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roy macgregor

'Tis the season of the dads' road trip.

It has become an annual ritual for many NHL teams; the sons swirling about the ice while their fathers sit watching as a group, looking eerily like an old-timers team that will take to the ice once the beer bottles and stands empty.

It can be heartwarming, as when the dads of the Ottawa Senators high-fived each other Thursday night following their boys' 3-1 victory over the Minnesota Wild.

And yet, at the risk of tossing a little bah-humbug into such a festive scene, it is also out of balance.

Where, dare we ask, are the mothers? When does the moms' road trip take off?

We turn for perspective on this relatively recent hockey ritual to the current No. 1 hockey mom in the country: Cassie Campbell. The Olympic gold medalist and former captain of Team Canada is today the proud parent - along with Hockey Canada's Brad Pascall - of one-month-old Brooke Violet, who will almost certainly take to the ice herself, given such lineage.

Parenthood, Campbell says, is "better than Olympic medals," but it is also a shared matter when it comes to getting children into and through a sport like hockey.

Her own mother, Eunice, was a great athlete herself, a farm girl in rural Ontario who played softball and even a year of women's football before retiring when she found herself pregnant with the Campbells' first child, Jeff.

It was Eunice who encouraged Cassie to take up the national game when the little girl said she'd rather wear hockey skates than figure skates. "My mom coached me," Campbell says. "And she managed. My dad was great, and I don't really want to say moms do more than dads … but, well, they do.

"It's moms who tend to organize the family. It's moms who keep the schedules. It's mom who makes sure the kid gets to practice and back. It's every night and every weekend."

Hockey lore bears out this argument.

If not for Katherine Howe, no Gordie. It was Katherine's kindness to a destitute neighbour in Floral, Sask., that led to a gunny sack being dropped off in the Howe home. Inside were two skates. Gordie put on one, sister Edna the other, and out they went onto the frozen fields. He bought the second skate off his sister for a dime and never looked back.

If not for Phyllis Gretzky, no Wayne. She handled the multiple practices for the large family; she organized the meals and the travel schedules. "A lot of people know about my dad," Wayne once said of his late mother, "but the sacrifices my mom made to put me in the NHL never get talked about."

If not for Pierrette Lemieux, no Mario. She's the mom who shovelled snow into her own home, packing it down on the floor so that her boys could continue playing "street hockey" with indoor lighting.

If not for Laurette Beliveau, no Jean. She had industrial-strength linoleum installed in her kitchen so her hockey-loving boys could keep their skates on during lunch and not lose any time getting back to the outdoor rink.

No Karen Modano, no Mike. Find another mother who would stand against the basement wall in full goalie gear while holding up a garbage can lid for her son to shoot at.

The Minnesota Wild are one of the few teams in the NHL to recognize this reality. A few years back they took the dads on the road, then the next year the moms, in both instances to California during the winter.

"We did it to give the parents an insight into their kids' lives," says Doug Risebrough, then general manager of the Wild and today a scout for the New York Rangers.

"It was a recognition of sacrifice. It was done to reward them, and a lot of times it's the mothers who took the kids to the rinks, who tied their skates up, who dealt with their bad times as well as their good."

Risebrough, who accompanied the parents on both trips, found the dads and moms very different. "With their dads," he says, "it was more like a big-brother relationship. They tended to sit back in groups and just listen to their dads talk and tell stories.

"The players were way more interactive with their mothers."

One aspect where he expected major differences, however, he found little.

"I always thought it was the fathers who put the pressure on the kids," Risebrough says. "But the day I saw Mrs. Koivu [mother of current Wild captain Mikko]standing at the dressing room door yelling 'We need a win!' I realized mothers are no different than fathers."

All the more reason why there should be a moms' road trip for every one that dad gets.



Columnist Roy MacGregor writes about hockey on Tuesday and Saturdays in The Globe and Mail.

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