The extra mile

Bonnie and I tossed and turned in bed one night, but we
couldn't get to sleep. We were with Eric at a little tournament in
Amherst, New York, and for the first time it began to dawn on us
that there could be something special there. Finally, after a few
futile attempts at nodding off, we both sort of looked at each
other at the same time, as if to say, "Did you see what I saw?" He
was nine years old at the time, but he was starting to do things
that made him stand out.
I guess it was the first time that Eric had caught up to some of
the other kids who were excelling at that age. There was a player
in Chicago who had matured a lot earlier and had more strength,
and he had always been quite a bit ahead of Eric. But at this tour-
nament, Eric had not only reached the level of this other player,
he was surpassing him.
He had an understanding of the game. He would be doing
something and you would scratch your head wondering what he
was up to, but the puck would end up being there. He had an
anticipation of the play, an ability to make lead passes that was
beyond minor hockey. Minor hockey at that stage tended to be
more along the lines of the better player grabbing the puck and
going to the other end of the ice and scoring, but that wasn't what
Eric was doing.
He also had willpower; if they were down a couple of goals,
he would just buckle down. I guess it was a combination of drive,
skill and mental aptitude. But it was the mental aptitude that
struck me more than anything. I can remember, at the end of one
period, he was going up the ice and he shot the puck from center
ice. I was saying to myself, "Why the heck would you want to
shoot from center ice? Who's going to score from there?" And
then all of a sudden the buzzer went. Here was this young kid
who was conscious of the time that was left on the clock. Nobody
had taught him that. It wasn't anything the coach had said. He
just knew.
Once we saw that Eric had an obvious love for the game, the
next question was, "How do you make sure that this kid has the
opportunity to take it as far as he can go with it?" You want to do
it in a fashion that doesn't take the fun out of the whole activity.
You can't analyze things to death, because then it becomes some
sort of computer game. Sometimes the important thing isn't get-
ting there, it's the fun, or what you learn along the way. It's a lot
of hard work, but unless there's some enjoyment in it, then there's
no sense in doing it. You don't want things to get out of whack in
terms of how important the objective is.
Bonnie was very good at identifying certain things that
needed to be worked on. She tends to be more analythical in the
sense of seeing the whole picture. And she spent countless hours
organizing things for Eric, Brett and Robin and driving them
everywhere. It's her energy that really pulls everything together.
We've also received a lot of gems of advice along the way. One
fellow who was particularly helpful wasBob Vigars, who used to
advise players on fitness training when I was on the football team
at the University of Western Ontario. Bob had experience in
working with young athletes and his track-and-field teams at
Western have won a record fourteen national titles. One of the
things I was interested in finding out from Bob was how they
ensure that kids in sports like swimming, where they train for
hours and hours, are well-balanced and don't get burned out and
end up hating the sport further down the road. He said the
burnout didn't come from hard work, that burnout very often
came from a lack of positive reinforcement.

He used the example of Wayne Gretzky, because Gretzky was
just emerging as a superstar at that point. Bob talked about the
expectations that were placed on someone like Gretzky, who
many people expected to score three goals in every game he
played. He said if Gretzky is getting dumped on every time he
scores one goal instead of three, then it won't take long for him to
pack up his tent, because he won't have the drive to stick with it
anymore. But if he's given recognition for things other than scor-
ing, such as setting up other goals or stripping a player of the
puck a couple of times, then it will be easier for him and others to
keep everything in perspective. Gretzky will have the nights
where he scores three goals and other nights where he'll score
none, but Gretzky will always feel good about being Gretzky.
What he was saying was, don't let the expectations become
unrealistic. You have to have expectations, but they should be
reasonable ones that you can strive for and that you're likely
to achieve. It's when they become unrealistic that the athlete
burns out.
The other key part of the advice we got from Bob was that
kids who are involved at the high end of sport lead a very struc-
tured life. In Bob's mind, it is important to have a time during the
year when there's very little structure. It doesn't make a lot of
sense to play a top-end, organized sport like hockey and then
move into something like baseball at a very competitive level. He
said if you really want to excel at a sport, it is important that
there be times when you do other things that aretotally different
and of a different structure. So our kids have never been involved
in summer hockey or any other organized sport. They do some
skating in August to get ready for the season, but that's it.

