I grew up, naturally, rooting for my hometown Philadelphia Flyers.
It’s been three moves and several years since I lived in the city. While I still follow the Flyers closer than any team in the NHL, it’s now a professional investment rather than a rooting interest.
Instead of cheering for a particular team, I root for a good story. I know who I’ll be pulling for this spring.
This week I finished “Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer,” the recently released autobiography of Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau written with Tim Leone.
As much as anything, it’s a love story about the sport, and the American Hockey League in particular.
He scored more points in the AHL than any person in the 80s, yet got precious few chances to stick in the NHL. Then he won championship after championship as a coach in the minor leagues, but saw his name passed over again.
As a player, Boudreau takes responsibility. He was immensely talented, but never worked hard enough to achieve his potential. As a coach, he got overlooked because he didn’t look and sound the part.
One read of the book is straight inspirational: overweight, career minor-leaguer with bad taste in suits becomes Coach of the Year for one of hockey’s best teams.
Another is pure fun. Boudreau is the clown prince of the wacky minor league life, and the book careens through outposts like Johnstown, Fort Wayne — and yes, Adirondack — with glee.
This is a definitive account of life in the minors, for better or worse. It’s an honest, occasionally painful reckoning. Nothing is spared, from his harrowing, nearly unprintable hazing involving duct tape and tar, to goofing off with the Hansons during the filming of Slap Shot.
Boudreau played the final four games of his career with the Adirondack Red Wings in the 1992 playoffs for coach Barry Melrose. They were his only four games in the Red Wings uniform.
He joined the team in the second round of the playoffs and scored a goal on his first shift against Springfield. There was a break before the conference finals, and in the meantime, the Detroit Red Wings’ season ended. They sent down a few players, and according to Boudreau, general manager Bryan Murray told Melrose to play the prospects instead of Boudreau.
He packed up and went home. Adirondack went on to win the Calder Cup. The four games are barely a footnote in an AHL Hall of Fame career.
“Yet, that brief Adirondack stint is how I got my name carved on the league’s silver grail,” Boudreau writes. “Go figure.”
For those Boudreau took a shine to, such as Melrose, the praise is sincere and flowing. Boudreau says he keeps a picture of Melrose in house.
For those that cross him, Boudreau is equally unflinching. His feud with Sean Avery of the Rangers, who played for Boudreau in Manchester, has drawn the most attention in the national press.
Locally, his row with Kevin Dineen is likely to raise a few eyebrows. The two were opposing coaches in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2006 when Boudreau coached Hershey against Dineen’s Portland team. Dineen, the son of former Adirondack coach Bill Dineen, maintains an off-season home in the area.
According to Boudreau’s account, Dineen violated a pre-series arrangement to close practices by showing up at Hershey’s skate the day before Game 7. Boudreau stopped the practice to yell at Dineen, and as Boudreau writes, “it turned into an F-bomb festival that continued under the stands after practice.”
But the book isn’t about settling old scores. Boudreau is a colorful guy and the stories fly fast and thick. They don’t call him Gabby for nothing.
Tim McManus covers the Phantoms for The Post-Star. He may be reached at tmcmanus@poststar.com
Posted in Sports on Saturday, November 21, 2009 1:25 am Updated: 4:28 pm. | Tags: Phantoms
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