Free Hockey Dad by Bob Mckenzie Page A

without so much as a whimper.
    But Shawn didn't sit for hours at a time and draw hockey pictures. He had no interest whatsoever in learning which logos belonged to which teams and couldn't have cared less about how Mike's friend Mario Le-Moo brushed his teeth.
    Shawn's attention span was fl eeting. He would go from one thing to the next in rapid succession. His hockey stick wasn't going to get any more attention from him than his toy truck or toy car or toy gun or Super Soaker or toy sword or his action figure s. He was much more likely to plant himself in front of the TV to watch cartoons than a hockey game, which is to say he was a pretty normal little kid.
    That said, Shawn was still going to be given every opportunity Mike had when it came to hockey.
    The first time I recall having Shawn on skates was just after Christmas of 1992, when he was about three and a half years old. That's when the Griswolds-I mean the McKenzies-decided to do the Christmas Vacation thing in Gavle, Sweden, site of the 1993 World Junior Championship. I obviously had to work the tournament for TSN and since the first game started on Christmas Day, Cindy and I agreed it would be nice for the whole family to be together for a family Christmas in Sweden.
    So we sort of celebrated Christmas in Canada with our families four or five days before the actual day. Then the four of us-Cindy, six-year-old Mike and three-year-old Shawn and I-jetted off to Sweden. If that sounds exotic and glamorous, great, but anyone who has traveled with kids that age, they know only too well what it's really like.
    There was, with a seven-hour time difference, the seven hour overnight fl ight from Toronto to Frankfurt and a six-hour layover in Frankfurt before the two-hour fl ight to Stockholm, followed by the two-hour drive north to Gavle. I recall getting into the nice Volvo station wagon rental we got at Stockholm's Arlanda airport and everyone (except me, of course) immediately, for the first time on the trip, falling asleep in the car.
    As we drove north from Stockholm to Gavle on that snowy afternoon and the family slept, I did what I could to stay awake, but it was difficult , compounded by the fact I was starting to feel extremely warm, so much so that I thought I might be getting sick with a fever. I started sweating. My shirt and jeans became drenched. The hotter I got, the more tired I got. Every so often I would have to put down the window to get a blast of cold, fresh air to keep me awake. I was never so happy on the early evening of Christmas Eve to finally arrive at our hotel in Gavle, wake up the family, unpack the car and check in. It was only as I exited the car and happened to put my hand on the driver's seat that I made an amazing discovery-this car had heated seats, which was a totally new and foreign concept for me. Let's just say that drive might have been a lot more enjoyable if I'd realized the heated seat was on high and frying my backside for the entire time.

 

     
     
Grizli777

    I mention the Gavle trip because, to the best of my recollection, that was where Shawn first skated. I had gone out in advance of the trip to buy Shawn his own skates. We took the same bob skates Mike had learned on but I figure d Shawn was a little older than when Mike first tried skating, so he needed to have single-blade skates.
    There was a great outdoor rink close to the hotel in Gavle where kids and adults played shinny all day long. That is where we spent a considerable amount of our free time. Mike loved it because there were little pickup games going on all over the ice and it took him no time at all to mix in.
    It was also a time when the McKenzie family got to hang out with Darryl Sittler and his family. Darryl's son Ryan was playing for Team USA. Darryl and his lovely wife, Wendy, who passed away in October of 2001 after a battle with colon cancer, and their daughters Ashley and Meaghan, were staying at our hotel. The Sittler girls were older than our boys by