Another person we sought counsel from was Bobby Orr's
father, Doug. We went to Parry Sound one day on a camping trip
and we just knocked on his door. Being the friendly individual he
is, Doug ushered us right in. He said he had heard about Eric
through some friends, and he took us downstairs to show us
some of Bobby's many trophies. We chatted for a while, and his
main message was, "Keep your kid a kid." He said, "If he's
as good as I think he is, the hockey will all fall into place." He
seemed to feel that maybe Bobby had been cheated out of some of
his childhood by joining the professional ranks so young. We lis-
tened very carefully and really took that to heart. We spoke a few
times after that. In fact, it was on Doug's advice that we eventu-
ally wound up asking Rick Curran to handle Eric's business
affairs. Doug jokes with Rick every once in a while, asking when
he's going to get his commission.
I think what we've attempted to do as a family is to think
ahead and try to plan for the future. I don't think it should ever
be construed that we're wizards at this. I don't think we did any-
thing different than a lot of other parents who try to give their
kids some guidance, hoping they'll get into a certain university or
that they'll marry the right kind of guy or girl.
There was lot of satisfaction in working with the kids on their
skills in the backyard. It's not that I was that proficient as a hockey
player, but there were some coaching ideas I saw in other sports
that stuck with me and that I thought could help the kids in get-
ting more enjoyment out of the game. I think the level of coaching
now in hockey has changed dramatically from when I played. At
that time, I thought the coaches I had in basketball and football
had a better way of teaching things. In basketball, when they
taught you how to do something like a lay-up, it was broken
down into ten steps, whereas in a typical hockey practice they
would say "Go in and shoot." They weren't talking about which
foot you're shooting off, how you hold your stick, whether your
eyes are up or not, what you should be looking at when you move
in on a goalie, whether you should shoot high or low or whenever.
In basketball, you'd be forced to do lay-ups with your right
hand and with your left hand. You would dribble as much with
your left hand as you'd dribble with your right. In hockey, we
always tend to shoot on the forehand, and most players, even a
lot of players in the NHL, aren't that proficient with their back-
hand. They always take the puck from the backhand and move it
to their forehand before they shoot. If you can use that backhand,
it's an extra weapon in your arsenal. Gretzky is an example of a
player who is just as dangerous on his backhand, and it's obvious
from books about him and watching him that it's an asset he
acquired through practice and hard work.

