CHAPTER SIX

Every player, coach, and parent involved in peewee hockey everywhere in the world had their mind on Le Tournoi International de Hockey Pee-wee de Québec from the moment their teams were put together. Wayne Gretzky had played in the Quebec tournament. So did Mario Lemieux, Guy Lafleur, Marcel Dionne, Mike Bossy, Gilbert Perreault, Brett Hull, Steve Yzerman, Patrick Roy, and hundreds of other NHLers. All the best thirteen-year-olds would be there. Quebec was an opportunity for them and for their parents to see how they measured up against every other kid; to see how they were doing on their way to the dream. For these kids and their parents together, it was also a chance to get a taste of what that dream might be like: playing in Le Colisée, the arena that Jean Béliveau built, the home of the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques, filled with NHL-size crowds making NHL-decibel-level noise, the national anthem played before every game; around the city, the kids in their team jackets, local people pointing, whispering, and teenage girls asking for their autographs. When Montreal Canadiens Hall of Famer Steve Shutt was asked when he knew he wanted to be an NHL player, he said, “In Quebec,” his eyes lighting up. It was when he walked down the dark hallway from his team’s dressing room and turned into the light, towards the ice. When “all I could see was a wall of people. ‘That’s me!’”

Quebec was a hockey family’s reward, and Paul, Donna, Chris, and Lindsay were all there. It was February, 1993. The Toronto Red Wings were the powerhouse team that year, led by Tom Kostopoulos, who would later play more than 600 NHL games. The Red Wings had beaten the Marlies several times during the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL) regular season. Here, the two teams were in different brackets and wouldn’t meet—until, perhaps, the playoff rounds.

The Marlies won their early games and played a team from Quebec in the group final. Le Colisée was packed. All the Marlies’ parents, brothers, and sisters were cheering for the Marlies; all the thousands of others were cheering for the home team. Late in the second period, with the game tied, Steve had the puck in his own zone and the Quebec team was changing; there was open ice ahead of him. When he got to centre, the puck flipped over his stick. It took him a split second to notice. In that moment, a Quebec player grabbed the puck, skated in on a breakaway, and scored. Paul felt sick; Lindsay wanted to cry. Steve’s head was down, his body slouched.

The game went on. Jim Nicoletti, the Marlies coach, put Steve back on the ice for his next regular shift. Immediately, Steve was bumping in the corners, moving the puck, jumping into the play, racing back, pushing himself to forget what had happened. Paul began to notice this only when the Marlies scored to tie the game once more; Steve was off the hook. Later, the Marlies scored again and won the game. It was a moment that none of the family ever forgot, and all of them remembered in their own way. For Paul, Steve had made an error, not a mistake—an error meant doing the right thing but not executing it properly; a mistake was doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. But most importantly for Paul, the team had picked Steve up. His teammates had helped him just as, at other times, he helped them. They had fought back together. It was the lesson of “team.” Years later, Steve would play in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) with the Erie Otters. In the team’s program, as part of his player profile, he described the Quebec tournament as his most memorable moment in hockey.

The Marlies lost their next game, to the Red Wings, and were eliminated. The Red Wings then beat Syracuse in the final to win the overall championship. For ten days, Steve had been up against the best peewee hockey players in the world: Marián Hossa, Alex Tanguay, Brian Gionta, Simon Gagné, Mike Ribeiro, Tim Connolly, and Tom Kostopoulos among them. And on his own team, he had played with Daniel Tkaczuk. Steve had not been one of the tournament’s best players, but it was now clear in his mind that he could play with them.

Steve returned to the Marlies the next year, but the following season he moved to another GTHL team, the Mississauga Senators. His Marlies coaches, after two years, saw him as a good, tough, hard-trying player. The coach of the Senators told Paul that he thought Steve had the talent to play in more critical situations as well—on power plays and penalty kills—and with the Senators he would be given that chance. But in his first season with Mississauga, nothing much changed. Other players were still more talented. Others still got more ice time in the high-skill moments of a game. But hockey’s style of play was evolving. Teams were demanding players who were faster, tougher, and more competitive. They were demanding what Steve offered. If many players each year were still better, many more were worse, and Steve still loved to play. He remained a good teammate, and his team won most of its games.

