A farewell to NHL players in 2014

By Tom Hawthorn

From the brightest star in Jean Béliveau to a one-game goalie like Joe Junkin, several former Canadian-born NHL players were among the fallen in 2014. Here are their obituaries, originally published on my Benched blog:

Don Ward
Journeyman defenceman enjoyed a long career in the Western Hockey League after having cups of coffee in the NHL with the Boston Bruins and Chicago Black Hawks:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/don-ward/

Joe Junkin
Goalie's NHL career lasted seven minutes, 56 seconds:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/joe-junkin/

Danny McLeod
Decorated wartime hero, driving force behind the creation of what is now Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS), McLeod later worked as the NHL's supervisor of officials:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/danny-mcleod/

Keith Allen
Never scored a goal as a player, but built the expansion Philadelphia Flyers into Stanley Cup winners:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/keith-allen/

Doug Mohns
Diesel spent 22 seasons in the NHL on five different clubs, yet never had his name engraved on the Stanley Cup:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/doug-mohns/

Jack Stoddard
Tall player known as The Octopus for his reach, Stoddard was first NHLer to defy superstition by wearing sweater No. 13 for an entire season:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/jack-stoddard/

Doug Jarrett
Hard-hitting defenceman was known as the Chairman of the Boards:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/doug-jarrett/

Joe Bell
He lost three years of his career fighting Nazis instead of NHL rivals:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/joe-bell/

Ron Murphy
Stalwart left-winger got his name on the Stanley Cup after he retired:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/ron-murphy/

Chuck Scherza
Rugged bruiser scored six goals in 36 wartime games:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/chuck-scherza/

Lionel Heinrich
Defenceman scored one goal in 35 games with Boston Bruins:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/lionel-heinrich/

Jim Mikol
Lantern-jawed forward played briefly for Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Rangers in the 1960s:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/jim-mikol/

Edgar Laprade
Stylish New York Rangers forward was a hockey Gandhi:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/edgar-laprade/

Ross Lonsberry
Checking forward won two Stanley Cups with Philadelphia Flyers:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/ross-lonsberry/

Ralph Nattrass
Bruising defenceman played good defence on bad Chicago Black Hawks teams:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/ralph-nattrass/

Brian Marchinko
An original member of the expansion New York Islanders:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/brian-marchinko/

Larry Zeidel
Tough player known as The Rock endured anti-Semitic barbs on ice:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/larry-zeidel/

Guy Trottier
Tiny forward nicknamed The Mouse:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/guy-trottier/

Carol Vadnais
Defenceman twice got his name on the Stanley Cup, played in six All-Star Games in 17-season career:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/carol-vadnais/

Milan Marcetta
Journeyman minor leaguer was playoff call-up on 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/09/27/milan-marcetta/

Wally Hergesheimer
New York Rangers sniper slowed by broken leg:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/wally-hergesheimer/

Len Ronson
Forward whose wrist shot earned him nickname The Rifleman played in 18 NHL games with New York Rangers and Oakland Seals:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/len-ronson/

Pat Quinn
Big Irishman played nine seasons on blue-line for Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks and Atlanta Flames, later had success as coach and general manager, winning Olympic gold in 2002:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/pat-quinn/

Murray Oliver
Stylish playmaker scored 274 goals over 16 NHL seasons:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/murray-oliver/

Gilles Tremblay
Two-way player won four Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/gilles-tremblay/

Jean Béliveau
Le Gros Bill. Ten Stanley Cups as a player, another seven as an executive, all with the Montreal Canadiens. Five hundred and seven career goals. Grace personified:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/jean-beliveau/

Connie Dion
Winning goalie in most lopsided NHL game ever played — a 15-0 victory for Detroit over Rangers:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/connie-dion/

Bob Solinger
Scored 10 goals in 99 NHL games:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/bob-solinger/

Eddie Kachur
A stocky forward with the Chicago Black Hawks:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/eddie-kachur/

André Gill
Québec goalie recorded a shutout for Boston Bruins in his NHL debut, but was soon back in the minors:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/andre-gill/

Germain Gagnon
Québec forward slogged through minors for a decade before playing for Montreal Canadiens, New York islanders, Chicago Black Hawks and Kansas City Scouts:
https://benchedathletes.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/germain-gagnon/

Born again Blue Jay

The Toronto Blue Jays obtained Micheal Saunders in a trade with the Seattle Mariners. Saunders becomes the second player from Victoria, B.C., to play for the Blue Jays. Here's a feature article from 1997 about Steve Sinclair's revived effort to get to the major leagues. He made his big-league debut with the Blue Jays in 1998.


