Family Ties

Shinny hockey on the local public rink can be a little chippy at
times, but this was getting ridiculous.
My younger brother Brett, my Dad and I had made tracks to a
nearby outdoor rink in Toronto for some shinny action on a Satur-
day afternoon. As was usually the case, the place was packed. As
was also usually the case, there were a few guys carrying on as if
they were the lords of the rink. They just thought they were great.
Now, we're good players, we know we're good players, but we
don't fly through everyone and act like we own the ice. On this
particular afternoon, there were a couple of demented guys skat-
ing around jabbing everyone with their sticks.
We knew there was potential for trouble, because if someone stuck
me, I'd stick him back. And if someone stuck my brother,
my brother would stick him back. It got to the point where this
big guy was taking runs at Brett and me, but he was gunning for
my little brother in particular. After he bashed Brett on one play, I
hit him, and then he hit me back.
It wasn't long before my Dad arrived on the scene to
straighten things out. It was very verbal and a little physical --
Dad basically took him apart. Needless to say, this guy didn't try
anything again.
No one messes around with my brother when he's on the ice
with me. No one messes with me when I'm on the ice with my
Dad. If my sister Robin's got a problem and my brother's in the
same school, no one messes around with my sister. And no one
messes around with my Mom. You touch one, you touch us all. It's
the best backup anyone could have.
I think our attitude comes from being a very athletic family.
Athletics breed a certain person. They breed a certain competi-
tiveness, a certain desire to win, a certain fear of failure -- and the
recognition that hard work is the buiding block of success.
My parents are hard-working people. My Dad's a chartered
accountant and my Mom's a registered nurse. They didn't inherit
tons of money; they had to apply themselves. And whatever they
have, they've earned.
I think I just picked up on that. I've always been willing to
work for what I got. I think if you do anything, you should do
your best. It's a family philosophy: you don't get ahead sitting
down waiting for somebody to do something for you.
I've got a great relationship with my parents. It's sort of neat
the way everything evolves. My parents have always tried to
instill confidence in us; they never talk down to us. I get a kick
out of referring to my parents by their first names instead of
"Mom" and "Dad." It started about a year and a half ago. My
friend Jeff would say, "We're going to go talk to Ian." I'd say,
"Who's Ian?" He'd say, "My Dad. We'll see what Big Ian has
to say." So I started saying, "We're going to talk to Big Carl,
see what's up on the home front with Big Carl." I refer to them
as Mom and Dad about 65 or 70 percent of the time. But around
friends I call them "Big Carl" and "Bon."
My parents are very level-headed. They don't get caught up in
money and they have their own keen sense of what's important
to them. My Mom is very outspoken, while my Dad thinks a lot;
he's always thinking. Not to say that Mom doesn't think, she just
doesn't keep as much inside. She says what she thinks. Bon's
been known to go a little too far once in a while, but that's why
my Mom and Dad are a really good balance. My Mom's the
jumper; my Dad's always got the backup plan. My Mom's got the
ideas running; my Dad will take the ideas and make calculated
decisions from them.
My Mom was the one who had to cut through the stuff or
nothing would get done. Dad was the relaxed guy, a little more
laid-back. But at times, Carl was the one you'd avoid and Bon
was the one you would go to. You had to work it out, but luckily
you had two personalities you could work with.
Mom was really the iron hand when I was growing up, and if
it got really bad, my Dad would hop in. I didn't want that. Joke
around with Dad, but don't mess around with the discipline. My
Mom used to buy a pile of wooden spoons, and she didn't use
them just for cooking. It got to the point where Brett and I would
try to scatter them in hiding places all over the house. Anything
you could get yourself in trouble with, I was there. I spent so
much time in the corner as a kid that my parents were sure my
face was going to grow V-shaped.
Bon believed in punishments that were here and now. One time
I really got myself in her bad books and she declared, "I just don't
know what punishment suits this behavior." Good ol' brother Brett,
ever the helpful one, starts coughing and mutters under his breath,
"Toiletbowls. Toiletbowls." Guess what I wound up scrubbing.