Most players, when they see someone use a new skill, get a lot
of fun out of learning it and making progress with it. On the other hand,
if you just throw the puck out all the time and play
shinny -- and there's certainly time for that -- you tend to use the
skills that you're already good at. But if you break down a skill,
and players start to recognize that they can improve on it through
hard work over a period of time, then they're going to make the
effort.
When the kids were moving from non-contact hockey to con-
tact hockey, I realized, from having played football, that you
could use a lot of the same principles to teach them about hitting.
It just gets back to the idea of fundamentals in terms of balance,
extending your knees, how to use your shoulders and keeping
your head up -- basic stuff. It was just taking something that you
spent hours and hours doing on a football field and saying, "Let's
take a few hours and apply it to the hockey situation." The kids
loved it. Most kids are gung ho and they want to be macho, but
they're also apprehensive, because they know that if you don't do
it right you can hurt yourself.
It's a matter of control. Your objective isn't necessarily to abso-
lutely kayo the other person; the idea is to make sure that other
person doesn't get by. I can recall one afternoon we had about
half a dozen kids in the backyard. Some were Brett's age; some
were Eric's age. They were all getting their licks in. We would
start with the dummy on a stationary basis, then show them how
to bodycheck someone in open ice or hit somebody straight up.
We didn't do it much beyond three-quarters speed, because oth-
erwise I'd have been knocked for a loop.
In football, you spend a lot of time doing neck exercises, and
the kids should be doing the same thing in hockey to help protect
themselves. At the end of most of our practices outside, Eric
would usually do some isometric exercises, just like we did in
football. It's something that's seldom done, yet it's something that
anyone can do at home.
My dedication to keeping the backyard rink going certainly
made me the butt of a lot of jokes. They'd laugh at me because I
would be out there at all hours of the night, either flooding it with
the sprinkler or trying to patch it up with some snow. When you
spend a lot of hours working on the rink, there's sort of an attach-
ment there. When it melts, it symbolizes the passing of another
year. You can always tell spring is approaching, because the rink
gets shorter and shorter. Last year, when the ice got pretty bad,
Brett would venture out on it at night wearing golf shoes so that
he had some stability and could shoot pucks. It worked out well.
On the night of our final skate, the kids would usually take
their sticks and crack the ice up and throw chunks all around.
Brett would typically threaten that he was going to go into the
house to get some salt to throw on it to make sure that it melted.
But sometimes the cold weather would return for a short spell,
and everybody would be chuckling because I would be out there
late one night trying to get the rink going again. It was hard for
me to accept the end of a season.
Looking back on it, I think there are two sides to the success
Eric has enjoyed so far. He's been fortunate in that he has been
blessed with a certain amount of natural athletic talent, but the
other part of it is that he has worked hard to develop his skills.
You do have to work hard, because things seldom come easy.
Sometimes, being blessed with a skill can be a detriment. For
example, as a student, you might do very well at high school
because you're very bright, but you might not develop good
work habits, and by the time you get to university you can get
blown out of water.
The same thing can happen in sports. Perhaps, as a young
person, you might be bigger than the rest of the kids, so you don't
work on things such as stickhandling. As you try to take the next
step up the ladder, you might get left behind because you can't
keep pace anymore. There has to be a balance there. Just because
you've got certain skills, they won't necessarily get you where
you want to go.
It gets back to the whole idea of catching the kids when
they're doing something right and building on it. Just from my
own experience as a hockey player, I know what a vital ingredient
confidence can be. I remember what Paul Terbenche told me
when we were both in the Chicago farm system trying to make
the Blackhawkes. He was a smaller player with good skills who
would go on to play in the NHL for a while. I was a big guy, but I
always felt gawky and uncoordinated.
Terbenche said to me, "I really wish I had your size. You can
do anything you want out there." I was kind of taken aback by
that. I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Your biggest problem
is self-confidence. If you go out there and think you can do it,
you can do it. Just go out on the ice and think you're the best player on
the ice." I did that for a couple of weeks, and I was amazed at how
well it worked. I quickly became a starter. It was a simple point
that he made, but it really showed me, when I was dealing with
the kids, how important it is to make sure there is that sense of
confidence. You don't want them to be cocky, but for a lot of kids
there's a tendency for them not to realize how good they are. You
improve by building; you don't develop by destroying.

Other voices:

Carl is always trying to learn new things, and I think our
whole family is like that. We don't sit back and act complacent.
We always keep moving; we never sit and rest. We're always
thinking, "How can we get better? How can our kids get better?"
Luckily, we've made a lot of good friends who have helped us
along the way. Carl is the type of person who doesn't do that
much talking because he's too busy trying to figure out what he
can learn from you. We make a good team, because he'll think of
something and I'll do the legwork to get it done.
As soon as Eric started to emerge in hockey, we started rent-
ing some extra ice time and organizing things a little bit differ-
ently so that he got the opportunity to develop his skills fully. We
never felt threatened by his talent. Eric is certainly a lot better at
hockey than Carl ever was, but that never worried Carl.
Bob Vanderaa came up with the idea of renting the arena in
nearby Dorchester for an hour when Eric and Bob's son Mark
were playing together back in London. All the defensemen from
the team would go out there, and Carl and Bob would work with
them. Carl would read all the instruction books and he knew how
to run an excellent practice. He's really into the teaching aspect.
He likes to look at the big picture, but not too much escapes his
notice. He can even tell you how wide a certain player's
skates are.
It was always important to us that our kids feel good about
themselves. I was impressed by the way my friend Wendy Ebers
dealt with her kids. She always made a point of introducing them
to you. The minute you walked into her house she'd say, "Now
here's Matt and Bethy, come and say hi to Mrs. Lindros." It was
different from when I was a kid, when the general philosophy
was that children should be seen and not heard. Her kids were
brought into the center. They didn't hang around for hours, but
they were always made to feel part of things. And they had a lot
of confidence. I recognized that and followed her example. The
kids were always introduced and treated like individuals. I think
that gave Eric a lot of self-assurance.
When we had a christmas parties in London, I would dress the
kids up in matching pajamas, which I had sewn. Their job was to
greet the guests. They looked like cute little bugs running around
and taking the coats upstairs. It gave them a chance to meet all
the people at the party, and I think those little things gave them
more confidence.
But I must admit, some days Eric got me down, and I could
get very angry with him. I probably said things that weren't as
boosting to his self-esteem as they could have been. But he did
drive you up the wall!

My parents always kept things fun, but managed to make them
challenging at the same time. I found that I was always yearning to
reach the next level. When we used to drive to the rink before a
game, we would talk about things I could concentrate on develop-
ing that day. We would usually pick three things. It was an oppor-
unity for me to get better as a hockey player, as opposed to just
concentrating on winning or scoring. It wasn't a heavy-dutie thing;
it was something I really enjoyed. The other thing that was typi-
cally said was, "Have fun." After the game, they would compli-
ment me and say, "Hey, that went really well today!"
Mom and Dad both really understand the game. When you
get into the playoffs, where the little things can make a differ-
ence between whether you advance or not, Carl is just like a
player -- he becomes more intense and focused. Because you play
the other team in as many as seven games, he starts to zero in on
their weaknesses and how you can counter them.
He was at his coaching best when we played Kitchener in the
Ontario Hockey League finals in 1990, the year that we won the
Memorial Cup for Oshawa. We were one game away from losing
the series, down three games to one, and Mark Montanari was
doing a great job shadowing me and keeping me off the score-
board. My Dad started calling up all his sources, asking them for
some tips on how I could break loose and whether they had spot-
ted any weaknesses in Kitchener goalie Mike Torchia.
Before the start of the next game in Oshawa, my Dad took me
out to the parking lot at the Civic Auditorium to fill me in on
what he had learned. You've got to picture this scene. Everyone's
standing there lined up for tickets, and we're out in the parking
lot with hockey sticks, and Carl's about to give me a few tips. I
was trying to hide between the cars.
"All right, Dad. Let's do it."
He went through everything. He didn't care what it looked
like; if it was going to help us win, he was going to do it. He
didn't tell me anything extraordinary. It was just little things, like
how to fare better on the draws, but those small things can make
the difference in the heat of the playoffs. Maybe the most impor-
tant message of all that was communicated was "We believe in
you." My Dad didn't even have to say it -- I felt it. And that gave
me the confidence to go out there and make things happen.
Not all the things Carl showed me were within the rules,
because the opposition seemed to be bending them in the way
they were playing against me. You do what you can to win. You're
a survivor. The winner prevails. I don't claim to be an angel. I get
sticked all the time, I get hit illegally and I do it back. There's a
time and a place. What goes around, comes around. Live by the
sword, die by the sword. Montanari started cutting me with the
sword. He died by the sword.

