A little ice surprise

As best as I can remember, in 1978 I was coaching a Midget hockey team. It was composed of boys 15 and 16 years old. I really don’t remember what our record was that year, but I believe it was a good year. I remember jumping up in age groups to coach Midgets because one of the advantages was there were a lot of them that drove to practices and games. This meant I had fewer parents to deal with, which made life simpler.

In the spring we were invited to a tournament in Springfield Illinois. It included a number of the better Illinois teams. We were excited and accepted and made plans to go. Just prior to that weekend I found out one of my defensemen had a family obligation and would not be able to attend with us. Since we were allowed to pull a player up from a lower age group, and my son Dan was a Bantam 14 years old, I ask him if he wanted to play with us. He was really excited, so it was a done deal. I would play him on my third line.

The first game of the tournament started, and we were awful. Passes weren’t connecting. We were out of position, and it wasn’t going well for us at all. During the middle of the second period, we were down 2 to 0 and things not looking any better. I pulled both first and second lines and put my third line on the ice. I had both lines sitting on the bench and I with my back to the ice began going over what we weren’t doing on the ice.

Faintly I heard cheering coming from the stands. I turned around just in time to see Dan on a breakaway scoring his second goal in that shift on the ice. That tied the game up. I then asked my players if they could play up to the standard of our Bantam sub. The rest of the game and tournament went very easy for us.

I thanked my son for saving our bacon. It remains one of my fondest hockey memories.