By Tom Hawthorn
Victoria Times Colonist
September 28, 1997


Not so long ago, Steve Sinclair had called it quits, had hung 'em up, had stepped down from the pitcher's mound for good, had seen his childhood dream go to that big bullpen in the sky. He had languished in the Toronto Blue Jays system for five yearsand the closest he got to the bigs was listening to Buck Martinez on TSN. He had had enough and came home to Victoria at age 24 to go to school, to get a job, to become a grownup.

He worked as a doorman at a fancy hotel and, on some summer eves, threw bullets and hit taters against amateurs at the same parks in which he had played as a kid. He decided he still had a love for the game. He also decided his left arm was meant for better things than holding open doors.

So, this spring he returned to the same small Florida town where he had toiled for so long for so little reward, and once again began the climb up baseball's ladder. He ended the season in Syracuse, New York, just one level below the parent club.

Along the way, his fastball picked up some zip. He had been throwing in the 88 to 89 m.p.h. range for years. After taking up weight training, Sinclair was throwing in the 92 to 93 m.p.h. range. It is the difference between a fastball that is ho-hum and one that is a hummer. As they age, ballplayers are expected to add heat to aching muscles, not to their pitches.

"Maybe I'm just a late bloomer," Sinclair says with a laugh.

Sinclair leaves today for Toronto to join Canada's Olympic team, for whom he will pitch in a qualifying tournament in Mexico City. He will then become one of the Boys of Winter, playing for Lara in Venezuela at the suggestion of the Blue Jays.

At spring training, he expects to be battling for a spot in Toronto's bullpen.

At 26, Sinclair is closer than he ever has been to earning the baseball immortality that goes to those who play in the major leagues. "Once you're in Triple A, you're just one phone call away," Sinclair says. "One injury away. One little break."

He got one of those little breaks this summer when the Jays traded relief pitchers Mike Timlin and Paul Spoljaric to Seattle. The Jays have yet to post a Help Wanted sign for their bullpen, but every vacancy helps. Sinclair is a left-handed relief pitcher, a baseball commodity for which demand never lessens.

First, though, he will get an education in beisbol. He knows little of Venezuela, speaks only "pequito" Spanish - not yet even enough to get himself a cold cerveca after a game - and truly hopes the fans do not carry the same passion for ball that they do for soccer. "All I know is that we're not going out on New Year's Eve," he said. "They shoot their guns off in the air to celebrate, so I guess we'll be staying in and having a party of our own."

Venezuela is a long road trip for someone who first fell in love with ball watching his father, Scott, play for the Seaboard fastpitch team in the 1970s.

"I would go on all their trips with him," he recalled. "I'd have a ball and bat in my hands when I got up from bed and I'd have a ball and bat in my hands when I went back to bed at night."

His first big break came in the minors when Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick came to take a look. Gillick, a former minor leaguer himself, hunched down behind the catcher to get a better look at Sinclair's stuff. Another prospect would have been intimidated by having his future depend on a few tosses. Not Sinclair.

"I was just up there letting loose," he recalls, "letting him know what I had."

His arsenal has improved over the years. Bull sessions in the bullpen with the likes of Frank Viola have taught him that pitching is far more than just rearing back and throwing.

"I've learned that to be successful you have to pitch inside and change your speeds. Once you pitch inside, you widen the plate both inside and outside.

"Most of the time, I lived outside. I had a good sinker and threw outside, outside, outside. At Triple A, you face much better hitters. They can take that pitch the opposite way. But if you can throw consistent strikes inside, then that's going to keep the hitters off balance."

Sinclair's repertoire includes a fastball, a changeup, a curve, and a split-finger fastball that he has yet to refine.

He was 2-5 in Dunedin, allowing 63 hits in 68 1/3 innings, showing good control with 66 strikeouts to go with just 26 walks, three of those intentional.

At Syracuse, he pitched just nine innings over six games, recording a 6.00 earned-run average with no decisions. He had nine strikeouts and three walks.

"I look at my numbers and I go, wow, 6-something, that's not so good. But you only need three or four good innings and that comes way down."

On a recent hot afternoon, Sinclair limbered up on a mound at Lambrick Park, tossing big looping curveballs to a friend, Todd McLaughlin. Sinclair wore a Blue Jays cap and a team windbreaker. In a year's time he could well be throwing curves from the mound at SkyDome.

If so, his name and statistics will be included in the Baseball Encyclopedia, the registrar of baseball immortality that shows that in a century and a half of organized ball, only a single Vancouver Islander, Steve Wilson, a left-handed pitcher, ever made the bigs.