We always did work for our misdeeds; we never got banished
to our rooms, where we could sit and relax. Dishes were another
chore you could get saddled with. If we were sitting at the table
eating dinner and Mom was exhausted from working, she would
say, "Boy, I'm really tired tonight. I hope someone misbehaves."
She was never disappointed. We couldn't restrain ourselves.
Mom would say, "Who's got dirty fingernails tonight?" We'd
start having a fit because we knew that meant someone would be
doing the dishes.
I never watched a lot of television when I was a kid, and I
hardly ever read. It was just me and the rink. My Mom was
always pushing me to read books; she spent a lot of time reading
to me when I was young. I liked Lassie come home -- exept that
Mom used to cry so hard when she read it to me that she could
hardly get through it. Not surprisingly, I liked books about
hockey. I also liked stories that were offbeat. In one of my favor-
ite kid's books, there were some church mice that thought they'd
built a flying saucer. They thought they were going to the moon
on this flying saucer, but they really hadn't left the church vestry,
and the choir was getting ready for a performance. The one sec-
tion I loved was when this big, fat guy was bending over getting
his choir outfit on. The story said, "Behold the moon." The mice
thought they were approaching the moon, and it was this guy's
butt. That was the kind of stuff I liked. I liked the stories where
kids got into a lot of trouble -- I'd laugh my head off. I loved it
when somebody else was getting into trouble besides me.
Mom had her work cut out feeding our gang. I had an impres-
sive appetite as a kid, and my favorite was peanut-butter-and-jam
sandwiches -- the dentist's delight. I grew up on those. I didn't like
the health food peanut butter, it had to have sugar in it. One day I
forgot my lunch when I was in Grade 7 and my Mom brought it
over to the school. She used to put out lunches in plastic grosery
bags, because the paper bags would break. It was my usual light
lunch: five sandwiches, two fruits, two juice boxes, some cookies,
and celery sticks with peanut butter. It was quite a bagful. The
teacher held up my lunch in front of the class and she said, "Eric,
are you sharing this with the whole class or are we thinking of
sending it to the Third World?" It's a wonder I didn't bankrupt the
family; the groceries were always at least $200 a crack.
My brother Brett and I fought a lot. He used to do things that
would drive me up the wall; he just knew how to get under my
skin. He's nearly three years younger than I am, but he was an
expert at manipulating my Mom from an early age. He could do
it even at four years old. My brother would smack himself and
wail, "Mom, he hit me!" And it would be, "Eric, get to your room!"
We'd play downstairs and we'd get into a fight, and he would
have her wrapped around his finger. It wasn't until years later
that she began to realize that Dennis the Menace was responsible
as much -- if not more -- than I was.
I used to chase him all over the house. The chandeliers would
shake. He'd go flying into the bathroom and lock the door. Then
he'd come out and I'd be hiding behind something and he would
bolt to another bathroom. The bathroom was home free. It was a
game, but it could get pretty rough.
We've always shared a room. We're kind of like the Odd
Couple -- Brett's neat, I'm a little sloppy. Okay, maybe more than a
little. One time, on his way home from school, Bubba spots one of
those huge cardboard boxes from a refrigerator and carts it home
with him. (I had different nicknames for him: "Bubba," "the Bart
Man," "Bartlett.") Well, Bubba grabs the cardboard box, spits it
up to make a divider and tapes lines across the middle of the
room. His side was supposed to be off-limits, but it was tough for
him to enforce. I'd say, "Well, Brett, I'm coming over," and then
I'd stick my foot over on his side just to get him mad.
My Mom made us switch sides of the room because mine was
such a mess. I used to be nearest to the door, but she decided
against that. Brett's bed is now closest to the door, so that when
guests are walking by they see the nice part and I'm hidden away
on the other side. You couldn't see the floor on my side. I always
used to work on Brett's desk, because mine was usually buried
under a pile of rubble. I guess I haven't become much neater
through the years. Shortly after I returned home at the end of last
season, Bon had me straightening up the mess under my bed.