Over the course of the last three games, I gained a lot of confidence
and I shot Montanari down. During the game that started for me
in the parking lot, I had two goals. The next game we went back
to Kitchener, and they were set to wrap it up on their home pond,
but we won again, and I had a hat trick. In the seventh game, in
Oshawa, I had another goal and we beat them again to win the
series. I had six goals in the last three games, and I attribute that
to the help that my Dad gave me.
My Mom knows what's going on, too. You can't pull a fast
one on her. If I'm not skating hard, she's the first on to yell at
me. She tends to see some things in a different way than my Dad
does. Bon's good at seeing how the players react to certain situa-
tions, what's going on between the two coaches. She notices that at a
certain point in the game certain coaches will have their players
start checking you differently -- things most people would never
think about.
She knows about the mental side of the game, too. During the
Kitchener series, one Ranger fan had a megaphone and used it all
night long to shout sarcastic comments at our team, and I was his
favorite target. He was so obnoxious and loud that it was hard at
times to tune him out. My Mom realized what this fan was trying
to do and asked our friend Lynn Vanderaa to rent a megaphone
to bring to the next game to cheer the Generals on. Every time the
Ranger fan started blasting away on his megaphone, Lynn
cranked it up to drown him out. The Kitchener players soon
began to refer to Lynn as "the bitch with the megaphone." But she
accomplished what my Mom had hoped -- she stopped this fan's
attempts to get us off our game.
Bon also knows exactly what the ref's thinking. If the ref's not
too good socially, she can point that out to me. When a ref isn't
very good socially, you don't talk to him. You say "Yes, sir" or
"No, sir." If a ref is more social, you talk to him more, it's more
open. Let's face it, you try to use all the ploys you know.
Hockey is a lot like a book. Within the book, there are sections.
And within the sections, there are subsections or chapters. And
within each chapter, it's sort of like a paragraph where there's an
opening statement, three things you talk about and then a closing
statement. It's like an essay. If you can break everything down, it
makes it that much easier. I can break it down.
If I have the chance to see someone demonstrate a skill a
couple of times, I can usually break it down and go out and work
on it in the backyard. It's got to be in your head. I analyze it,
trying to think what the person doing the skill was thinking. If
he's got his head down when he's making a stop, you have to
watch where his eyes are. Just little things. Some people stop and
have their heads down for a reason. It's sort of a fake that they're
lost, but they keep on going and they know exactly where every-
one is. You've just got to take the skill apart bit by bit and throw it
back into your style using your own crazy-glue.
I would watch someone in practice who was really slick with
the puck, like Dale Craigwell while I was with Oshawa. He could
cruise in and make the moves on the defense even at the end of
practice when the ice was really chipped up. I would need perfect
ice, perfect stick, perfect everything just to get by a stupid pylon,
so I would look at how Dale did it, and I would be out there in
the backyard going over it with my Dad or my brother, making
the dekes on those pylons. That's how you learn.
I've also got to be in the right mood, kind of relaxed, to work
on a new skill. If I'm mad about something, then I'm in a shooting
mood. I just shoot the puck as hard as I can. I never try working on
a new skill right before a game. I usually try something mid-week,
presuming the games are on Sunday or the next Friday. I practice the
skill a number of different ways on the rink so that it represents
each possible situation. I try things like making backhand chip
passes to the pylons, over and over and over again. People used to
think I was nuts, making all these passes to pylons. But I try to pic-
ture someone like Robbie Pearson, my linemate with the Generals,
or Jarri Kurri, moving in to take the pass.
I think I first decided I really wanted to be a professional
hockey player when I was fourteen years old. I looked at all the
options and thought my best chance for success might lie in
hockey. I was having fun, it was a competitive game, and I was
good at it.
Mark Messier of the Edmonton Oilers was the big guy for me.
I was impressed by his physical presence and his leadership quali-
ties -- and also his Porsche. I didn't really have a favorite team. I
always liked winners, and I was on and off the bandwagon all the
time. Watching hockey games on TV wasn't a big thing for me; I
would rather be playing than watching. I'm a doer, not a spectator.
It all comes down to a willingness to learn and work hard.
Those are things that were instilled in me by my parents. They've
always put their kids ahead of everything else, and I hope some-
day to be in a position to do a lot of things for them and the whole
family. My parents have never been to England, and my Mom has
always dreamed about going there. They're going to go to Eng-
land some day. I've got more to pay back than I'll ever earn --
money doesn't even come close to it. You just can't put a price tag
on it.

End of Chapter 4.