King on CHL: Generation gap

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — From bench-clearing brawls, to allegations of game-throwing, to hitch-hiking late at night along Highway 17, the MasterCard Memorial Cup has truly come a long way.

Long before Mark Reeds and Gerard Gallant fought at centre ice during their National Hockey League careers, the two bench bosses from Owen Sound and Saint John paved the road in tournament history for the many players who now play for them. But, boys being boys, these teenaged hockey players would rather poke fun at their mentors rather than reliving their glory.

“They just say, ‘did the goalies wear pads back then?’” said Gallant, who twice played for the MasterCard Memorial Cup in 1982 and 1983.

“The kids today — they don’t want to listen to stories about old days,” added Reeds, a three-year tournament veteran with the Peterborough Petes from 1978 through 1980. “They’re not interested in that. They like some stories, but for the most part, it’s a different generation.”

Stories like the one which pitted the two head coaches from Monday’s MasterCard Memorial Cup game in a fight while playing in the NHL?

“Yeah, they always like stuff like that,” Reeds said. “They enjoyed that one.”

Darn kids.

While they may not be interested in reliving their head coach’s glory days as a player, the history from those tournaments some 30 years ago helped shape the tournament to how we know it today. Reeds and Gallant combined to play in five national championships during a period of great influence in the game, and in particular, the MasterCard Memorial Cup.

Reeds’ second trip to the national championship is still considered one of the best tournaments ever played. The Peterborough Petes, the only of the three teams in the tournament not to have set a league record for points in the 1978-79 season, wound up upsetting the Brandon Wheat Kings, whose 125 points that season still stands as the Canadian Hockey League record, in overtime of the final.

After losing in the final the year before to the New Westminster Bruins, Reeds recalls his head coach, Gary Green, organizing a team meeting the night prior to the 1979 final.

“We felt we were maybe a little too tense the year before and (Green) brought us in, we sat around and shot the breeze a little bit,” Reeds said. “Obviously that was a huge thrill winning the Memorial Cup — the town of Peterborough and just being involved in it was a great experience.”

One of the stories that stood the test of time from the 1979 tournament was the complete team brawl in warm-up between the other two teams, the Wheat Kings and the Trois-Rivières Draveurs.

Such things were commonplace in those days. Revenge was a dish served cold with a side order of wood. Three years later, Gallant actually sparked a battle royale when he sought retribution for what he must have felt was a dirty hit from Kitchener’s Mike Eagles.

As Gallant, a member of the Sherbrooke Castors in 1982, remembers it, Eagles jabbed him in the back of the legs while Gallant was going in on a forecheck. Gallant spilled into the boards and cut his lip in the process. Gallant took matters into his own hands a few shifts later with a description that sounds eerily-similar to the Marty McSorley-Donald Brashear incident from the year 2000.

“Mike Eagles was breaking out and swinging up the boards and I sort of slapped him in the face with the stick and cut his face and he went down,” says Gallant. “Me and Mike are pretty good friends, and it was a long time ago — but then from that time on the bench-clearing brawl started.

“I must have got a five-minute major – had to, because I fought three times in the bench-clearing brawl. It was more wrestling than anything else, but it was exhausting.”

Gallant wasn’t able to replicate Reeds’ success in the final. The Castors wound up losing 7-4 to Eagles’ Rangers.

“Sherbrooke was an outstanding team that lost in the final,” Gallant remembers. “We could have won just as easily as we lost.”

Those are the breaks when playing a one-game final. Reeds agreed his Petes were probably more suited to win the 1978 and 1980 MasterCard Memorial Cups than they were the one time they did win in 1979. All three years the Petes played in the final, but as Reeds indicated, all bets are off once the puck drops.

“That’s the way the tournament works,” he said. “We thought we could beat Cornwall (in the 1980 final) and I remember Scotty Arniel or someone saying, ‘we should have been able to win, but we didn’t.’ The bottom line is we didn’t, so how could you say they didn’t deserve to win?”

Reeds’ first trip to the Memorial Cup left him with more than just playing experience. Prior to 1983, the tournament only had three teams with a host city, but no host team guaranteed entry. The 1978 tournament was held in Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., another common theme to have dual host sites in those days.

The problem between alternating cities was the travel that was involved. Late one night while traveling between the Soo and Sudbury, the Petes’ bus broke down on the highway. As Reeds recalls it, vans were sent to pick up the stranded players, but not all of them waited. In a move that would send a chill down every parent’s back in today’s society, many of the teenaged players hitched rides.

“Just a different era,” the player-turned-coach said. “Another part of the game and another story to tell.”

One of many stories Reeds could share with his players — if they were interested.

As inconceivable as it may be to consider the notion a team would lose a game on purpose in this tournament, such allegations followed Reeds’ final two trips. A Peterborough win in their final round robin game against Brandon in 1979 would have eliminated the Wheat Kings and set a final between the Petes and Trois-Rivières. The Petes lost — eliminating the Draveurs — then beat the injury-depleted Wheat Kings in overtime in the final.

A year later, the Petes were again blamed for throwing their final round robin game when it was already determined they would play in the final. The tournament was partially hosted in Regina, and the hometown Pats were eliminated when Peterborough lost to Cornwall in the round robin. Fans showered the Petes players with coins, popcorn, pop containers and insults.

Peterborough wound up losing the final in overtime to Cornwall, and moments after the game was decided Petes players were hit by eggs from the angry Regina faithful.

The subject still seems a sore one for Reeds even now 31 years later, but he has a simple solution for anyone still pointing fingers at that Peterborough team.

“People can say what they want, but at the end of the day you’re here to compete and win,” he said. “Win your games and you didn’t have to worry about it. Do your own work.”

A rule change was put in the following year where, if a team had advanced to the final after four games, the other two would play twice in a total-goal series.

Then in Gallant’s second Memorial Cup in 1983, two years after the rule was put in, the tournament expanded to four teams with a host city team earning an automatic entry. But unlike the 1982 Castors, the 1983 Verdun Juniors, Gallant’s new team, were not expected to succeed. Aside from a future superstar by the name of Pat LaFontaine, the Juniors were ill-equipped to compete for the championship.

“We didn’t have a whole lot of depth,” Gallant explained. “We weren’t going to win that tournament, but we had a lot of fun with it.”

And while there were far fewer fights in 1983, the times were still clearly much different then compared to now.

“The game was definitely different,” Reeds said. “The game has come a long way and as far as players. They’re bigger, stronger, faster — you can’t compare the athletes.”

Nor can you compare the rules towards fighting since bench-clearing brawls now only have a place in history.

“The intimidation factor and I mean, you look at Slapshot the movie — it wasn’t far from it — some of the antics that went on in the WHA,” Reeds said.

If one of his players finds himself in a similar position to Gallant in 1982, where a stick jab precipitated a brawl, the coach would offer differing advice than his own actions: “Stay disciplined,” he said. “We’re a disciplined team and we try to play disciplined.”

“Obviously, the changes I think have been good for the game,” Reeds said.

“It’s good that it is (evolving),” Gallant concurred. “We get pampered pretty good here and the kids get taken care of real well so it’s a lot of fun.”

Yes, the MasterCard Memorial Cup has certainly evolved.

Today’s generation doesn’t know what its missing.