"I'm going to have a maid some day," I yelled from under
the bed.
"No you won't, Eric Lindros. You're too cheap," Bon replied.
We both just started laughing.

When we were kids back in London, Mom used to hire a
babysitter once a week to look after us while she took a tennis
lesson. One week, Mom phoned to check up on things while she
was out. She couldn't hear us in the background, so she thought
something was up, because you could always hear us in the back-
ground. We would be whipping around, screaming and making
lots of noise. Bon decided to come home to investigate, and when
she got home, I was in the closet and Brett was in bed. The
babysitter wanted to watch some soap opera; I wanted to watch
Sesame Street. So I was in the closet doing a slow boil, and the
babysitter had put Brett to bed. Mom quit tennis.
Brett and I used to play on the backyard rink together, but we
almost always ended up fighting. He had lots of friends; I didn't
have that many. He would have a friend over on the rink and it
just wouldn't work. He would want control, and I wasn't about to
give it to him.
Still, it was a different story when someone tried to lay a beat-
ing on my brother. I might beat on him, but no one else was going
to. Once, when he was in Grade 6 and I was in Grade 8, he and
his buddies got into trouble with some skinhead-wannabes. One
of my brother's friends told one of these characters he dressed
like a cow because he was wearing black clothes with white
socks. The nest thing they knew, this group of skinheads was out
to kick their butts. Our schools were right beside each other,and
word traveled fast. As soon as I heard about it, I came over to
escort Brett home. When the skinheads saw they wouldn't be
dealing with just a kid several years younger, they had a change
of heart.
The Bart Man's developing into quite a hockey player. If he
wants it, he's got a very good shot at a professional career. But no
one's going to make it easy for him. I went to a couple of Brett's
games last year. The refs always pick on him. It's the same stuff I
go through, but sometimes I deserve it. Well, a lot of times I
deserve it.
It was really bad for him in high school hockey at St.
Michael's College School last year. He was only in Grade 10, and
he made the senior team at the start of the season, even though
they weren't really expecting him to make it. But he was a
marked man and he got into a fight nearly every game. He
played in only three of the six exhibition games because he was
suspended from the other three for fighting. In his last game
before he had to decide whether he was going to play senoir or
junior, the biggest player from the other team jumped him along
the boards in the closing minutes and tried to beat him up.
Although this player was four years older, Brett was able to spin
him around, flip his helmet off and pin him to the ice. If he
wanted to, Brett could have pummeled him. Meanwhile, one of
Brett's teammates came up and started ridiculing the opposing
player by chanting in his ear, "You know, he's only fourteen."
The fans from the other high scool then congregated at the
boards and started yelling at him to beat the crap out of Brett.
This player just flipped out. As Brett and my Dad were trying to
leave the arena, this guy's brother and some of his football bud-
dies followed them out and starting rocking the car. My Dad got
out of the car -- all six-foot-five of him -- and these clowns quickly
realized they didn't want to mess around with him. In the end,
Brett decided to play junior, because playing senior just wasn't
worth the hassle.
It isn't easy for him being "Eric's little brother." A lot of things
might open up for him, but it's a tough road in a lot of ways. It's as
though I'm the builder and he's the brand new car riding on my
road, getting there, but getting dirty at the same time.
Brett doesn't like to have things given to him. He likes to
earn everything he gets, which is the perfect attitude. I used to
drive him to school once in a while and I would ask if he had
lunch money. He'd say Mom had packed his lunch, but I'd hand
him a few bucks anyway. He'd reject it with a scowl. "I don't
want your money." The next thing I turn around and he's selling
my memorabilia. But that's my brother -- he'll get you one way
or another.

My little sister Robin's great. I'm pretty protective of her, and
she looks after me. If someone in the stands is giving me a rough
time during a game, she'll let them have it with both barrels.
She's not afraid to yap. She's just a little thing, but she's been
hanging around us, and our vocabulary at times has slipped. So
Robin can really let loose.