Still, Sinclair's friend had a better reason to cheer for his friend's success. "I want him to make the big bucks," McLoughlin said, "so he can come back home and buy the beer."

Fans flock to meet a part of NHL's holy trinity

By Tom Hawthorn

Special to the Globe and Mail
November 7, 2005

They came on crutches and on walkers, by wheelchair and by stroller, joining a queue for an audience with an ancient warrior.

The procession was clothed in the familiar bleu , blanc et rouge of les Glorieux . It was a pilgrimage in which devotees brought the icons and artifacts of their fandom. For many, their faith is a birthright.

Their religion is hockey and their denomination is the Canadiens.

They waited in line for up to three hours for a few moments of grace in the presence of a secular god known as much by his uniform number (4) and his nickname (Le Gros Bill ), as by his name.

Jean Béliveau is 74, his hair as white as the ice on which he once performed magic. His eyes are as blue as the sky on a sunny winter's day in his native Quebec. The unforgiving demands of his former profession can be seen on his nose: flattened across the bridge as though by a cross-check, the tip bent as though struck by a fist.

He is so ruggedly handsome that three generations of women from one family all pronounced him worthy of adoration.

The men, if possible, were giddier.

"Jean Béliveau for prime minister!" one shouted.

He might have done even better than that, having reluctantly turned down the possibility of being named governor-general. That he did so for family reasons only enhanced a reputation in no need of polishing.

"There is the holy trinity," 45-year-old fan Jean-Paul Desjardins explained. "Maurice Richard. Guy Lafleur. Jean Béliveau. Béliveau is the father, Lafleur the son, and Maurice, since he is gone, he is the holy ghost up in heaven."

Mr. Béliveau was once truly an Adonis, as can be seen on the cover of Jean Béliveau: My Life in Hockey , his 1994 autobiography. (A revised paperback edition has just been released by Greystone Books.) His hair was jet black, his teeth a perfect white row.

In those days, he made women swoon, and rival defencemen feel sick.

On Saturday, he sat at a table outside Bolen Books at Hillside Centre, signing his autograph with flawless penmanship, every underlined signature including a glyph reading "#4."

The book was snatched from shipping boxes before reaching store shelves. The supply of 200 sold out before the first copy was signed.The line of patient faithful snaked through the store, past the calendar displays and along two aisles of cooking books into the computer section.

Some wondered whether the demand would be too great for the veteran player.

"I'm used to playing in front of a big crowd," Mr. Béliveau assured those within earshot.

Ron Cairns, 57, was asked why he had come. "To shake his hand," he said. "He's a gentleman. An icon. A legend. A super human being."

Rolling up his right pant leg, Ira Hunter revealed tattoos stretching from his kneecap to his ankle. A Canadiens logo was surrounded by the Stanley Cup and portraits of goaltenders Georges Vezina, Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy. Mr. Béliveau found a bare patch of skin to sign, an autograph that Mr. Hunter plans to have permanently inked.

Grown men bowed on one knee to pose for a photograph, or to share an anecdote, or to receive a benediction. In line, they spoke in reverent tones about his classiness as an ambassador for hockey.

Mr. Béliveau joined the Canadiens in the early 1950s as a saviour, and a successor to Maurice (Rocket) Richard. He learned an early lesson about a star's persona. The Rocket fought the National Hockey League's English-speaking bosses, fuelling the imaginations of Quebec poets while becoming a folk hero, only to wind up selling Grecian Formula on television.

Mr. Béliveau had a Molson's employee number far longer than he wore No. 4 with the Canadiens.

He was corporate all the way, a federalist and an establishment figure.

Over the years, he has passed up overtures to run for office from the Union Nationale, the Conservatives and the Liberals. He twice rejected prime minister Brian Mulroney's offer of a Senate seat.

The most difficult to turn down was the job of governor-general, apparently on offer from former prime minister Jean Chrétien: Mr. Béliveau needed to spend time with his recently widowed daughter and her two children.

In an interview, Mr. Béliveau allowed how he sometimes contemplates what the position would have meant for a boy from rural Quebec, the eldest of eight children, who learned hockey on the rink his father built in the backyard.

"It would have been nice. Starting with the ice surface behind the house and ending up. . . ." He let the thought slide away. From Victoriaville to Rideau Hall. That would have made a terrific final chapter to the autobiography.

Finally, after more than three steady hours of signing without a break, as Mr. Béliveau prepared to catch an airplane to Vancouver, Rob Dunn stood before him in a gorgeous cream team jacket. Over his heart was a stitched crest for the 1950-51 Quebec Royals of the Quebec Senior Hockey League.

