Mr. Hockey My Story (11 page)

Five

C
OLLEEN
J
OFFA

T
o be a good hockey team, you need talented players. I know that’s not exactly a profound insight, but it’s true. Plucky teams without much skill can steal a few games here and there, but they rarely win anything that matters. Having said that, though, you can have all the talent in the world and still not get anywhere if players aren’t willing to put the team ahead of themselves. A good team is just that: a good team. Great teams, without exception, are full of players who care more about the name on the front of their jersey than the one on its back. They come together less often than you might think.

Most professional hockey players have healthy egos. To be fair, they come by them honestly. As kids, they were always the best player on their teams. That all changes when they reach the big leagues and the talent around them catches up. At that point, some
guys just can’t bring themselves to accept a lesser role, and they’re the ones who can turn a winning team into an also-ran. It doesn’t matter if it’s the NHL or your local beer league, some guys won’t ever understand that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. They might hog the puck or refuse to back-check. Maybe they chase their own statistics. The really frustrating ones do all of the above and more. The ways in which an otherwise skilled player can choose to play losing hockey are endless. The same holds true across all team sports. It could be hockey, basketball, football, or soccer; the modus operandi of a selfish teammate is the same. For a professional, the motivation to look out for number one is easy enough to understand. During contract negotiations, goals and assists speak more loudly than the number of times you gave up your body to block a slap shot. Regardless of the size of your paycheck, though, your teammates always know who’s in it for the right reasons and who’s not.

In the early 1950s, I played with a rare group of guys who put the team ahead of themselves. It began with stars like Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay and carried all the way down the roster. In those years, there’s no question that the Red Wings were stocked with talent, but that wasn’t why we won. The reasons went beyond our skill on the ice. We were a close-knit bunch who played for each other as much as anything else. You never wanted to look down the bench at your buddy and know that you’d let him down. In the third period, when the game is on the line and you’re dog-tired at the end of a shift, that can be why you dig deeper for the last ounce of energy left in your legs. Winning a championship takes a whole team willing to pay the same price on every shift. The opposite is also true. If you don’t care about your teammates, maybe you don’t dig in to get back into position to take away an odd man rush. Maybe you lose focus and that’s the instant your check slips behind you and tips the
puck into the net. The NHL game moves so quickly that a single mistake can be the difference between winning and losing.

The only NHL locker room I knew at that time was Detroit’s, but when players were traded to our club they’d always remark on how close we were. Every team I played on wasn’t the same way, but in those days we were like a family. It was a special team and I still feel lucky to have been a part of it. Looking back, I can see that our camaraderie wasn’t an accident. We didn’t just go our separate ways after practice. The younger guys, especially, spent all kinds of time together. We ate meals together, went to church, played cards, went bowling, chased girls, and many of us even lived under the same roofs.

I can’t imagine that young Detroit players would go for a similar arrangement these days, but back then most of the Red Wing bachelors lived together in rooming houses organized by the team. In my first few years in Detroit I lived at Ma Shaw’s place. It was an old brick house only a few blocks from Olympia Stadium. When I first arrived, my roommates were Ted Lindsay, Jack Stewart, and Harry Lumley. The rooms would turn over periodically, usually when someone got hitched or, more likely, was dealt away by Trader Jack, as deal-happy a general manager as you’ll find. My spot in Ma Shaw’s house opened up when Bill Quackenbush left. Other guys stayed at rooming houses run by Ma Tannahill and the Michaud brothers. I was happy at Ma Shaw’s.

Nowadays, rookies can afford to live wherever they choose with the money they make on their first contract. Not us. We made okay money, particularly if there was no family to support, but every dollar counted. The sports world was still decades away from athletes becoming instant millionaires when they turned professional. It was certainly a different time, but in many ways it suited me just fine. I was still just a teenager when I moved to
downtown Detroit. My stops in Galt and Omaha had given me a taste of living away from home, but I still wasn’t that far removed from the Saskatchewan prairie. When I wasn’t at the rink, big city living still felt foreign to me.

