One legend recalls another
Dunnell remembers his old pal Beland
More than six decades later, Milt Dunnell easily recalled the details of how junior hockey brought him together with Beland Honderich, beginning a long friendship that ended the only way it could yesterday with the sad news that Honderich has passed away at age 86.
Dunnell, for years the voice of the Toronto Star’s sports pages, and Honderich, for nearly as many years the editorial expression of the entire paper, first met up because a young fellow named Howie Meeker could play hockey. But we’ll let Milt tell the story.
“I was sports editor at the Stratford Beacon Herald
and in a smaller town you were pretty close to the local hockey team,” Dunnell, 99, recalled. “ A man named Dave Pinkney was running the team. He’d found a promising young junior, Howie Meeker, who lived in New Hamburg. So Pinkney signed him.
“ There was a team called the Waterloo Siskins and they wanted Meeker, too. Beland Honderich was secretary with the team, something of a power in Waterloo hockey. The rule in those days was about residence — which team was closer to his home. So they actually measured the distance to his house in New Hamburg. Waterloo was closer. “Meeker wanted to stay in Stratford, but he technically was Waterloo’s property, so this young man Honderich came up with a solution. He said to take two weeks and decide which team he wanted to play for. But Pinkney had given him a few bucks, or found him a job, so he could play in Stratford, which was what they did for amateur players back then.
“ They didn’t know if Honderich would let him go, but everybody in Waterloo said, “ Honderich will live up to his promise.’ And he did. Meeker decided to stay, and so Honderich let him go. He was a different type, a man of his word.
“ In my own professional life, I found out I was right about that. It was typical of the way he did business. If he said something applied, it did.”
Dunnell was directly responsible for Honderich’s joining the Star, back in 1942.
“I got a letter from George McNair, who was the editor at the Star, and he offered me a day off each week. Plus, the last pay before Christmas, you got double pay,” Dunnell said.
Leafs would have their motivation on hyper- drive as they got a shot at the lowly team that had embarrassed them two days earlier.
Instead, Toronto came out flat and generated little early offence worth mentioning as the Caps built a 2- 0 lead. The one good chance the Leafs had, a glorious one as Jason Allison was presented with a wide- open net after gathering in a juicy rebound, was frittered away.
It appeared Kolzig made a tremendous save, diving back toward his goal- line to snare the puck. But replays showed the shot might have been going wide anyway. When you’re in a slump, as Allison is, even a 24square- foot target is tough to hit from 15 feet. On two occasions when the Leafs could have benefited from power plays, their own infractions — calls on Darcy Tucker and O’Neill — quickly wiped out the advantage. That certainly wasn’t an indication of the discipline Quinn was seeking.
In goal, Ed Belfour was back between the pipes after backup Mikael Tellqvist was shredded for all the goals at Washington. Belfour didn’t fare much better as he whiffed on both Cap goals in the first. The first came on a Ben Clymer wrist shot from the left faceoff dot that went between Belfour’s legs. The second, to be fair to the netminder, came on a terrific shot from Washington super rookie Alex Ovechkin, who got the first of his two goals, by whistling a rising wrist shot over Belfour’s catching glove from the right faceoff dot. The opportunity came after Toronto defensive partners Ken Klee and Alex Khavanov became confused in their own end and Ovechkin pounced on the puck. The sensational rookie now has 12 goals on the season. As happened at Washington, the 2- 0 deficit seemed to be a wake- up call for Toronto. The Leafs, although still turning in some shoddy defensive work, stormed back with two goals of their own midway through the period.
Kilger, who has been playing some solid hockey in the last few games, put Toronto on the board when he took a pass in the right faceoff circle from Bryan McCabe, turned and fired a low drive to the far side that eluded Kolzig. It was Kilger’s second of the campaign.
O’Neill, who has seen his offensive touch revived in the last three games, potted the equalizer on a 4- on- 3 advantage, doing what he does best. McCabe, again, fired a cross- ice pass to the sniper in the left faceoff circle and he ripped a one- timer past Kolzig. It was O’Neill’s eighth of the season, sixth on the power play and his fourth in the last three games. The Leafs took that 2- 2 tie into the third period despite giving up several odd- man rushes.