When my parents were preparing to adopt Robin, the agency
sent out a social worker to check out the situation. They wanted
to see whether Mom and Dad were appropriate parents. The lady
from the agency decided to spend a little time with me to see if I
was a well-adjusted child.
I was four and a half at the time and was really into putting
on my own circus. Well, I took this lady downstairs so that I
could perform for her "under the Big Top." First of all, I had the
top hat and I sold some tickets at the front wicket. Then I did all
the acts. I juggled. I did cartwheels. I pretended I was the lion-
tamer. Of course, I also had to pretend I was the lion. I was the
master of ceremonies. I just whipped around and did the whole
thing. The lady went upstairs and collapsed into a chair. She was
wiped out.
My Mom asked, "Adjusted?"
"Adjusted," gasped the social worker.
I think she had to be adjusted later.

When I was younger, a lot of the kids at school picked on
Robin quite a bit, and I fought a lot about that because I wouldn't
let them get away with it. Now that she's older, Robin's quite
capable of sticking up for herself. She has that Lindros feistiness
when she needs it. She used to say, "My big brother will beat you
up." Now she says, "You be careful because I can really punch."
The kids at her school used to send her home with handfuls of
hockey cards for me to autograph, until the principal cracked
down on that. Robin has some cards that I gave her and she's
really careful about where she stores them. She keeps them
buried away in a special hiding place in her room and she won't
let her friends in there. I gave her my Ontario Hockey League All-
Star sweater, and she used to wear it sometimes to my Oshawa
Generals games. It always made a big hit. People would come up
and ask, "Where can I buy one of those?" Robin would reply
with a big grin, "You can't." She loved to tell them that.
Robin's as busy with sports as Brett and I ever were. She takes
swimming lessons and likes gymnastics, water-skiing and down-
hill skiing. When I'm home from hockey, I often pick her up from
Girl Guides or swimming, or help out with some of her home-
work. She likes going with me for rides in the car, undoubtedly
because we both love going fast with the rock'n'roll at full blast. If
I don't remember to use my turn signals, Robin is the first to let
me know about it. We go out and get a yogurt cone once in a
while for a treat. We just have a lot of fun together.

Our family tree is filled with athletes. My Mom's sister Marcia
held the high school shot-put record in the British Common-
wealth for ten years. My Dad's brother Paul played on a Vanier
Cup champion team while playing Canadian college football at
Queen's University. My Mom's parents met while competing at a
track-and-field meet in Chatham. And my Grandmother Marg's
father competed in baseball, boxing and barrel-jumping.
I guess you could say a lot of it is in the genes. My father is
six-foot-five. My mother is five-foot-eleven. Farm communities
have big kids -- must be the air. My parents were both athletes-of
the-year at their high school in Chatham. My father was in the
Chicago Blackhawks farm system for a short stint and was
drafted by the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football
League. My mother was an excellent high school basketball
player and a standout in track and field.
My Dad was an absolutely natural athlete. There was nothing
he tried that he didn't pick up very quickly. He was good at
everything he touched -- basketball, football, track and field, base-
ball and tennis. He was the captain of the high school basketball
team. He played middle linebacker and quarterback on the high
school football team (though not at the same time. Dad was quite
an athlete, but there are limits).
Carl's the type of guy who can walk into a room and trip over
six things, but you put him on a tennis court and he's like a cat.
My Grandmother Marg says he always moved before he thought.
In baseball, when he heard he made the local all-star team, he just
came flying out of the front door, jumped down on the front steps and
sprained his ankle. When my Dad had his tonsils out at seven-
teen, my grandparents went over to the hospital to pick him up.
Nobody at the hospital could find him -- he had started walking
home by himself. Dad doesn't sit still. He's got two speeds: he's
either going full tilt or he's asleep.
He's always been a risk-taker. When he went to St. Catharines
to try out for the Blackhawks' farm team, he was sixteen. Dad
went more for the life experience than a shot at an NHL career.