Things were now a little easier for the Montador family. At home it was just Lindsay and Steve, and Lindsay—older and more independent—went to the rinks only when she wanted to. Chris was in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, attending Notre Dame College, which at the time was the best hockey school in Canada. Wendel Clark, Curtis Joseph, and Rod Brind’Amour had gone there; so would Vincent Lecavalier, Brad Richards, and many others who went on to play in the NHL. The rule in the Montador family had always been that school came first. But little by little, under the compromises of AAA hockey, the definition of “first” had begun to slide. It had become not much more than “if Chris/Steve is passing, even if it’s by the skin of his teeth, he can play”—and at times Chris had been pretty close to the line. But at Notre Dame, he would have to earn his playing time for the Hounds in the classroom as well as on the ice.

After his season with the Senators, Steve got a chance to play Tier II Junior A with the St. Mike’s Buzzers. It was a big step from bantam to junior. Steve had always played with and against kids his own age; in junior, the players might be four years older—bigger and stronger physically, more developed emotionally, intellectually, and as players. But St. Mike’s, a hockey school even more legendary than Notre Dame, was too good a chance to pass up.

St. Mike’s had been a central building block for the great Toronto Maple Leaf teams of the 1960s. This was before the NHL’s universal draft was introduced with expansion in 1967. After the Second World War, NHL teams had begun building their farm systems. Players could be signed by NHL organizations at a young age to play for local teams that the big clubs sponsored. Many of the most promising of them were from small towns, especially in the north. As these young players got older, they needed to play for better teams in more competitive leagues, which were usually located in the south. But if these kids were to leave home and move to the big city, their parents wanted to be sure they were safe. That’s where Catholic schools came in. What could be better for the welfare of their kids, parents believed, than to be looked after by priests? Detroit sent their young out-of-town players to Windsor, to play junior for the Spitfires and to attend Assumption College, a Catholic high school. The Leafs sent their prospects to St. Michael’s College School (St. Mike’s)—Tim Horton, Frank Mahovlich, Dick Duff, Dave Keon, Gerry Cheevers, and many more. Red Kelly and Ted Lindsay, who both later signed with Detroit, also attended St. Mike’s. Next door to the school was the arena, and across the front of the arena, in big letters, a sign read, “Teach me goodness, discipline and knowledge.”

St. Mike’s had withdrawn from major junior hockey years earlier; during Steve’s time there, in the mid-1990s, it had become a prime feeder to U.S. colleges offering hockey scholarships. Most of the team’s players attended St. Mike’s, and were still of high school age, eighteen and under, making St. Mike’s the youngest team in the league. Steve—at fifteen, moving up from bantam and with his late birthdate—was its second-youngest player.

Kevin O’Flaherty and Steve were rookies together on the team. Kevin’s grandfather, “Peanuts” O’Flaherty, had played with St. Mike’s in the 1930s before having a pro career as a player, coach, and scout. Kevin’s father, John, had played Junior B with Steve’s minor peewee coach, Jim Donaldson. To Kevin, though Steve was a year younger than he was, Steve seemed the older one. It was the way he held himself, Kevin recalls. Steve seemed so comfortable in his own skin, right from the first day, yet without cockiness or swagger. The younger guys liked him because he wasn’t intimidated by the older guys; the older guys liked him because he seemed like them. “Their mothers and sisters liked him too,” Kevin remembers with a laugh. Yet Steve was no hotshot prospect, no “golden boy,” and as a fifteen-year-old he had to prove to his teammates, coaches, and opponents—and to himself—that he could play at this level and handle everything it demanded of him. Against big, tough teams, sometimes in small-town arenas, against big, tough local heroes four years older than he was, he had to show he was tough enough.

Steve wasn’t a fighter, Kevin remembers, but he fought because the team needed him to fight, so that others didn’t have to. St. Mike’s had another young player on the team, Kip Brennan, a big left winger. Brennan would go on to have a thirteen-year pro career; in his sixty-one NHL games with the Kings, Ducks, Islanders, and Atlanta Thrashers, he had one goal, one assist, and 222 penalty minutes (PIM). In forty games with St. Mike’s, Brennan had 155 PIM; Steve had 145. Brennan was a heavyweight; Steve a light-heavyweight. Yet Kevin recalls, “I never saw fear in his eyes. Ever.” Nor did Steve pick his spots and prey on the weakest, most vulnerable opponents. “Absolutely not,” Kevin says. Taking on the weak would be about him; taking on the strong was about the team. It might seem that the toughest guys are those who deliver the biggest hits, with a shoulder or a fist. But the toughest guys are really those who are willing to take the biggest hits, to make a play to help their team. And Steve, Kevin explains, was truly tough.

