NLL Insider

It has been a long time since I was a rookie, but for six or seven years it seemed as if I was some one’s rookie every year. Whether it was lacrosse or hockey, junior, senior, field or box, I had my head shaved more then my fair share of times. I had to drink a lot of warm beer and tequila through a straw out of a stainless steel popcorn bowl that was being heated by a Bunsen burner. I ran around icy parking lots without any clothes on carrying a marshmallow passenger in some unmentionable place that some other rookie (who was slower then me) was likely going to have to eat. My parents found me duct-taped to our front porch one year, mostly unclothed, thoroughly soaked with the garden hose. I’ve slow danced in public places with more then my share of dudes at the behest of some group of chuckling veterans.

Funny thing is I’m still alive to tell the stories and I learned a whole lot about respecting my sporting elders, aka vets. I might have learned it the hard way but I learned it never the less.

I am not supporting hazing, and I understand why in our litigious society governed by lawsuits and complainers, it no longer has its place, but we have yet to find that suitable replacement that demonstrates who is who, to the rookies.

If you eliminate all of the body shavings and generally illegal acts that were used to abuse rookies in the old days, you’d still be left with some classic acts of respect. No vet ever carried his own bag off the bus. No rookie ever got up first and walked off the bus ahead of the 10-year veteran, and when we got back on the bus, it had better be clean.

In the buffet line, you guessed it, the guys who had paved the way for these slobbering little buggers got to eat first. Oddly enough you got to know the babies a lot quicker too — you weeded out the whiners, and inevitably you ended up respecting them more in return for the respect that they had shown to you. And this was all strictly off the floor. If a rookie is in the lineup, he’s earned it and we never questioned their skills; they just needed to know that skill only counts for so much, and respect will get you the rest of the way.

When I was 14, I was called up to play with the juniors in Brampton. I was a good little rookie. I knew all of the guys anyways because I had watched them play for years. I also knew about the stories of past hazing. I knew one day I too would be duct-taped to a chair, shaved from head to toe and put on display during the beer garden.

I took it like a man. A couple weeks later, some old fart in the league (probably Doug Hill) took a cheap shot at me; it happens all the time, but before I could even get up to drop my gloves, two or three of the vets, the same guys who had “abused” me, and made me carry their bags, and clean up their bus, they were the first ones in to the pile to send a message that the rookie wasn’t to be touched.

So, Dan Teat, Mike Hasen, Mike Henderson, Kevin Hanes, Bob Hamley, Brian Shanahan — Thanks for the lessons in respect, I’m a better player because of it. And to all of the rookies, my bag is in room 415, I expect it to be loaded in the van. Make sure the dressing room is cleaned up after the game, and if you’re really good, us old farts will be buying the beers at the post-game party. We know what it’s like to live on a rookie salary.

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