Hall of fame honour `surreal' for Holland
At his first — and what he believed would be his only — major junior hockey training camp, Ken Holland crumpled up a Medicine Hat Tigers jersey when no one was looking and hid it in his goalie bag.
He wanted a personal souvenir, just so he could later tell people that he once spent a moment trying out in junior hockey.
That moment turned into two full seasons with the Tigers, a surprising very late draft selection by the Toronto Maple Leafs, nine years kicking around the minors, 12 years in a variety of scouting roles with the Detroit Red Wings, and the last 24 years as a general manager, first in Detroit, now in Edmonton.
And along comes Monday night and Holland's head is spinning, his mind is racing, his storytelling is on high alert — this is hall of fame weekend in the hockey world and Holland is getting the call he never thought would come his way.
He is used to going to Hockey Hall of Fame inductions.
He's been there to watch Steve Yzerman and Nick Lidstrom get inducted. He's been there for Jimmy Devellano and the late Mike Ilitch. He's been there for Dominik Hasek and Chris Chelios, for Brendan Shanahan and Sergei Fedorov and Igor Larionov, for Luc Robitaille and Brett Hull.
“This all feels so surreal,” Holland said in a lengthy phone conversation. “I was a guy who barely made it. I was a minorleague player. And I had a job at the liquor store in Vernon,
B.C., when my career ended and Jimmy Devellano and Neil Smith called and offered me a job as the western Canadian junior scout for the Wings. Bill Dineen (his AHL coach) had recommended me. I'd never scouted before.
“Neil had to come out and show me. He showed me where the scout's entrance was in buildings, where the scouting room was where you picked up the lineups, I didn't know a thing.”
But he just kept going to work. Driving the Prairies through snowstorms. That sounds like a cliché, but anyone who has made those treks understands the challenge. “You go to work every day, and you keep looking for players and then you get a better job and you work and you're still trying to find players. And one day turns into a week and a week turns into a month and a month turns into a year and then one day you get a call from Lanny Mcdonald (a former Medicine Hat Tiger himself ) telling you you're going to the hall of fame. It's surreal. It's more than surreal. I'm very honoured. I'm overwhelmed really.
“The hall of fame has never been on my radar screen,” he said. “I still can't believe this is happening.”
When he made the Medicine Hat team as a 19-year-old, almost a half century ago, he gave the jersey he stole back to the trainer. He told him what happened. And when he finished his Medicine Hat career, there was a present waiting for him: a team jersey. This time he could tell people he played two seasons in the Western Hockey League and later wound up in training camps with the Leafs and Buffalo Sabres.
He remembers arriving at Leafs camp and taking his first drive up Yonge Street.
“I'm a kid from Vernon, B.C., and I played in Medicine Hat and I'm driving around Toronto and my eyes are the size of saucers,” he said. “I'd never seen anything like it before. The size of the buildings. The number of people. Then you get to camp and you're watching Borje Salming skate, and you can barely hear him skating, it's that silent. It's that smooth. After that, I went to Buffalo's camp and it was the same with Gilbert Perreault.”
Those are really his only NHL memories as a player, aside from the parts of four games he played in goal for Hartford and Detroit. He was a huge Bernie Parent fan. As a small goalie, he tried to be like Parent. Instead, he wound up more like Sam Pollock, running teams, making decisions, winning, lots of winning.
He had grown up a Leafs fan, watching Johnny Bower and Terry Sawchuk win Stanley Cups in the 1960s. The games came on early on the West Coast. It was still afternoon when the second period started on television.
“And after the game was over, we'd go out and play some more,” said Holland. “Those were the first guys I idolized, Sawchuk and Bower. My dad and I loved the Leafs. At that time, honestly, I wasn't sure I could be a juvenile goalie, let alone a junior goalie … it just happened.”
But the Red Wings weren't exactly the place to be when Holland went to work for them in 1985. Record wise, they were the worst team in the NHL. Building, as always, would take time. Holland was part of the famed 1989 draft — maybe the greatest any team has ever had — that included all-time greats Lidstrom and Fedorov and produced 5,955 NHL games played by those selected. Later on, Lidstrom and Fedorov would be central to Holland's three Stanley Cup wins as GM of the Wings.
“Prior to the work stoppage in '05, I worked for ownership that was all in,” said Holland, who just turned 66. “We had a high payroll. They (Ilitchs) were at every game. They were all in emotionally. They were all in financially. There were six or eight teams like us. We went out and got Chelios, Hasek, Robitaille, Hull, Shanahan, the Russian Five, Scotty (Bowman).
“They were driven to be elite. If we had one cup, they wanted two. If we had two, we pursued three.” And then came the salary cap. “We went from a payroll of
$70 million to $39 million. And I take great pride in the fact that we were the last team to miss the playoffs in the salary cap era.”
And now, Edmonton is his hockey home with Connor Mcdavid and Leon Draisaitl and another opportunity for the hall of fame general manager to succeed.
“I've been blessed,” said Ken Holland. On Monday night, he'll get a chance to say thanks. And who knows, maybe he'll flash that jersey from the Medicine Hat Tigers, where everything started to go his way.