It’s official: Shick into B.C. Sports Hall of Fame

There is a reason why every referee who walks into the officials change room at Weyerhaeuser Arena in the Alberni Valley Multiplex looks up with such reverence at the Rob Shick-signed gameworn striped jersey hanging on the wall.

Shick came out of Port Alberni to referee 1,451 NHL regularseason and playoff games between 1986 and 2009. Now he skates into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2018, which was announced Tuesday.

“I started out officiating senior hockey in Port Alberni, and later in the [WHL], and that’s where I learned it was about controlling emotions and keeping the game fair and safe,” said Shick, also the supervisor of officials at the 2010 Vancouver and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

“If you do that, players learn to trust you.”

Shick, now senior officiating manager for the NHL, certainly earned that trust and respect across the league.

“I come from an amazing hometown, Island and province . . . I am beyond shocked and honoured and truly humbled by this induction,” added the 60-year-old, who officiated two NHL all-star games and the 2001 Stanley Cup final.

The induction ceremony, the 52nd annual, will take place May 31 at the Parq Vancouver.

Being enshrined in the team category is the Island-dominated Canadian rugby squad that made it to the 1991 World Cup quarterfinals, where it gave the fabled New Zealand All Blacks all they could handle. It remains the rarefied high point in Canadian rugby history. The Island players on that team were captain Mark Wyatt, Gareth Rees, Chris Tynan, Gary Dukelow, Tom Woods, Roy Radu, John Graf, Eddie Evans and the late Norm Hadley.

“The guys were totally committed and we showed the world that Canada could play the game,” said Rees, who with fellow Victorian Wyatt, is previously inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall as an individual athlete. “These were sporting warriors, who put in so many thousands of hours for the Canadian cause, and laid the groundwork for what was to come.” This was before rugby went pro. “The guys had to phone their workplaces asking for another week off because we had advanced to the quarter-finals,” recalled Rees.

“With 23 of the 26 players from B.C., it was reflective of how strong this province was at the time in rugby.”

The Class of 2018 also includes 18-season NHLer Cliff Ronning of Burnaby; fearsome linebacker Glen Jackson, a CFL West all-star in six of his 12 seasons with the B.C. Lions; 16-season MLB pitcher Ryan Dempster from Gibsons, a two-time NL all-star and a World Series champion; ski-cross Sochi Winter Olympics gold-medallist Marielle Thompson of North Vancouver; and Winter Paralympics multi-medallist skier Josh Dueck of Kimberley.

Being enshrined in the builders-coaches-officials category is Shick, swim coach Tom Johnson and sports-medicine guru Alex McKechnie. Former Province hockey columnist Tony Gallagher is being inducted in the media category and the 1900 to 1918 Rossland women’s ice hockey team in the pioneer category.

Alex Nelson of Victoria will be given the WAC Bennett Award for his lifetime work of advancing aboriginal sport. Nelson recalled sport being a reprieve from the otherwise soul-destroying bleakness of Residential School.

“Sport meant freedom to me,” said Nelson, in October, when he was inducted into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame.

“It always stayed with me that there’s more to these games than just the game. Sports have value. I applied that lesson later in life when I asked myself what is my purpose here.”

The undersized Ronning, meanwhile, was elusive but still took a few hits in the NHL and Jackson handed out more than a few in the CFL. Shick wasn’t taking licks or dishing them out, but his was a draining grind nonetheless.

“I worked in the one-referee system and that was hard on you physically and it took it's toll,” said Shick.

Shick lives in Orlando but his parents, Earl and Myrna, still reside in Port Alberni and Rob returns every summer for the charity golf tournament he started 25 years ago in the Alberni Valley and which has raised nearly $900,000 for several causes in the community.

“It’s what Port Alberni and the Island are all about: Live life and make a difference,” said the graduate of Alberni District Secondary.

They did that on the ice and diamond, too. Fastball standout Shick was part of a talented Port Alberni athletic generation and played national top-level Senior A softball with the likes of Doug Chase. The Alberni ice sheets produced former Victoria Cougars WHLers Rich Chernomaz and the late ninth-overall 1982 NHL draft pick Paul Cyr, and the soccer pitches the likes of 1986 World Cup player Jamie Lowery.

Shick said he owes a lot to growing up in that sporting environment.

He met his doctor wife Lynda, now a breast-cancer specialist, in California when she was attending to his stitches after he got hit by a stick during an NHL game.

“My wife deals with life and death. I only dealt with wins and losses. There was no pressure by comparison,” he said. The couple has four children. Shick listed his three most memorable games officiated as the five-overtime playoff marathon between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in 2000, the thirdlongest game in NHL history, that was finally decided at 2:35 a.m. by Keith Primeau; the first NHL outdoor game in 1991 held in the Caesars Palace parking lot; and when Queen Elizabeth dropped the honourary first puck in Vancouver in 2002.

Shick will get another moment to remember in May when his home province inducts him into its Hall of Fame.