by Barry Stagg
February 1996
A prayer for Wendel
This month is the time when the long hockey season begins its overlap with the equally endless baseball schedule. It seems odd to think baseball in the balmy breezes of downtown Toronto or downtown Trout River in February but in the more moderate climes of Florida and Arizona the diamonds are raising dust and the cleats are gathering mud. In the frozen ice castles of Canada the minor hockey ballets swirl on to the ecstacy of tournament heaven and the glad hearts of parents relieved at ending the daily 6 a.m. practice routine. These times qualify, in this typists mind, as the dog days of winter.
We rush onward with dogged determination in February. The cold is eternal and the heat bills astronomical and by now we are past the point of really caring. Survival until the thaw is the only focus. Hockey Night in Canada pulls the devout into Saturday worship and serious consideration is given to the imminent return of St. Wendel to the Toronto Temple just as thoughts of the reincarnation of Wayne as the Spirit of St. Louis surge across the synaptic gaps of the terminally addicted fan.
Down on the farm in the sleepy burg of St. John's, the minor league Leafs are struggling with the Islanders from Charlottetown for the top of the heap in the Atlantic Division of the American Hockey League. The Leafs have given generously to the upscale parent club in Toronto already this season and the toll has been taken as the big gunners are hived off and the rest of the roster struggles on bravely and still successfully.
Top sniper Kent Manderville has been traded off to Gretzky's old alma mater in Edmonton in exchange for Peter White, last years league scoring champion. Todd Warriner hangs in with the big club, threatening to become either the next Lanny Macdonald or a big part in the trade of the decade which must bring Wendel Clark back home. The boys are looking a lot like the farm teams that Cliff Fletcher put together in Atlanta and Calgary. Good young players emerge from unlikely positions in the draft and from the ranks of the unsigned and the unwanted.
Fletcher helped stock the great Halifax teams of the late 1970's as Atlanta Flames shared the Voyageurs roster with the Stanley Cup champions from Montreal. That was when such stalwarts as future fifty goal scorer Guy Chouinard and massive enforcer Harold Phillipoff rubbed elbow pads with the late Bill Nyrop and Habs gunner Pierre Mondou. The Fletcher farm in Calgary grew a few fine prospects too including some fellow named Hull who snipes the odd goal or two now and then for the St. Louis Blues.
Now in St John's the team is making major leaguers out of Brandon Convery and Jamie Heward while free agent Mark Kolesar checks and scores his way back up to Maple Leaf Gardens after a couple cups of rink coffee earlier this season. Brent Gretzky makes up for what he lacks in talent by being every bit as charming with the fans and the Newfoundland media as big brother Wayne upalong.
This is the year that St. John's has a chance to duplicate its long playoff run in the team's first year when Felix Potvin and Damian Rhodes took the boys to within a game of the Calder Cup. The team has veteran coach Tom Watt and rambunctious sidekick Mike Foligno behind the bench and they now have the players on the roster that Fletcher and company have handpicked to lead the Toronto organization into the twenty-first century.
The possibility still remains high that Fletcher will do a major raid on the farm to build a big trade that lands Wendel Clark or Kirk Muller or (heaven forbid and hold down Don Cherry) both of these erstwhile fellows. In that case the team may lose a few key parts as the management braintrust stocks an airlift of young, cheap talent to Long Island. This is a hockey season where wealthy teams like Toronto can make a trade for two expensive hockey players quicker than they can acquire one of these treasures. That is precisely the case in New York where both Clark and Muller pull in over two million dollars a year. There are not many organizations that can absorb that kind of American money but the Leafs are one that can.
Perhaps while the palm trees provide shade for baseball fanatics in Florida this spring, the wily trader of Maple Leaf Gardens can send Wendel back into the dressing room that belonged to him for ten seasons. Gretzky in St. Louis will be no match for the tough farm boy from Saskatchewan lining up alongside Mats Sundin and Doug Gilmour.
Happy dreaming and until next month: Be proud , be prosperous.