Sports hall calls for Bryan Murray, Charlie Henry
They are local lions of winter.
Bryan Murray, the Ottawa Senators general manager, and Charlie Henry, the longtime GM and governor of the QMJHL Hull Olympiques, will enter the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame together on Friday evening.
Together, the two hockey giants, both in their 70s, joined me for lunch at a Westboro establishment to discuss their lives and their lives in the game, their separate battles with cancer, and what it means to be recognized by a city of Ottawa both men are proud to call home.
“I’m from Shawville,” says Murray, bringing the talk back to his Ottawa Valley roots in the 1950s, “so when we came to Ottawa, it was a treat. When I was growing up and playing hockey, there wasn’t a lot of organized minor hockey, but if we got a chance to come to Ottawa that was the big deal of the winter. So to be able to come back from the Valley to the city and be recognized this way ... it’s a great honour.”
It’s fitting for the two lions to be honoured in the local sports hall. As GM of a rising Anaheim Ducks team in 2003, Murray could have stayed there and won a Cup, but chose to return home to coach the Senators (reaching the 2007 Stanley Cup finals against the Ducks), and then manage them. Murray remains arguably the best coach the Senators ever had and plans one more season as GM, and then perhaps an advisory role.
Henry, who worked more than three decades in the Ottawa fire department, or roughly as long as Murray’s time in the NHL, turned down multiple hockey offers to leave the region and continues to work on projects for QMJHL president Gilles Courteau. Veteran TSN 1200 broadcaster Dave Schreiber, former Canadian women’s national soccer team regular Kristina Kiss and the 1975 undefeated Vanier Cup-winning University of Ottawa Gee-Gees football team fill out the rest of the list of inductees.
Humbly, Henry, once a Gloucester Rangers minor and junior coach, would have you believe he’s a hanger-on to the resume of his fellow hockey inductee.
“I’m looking up to him, and I’m the one that’s thrilled to be going in with Bryan Murray,” Henry says.
“This is the biggest thing to happen to me in sport. This gentleman (Murray) is going to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. In my case, this is the summit. And I’m realistic in that.
“Bryan has done this without looking to put his name up there, and I’m the same way.”
Henry sells himself short. In his run with the Olympiques from 1985 to 2010, Henry’s teams made the playoffs 27 years in a row and won the 1997 Memorial Cup on home ice. Henry was on the cutting edge of recruitment, finding gems who didn’t fit the OHL’s stricter mould (like Claude Giroux, Paul Byron); and one of the first to sign a European player (Herbie Hohenberger). Henry hired a string of NHL-bound coaches (Pat Burns, Alain Vigneault, Claude Julien) and had a flair for attracting U.S. stars like Jeremy Roenick.
Of course, it didn’t hurt to have Wayne Gretzky on board as the Olympiques owner for seven seasons beginning in 1985. Henry and Gretzky go way back, to a time when Henry met Wayne’s father, Walter, at a mite tournament for 10-year-olds in Belleville.
Some time later, Walter was on the phone. “He asked me if I’d take Wayne to a baseball game (Montreal Expos) because his station wagon had broken down,” Henry says. “He put him on a bus (to Ottawa) and I took him down. And every year he came to the house.”
Of Wayne Gretzky, Henry says, “The name is bigger than the person, but he’s not the name, he’s the person. A very generous man.”
For the better part of an hour, Murray and Henry swapped war stories, some raucous, dating back to Murray’s monstrous triumph with Rockland in 1976, where he coaxed and cajoled his underdog central junior team to a national title (Centennial Cup) against Mark Messier and the Spruce Grove Mets. Hockey ties run deep, so it’s natural that Henry knows Murray’s stories from the day nearly as well as Murray knows them himself.
Murray often checked with Henry on players. And when Henry was putting together his staff in Hull one of his first hires was strength coach Randy Lee, now Murray’s assistant GM with the Senators.
The wonder is that Murray and Henry are here at all. For the past year, Murray has been battling Stage 4 cancer. One doctor told him that just 5 per cent of Stage 4 patients make it to five years, but his recent results are excellent and he’s actually regained four or five pounds.
Henry has contested deadly pancreatic cancer. A few years ago, when he was undergoing surgery to have a spleen removed, the surgeon couldn’t assure him he’d wake from it. Undeterred, Henry’s oldest son, Michael, told him, “when you wake up, we’re going to China.”
Henry had often talked about going to China, to see the Great Wall. When he survived the surgery, he felt obliged not just to visit China, but to walk with Michael and raise money for pancreatic cancer research.
This summer, Henry plans to visit Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, to strike another one off the bucket list. Of his cancer, Henry says he gets a scan every six months. So far, so good. “There is a deposit there (in the pancreas) but it’s dormant. That’s fine. It may never happen again, or it might. Every day is a gift.”
Neither Murray nor Henry envisioned himself as a cancer campaigner, but here they are. Last week Murray was named the United Way community builder of the year for going public with his story and encouraging people to get bowel examinations. Not for one second does he feel sorry himself when so many children are afflicted with cancer.
“My attitude is, I go to the hospital and see all these young people who are sick,” Murray says. “I’m 72. Life is pretty good. I’ve got a great family, and you’re right, Charlie, you give thanks for every day. Just be positive.”
As we leave the restaurant, a woman seated at a table recognizes Murray, reaches for his hand and thanks him for his “crusade.” She also has Stage 4 cancer, but the diagnosis was seven years ago and today’s gift of life includes a glass of wine with her lunch.
Graciously, she acknowledges her hometown hero while Murray smiles, beaming in the presence of yet another local triumph.
I’m 72. Life is pretty good. I’ve got a great family, and you’re right, Charlie, you give thanks for every day. Just be positive.