It’s time hockey moms get their due
TAMPA— It had been aMaple Leafs tradition for more than a decade. On one road trip a year, the fathers of the players and various staff members were invited along for the ride to get a look inside the NHL lifestyle.
So when the Leafs followed the lead of other NHL clubs and broke from that norm this year, announcing months ago that this week’s two-game Florida swing would mark the franchise’s firstever mothers’ trip, there were those who didn’t take it well.
“My dad was devastated,” said goaltender Frederik Andersen. “He lives for that stuff. I’m sure a lot of dads are going to miss this year.”
Alas, NHL rules prohibit more than one such trip a year, apparently to ensure rich teams like the Maple Leafs aren’t allowed to continually lavish players with such perks. And so, for the first time since John Ferguson Jr.’s run as Toronto’s general manager, the fathers are sitting this one out.
“My dad was a little bitter, I’m not going to lie,” said centreman Nazem Kadri. “He thought I was just messing with him at first when I told him. But after he got past that, I think he’s really happy for my mom.”
Being happy for the mothers, of course, is exactly the right sentiment here. The role of the hockey mom in the development of most NHLers, not to mention the legions of boys and girls who never come close to becoming elite, is as elemental to the process as the hockey stick. And if, by chance, you happen to forget your twig or any other piece of equipment, it’s often the hockey mom who’ll dutifully hustle across town and back to retrieve it before puck drop.
As Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock
was saying of the inaugural mothers’ trip on Wednesday: “I think it’s a great opportunity for you to get a chance to say thanks to your mom.”
What, players were asked, will differentiate a moms’ trip from its parental predecessor?
“Maybe more shopping?” Kadri said.
And possibly less post-game critiquing. Defenceman Morgan Rielly said the dynamic in his family, at least, has usually seen his father, Andy, offer more hockey-specific feedback while his mother, Shirley, has mostly specialized in unconditional support and concern — although, now that Rielly is age 24 and firmly entrenched in the Norris Trophy conversation, he said even his dad has gradually put the brakes on giving advice.
“He feels like I might have a little bit more knowledge than he does,” Rielly said.
Still, as former Leafs coach Paul Maurice once said, the flight home from a losing dads’ trip always had the possibility for father-son friction.
“It could get a little ugly … like in the back seat of the car on the way home,” Maurice said back in 2007.
Mind you, the idea that it’s universal that mothers don’t consider themselves fit to offer hockey-related counsel would be erroneous. When the Minnesota Wild inaugurated a moms’ trip years ago, then-GM Doug Risebrough experienced something of a revelation.
“I always thought it was the fathers who put the pressure on the kids,” Risebrough once told the great hockey writer Roy MacGregor. “But the day I saw Mrs. Koivu (mother of then-Wild captain Mikko) standing at the dressing room door yelling ‘We need a win!’ I realized mothers are no different than fathers.”
On Thursday, the Maple Leafs will take part in the mother of all NHL matchups. Tampa Bay is the best team in the league as measured by points percentage. Toronto is the second-best. Both teams are playing at a pace that, if they kept it up, would result in the best regular seasons in their respective franchise histories. This is their first of four regular-season meetings. And recent history hasn’t favoured Toronto, who dropped three of four to the Lightning last season.
“We’re excited to have the opportunity to play against them. They’re obviously setting the standard for the National Hockey League, and we’d like to be where they’re at,” Babcock said. “We’d like to be like them.”
They are, in some ways, a reasonable facsimile, built on speed and skill above all else. The Lightning are the highestscoring team in the league; the Leafs the third-highest. And while the Maple Leafs have been marginally better at keeping the puck out of their net — they’re sixth in goals against per game to Tampa’s 12th — the Lightning have kept it out in a different way.
Toronto has done it thanks in large part to Andersen’s elite goaltending. The Maple Leafs came into Wednesday’s games ranked third in five-on-five team save percentage. The Lightning, who’ve been without the services of No. 1 netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy for the past 15 games, ranked 21st in that category. A year ago, Tampa ranked fifth.
The Lightning, mind you, have won 12 of 15 with Vasilevskiy out with a broken foot. And it sounds probable that Vasilevskiy, who practised Wednesday, will make his return against the Maple Leafs. Tampa coach Jon Cooper was quoted as saying the decision will be Vasilevskiy’s — a decent indicator he’ll be in.
Vasilevskiy or not, the Maple Leafs will be buoyed by maternal support in the stands. John Tavares, the veteran centreman, said while he always enjoyed taking his father on dads’ trips during his time with the New York Islanders, he can see an upside to having the moms along.
“Probably a little less babysitting for us,” Tavares said with a smile.
To which the 55-year-old Babcock — whose mother, Gail, died in 1991 and who brought along his wife, Maureen, on this trip — raised a skeptical eye.
“(Tavares is) probably looking at his own family. I’ve heard a lot of rumours that it’s the other way around,” the coach said. “So I think it just depends on what house you live in.”
Joking aside, on Wednesday, you didn’t need to go far to hear a Maple Leaf paying homage to the tireless role his mother played in the chase of his NHL dream. Kadri called his mom, Sue, his “backbone — always positive, always supportive.” Rielly spoke lovingly of his mother and her knack for engaging in understanding conversations about the ups and downs of life. Tavares noted that it was his mom, Barb, who mostly drove him around the GTA’s rinks during his rise as an on-ice prodigy. Andersen spoke of the rare pleasure of seeing his mother, Charlotte, set foot on North American soil.
“She doesn’t like to fly, so it means a lot that she comes over this far and sits on a plane for nine hours (from the family home in Denmark), and then another three hours coming down here (from Toronto to Tampa),” Andersen said.
“It’s nice to give the moms some recognition for all the hard work they’ve been doing, because it’s not easy, either, to be a hockey mom. They’re putting in the same amount of hours as the dads, usually, and the same kind of support, or even more.”
As for which parental group will ultimately require more babysitting — that’ll be a question better answered when the trip winds up with a flight north after Saturday night’s game against the Panthers in Sunrise, Fla.
“The moms, they could be a little more tame, a little more wild,” Kadri said. “Who knows? We’re about to find out.”
from On Wednesday, you didn’t need to go far to hear a Leaf paying homage to the role his mother played in the chase of his NHL dream