Two of my favorite players on the Juniors were Tucker and Todd. They had grown up together and had been teammates for ten years. They always managed to surprise or give me problems. Todd was one of our principal goal scorers. He developed a little problem of not changing up when I called for a line change. I would signal for a change and his four line mates would make the change. Eventually we would get him off. Finally, I had had enough, I called for a line change and his four teammates came off, but I didn’t send any replacements out. Todd ended up down the ice on a one on five rush. The referee blew his whistle and gave me a bench minor for failing to put on a proper team. I made Todd serve the penalty. We didn’t have that problem anymore.
Tucker, pound for pound was one of the toughest players I ever coached. The problem was that he didn’t have many pounds. He was the player who leapt over the boards in McFetridge during the playoffs when they had nailed our center ice door shut. They had done this to try and prevent us from pulling off our “Door Play”. Needless to say, Tucker scored the winning goal sending us to play in the Nationals in the St. Louis Checker Dome.
Jeff Sauer, coach of the University of Wisconsin hockey team brought the Korean National team to Rockford to play against us. After the game he told me he was really impressed with Tucker. He just wished we could give him some more pounds.