He can still vividly recall going up to Bobby Hull's hotel room
with a buddy to meet "the Golden Jet." The big guns from the
NHL team stayed in the same place as the farmhands. Bobby Hull
was lying on the bed with his arms behind his head, and Dad
says it seemed as if Hull's chest stretched from one side of the bed
to the other.
It didn't take Carl long to find out what the Chicago brass had
in store for him. In one of his first scrimmages, they told him to
have a fight with Ken Hodge, one of the veterans on the team.
Then, in their opening exhibition game, they gave him orders to
go after Peter Mahovlich. Dad says that it wasn't so bad, because
Mahovlich couldn't fight either. It was clear that, because of his
size, they wanted him to be a goon. And he wanted no part of that.
He called home and said he was thinking about leaving the
team. But my Grandfather Ed suggested he stay until after the
final cuts, so that no one could say he wasn't good enough. Dad
made the team, but he just packed all of his gear in a green duffle
bag and returned home on the bus. My Dad has never said much
about his hockey experience. He never talked about the fighting.
He'd rather talk about scoring -- but that's a pretty breif topic on
his list.
My Grandmother thought Carl would have a big adjustment
coming back to high school, because there was a lot of attention in
the local paper about him trying out for the Hawks. But it was a
smooth transition. When he came back, he was quite convinced
that being a hockey player wasn't going to be his life. He just
didn't like what he saw.
My Dad made the varsity football team at the University of
Western Ontario as a freshman. He was a tight end. When he got
drafted by Edmonton after his final year, Mom begged him to
give pro football a try. She thought it would be a neat adventure
for a year. But Dad couldn't be persuaded. The average CFL
salary at the time was about $7,200. He said, "If you think I'm
going to put my life on the line for $7,200, I've got news for you."
He bore down hard in school. While he was at Western, he
made the dean's list. My Dad's a grinder -- he can grind it out for
hours. The bigger the challenge, the harder he works. He just
forms a mental picture of the task ahead and away he goes. He's
very competitive and he's very focused. He became a partner in
his firm, Peat Marwick Thorne, at the age of thirty.
Mom was an excellent athlete in her own right while growing
up in Chatham. She played guard on her high school basketball
team and was one of the aces on the squad. They had a powerful
team. She never really got the chance to develop to her full poten-
tial, though, because there wasn't too much emphasis on
women's sports at the time. When she played basketball, they
could only take three steps before they had to pass. The team's
uniforms were one-piece cotton bloomers with short sleeves and
elastic legs, with buttons down front and a little cotton belt.
Bon says it was absolutely the ugliest thing you ever saw. It
sounds like it. My Dad and the rest of the boys would trot in after
the girls' games outfitted in satin shorts with contrasting trim and
satin jackets with huge crests. The thrust was obviously not on
the female athlete at the time.
Bon was an awesome standing broad jumper, but her spe-
cialty in track was sprinting. She always ran the anchor leg on the
relay team. One time, at a big race in Ridgetown, she got so
excited before she received the baton that she peed her bloomers.
When she got the baton, she took off like a flash. Whoosh! All you
could see was this navy bum. After she crossed the finish line, she
bolted straight into the bathroom. Everyone was so thrilled
because the relay team had broken the inter-county record, and
Mom wasn't even around to enjoy it. But she had obviously been
pumped up for the race.
Mom is ever the competitor. When I was playing hockey in
London one year, they had a skating race for the parents at
Christmas. Well, Bon decided she was going to to win this race. And
she was winning it, until one of her figure skate picks hooked on
the ice and she went crashing down. She hurt her knee so badly
that she could hardly walk that Christmas. Mom wasn't too fond
of skating after that. She remembered how much it hurt to hit that
ice. She would venture onto the backyard rink every now and
then, but the fact that I was always firing pucks at her blades usu-
ally dissuaded her from staying out too long.
