Boards bring stories home
Ball hockey artifact from Canada’s Kandahar mission on display at Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame
A piece of hockey history, which helped prop up many a game at the Canadian Forces Airbase in Kandahar, Afghanistan, settled into its new home at the Hockey Hall of Fame Tuesday.
A well-weathered portion of the boards from the rink at the Kandahar Airbase were unveiled at the Hall. They brought with them a tapestry of stories from a place where men and women on a mission to protect Canada’s freedom enjoyed ball hockey for more than a decade.
“Tiger Williams’s (a legendary former Toronto Maple Leaf) elbow is embedded in those boards . . . He ran over someone when we were playing a game against the USA,” said Lanny McDonald, ex-Leaf, now the chairman at the hall.
McDonald was joined by Brigadier General Kevin Cotten and former Leafs GM and current Calgary Flames President of Hockey Operations Brian Burke.
Each man stressed the significance of the 126-inch by 48-inch length of the boards. The once beaming, red Canadian flag logo was bleached by a desert sun in Kandahar that often drives temperatures over 40 C.
“We were told that we should get an early start on our game, so we did . . . We played in 46 C heat, but that beat the (midday) heat of 51 C,” Burke said.
“This (Hall of Fame) is a perfect place for these boards. I played on that rink a couple of times . . . Kandahar is a staging area and a place where they (military) can relax and play some ball hockey. Those people are working 14 to 17 hours a day, seven days a week, so they got a chance to relax a bit there (at the rink).”
Burke was among a wide group of NHL executives and players who visited the troops at the Kandahar Airfield, which housed more than 50,000 people in its time as the centre of Canada’s military engagement in Afghanistan, from 2011-16.
About 158 members of the Canadian Armed Forces, plus four civilians, were killed, and more than 1,800 were wounded serving Canada during its mission in Afghanistan. General Cotten welcomed the chance to have the boards brought to Toronto, where they’ll be on display at the Hall from June 30 to Sept. 4.
“It’s an honour to have a piece of Canadiana brought to the Hall of Fame,” Cotten said. The boards help represent Canada’s rich history of the combination of hockey and the military, which dates back to the First World War, and saw the Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers win an Olympic gold medal in 1948.
The boards were originally part of the Airbase rink, a near regulationsized concrete sheet where military personnel played ball hockey from the time the rink was built, mostly by Canadian engineers volunteering their time on off day, in 2006.
Over the years, the boards saw the “Hockey Night in Kandahar,” a game between the Canadian and U.S. military in 2010, which Canada won 16-2, and a 24-team league, with teams from Canada, the U.S. and Slovakia, which became a mainstay at the rink at the height of the Canadian mission prior to 2011.
NHLers such as Burke, Don Cherry, Guy Lafleur, Tiger Williams, Jarome Iginla, Mike Gartner and others returned many times to the rink. They were given no special treatment.
“We stayed for three days and we slept in the barracks with everyone else,” Burke said. “The first couple of days, the air space over Kandahar was not secure and we heard they attacked (the base) two days after we left. The first time I was there, there was an air ramp service for a U.S. Marine, who had been killed.”
Burke felt NHL players should view the boards and learn as much as they can about the efforts of the Canadian military. In 2011, during one of his three visits, he brought former Leafs defenceman Luke Schenn to experience the base and the rink.
“I told him (Schenn) if you are going to go out (in the NHL) and behave like a soldier, then you better get some real sand in your boots,” said Burke, who took heat for one of his visits because it fell on Canada Day, which coincided with the opening of NHL free agency at a time when the Leafs were fighting to make their roster playoff-worthy.
“I’ll go again if they ask,” Burke said. “You get off that plane and one of the first things they do is warn you about rocket attacks, so you realize these are the people with important jobs.”