Twenty years ago, it was like Colin Campbell and his cohorts were given a brand-new Zamboni to scrape and groom the ice a they saw fit, a ‘new’ National Hockey League.
The 2004-05 lockout had created much angst between the league, its players and particularly fans, who wished a plague on both their houses. But it also opened a rare chance to re-invent the wheel.
That success is partly why Colin Campbell went into the Hockey Hall of Game on Monday, why fellow inductee Pavel Datsyuk was free to roam and while so many other stars have played without clamps.
“In the millennium we started making rules for Johnny Hockey (the late Johnny Gaudreau), for Martin St. Louis, so everyone was able to play,” Campbell said. “I quickly came to the realization that when I took this job, I wasn’t doing it for the NHL, it was for hockey world-wide. They all follow our league and I had pressure on me.
“I’d played on a pond near my house in Lake Lisgar near Tillsonburg, Ont. I’d think ‘you can’t hook a guy on Lake Lisgar, slash a guy, whack a guy’. So, if we don’t allow the purest form of hockey on a pond, why do we allow it in the NHL.
“The 1970s were not a good time, players like me worked out just to be strong, to protect myself and my teammates. The ’80s were a better, but still a mean game that wasn’t always televised so you could get away with things. We got a bit better in the ’90’s. But in short, the game was broken, fans were losing interest.
“(In ’05) we had good players to work with and some good GMs (such as David Poile, Kevin Lowe and Bob Gainey) who (revealed) how they won so we could figure how we’re going to dance out of the dead puck era. Mike Gartner was my equal at the NHLPA and had an open mind, there was Brendan Shanahan, Rob Blake, Jarome Iginla, Marty Brodeur and Trevor Linden and Ed Snider representing the owners. We met away from the money men (hashing out the final details of the CBA).”
At Monday’s ceremony fellow Hall of Famer Chris Pronger joked he’d fenced with Campbell and his committee.
“With any changes there will be some detractors,” Pronger said. “But it was for the good of the game, sometimes you have to institute them. I wouldn’t call them new rules, but reinforcing old ones and putting an exclamation point on them.”
Campbell re-told a story about then-Red Wing Brendan Shanahan complaining vehemently about the spate of obstruction penalties called early in ’05 including one on him by referee Paul Devorski .
“They’re your rules, Shanny” shot back the ref.
In giving him his plaque, commissioner Gary Bettman called Campbell his “hockey consigliere”,while Campbell mused that others who don’t like the current NHL have suggested it’s time for another reckoning.
“I said to Gary, ‘maybe we should have another lockout’. He said ‘go away’.”
IN THE YEAR 2025
Next year’s Hall class could see first-year eligibles Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, Carey Price and Duncan Keith get Hall passes. While this year had some debate, that’s a pretty strong hand with the dominating defenceman Shea Weber, Thornton the league’s Methuselah and a goalie and defenceman who were NHL stars and winners with Team Canada in a new Olympic era.
Bruins’ franchise wins leader Tuukka Rask is also eligible. But will it finally be the year that early Russian defector Alex Mogilny gets the 75% required vote from the selection committee?
RAVES FOR DAVE
Many GMs came to Toronto for the weekend to toast David Poile going in the builders’ category with Campbell, with more wins than any of them, starting with two teams in non-traditional markets, Washington and Nashville. His 41 years included 1,000 games with both teams and he also assisted Cliff Fletcher launch the original Atlanta Flames in the early ’70s.
“I think he’s made more rule recommendations than the entire group,” praised the Islanders’ Lou Lamoriello. “It’s hard to explain where Nashville is today (a destination city for players and fans), but it’s because of David going in there, taking all his experience from Washington.”
FAMILY AFFAIR
Family was not far from the minds of all inductees, many whose parents did not live see to see them recognized among the greats.
“You are my foundation,” Triple Gold Club member Datsyuk said of his late parents in Russia. “From early morning practice to long trips, my (triumphs) and mistakes, you live in my heart.”
Player inductee Weber began the night’s inductions with a message of sympathy for the families of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. Hall chairman Lanny McDonald, who knew Johnny from Calgary, later gave a speech with the brothers’ sweaters laid out beside him.
Weber had some emotional recollections of his own parents. Mom Tracy died from brain tumours in 2010 not long after his NHL career began in Nashville and he saluted his father James for putting in long hours at the sawmill in Sicamous, B.C., getting him to practice and eventually selling his beloved classic Mustang to help pay the bills”.
Natalie Darwitz was also grateful to her mom for breaking down and buying her My Little Pony skates as a five-year-old. She later improved to the point of pretending to bury 2-on-1’s with local North Stars’ fan favourite Neal Broten.
HALL AND NOTES
Jeremy Roenick broke up the crowd with a few stories, including the night before he was drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks. He wound up in a hotel urinal next to his prospective coach Mike Keenan, who decided to test the New England school boy “He says ‘do you have any balls kid’?. “I said ‘enough to play for you’. Thank God he didn’t look over the divider” … Campbell pegged the number of NHLers he coached during his years behind the bench at more than 200 with 20 now in the Hall … Minnesotans Darwitz and Krissy Wendell the first two American women to enter the Hall together, both thanked the boys they played with in the days girls’ hockey was not as prevalent in the U.S. and Canada. The Olympics that both eventually played in were a pipe dream then. “You didn’t treat me like a girl, you treated me like a hockey player,” Darwitz messaged the now adult males back home.