Capturing Hall’s hearts
Hayley Wickenheiser speech one to remember
TORONTO - Hayley Wickenheiser had no old boys’ club stories to tell in her Hockey Hall of Fame speech.
But she gained the respect of a room full of NHL and international stars with her own compelling tale. It involved a young girl who received some nasty looks from a few parents in Shaunavon, Sask., for taking a boy’s place on the top minor hockey team and had to cut her hair to blend in.
She paid tribute to her parents, whom she said put themselves into debt every four years for her five appearances in the Olympics (four of them ending with gold medals) and apologized that she never made enough in the game to pay off their mortgage. As a teenage rookie on the national women’s team, she noted her first roommate was a Grade 10 math teacher and she was a Grade 10 math student.
But barely had the 41-year-old Wickenheiser started when she captured the Hall’s heart for giving up part of her podium time for Vaclav Nedomansky, who was looking sombre beside her when he realized he’d forgotten to mention his wife and children during his allotted speech.
She acknowledged the rest of the 2019 class and some of their influence on her: Guy Carbonneau, a right-handed centre and shot-blocker like herself, and a power-play quarterback like Sergei Zubov.
CARBONNEAU
Dallas teammate Brett Hull had the book on the defensive strengths of Carbonneau.
“You need a guy who can score, but when you’re playing against Colorado and it’s Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic, you need a Carbonneau, and those guys out there like him, playing those hard minutes.”
Player-turned-hockey exec Tom Fitzgerald respected Carbo’s 200-foot game.
“In junior, he put up (435) points and to make that commitment, sacrificing that … it’s not all about points, it’s about what you contribute to your teams that are great.”
Carbonneau learned from Bob Gainey in Montreal and said he sees Patrice Bergeron as the next Gainey in NHL history.
“He’s the best 200-foot centre in the league, and that’s why Boston is Boston,” said Fitzgerald. “He can pump in goals and points, but his first thought is defending.”
ZUBOV
The low-key Zubov gave a nice speech, starting with a “nice to meet you” to the attending media in apology for staying in the background, especially in Dallas.
“Brett talked all those years ago for all of us,” he joked.
But he had a touching tribute to late fellow defender Alexander Karpovtsev, who was his friend growing up in Moscow.
“One day, he brought me to a real hockey club (Red Army), a nice rink with a Zamboni machine. He didn’t know that 17 years later, we’d be the first Russian (trained) players to win a Cup in New York. I hope he’s watching (Karpovtsev died in the Yaroslavl team plane crash).”
The Professor, Igor Larionov, gave a detailed review of Zubov’s Hall credentials.
“The way he played, he make great decisions all night,” Larionov said of Zubov’s Cups in New York and Dallas. “He made the game so easy for the forwards. He knew how to pass, never used the boards or glass, always looking for the good pass. He and Nick Lidstrom were doing that in this generation.”
RUTHERFORD
Jim Rutherford, named in the builders’ category, thanked his parents, relatives and friends from Beeton, Ont., 60 miles north of Toronto.
“We lived cheque to cheque, but they always found a way to get me to practice,” Rutherford said.
He began skating at age five and took up goaltending seriously when Bob Cairns, a senior-league goalie, gave him a men’s stick.
Penguins owner Mario Lemieux, who hired Rutherford in 2016 after his first Cup in Carolina to rejuvenate the Pittsburgh Penguins, presented his Hall plaque on Monday.
“It means a lot,” Lemieux said. “Jim’s a great friend of mine, had a great career starting in junior (Windsor Spitfires). We were lucky to get him. We had a chance for another Cup, he got us two.”
NEDOMANSKY
Nedomansky felt the story had to be told one more time, why he took his family out of the East Bloc in 1974 for a new beginning with the WHA Toronto
Toros.
He was playing club hockey in Bratislava and for the former Czechoslovakian national team. He only received two weeks of vacation from training and playing.
“They break your heart, body and mind,” Nedomansky said. “So thank you Canada for giving me the chance to live my life.” York
Jerry York, selected in the builders wing, won’t get a better endorsement of himself as a coach than from Fitzgerald. The Massachusetts-born assistant general manager of the Devils had two kids under York at Boston College, Casey (a twotime captain) and Ryan. A third, Toronto-born Brendan when Fitzgerald was a Leaf, is a possibility to attend.
“Jerry doesn’t want the stick to be taken out of your hand, he allows skill to be skill,” Fitzgerald said. “Structure is what you do with just a few little things he asks you to do on the ice — and then it’s just ‘play hockey’.
COMING SOON
Joining the list of Hall hopefuls next year will be first-year eligibles Jarome Iginla and Shane Doan. Meanwhile, Alex Mogilny and Daniel Alfredsson, two of the players who didn’t make it last year, will be getting a lot of press prior to the selection committee in June. Zubov’s election increases the chances fellow Russian Mogilny will get a nod. Marian Hossa is also a possibility.
Hull’s list of overlooked inductees included Pat Verbeek, Pierre Turgeon, Jeremy Roenick and Doug Weight.