At least, it looked like the crowd was going wild. Even with
my vivid imagination, it was a little hard to make out all those
fans sitting there in the snowbank in the backyard of our home in
London, Ontario. I had just returned home from our Saturday
morning house league game and I was replaying the action on the
backyard rink. It was a weekly ritual when I was a kid.
We got killed 11-1 in that game, but I couldn't wait to return to
my rink to replay my goal all over again. I would think, "Where
was everyone on the ice when I scored? How did the goalie
react?" It was a great feeling to score in that game, because we
were playing against the dominant team in the league. My best
friends were on that team, and they whipped us every time we
played them. Back on my rink, I would go through what every-
one had done in the game - me and all the other seven-year-olds.
I didn't repeat my mistakes, though. I would only replay things
that were positive and that I enjoyed.
The rink was my getaway, my little bit of heaven. If you ever had
a problem in school, I would get out on the rink and blow it off.
Being on the rink was the best time of the day. You didn't care
that your room needed cleaning, that you were supposed to help
your brother with a project or anything like that. You just didn't
obey. If my Mom, Bonnie, wanted to harp at me about something,
she would have to climb through the snow to get me. It was
my escape from everything. When you were on the rink, it was
like you were above the law.
My Mom was always buying us these funny-looking toques.
They fit snugly over our heads so that our ears wouldn't freeze,
and we could put our helmets on top. We were always sup-
posed to wear our helmets, because Bon the Nurse would flip out
if we didn't. But if you were cagey enough, there were ways
around that. When my Mom would be working away at the
kitchen counter or going upstairs and couldn't see, the helmet
would quickly be pitched into the snowbank. I would be flying
around out there hell-bent-for-leather, the cold breeze flush
against my face.
What I remember most is the sensation of being swallowed up
by the surroundings - cold, crisp, clear and white. I would be by
myself on the backyard rink, but I felt as though I was in the
middle of nowhere. You'd gaze around and it was just a wall of
white, everywhere. It was magic.

London is right in Ontario's snowbelt, and we had some win-
ters when you couldn't even get out the front door - it was unbe-
lievable. We had paths, cut like mazes, just to get out of the house.
Our backyard was buried under an avalanche of snow. Every
sound - my skates carving through the ice, a slapshot unleashed
from point-blank range - echoed off the massive snowbanks
around the rink. All the neighbors knew when you were out
there, because they could hear everything.
It was as if we had our own little hockey franchise on that
backyard rink. My father, Carl, was the owner, manager, rink
attendant and total rink-rat. It was my home ice, but he owned it.
I may have fancied myself the Rocket Richard of the place, but
my Dad had built the Forum. The ice was awesome. My Dad
began making backyard rinks as a kid growing up in Chatham,
Ontario, and through the years he became a master at it. As I
learned throughout my hockey days, my Dad would do whatever
it took to keep that rink going. The ice was lightning fast. I could
shoot the puck twice as fast on my backyard rink as I did in my
games. The arena ice often wasn't flooded before your games and
could be chipped up quite a bit by the time you took to the ice.
But back home, it was crisp and like a sheet of glass. If garden-
ers have green thumbs, Carl had a white thumb.
The ice would always be at its best in the morning, especially
during a thaw, because it took a while for the sun to rise over the
trees. I'd get out there as soon as I woke up, while my brother
Brett preferred to sleep in and watch cartoons. When he finally
got out there, the ice would be totally chewed up and he'd com-
plain, "Dad, the ice is horrible." But by that time I'd got
all my skating in.
After I played shinny in the early evening with the neighbor-
hood kids, my Dad and I would work on skills. And, much to my
delight, Carl could occasionally lose track of what time a kid was
supposed to go to bed. If there was ice to be had out there, that's
where we both wanted to be. We worked on a lot of passing, one-
time shots, tons of deflections. Our favorite drill was "skate in a
cicle." I would skate the circle, take a pass and shoot as quickly
as possible on net. Then my Dad would get lined up to do the
same thing, and I would pass to him. So I'd get my passing in.
He'd get his passing in, too. Not that working on his passing mat-
tered to him - but some days his passing could use the work,
trust me. We'd have a great time.
Eventually, my Mom would be knocking on the window.
"C'mon in, guys."
I would plead in a whisper, "Dad, just a little while longer?"
"What time do you normally go to bed?" he would ask.
"Oh, in a half hour."
He would yell back, "Bon, a half hour."
When that half hour was up, I would be pressing him for
another ten minutes. What was Mom going to say? I'd be
thinking, "Everyone else is in bed. Dad's on my side. This is
cool." It might make me a little tired in school the next day, but
that was a risk I was willing to take. I would sit there in class,
yawning, and say casually to one of my classmates, "I was out
until nine-thirty last night with my Dad. What time were you in bed?"