Mom and Dad were high school sweethearts. They had their
first dance together after a track-and-field meet in Dresden, a
little town outside of Chatham. Bonnie Roszell was in Grade 9,
Carl Lindros was in Grade 10. Dad was quite the romantic. Before
a dance at Christmas, "the Crystal Ball," my Dad bought a beauti-
ful corsage for Mom. But he was afraid if he put the corsage in the
fridge that his brothers would eat it, as a gag. So he took a steak
out of the freezer and put the corsage on top of it to keep it cool
while hiding it in his room. The corsage was sort of brown by the
time Mom got it because he'd had it on the steak all afternoon,
but it was the sentiment that counted. And my Mom still has that
brown corsage.

Our whole family is very competitive. Easter-egg hunts can
get pretty wild around the Lindros household. It's not as intense
now, but it used to be like war. The Easter Bunny doesn't just
throw Easter eggs all over the joint; she hides them in some tough
spots. You've got to be very careful where you look. Brett used to
leave his basket out there and, when he wasn't looking, I'd
be pilfering a few of his eggs. I'd leave mine out and he'd do the
same. We always used to count up at the end to see who had the
most. Mom would be the referee, Dad would help Robin look for
eggs, and Brett and I would battle.
My parents have always put a heavy emphasis on school. My
Mom spends hours with Robin, my Dad spends hours with Brett.
Both of them spent hours with me. I would be struggling in
school now if it weren't for their help. And if we didn't have
that closeness, I might have been more inclined to goof off in my
studies. It was important to do well at school. When things
weren't going so great in my classes, my Dad and Mom would
talk about some of the pranks they pulled as students just to
make me feel better. So, of course I would follow suit, and either
Carl or Bonnie would be busy the next day straightening things
out with the teacher.
Math was my favorite subject. I could always do well in that.
If my Mom didn't think I was being tested enough, then she
would say, "Put him in advanced enriched," and she'd push for
it. I remember once I flunked a Grade 9 English exam. I got 48
percent on it. My Dad was at the school the next morning. I was
crying. I'd never flunked anything in my life. He spoke to the
teacher about the difficulties I was having and found out what
the problem was. I got a tutor. I ended up with a 78 overall. I
don't know how I did it, but that's the way it went. You just don't
accept failure.
My parents always stressed that whatever you do, you repre-
sent every one of us, so make sure you do it right. Some
people might think that's a heavy burden to carry, but I think it's
helped me establish a real sense of pride in everything I do.
We've always had a lot of fun as a family. My Dad's a riot. He
always kept things loose when we were out practicing in the
backyard or when he ran scrimmages with some of my friends.
There would be little competitions where you had to do push-ups
if you lost. My Dad wasn't exempt. To see Carl doing push-ups is
like watching Garfield do push-ups -- the two stubby paws and
the gut hanging low. You would see his stomach just an inch off
the ice. You would hoot, "Yeah, here we go, baby." He was just
hilarious. I laugh so hard at some of the things he does.
One of his best stunts took place when I was ten years old,
playing atom hockey for the Toronto Marlboros shortly after we
moved from London. We were playing in a tournament in Ottawa
between Christmas and New Year's. We had traveled there on
our own team bus. I remember my Dad said to the team if we
won the tournament he would clean all the outside windows on
the bus -- while barechested. We won the tournament. True to his
word, Dad stripped down to the waist. It's minus-fourteen
degrees outside and Carl's got his shirt off washing the windows
of the bus. We could all see just fine on the way home -- provided
you could see through the ice that had formed on the side of the
bus. He'd wash'em, but he wouldn't scrape'em.
Dad used to buy pucks upon pucks upon pucks for the back-
yard rink. But he also had other ways of keeping up his supply at
the local shinny rinks, and he didn't care how he looked doing it.
You've got to imagine this partner in a big chartered accounting
firm climbing up a ladder to the top of the dressing rooms wear-
ing this bulky parka and stuffing stray pucks into his coat.
Somebody would say, "Is that your Dad?"
"No, that's Carl."
