Hall of Famer Lanny McDonald was a hit
Hockey Hall of Famer Lanny McDonald was a keynote speaker at the B.C. Cattlemen's Association convention last Saturday.
His talk, Leading and Motivating Your Team Through Difficult Times, was apropos considering the upheaval in the cattle industry.
The event was well-attended by cattlemen and the general public who came out to the curling rink to hear the hockey legend.
McDonald spoke briefly about his upbringing and at length about his hockey career, finishing up with a few words of wisdom about what it takes to get through tough times and stay focused on one's goals.
McDonald grew up on a family farm in Craigmyle, Alberta. The family ran 60 head of cattle on two sections of land, a fact McDonald felt qualified him to be speaking to a crowd of ranchers.
But it was the humorous anecdotes about his life in hockey and players like Barry Beck, Tiger Williams, Jim Peplinski and Bob Johnson that had the crowd hanging onto his every word.
Much of McDonald's humour was self-deprecating. He recalled some early games when he was a young hot shot on the ice who knew he was going to be a star.rnI always carried the puck back then, McDonald said several times to bring home the point about how much he viewed himself as a legend in his own mind.
He recounted a funny story about tough guy Barry Beck (Bubba) slamming McDonald not only into the boards but out of the rink as payback for an earlier skirmish.
McDonald looked up to see Beck looming over him, pulled himself up off the floor, and went back out onto the ice laughing, Is that the best you could do?rnBeck stood there with his mouth gaping open, speechless, and when McDonald's teammates asked him what he said to Beck, McDonald replied, I told him next time he touched me, I would kill him.
McDonald began his NHL career playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1973.
In 1979, he was traded to the Colorado Rockies, the last ranked team in the league at that time.
But even then, McDonald said, he was inspired by the positive energy in people like coach Don Cherry, who told McDonald, If you give it everything you've got every time you get out there, that's all you can ask.rnIn 1981, McDonald was traded to the Calgary Flames, where he played until his retirement in 1989. It was with the Flames that McDonald hit the high point of his career, capturing the Stanley Cup in 1989.
McDonald spoke about his family life to illustrate his point about focusing on the positive.
He recalled a game he would engage in with his wife and four children around the dinner table.
I would get everyone to say three good things they saw or helped make happen every day. That did three things: it helped us deal in positives, we had better communi-cation and we all learned a lot, McDonald said.
McDonald closed his speech by talking about change, a fact of life everyone must cope with.
Most people look at change as a loss, as taking something away. Change is simply change. We need to embrace it and move on.
The floor was then opened up to questions from the audience, and there the topics ranged from violence in hockey to co-ed hockey and the recent NHL strike which saw an entire season of hockey lost.
Earlier, McDonald spoke to the Osoyoos Times and gave his opinion on the strike.
It's absolutely ridiculous. Everyone loses.
It's similar to what's going on in the cattle industry and our friends south of the border. They've got one faction trying to close the border and another trying to open up the border.
In the NHL, you've got the ownership on one side who let it get out of hand and the players who didn't look at the last ten years as a bonus and suck it up a little bit.
If the deal could have been better, I could understand holding out, but when you know the next deal had to be worse, why you would sit out one day is beyond me. You can never get that back.
If they had just come back and found a way to keep playing, in three to five years they would have been back to where they were in the first place, and ownership would have had a chance to manage their expenses a bit better.
In my opinion, both sides lost, but more than anything, the game and the fans really got hurt, McDonald said.
When asked what led him to getting into motivational speaking, McDonald said he feels he can pass on some of his own life lessons, and his belief in focusing on the positive, to others who may be struggling through tough times.
I've had the chance to work with some great people in the past like Roger Nielsen and Bob Johnson. And now that I have four kids of my own and a 16-month-old grandson, it has given me the chance to be involved in their lives, as well.
I love people, enjoy meeting people and it has been a lot of fun, McDonald added.
McDonald said this is the most rewarding time in his life. He admitted the toughest period of his life was when he left hockey and tried to find his way in the business world. He now works in the oil and gas industry, coaches youth sports and does a number of things for children's charities.
McDonald also commented on one of the more colourful players in the NHL , Eddie Shack, with whom he played one season.
Eddie was totally wacko. You had no idea where Eddie was going to come from next. He was exactly what his nickname was – Eddie 'The Entertainer' Shack.
He'd be standing up behind the bench while the coach was coaching and be cheering the crowd on to shout 'We want Shack!' – and we were supposed to be in the National Hockey League. He was a great guy, but very much the entertainer.rnMcDonald flew into Kelowna and drove down to Osoyoos for the cattlemen's engagement and he had high praise for the Okanagan Valley.
It was a spectacular drive all the way in and when I arrived in Osoyoos, I sat out in front of the lake and watched people water-ski, the fish jump – it's beautiful.
I phoned my wife and said, 'I've got to bring you back here.' It's a little piece of heaven.rnMcDonald played 16 seasons in the NHL, recording 500 goals, 506 assists and 1,006 points in 1,111 games.
He currently holds the Calgary Flames record for the most goals in a season (66 during the 1982-83 season).
McDonald was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992.
