Miserables, Boubill and Natel

It’s March and that means playoff hockey in Oakville.

Our team – the peewee red Packers – faceoff tonight in a semi final with the season on the line. There are no best-of-five or two-game-total-goal series in house league. It’s one and done. Win, and you get to be sweaty on the blueline after the championship game, win or lose. Lose and your season ends.

It’s not life or death and Donald Trump won’t show up and make fun of us if we don’t get the outcome we want. But it’s still a big deal.

Our opponents are a solid squad. They have beaten us, we have beaten them (the last time just two weeks ago in the last game of the regular season with 2^nd place on the line.) But after nearly two decades of this I know that in a one-game playoff, expect the unexpected and stuff will happen.

Win or lose, we are already proud of our guys.

It’s hockey, man

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family, hockey, Leafs

Watching the Leafs game last night – or at least the small portion of it I actually watched – brought back some interesting memories.

Those memories were not of the “brush-with-greatness” players on the Leafs roster whose careers intersected tangentially with my older son. One Leaf d-man was Pad’s defence partner in junior varsity high school tournament hockey for a couple games (Pad’s high school coach offered him “$100 and all the Quiznos sandwiches he could eat” to forgo junior and play high school hockey full-time); another forward was a player he played against for a couple of seasons in the OJHL.

No, my memories were triggered by watching all those AHL callups on the Leafs getting a shot at the Big Time and how exciting it must be not just for them, but their families too. And that made me recall when Pad got called up from midget AAA to play a few games of junior A. I was excited, too.

The OJHL is a long, long way from the NHL. And the Mississauga Chargers, in a universe of junior A hockey teams, would be the planetary equal of Pluto. Is it really a planet? Is it really a junior A team? Hard to tell from here.

But they called and asked him to suit up for his first junior A hockey game in November 2009. It was a home game for the Chargers at Port Credit Arena against the Aurora Tigers, which had in its lineup the tallest, beefiest free-standing hockey player I had ever seen in person.

Andy Bathgate

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andy bathgate, family, hockey

I’ve been missing in action from here for so long I’m not sure it’s worth my while to even try, but I’m going to tell a story I’ve told before.

Andy Bathgate died a couple of days ago. He was a gentleman. A former captain of the New York Rangers, a Hart Trophy winner, a Leaf, a Penguin, and a Red Wing. And I’ll never forget the day he won me over.

In winter 2000, Toronto hosted the NHL all-star game and I took Patrick out of school for the afternoon to attend the fan festival. He was only seven and we had a ball. He got to play roller hockey, have his shot clocked, and lots of other cool stuff. And we lined up in a snaking, slow-moving queue to meet two hall of fame members.

We didn’t know who would be at the table when we got there because they were replacing them every 20 minutes or so. But when our turn came, it was Steve Shutt (certified dick) and Andy Bathgate.

Super Bowl stuff, other stuff

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AUS Hockey, budweiser, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, super bowl, training, working out

There wasn’t a whole lot “super” about Sunday’s Super Bowl, at least not from my perspective. The game was not exciting. It bordered on boring.

I’m not a hardcore NFL fan. I’m just a guy who likes watching elite athletes do their thing on a big stage. I’m also a journalist so I enjoy the stories within the stories as much as I enjoy the game line. I like the buzz, even if the Super Bowl has more manufactured buzz than any event outside of a manned Mars landing deserves.

It will not surprise you that I was hoping Denver would win. The aging quarterback going for something big perhaps for the final time, versus the brash up-and-comer. I will always tilt way more toward the Peyton Mannings of the world over the Cam Newtons. And lately, more towards the aging guy . . .

But off the field Sunday, both of their performances were not something I would commend my sons to emulate.

Caution: men thinking

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AUS Hockey, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

Only 10 more weeks to go in the New Year challenge at ATC.

Only.

Week three of the eat-better, get fitter challenge is upon us. Assuming people stick with it, April 1 is an ocean away.

I’m not certain how success will be defined at the end of this and whether everyone who started out two weeks ago will still be involved at the end. Actually, I think I know the answer to the second part of that statement – not everyone is going to hit the tape at the finish line. Some are falling off already – or in fairness, perhaps they were never really volunteers to the cause.

But the group enthusiasm is there for now. The 6a class continues to bring in about 20 people on weekday mornings in spite of the cold and dark. And people are in a decent mood, considering the time of day. The tempo of the workouts has changed with much more focus on strength. We’re lifting heavier weights to build muscle, taking advantage of the new diet regime of less meat, more plants.

We still do cardio – Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday still feature fairly intense spin sessions. But the emphasis is on strength. Some respond better than others but I feel it after a “lift” day. Today was front squats (barbell rest on front shoulders and then full squat with progressively more weight.) Wednesday is dead lift. Friday is bench.

I excel at precisely zero of these but that doesn’t stop me from showing up and doing what I can. Richard told me I’d be “shredded” by April 1 so, that’s the deal.

Five for Friday: Vol IX

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

The five for Friday lazy blog is back. As we hear at the gym, pitter-patter let’s get at ‘er.

–

We have a bunch of our out-of-Toronto managers in to head office for a couple days of meetings as we do annually. I was told this morning that in my absence from one gathering it was decided an intervention was needed to get me off my training regime.

All in jest of course, but it does highlight at least a little what is considered “normal” in our society and what isn’t. And a guy who takes a pass on drinking with co-workers (subbing Perrier for beer) or opts for the vegetable ragu over a steak and fully loaded baked potato is going to become a target.

I’ve been at this long enough now that my efforts are not news. But people now react with “are you STILL doing this?”

It’s mostly good natured but there’s no doubt it makes some people … well, uncomfortable isn’t the word, but it does leave them a little off centre.

Live and let live, say I. If people ask what I’m doing, I tell them. The physical changes in my appearance are significant enough that colleagues who haven’t seen me since July ask.

Otherwise, I just do my thing.