I think one of the things I've learned from Dad is that there's a
lot of stress in life. Deal with it, have fun with it, try to make it
work. But when you play, play hard. His approach is, take it and
go for it, but be thorough. If you're going to do it, do it well, but
think about it first. There's no substitute for thinking. There's
always a backup plan with him. There's got to be a backup plan.
He's got more general knowledge than a lot of people. He's
always trying to learn from people. That's what life is. It's learn-
ing from your mistakes and it's learning from your successes, but
it's also learning from other people's mistakes and successes.
My Mom taught me not to take things lying down. Don't sit
back. Words are one thing, and action's another. I discovered
early that Mom was not one to hold her tongue. Bon doesn't like
going to class trips, but I talked her into going to the zoo
shortly after we moved to Toronto. My Mom's from Chatham, a small
town, very clean, no one litters. We're in Toronto now. Big city.
Big city kids. We're at the zoo. Kids start tossing out wrappers
and littering. My Mom starts chewing them out. I'm whispering,
"Mom, they're in my class, take it easy." She was not amused.
"Well, they shouldn't be littering. The elephant will eat the paper
and the whole colony will be gone."
Those who tried to give me a rough ride at the rink as a kid
could expect to encounter Bon's wrath. When I was playing in the
Esso Cup tournament as a thirteen-year-old, one of my former
assistant coaches was trying to rattle me. I had switched over
from the Marlboros to the Toronto Young Nats, and this assistant
coach was still with the Marlboros. If I made a mistake, he would
sarcastically yell, "Oh, Gretzky, too bad!" The other parents on
my team were mad at him and one wanted to fight him in the
stands, so the coach went off somewhere else to sit down.
Mom got wind of the situation, so she decided to settle the
matter with him herself. The old seats at the North York Centen-
nial Centre were double-seaters. She waited until this coach was
sitting to watch one of the other games then jumped in right
beside him on the same seat and wedged him right in. Bon looks
right at him and says sweetly, "I hear you're comparing Eric to
Wayne Gretzky. That's sooo nice of you." The guy didn't know
what to do. He squirmed through the whole period, not saying a
word. At the end of the period, he got up and got the heck out of
there. My Mom looked over at his brother, who was sitting in the
next seat, and said, "I don't think he'll be back for the rest of the
game." His brother said, "Oh, sure he will." The coach never
came back.
I can usually hear my Mom when I play. My Dad sits behind
the glass at the far end. He's quiet at the rink; he just sucks it all
in. Bon's up with all the other mothers. She is always saying
"Skate." She just screams it -- "Skate!" She would also yell, "You
can do it!" Her encouragement was sure to give me a quick boost.
When times are tough on the ice when you're a kid, you always
need a little confidence. Sometimes you know inside that you can do
it, but you just have to be reminded in order to bring that inner
confidence out.
Hockey's a very chauvinistic game. My mother knows a lot
about it, and she speaks her mind sometimes. She's very firm
about the values she believes in. I hear a lot of cracks about my
Mom on the ice, but if Bon can handle it, I can handle it. And if
my Dad can handle it, I can handle it. It's reached the point
where I've heard every single word in the book. My Mom must
be very, very busy, because I've lost count of the number of
people who have told me they've slept with her. It doesn't get
to me. If there's that much chauvinism and ignorance, that's
fine. They can say what they want to say. It's not going to
change my mother, and it's not going to change my feelings
towards my mother.

It's really hard to watch some of the things that go on in junior
hockey. When 4,500 people are cheering because your kid has just
been speared and is curled up on the ice in pain, it really hurts.
Hockey can bring some people right down to the raw basics.
That's the way it is, and it's one of the reasons either Carl or I try
to be at most of Eric's games. If there are thousands of people
standing there booing and cursing you, you've got to know there
are some people up there in the stands who don't feel the same
way they do. There has got to be somebody who cares.
When it comes to protecting the kids, I think mothers tend to
do that more. I think it's a natural instinct -- you just can't help
yourself. It's always the mothers who get upset at the rink when
things aren't right. When they see something that is totally dead
wrong, they can't handle it.