They were both from Mississauga. Kevin attended a high school in the area; Steve went to St. Mike’s itself, in Midtown, Toronto. Paul often dropped Steve at the Kipling subway station on his way to work, where Steve would catch a train to school. When Paul was away, Steve took a commuter train from Mississauga to Toronto’s downtown Union Station, then transferred to the subway, sometimes carrying his sticks and hockey bag. For Steve, hockey was a big commitment: up at 6:00 a.m.; home at 7:00 p.m., or later when there was a game. Paul was now the head of Johnson & Johnson Canada, busier than ever and travelling more often. He made it to most of Steve’s games—and when he couldn’t, and when Donna was busy with Lindsay, Steve got a ride with the O’Flahertys.

Steve and Kevin didn’t say much during these rides. On the way to the rink they had the game on their minds; on the way home, they were too zonked. Yet whether in the quiet of the car, or in the dressing room, or on the ice, Steve had a focus about him that Kevin remembers well. “He had this internal fire. You could see it in his eyes.” There were lots of players better than Steve, “but he was so determined. He could overcome things. What was going to stop him?”

Steve had had two pivotal hockey moments in his life. First, the decision to play AAA; second, his experience in Quebec. And now, he had a third: the 1996 OHL draft. The best sixteen-year-old players in Ontario, in U.S. states east of the Mississippi River, and in Europe were eligible. This was another chance for kids and their parents to see how they stacked up.

Steve was selected in the third round by the North Bay Centennials, the 36th overall pick of the draft. Rico Fata, later Steve’s teammate in Saint John, was the draft’s first overall pick. Kip Brennan went in the first round, 4th overall; Bryan Allen, who played more than 700 NHL games, went 9th; Mark Bell was 15th; Manny Malhotra, 17th. Tom Kostopoulos, Steve’s Red Wings rival, went in the second round. Others selected who would have NHL careers included Sean Avery, Paul Mara, Jason Williams, Mike Van Ryn, and Chris Neil. Steve’s former Marlies teammate Dan Nicoletti, Jim’s son, was also drafted, as were Mike Gardner, Steve’s Mississauga Braves teammate and buddy, and Nick Robinson, who Steve would later get to know in Peterborough and who became a lifelong friend. In all, 291 players were taken—the best of the best. Only a handful of them made it to the NHL.

For Steve and Paul, this was decision time. Major junior players in Canada receive a small weekly stipend to play for their teams, many of which are highly profitable, but the stipend is large enough that the NCAA considers the players professionals and ineligible for scholarships and college competition. Steve had one more year of high school remaining. He could stay at St. Mike’s, have another season of good competition, then graduate and take a U.S. scholarship; or he could leave home and go to North Bay, live with a billet family, play in a league with multi-hour bus rides, attend school under far from ideal circumstances, gain scholarship credits to help pay his future expenses to a Canadian university, and play against the best young players in the world.

To Paul, this was a very difficult decision. To Steve, it was not. School had always come first in his family because no parent or kid in any family had the right to think otherwise. But school had never been first for Steve. What drove him was elsewhere. Most of what he had learned, most of the people-lessons and life-lessons, had come from hockey. He had been in more tough situations, and had more responsibilities placed on his shoulders by the age of fifteen, than most people have in their lifetime. He’d had teammates who counted on him absolutely. He’d had an arena full of fans telling him he sucked. He had held up and met every challenge.

Paul talked to Steve. In his manager’s way, he tried to encourage, not push, but Steve knew which way Paul was “encouraging.” Still, Paul wanted to help Steve understand all of the implications of a decision that, in all probability, would affect the rest of his life. Paul wanted him to consider it carefully so that he could make the right choice himself. He did not want to intrude—or seem to intrude—on Steve’s decision; if he did interfere, that might have its own lifetime of implications. Paul wanted Steve to understand that they were really on the same side, that this decision wasn’t just about junior hockey or college hockey—it was about Steve’s future.

Steve didn’t say much, and Paul knew which way the wind was blowing. He also didn’t have much stomach for the fight. This decision wasn’t much different from all those times he had been offered a promotion, a new chance to learn and to move one more step up the ladder. And had he ever turned those offers down?

To make himself feel better, Paul made Steve promise that if he did go to North Bay, it would be on the condition that he stayed in school and graduated; and he made a promise to himself that if Steve did go, every time they spoke on the phone he would always ask him about school first, before hockey.

The two of them sat at the kitchen table. Paul knew that if he said no to Steve playing junior hockey, he’d have, as he puts it, “a very unhappy teenager on his hands.” He wasn’t prepared to have that happen. The horse had left the barn years earlier: hockey was what Steve did. And from that moment on, hockey was where he’d go, as long and as far as it took him.

Steve made the decision, not Paul. He went to North Bay.