Wayne Gretzky's Ghost (34 page)

BEHIND THE BENCH

OTTAWA, ONTARIO

T
here were no white towels waving over Rideau Hall yesterday. But it would have been a lovely touch—considering that they are playing for Lord Stanley's Cup these days and the man who raised the first white towel in a playoff game was inside being honoured.

Perhaps the towels were missing because they weren't quite sure it was really Roger Neilson at the door. He was, after all, wearing a pressed dark suit rather than his usual rumpled jacket and no socks, with only an outrageous starburst of a necktie to identify hockey's most eccentric and innovative coach.

Now, however, there will be something to distract the eye from his legendary ties—the Order of Canada pin.

The sixty-eight-year-old Neilson was presented with the honour yesterday by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, 110 years after Governor General Lord Stanley's famous trophy was first
presented to the best hockey team of the day—and the day before Neilson's own Ottawa Senators, the only Canadian team remaining, open the third round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The ceremony was witnessed by a few of Neilson's closest friends. The lifelong bachelor, who has been battling cancer for the past three years, claims to have no known living relatives—unaware, perhaps, that he is considered family by everyone who has ever played for him, coached with him, attended his hockey schools or simply bumped into him in a hockey rink or, for that matter, even in one of the absent-minded driver's multiple fender-benders.

The official ceremony had to be rescheduled after Neilson was felled by a bout of pneumonia that struck after a late January trip to South Florida for the National Hockey League's All-Star weekend. Already weakened from treatment for the two cancers he suffers from, melanoma and multiple myeloma, Neilson had run into travel delays that exhausted him and allowed him to spend only the first period behind the bench as he and fellow Ottawa assistant coaches Perry Pearn and Don Jackson coached the Eastern Conference YoungStars to an 8–3 victory over the West.

“I only watched a few minutes,” Neilson joked at the time. “Too much offence.”

Neilson was honoured with the Order for his dedication to the game—he began coaching at age seventeen and has held head-coach positions with eight NHL teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks—but it is his commitment to defence that has earned him special status in the hockey world. He was the NHL coach who perfected the infamous “neutral-zone trap,” mastering it while building the expansion Florida Panthers into a team that would go to the Stanley Cup final the year after he was fired—the only firing, he says, that caught him completely by surprise.

“The trap,” Neilson once said, “is the most misunderstood
system in sports. It's just positional play where you try and stop the other team from getting over centre.”

A former goaltender, Neilson became a master innovator in a game that prefers tradition. He once put a defenceman in net for a penalty shot (now illegal) and is responsible for more rule changes in hockey than anyone alive. He was first to use video equipment—picking up the nickname Captain Video—and “breaking down tape” is now considered an essential coaching technique.

Neilson is famous in hockey circles for using his dogs to illustrate plays. While coaching in the junior leagues, he would bring his mongrel, Jacques, out onto the ice to demonstrate to young defencemen the futility of chasing behind the net to get to a puck handler. Dog and coach were so close that when Jacques grew feeble, Neilson took to pushing him about in a supermarket buggy.