Paul Bissonnette, an NHL veteran of 202 games, is an engaging social media presence (with nearly700,000 Twitter followers) who has a thoughtful and unique perspective on the game. He plays for the Ontario Reign of the American Hockey League. Bissonnette will be contributing columns to USA TODAY Sports during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
In Canada, it takes a village to raise a hockey player.
When you watch New York Islanders right wing Cal Clutterbuck and New York Rangers defenseman Dan Girardi (who is injured) play in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, you got a glimpse of what small-town Canada can do for their children.
Clutterbuck and Girardi are from Welland, Ontario, a city of 50,000, located 16 miles from Niagara Falls. I also grew up there, as did Nathan Horton, Daniel Paille, Jamie Tardif, Matt Ellis and Andre Deveaux. We were all there in the same era, and all of us spent time in the NHL.
Maybe that’s a per-capita record for producing players in Canada.
All of us who played in the Welland area in the 1990s had the youth athletic experience that every child should wish for.
The local coaches – Mark Larose, Neil Blanchard, Bob Kraliz, Dave Shannon and Ray Boutin – taught us how to play the game and let us enjoy the experience.
Larose was a lawyer, and he would pay rental fees out of his own pocket to give us extra ice time. He’d rent an empty building to give us a place to practice our shooting.
Tardif’s dad drove a delivery truck at night, and he would pick us up at 4:30 in the morning because we could get free ice time then. No one else was crazy enough to get up that early. But we were.
After making sure I was awake, my parents went back to bed. What they didn’t know was that their 13-year-old son was watching the sex-line infomercials while he ate his cereal every morning.
I watched women in bikinis begging me to call them, and then played hockey for a couple of hours. What a life. When I look back, it amazes me how perfect it all was.
We had very little politics in our hockey association, and the community supported our teams. Welland folks, with no relatives on the team, would come to Welland Tigers games.
Today, I hear horror stories about parents being too invested in their children’s careers. We didn’t have that behavior in Welland. Our parents were just parents, not agents or career managers.
Part of the Canadian hockey tradition is having a dad who was proud that you played. My dad was always a fan, never a critic.
Even if I played poorly, my dad would still say, “Great job out there tonight.”
“Are you even watching?” I would say. “I was minus-3."
Every dad had a hockey story that he passed along to his child. My dad’s was that when he was a young man he played in an adult league that fined players $5 for every fight.
He fought three times in one game; $15 was a substantial amount in those days. My mother, dating him at the time, told him she would break up with him if he didn’t stop fighting. He must have stopped because I’m here.
When I look back, all of us who made the NHL were a byproduct of our community. All of those volunteer coaches draw an assist on our success.
None of our parents were rich.When we got new skates or a new stick, we genuinely appreciated it.
Girardi wasn’t even drafted, and worked his way up from the East Coast Hockey League to the NHL in the span of a season and a half.
Clutterbuck was a dominant scorer growing up, but he adapted his game through the years to become a noteworthy third- or fourth-line physical winger.
When he was asked to become a super checker, he could have said: "I’m not doing that because I’m a scorer." But that’s not how we were raised in Welland.
Welland taught us all how to adapt, to be team players. The city once boasted steel mills and a John Deere factory. They are gone, and yet Welland soldiers on.
Tardif toiled seven seasons in the American Hockey League before he got his chance to play a couple of games with the Bruins. Like the community where he once lived, Tardif had persevered.
My youth hockey experience instilled in us values that we have carried through our careers and lives.
Today, I hear stories that tell me that too many have lost sight of what is important about playing youth hockey. Every parent thinks their child will be the next Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby. Today’s young players face too much pressure. Those folks have forgotten what it is all about.
PHOTOS: Highlights from Round 1 of Stanley Cup Playoffs
