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Toronto, Ontario Ten years after hockey's Miracle On Ice, Herb Brooks decided to gather his gold-medal winning players together for a celebration. So he held a barbecue. In his backyard. Last night in Toronto another meal paid to honor Brooks, though the surroundings were decidedly more formal, the grass having been replaced with fine china, shorts and t-shirts giving way to tuxedos. The late American head coach was inducted posthumously into the Hockey Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Toronto alongside famed National Hockey League goaltender Patrick Roy, Original Six star forward Dick Duff and Calgary Flames governor Harley Hotchkiss. "My dad cooked hot dogs and had two kegs of beer," Brooks' son, Dan, remembered yesterday, as he received his father's Hall of Fame ring on behalf of the family. The younger Brooks - the image of his dad - could not help but see the humor in the fact that since that barbecue, the Olympic performance that made his father a household name has been turned into not one, but two Hollywood movies. "A Disney movie? You gotta be kidding me," said Dan Brooks, still in shock at the most recent production, which featured actor Kurt Russell portraying his dad.  The late Herb Brooks' hand in the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Olympics touched the hearts of all at the Hockey HOF 2006 inductions. But on this night, where the four inductees took turns at the lectern in the refurbished 19th century Toronto bank that houses hockey's cherished history - with the plaques of past inductees behind them, and the audience dotted with many of those same faces in front them - everyone had earned the right to be a star. That honor had certainly been a long time in coming for Duff. Though his knack for performing when it counted most - a Stanley Cup-winning goal for the Maple Leafs in 1962 standing as a fine example - had earned him the reputation of a playoff performer, Duff had waited 35 long years for his invitation to the shrine at the corner of Front and Yonge streets. His was a career that began in 1952 when a telegram arrived at his Kirkland Lake, Ontarrio, home, with an invitation from the Toronto Maple Leafs for the then 16-year-old to play hockey for one of their feeder teams, and eventually found its way via trade to Montreal, where he collected four more Cup titles to the pair he won in Toronto. "After a while, I sort of stopped (paying attention to the inductions),"said the 70-year-old, who insisted he had found peace with his place in hockey's annals, induction or not. Still, he had admitted he was "almost in tears" upon receiving the good news this past summer. There was much less doubt about Roy's place in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Born in Quebec City in 1965, Roy's 19-year NHL career is a tale of two cities. He won two titles in Montreal and then two more in Colorado. Along the way, he was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy three times as the playoff MVP. "Hockey taught me discipline and it also taught me to go for my dreams," Roy said during a speech where he acknowledged both his passion and his stubbornness. It was those same attributes that prompted him to demand his 1995 trade out of Montreal after a particularly rough game where he was left in for eight goals. Roy admitted publicly prior to the Hall of Fame weekend that he was happy that, unlike in Cooperstown, where baseball players are inducted as a member of a team they played on, he would not be forced to choose. "Today when I look back, Roy said in his speech, "I feel very lucky to have been part of the National Hockey League and to have played in the best possible conditions on teams such as the Canadiens and the Avalanche." Hotchkiss let slip that his allegiances were also somewhat divided. Born and raised in southern Ontario near Tillsonburg, his favorite team as a child growing up in the 1930s was the Maple Leafs. But that all changed when the oil and gas industry executive got involved in a consortium that purchased and moved the Atlanta Flames to Calgary. "Being here truly is beyond any dream I ever had," said the chairman of the NHL's board of governors, whose Flames won the Cup in 1988. "This is at the top of the heap." Brooks delivered a touching tribute to his father, killed three summers ago in a single-vehicle crash in his native Minnesota. It was a speech that, appropriately, wound up sounding more like a eulogy to the man whose 1980 gold-medal squad and its historic win against the former Soviet Union did more to promote the game in the United States than any single player ever could. "It wasn't a sporting event. It's almost a piece of American history," Dan Brooks said. "People I meet ... the first thing they say is, 'I remember exactly where I was when that happened.' I don't think there are too many things that people can say that about." Still, he urged people in his speech not to forget his late father's other achievements, such as his time coaching in the NHL with the Rangers, North Stars, Devils and Penguins, as well as his role as an innovator of the game for welcoming the European style to North America. Despite these pleas, the younger Brooks could not help himself when searching for a final way to pay tribute to his dad as he closed out his speech. There is an image, he told the audience, of the American players - that ragged bunch of no-name college players - after they had clinched the gold medal in Lake Placid. They are all gathered on the ice, their fingers pointed skywards, indicating their status as the best in the world. Yet, Herb Brooks is nowhere to be found, off somewhere in a hallway in lone comfort of his against-all-odds accomplishment. "This is the crowning jewel of his career," Dan Brooks said, as he pointed his finger upward. "And I know he's in the building somewhere now." |
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