From a practical perspective, living so close to the arena was great. I was always just a hop, skip, and a jump from being on the ice. In the years since, I’ve often wished I still had that same commute to work. I’m sure Mr. Adams also liked having so many of his players living in the shadow of the arena. He preached about the need to stay focused on the game, so he probably figured that the Olympia served as a great visual aid. Personally, I liked having my teammates around for company. When I was eighteen, especially, going home to an empty apartment every day after practice would have been depressing. Most teenagers would rather spend time with friends than be alone, and I was no different. Living at Ma Shaw’s meant that someone who was also at loose ends was always around. It was probably similar to living in a college dormitory. For a long time my roommates at Ma Shaw’s were Ted Lindsay, Red Kelly, and Marty Pavelich. When Metro Prystai was traded to the Wings, the five us lived together for quite a while.

For entertainment we’d often just sit around and play cards. Nothing too fancy, just low-stakes games of cribbage, hearts, or pinochle for a penny a point. It wasn’t until later in life that I became hooked on bridge. I even played a few hands with Charles Goren, once. (For a bridge player, it was a big deal sitting down with Goren, who wrote books on the game and had a column in
Sports Illustrated
.) The life of a professional hockey player, when you’re not at practice or on the road, is chock-full of free time. We spent a lot of time eating, going to the movies, or bowling. Some guys even went ballroom dancing. I didn’t join in, but I’d occasionally tag along to
watch. Dancing the tango and fox-trot may not seem like a fitting outing for a bunch of hockey players, but it was an entertaining pastime. It also helps to be athletic when dancing, which appealed to some of the guys. Some of them improved to the point where they weren’t half bad. As well, dance halls and pretty girls usually went hand in hand, which, to be honest, provided most of the appeal in the first place. When it came to chatting up girls I was quite shy, but many of my teammates sure weren’t. They collected a lot of numbers and took all sorts of girls out on the town. I went on my share of dates, but it was nothing compared to some of the guys.

When I roomed with Metro Prystai, I used to get him in trouble every once in a while just for a laugh. He had this deep growl of a voice, and for some reason I could do a fairly spot-on imitation. At that age, nothing’s better than playing a good practical joke on your buddy and my Metro impression came in handy. When a girl would call him up, sometimes one of the guys would pass the phone to me. Instead of getting some sweet nothings from Metro, she would hear me deliver a gravelly, “Whaddya want?” After talking to her for a while, my capper would be along the lines of, “Listen, you broads gotta stop calling here.” The girl, of course, would slam the phone down right away. When (or if) Metro saw her again, he’d have to do some fast talking to patch things up. It probably wasn’t the nicest joke to play on the girl or my friend. Then again, Metro could always find himself a date, so I didn’t feel like he ever went lonely because of me. Metro joined us in 1950 after Mr. Adams pulled off a big trade with the Black Hawks. We missed the guys who left, but we appreciated having Metro on our side. He could really put the puck in the net.

Metro was originally from Yorkton, Saskatchewan, which gave us a lot in common. A number of Red Wings in those years were
from Saskatchewan, including Gerry Couture, Bill Folk, Tony Leswick, Joe Carveth, Sid Abel, and myself. My closest friend at that time, though, was Ted Lindsay, a tough kid from northern Ontario. He came from Kirkland Lake, a rugged mining town, which probably had a lot to do with his temperament. Hockey fans from that time know that Ted played the game like a holy terror. He had a reputation for not being the nicest guy in the league and it was probably fairly earned. There’s not a pair of shoulders in the world big enough to hold the chip he carried around. Some have even described him as mean, and they might be right. Truth be told, he could be the same way off the ice, but I didn’t see that side of him too often. At that time, I’d have to say I considered him the closest thing I had to family outside of Saskatoon. Ted was there for most of the significant moments in my life during those years, including the biggest of all. He was around when I met a pretty little blonde girl named Colleen Joffa.

