Hawerchuk recalls junior days

BRAMPTON, Ont. – Dale Hawerchuk may be two decades removed from his junior hockey days with the Cornwall Royals, but the Hockey Hall of Fame Inductee doesn´t see much difference in the junior hockey of his era and the hockey played today by teams such as the Battalion.
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"You know, it doesn´t change much, even going back to the days I played," Hawerchuk said after competing in the recent Battalion Charity Golf Tournament at the Brampton Golf Club. "The players will get bigger and better but at the end of the day it’s the kids that really want it and push for it that succeed. It isn´t handed to you and you really have to work at it."
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Hawerchuk won a pair of Memorial Cups in his two years in Cornwall skating alongside players like Doug Gilmour, Scott Arniel, Dan Daoust and Marc Crawford (currently the Head Coach of the Vancouver Canucks) and is one of many hockey people who believe that the Stanley Cup might be an easier prize to claim than the Memorial Cup.
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"I believe it is (harder to win the Memorial Cup) because you only have two to four years to win it and you may get 10 to 15 years to win the Stanley Cup," explained Hawerchuk, who played in the 1997 Stanley Cup Final with the Philadelphia Flyers. "I played two years in Cornwall and we won two Memorial Cups. We were fortunate, but we also had people who came to Cornwall and were willing to pay the price and those are the kind of players that you want to develop in junior hockey. It doesn´t matter whether they end up in the NHL, they will end up being successful in life."
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After scoring 286 points in 144 games with the Royals (and being selected as the CHL Player of the Year in 1981), Hawerchuk, was drafted first overall by the Winnipeg Jets in 1981. He went on to play 16 seasons in the NHL with stops in Winnipeg, Buffalo, St. Louis and Philadelphia before retiring after the 1997 season due to an arthritic left hip. Hawerchuk scored 1,409 points (518 goals, 891 assists) in 1,188 games and collected the Calder Trophy as the league´s top rookie in 1981-82 after scoring 103 points, the third highest freshman total in league history. Hawerchuk, who also contributed 99 points (30 goals, 69 assists) in 97 post-season games, ranks 13th in NHL history in career points and 15th in career assists. Hawerchuk played in five NHL All Star Games and took part in two Canada Cup tournaments.
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Hawerchuk´s physical ailments have kept him from considering a Mario Lemieux-type comeback. "If I had a better left hip I´d be back and play as long as I could," laughed the 38-year-old Toronto native. "I still love the game but when the hip went bad, it made it easier to walk away because I knew that physically I couldn´t do it anymore.
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"I have a 12-year-old playing minor hockey and I catch junior hockey on TV or read about it" Hawerchuk continued. "The biggest thing I notice about today´s junior players is that it’s a different generation. They have a different outlook on life than my generation and my generation is different than my parents. The quality is still as good as ever, the technology is better and the players are better prepared now. Sometimes I think the Russian and the Czech kids have an advantage because they are hungrier since life isn´t as great over there. Nobody says it will be ´easy street´ over here but you have to have that desire to make it."
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There were few foreign players in the Canadian Hockey League in Hawerchuk´s era. "There were hardly any at all," he remembered, "it was just starting to happen. If I remember correctly Peterborough brought in a couple of guys when Mike Keenan was coaching there."
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Keenan also played a role in allowing Hawerchuk to be part of one of the most celebrated goals in Canadian hockey history. The Team Canada coach sent Hawerchuk out to take the faceoff deep in the Canadian end that resulted in Mario Lemieux´s famous goal in Game 3 of the 1987 Canada Cup.
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"It´s funny because Mark Messier was on the ice at the time and Mike Keenan told me to go on and take the faceoff," he recalled. "Messier was tired since he was at the end of a shift. All I can remember is skating into the circle thinking ´come hell or high water I´m not losing this faceoff´. As it turned out, I won the draw and we went down and scored the winning goal. It was a fantastic series."
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When asked about what it was like to see Lemieux´s goal from behind the play, Hawerchuk replied, "a lot of guys ask me about that. One of the Russians was trying to get back in the play and they say that I kind of tripped him up." Hawerchuk laughed at the memory and added, "in my mind he took a dive and that´s my story!"
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These days Hawerchuk keeps himself busy tending to his 100 acre horse farm in Hockley Valley.
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"We have a horse farm where we breed, raise and train jumping horses," he said. "We´re only in our second year but we have a nice operation. We have three or four horses that we show in the east and young ones coming along all the time."
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Hawerchuk will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame along with Mike Gartner, Jari Kurri and Viacheslav Fetisov on November 12, 2001.
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