I wasn't to keen on being a good student back then, and I
used to get in trouble a little bit for occasionally cutting corners in
school. I remember we had this one exercise where we would
have to pick out a word and write a sentence using it. Being
someone who couldn't sit still for too long, finding thirty words
and having to write a sentence with each wasn't too appealing. So
I begged off on that assignment. But my attitude at the time was,
"What are they going to do? They can't come into my house.
They can't take me off my rink." I'm just a little kid thinking this
stuff. It got to the point where my Mom made me do homework
before I was allowed on the rink, and that gave me all the motiva-
tion I needed to get it done.
One year in school, I tried to bring my obsession with hockey
into the classroom, with pretty dismal results. I did a science pro-
jekt on how to make a rink in grade 3. I had cotton balls for the
snow and tinfoil covered with plastic wrap so it looked like real
ice. I used toothpicks to make the nets. I did it all by myself and
thought it was awesome, but the teacher didn't seem to agree.
You were graded either 1, 2, 3, or 4, with 4 being the worst. I got a
3. A lot of dorks who had their mothers do their projects for them
got higher marks. I remember being pretty ticked off about that.
I was six and a half years old when Mom decided house
league hockey might be a good way for me to burn off some
excess energy. I wasn't the best player in the league at all, but I
slowly developed as I moved up.
That I wasn't one of the stars of the league didn't stop me from
hamming it up in the backyard. I never imagined I was someone
else when I was out on the backyard rink; I was always just me. I
would get out there and make some nifty little play to score into
the empty net and think it was great. I would raise my hands to
celebrate the goal and hear the crowd going wild, and I would try
to make out all the fans in the snowbank, amid the vast sea of
white. I would think, "Look at me - all right! I just made this little
play on this pylon. Okay, so it hasn't got a heartbeat. But what a
play!" That's how you build confidence, by repeating the skills
over and over so that you really believe you can do it in a game. I
gained a lot of what turned into confidence on that backyard rink,
knowing that I could do it. Everything progressed. Everything
came from playing.
Game days held no special attraction back then; I much pre-
ferred to stay practicing on the backyard rink where I could run
the show. The house league games were like brief interruption
to the more serious business at hand. My Dad would throw my
skateguards on, drive me to the arena and I would dash onto the
ice with the rest of my teammates. When the game was over, I
couldn't wait to get back to my private haven in the backyard.
I can still remember my first house league game, when the ref-
erees came out and placed us in our positions on the ice. The ref
said, "Every time I blow the whistle and we have a face-off, get
your butt back here, and I want you in the same position every
time." The referee was dictating everything. I can recall thinking,
"Who are these guys with the stripes? They're blowing the whis-
tle on me here. I can't shoot the puck when I want to shoot the
puck. I haven't got control of this. I don't like this." It took me a
while to accept it. Sitting on the bench between shifts was also a
drag.
To me, the rink meant free time. I was out there a lot by myself.
On Saturdays, with the exception of a break for my games, I
would play for six straight hours. The other kids might have been
out at afternoon shows or messing around at the local mall, but I
never felt like I was missing anything. The only way someone
could have convinced me to go to a matinee was by dragging me
there. When you're a kid, cool is to be in control of yourself. Cool
is to be doing what you want to do.
The backyard rink came complete with music, but it wasn't
exactly the organ tunes you hear at Maple Leaf Gardens. I was
into the heavy-metal band AC/DC when I was a kid. I had all
their tapes. Everybody used to give me AC/DC tapes for Christ-
mas and birthdays. I had a tiny radio with a little tape player, and
I used to plug it in outside and let the music blare while I played.
With all the snow banked around the rink, it reverberated all over
the backyard; it was just like a concert. I thought it was great,
though the neighbors probably didn't share my view. A lot of
lyrics didn't make much sense, but it was upbeat and perfect for a
little rock'n'roll hockey.
Girls were pretty far down my list at the time. When I was a
kid, I never saw Wayne Gretzky or Mark Messier hanging around
with their girlfriends. If the stars of the game weren't hanging
around with girls, I sure wasn't going to be caught hanging
around with them.
Besides, this was when I was in public school. I wasn't even
sure whether I like girls or not. The way I figured it, the other
guys may be getting the babes now. So be it. I'm just going to
keep practising. I just felt there would always be time for that
other stuff, but there were only so many hours that I could be on
the rink.
I wasn't really thinking about being a professional hockey
player at that point - I just had fun at it. The backyard rink was a
chance to go out and be myself. The games provided me with
the opportunity to use the skills I was practicing and to see what I
had within myself. I thrived on the competition. Even as a little
kid, I loved to win. I didn't think too much about the future, I just
prepared for each year of hockey. I really had no idea
where my love for the game would take me. But I was eager to
find out.

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