•   •   •

T
he first time I laid eyes on Colleen was just before I turned twenty-three in the spring of 1951. To kill time, I used to wander to a bowling alley, the Lucky Strike, a few blocks from the Olympia. Sometimes I’d get a lane and other times I’d just watch other bowlers. I used to do a fair bit of people watching back then. Occasionally I’d just sit on a bench and check out the world going by. Detroit could be a pretty entertaining place if you stopped to pay attention. One night at the Lucky Strike I looked over and saw what had to be, quite possibly, the best-looking girl in the Midwest. Heck, maybe in the entire country. I was smitten. I don’t know if it was love at first sight, but if it wasn’t then it was pretty close. Of course, I was so shy at the time I didn’t know what to do. Just
rushing up and saying hello felt too forward. My parents had raised me to believe that when a young man had serious intentions for a girl, he should proceed with a certain amount of propriety. It took a few weeks before I decided to ask Joe Evans, the alley manager, for an introduction. I was at the lanes one night with Vic Stasiuk, a left winger who had just come over from the Black Hawks, when Joe introduced us.

Colleen had just finished high school and was working as a secretary before going to college. She was a sharp cookie, I could tell that right out of the gate. She also had a great voice that matched her looks. I offered her a ride home, but she had the family car that night so she turned me down. It was a small setback, but not enough to deter me. I convinced Joe to track down her number and a few days later I took a deep breath and dialed her up. Normally I wasn’t one to stay on the phone for too long, but our first talk was a marathon. Three or four hours passed with hardly a pause, which was a record for me at the time. That is, until the next night, when we did it again. The night after that was the same thing. Talking to her was easy, but it still took me more than a week to ask her out. Years later, she told me she was wondering how big of a hint she needed to drop before I got a clue. Thankfully, I eventually wised up.

On our first date we went to a movie at the Michigan Theater in downtown Detroit, but I have no recollection of what was playing. I was too busy fretting over whether to put my arm around her to pay attention to what was happening on the screen. I don’t think my arm ever got around her shoulders, but I’m pretty sure we held hands. Judging by our phone calls I knew she was interested, but I could tell she was hesitant. As it turns out, she’d been going steady with some baseball player through high school. When I came
along, the ballplayer had shipped out for the summer, leaving her all by her lonesome in Detroit. His loss was my gain, as far as I was concerned. After the show, I took her to Carl’s Chop House for dinner. It was a classic steak place that was a pillar of the Detroit dining scene for decades. It closed its doors a few years ago, I heard. What’s happened to Detroit’s economy has been tough to watch. I don’t live there anymore, but as someone who loves the city, it’s hard to see. I know a little something about comebacks, though, and I like to think that Detroit has one in store. The city has heart; that much I know for sure.

When we finished dinner at Carl’s, we moved over to Seller’s Restaurant and Lounge. I knew that Ted would be there with his girl, Pat, and I wanted them both to meet Colleen. I can’t remember if Ted and Pat were engaged at that point or just going steady but, either way, they were married not long after. Colleen used to tell the story of the first time she remembered hearing my name. A year before we met, she was heading out the door to go to school when Budd, her stepdad, started talking about a hockey player who was almost killed in a game the night before. She felt terrible for this faceless player and thought it was awful that he might die over something as trivial as hockey. Of course, the article Budd was reading in the paper that morning was about our playoff game against the Leafs. It took until halfway through our first date before she realized I was the same dumb hockey player who’d smashed himself up on the boards.

As a kid, Colleen, much like me, didn’t realize how little she had. Although she was raised in Michigan and I grew up in Saskatchewan, we were both children of the Depression. Times were tough all over. Her father was a twenty-eight-year-old musician who played swing music during the Big Band era when he married her
mother, who was only seventeen at the time. Between the drinking and the philandering, he didn’t exactly turn out to be husband of the year. Her mom left her father when Colleen was still very young. That’s never an easy decision, but in those days raising a child as a single mother was especially tough. Instead of putting Colleen up for adoption, her mom leaned on her family for help. For a time, Colleen lived with her great-aunt Elsie and her uncle Hughie, who were big influences in her life, as was her grandmother. Her mother remarried when Colleen was twelve, which brought more stability to her home life. It didn’t sound like the easiest childhood, but she never complained about it. She only talked about how much she loved her friends and family. She was grateful for the people in her life who had helped her along the way. It’s something we shared.