Saturday, June 6, 2020

When CHOM was Home - Skating with The Great One

I was opening up the newsroom mail when I came across an invitation with my name on it from Coca-Cola to attend its Future Stars hockey camp in Val-Belair. According to the invite, I would have an opportunity to skate with Wayne Gretzky and other NHL stars.

Whaaaaat?

Incredulous, dumbfounded and dazed, I slapped my face to regain my senses and hurried to my boss’s office to ask whether I could attend. It was June 17, 1993, and my Program Director, Ian McLean, said, “go for it and get some interviews”!

On June 28, 1993, I hopped into a company vehicle with my hockey equipment and a company tape deck and drove to Val-Belair. We were two entire dressing rooms crammed full of star struck journalists. Organizers gave us a quick speech about being careful not to injure the NHL stars and then we were out on the ice. Granted, ice time was limited because of the large number of journalists, but I got out there four or five times.

Denis Savard, Rob Niedermayer and a pile of fellow journalists were on my team, playing against Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr and more fellow journalists. After the match, there was a reception where I interviewed Wayne Gretzky and Denis Savard. Jagr told me he did not feel comfortable enough to do an interview in English, but he very kindly signed an autograph for me.

I remember being amazed at how gracious The Great One was in the face of a ludicrous tornado of attention sucking up every second of his time. He was gracious during our interview and while posing with me for a quick photo.


I still have the jersey Coca-Cola gave us for the scrimmage, not to mention the memories and the thrill of meeting Wayne Gretzky. He was the real thing.

Yeah, I played hockey with Wayne Gretzky; that’s just the kind of crazy stuff that would happen when CHOM was home.