The jacket had been acquired by his mother from Royals right-winger Lorne Davis, who later became a Béliveau teammate.

Mr. Béliveau autographed the jacket on the right chest. Two other signatures were above the heart.

"Maurice Richard and Guy Lafleur," Mr. Dunn said, his chin to his chest to better read their handiwork. "And now Jean Béliveau. I've dreamed of this day."

Mr. Dunn, a 43-year-old health-care worker, wondered whether the Hockey Hall of Fame would want a piece of clothing blessed by the trinity.

Watching movies the old way

By Tom Hawthorn

Boulevard Magazine

December, 2014

Each yuletide, a smallish Christmas tree took up a corner of the living room in our apartment. All magazines but one were removed from the top of the end table to make way for a cardboard crèche. 

On winter evenings, our family quartet gathered around the warm, black-and-white glow of a cathode-ray tube to watch holiday specials.

The weekly TV Guide, hidden behind the crèche, was studied as carefully as holy text for the three shows my sister and I absolutely could not miss. These would be broadcast but once during the season and we were determined to view them.

We watched “Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” with unforgettable narration by movie monster Boris Karloff.

We watched “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” a stop-motion animation with Burl Ives narration. One of the characters was a prospector named Yukon Cornelius and since the Yukon was in Canada it was easy to believe Santa's Workshop indeed could be found elsewhere in the Great White North.

We watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with the sad-sack hero finding the true meaning of Christmas not in the commercialization of the holiday. The soundtrack was a revelation in a household favouring Elvis, as the Vince Guaraldi Trio's jazzy score remains as Christmassy to me as any carol.

The telecast specials offered a 30-minute reprieve for our parents from our constant requests for a Chatty Cathy™, an Easy-Bake Oven™, Battling Tops™, and Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots™ (“My block is knocked off!” “But you can press it back on again!”). Cindy Lou Who and all the Whos down in Whoville could make do without presents, but the redemptive holiday message of the specials was lost on two kids as greedy as any other.

By the time my own children were born, the shows were broadcast several times (including as early as November). Christmas movies were available on VHS tape and, later, on DVDs, while the soundtracks were on compact disks, technologies beyond imagination when those specials were first aired in the mid-1960s.

Many families maintain holiday viewing traditions, whether “A Christmas Carol” with Alastair Sim, or “A Christmas Story” featuring Ralphie's pursuit of a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot Range Model BB gun with which he might put his eye out.

Rob Nesbitt, 46, a self-described traditionalist, watches “It's a Wonderful Life,” though he also holds an annual party with friends while screening “Bad Santa” with Billy Bob Thornton. Nesbitt's childhood favourites includes Charlie Brown's scrawny tree and the teacher's voice a sad trombone.
“It's got such a sweet centre, but it's not cloying and it's not clichéd,” Nesbitt said.

Christmas is an important season for Nesbitt, as it is for many other proprietors of small businesses in Victoria. He is a co-owner of Pic-A-Flic Video, the Cook Street Village landmark, where the holidays will be marked with a large display of movies with a holiday theme. The bottom shelves are dedicated to alternative holiday selections, including the likes of “Fubar” and “Die Hard,” the action movie that has become a classic in some circles as Bruce Willis takes on terrorists on Christmas Eve.

The seasonal offerings are among 48,000 titles stocked at the store, which is the region's largest and a survivor in an entertainment business decimated by online services such as iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. We got Netflix earlier this year and the convenience cannot be matched, though the selection remains limited and the suggestions based on previous viewings are an embarrassment, if not insulting.

“How are we doing? We're doing unbelievably well,” Nesbitt said, “because every other store in the world is closing, and we're not.”

To browse a shelf at Pic-A-Flic is to immerse in the history of cinema. The blockbuster is equal to the cult offering, the Bing Crosby classic “Going My Way” sharing space with my CanCon fave “Goin' Down the Road.” (The store's online catalogue describes the stars of the latter as “two hosers.”) 

Talking movies with the store's staff is like having a one-on-one with the late Roger Ebert. Recently, John Threlfall of the University of Victoria curated a selection of movies featuring time travel. That's beyond what's on offer from online streaming services.

“Netflix is an algorithm, it's not people,” Nesbitt said.

I'd feel bereft if the curtain ever dropped on Pic-A-Flic, as important in its way to cultural life in Victoria as Munro's Books. So, this holiday season I'm going to rent a stack of movies and support a local business. Think of it as an early new year's resolution.