Eric needs people around him whom he can trust, and who
don't think of him as a commodity they can use but recognize
him as a person who has limits. I always felt comfortable about
his coaches with the Oshawa Generals, Rick Cornacchia and
Larry Marson, because I knew they both cared about Eric as a
person, not just as a hockey player.
Some fans in the opposition rinks are kind of positive, but
it's hard for Eric to know that. In quite a few arenas, many
people took the time to come up and say nice things about Eric.
And we always let him know about it whenever we could,
because these fans were certainly not the vocal ones at the arena.

Having my parents at my games means everything. It's a
great feeling. They've been there for me all the way down the
line. I started playing house league hockey before I was seven in
London, and later played two seasons for the London Minor
Hockey association. We moved to Toronto when I was ten and I
joined the Toronto Marlboro organization and played three years
with them at the atom, peewee and minor peewee levels. Then I
moved over to the Toronto Young Nats for two years, where I
played minor peewee and bantam hockey, before joining the St.
Michael's Junior B Buzzers when I was fifteen years old. My par-
ents were always juggling things to make sure at least one of
them was at my games. It would be tax season, and my Dad was
buried under paperwork, but if there was an important game and
it would be nice for him to be there, then he would be there. One
thing was always made clear: the family comes first.
When I was playing in the Ontario Hockey League for
Oshawa, I would always look for my parents during the national
anthem. If their seats were vacant, I'd start wondering what had
happened.

"Oh Canada..."
Did they have a problem with the car?

"Our home and native land..."
I don't think so. They've got a Volvo.

"True patriot love..."
They're very reliable cars. Or so they say.

Then they would arrive, and it's "Here they are, let's play."
When I scored a big goal, I would usually look over there.
Sometimes, though, I don't know how my parents deal with
some of the situations. It got really ugly last year when we played
against the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in the Ontario Hockey
League final. I had refused to report to the Soo when they
selected me first overall in the OHL draft two years earlier,
because playing there would have made it impossible to finish
high school and start university before I turned pro. Instead, I had
gone off to Detroit to play Tier II Junior A hockey for the Com-
puware organization for half a season, and to finish my high
school studies. Oshawa later worked out a big trade for my rights
that wound up benefiting both teams, but the Soo fans never for-
gave me for not coming to play for their team.
My Dad came to every playoff game we had in the Soo to sup-
port me, and I really felt for him because of everything he had to
put up with there. A lot of things were said that have no bearing
on the game and don't even relate to what I did. To sit there
through all the taunts hurled my way and the degrading signs
plastered all over the building was really difficult for him. When
we lost to Sault Ste. Marie, the first thing my Dad said to me was
"I'm proud of you." We just lost and I hate losing, and my Dad
hates losing. For him to say "I'm proud of you" really meant a lot.

Hockey for us has always been simply an opportunity to be
together. I think we all got a lot of satisfaction from being out on
the backyard rink. Working with the kids on their skills wasn't all
that different than helping them with their homework.
The backyard rink and hockey became a focus for all of us,
something we could share as a family. The thrust wasn't to try to
make Eric or Brett a hockey player. The thrust was to have fun.
The backyard rink looked like a carnival. We'd get the music
going, we had the Christmas lights in the tree, and we'd just go
out there and have a ball. Robin would often be out there gliding
around on her figure skates and trying out a few new moves,
while dodging the occasional puck.
It's quiet and relaxing to be outdoors on a winter night. It's
sort of like fishing. There's not a whole lot that happens in fish-
ing, but there's enough to take your mind off things.
Getting out on the rink is a good release after work, particu-
larly when things are hectic. It was an interesting combination,
because I enjoyed being outside and I was doing something with
the kids. It was a win-win situation. I'm sure at times Bonnie
thinks I'm nuts because of the amount of time I spend keeping
that rink going, but it's fun.
Some families are into skiing. They buy all the equipment and
go on weekend outings together for a big family gathering, a way
to further strengthen those family bonds. For us, it was the same
thing. Only in our case, the vehicle was hockey.

End of Chapter 3.