Roger's World: The Life and Unusual Times of Roger Neilson Mass market paperbound - 2005

Excerpt

For a mentor who always had an ear for his players, Neilson frequently tuned out of conversations, never more famously than when Craig Ramsay, then a rookie with the Peterborough Petes, walked into Neilson’s coach’s office in 1967 to tell him he was homesick and quitting the team.

For days, the nervous sixteen-year-old Ramsay had been summoning the courage to tell Roger what was in his heart. He sat in the chair across from Neilson, started into his farewell speech and … zzzzz … Roger promptly dozed off.

“He sat there, with his back against the wall, sleeping,” says Ramsay. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought, ‘I can’t just leave.’ Finally, he wakes up and says, ‘Well, let’s not do anything rash. Let’s think about it a while.’

“He wanted me to stick with it, wanted some young players to build around.”

Slightly perplexed, Ramsay left Neilson’s office, stayed with the Petes, and went on to a long and successful hockey career as an NHL player and coach. Just another stroke of Neilson coaching genius?

*****

Partly due to his long work days and early-morning habits, Roger was capable of falling asleep at any time.

When he was a teacher at Bayview Junior High, parents began to file in for teacher interviews. Sitting at his desk, ostensibly listening to an explanation of why Johnny doesn’t always do his homework, Roger fell sound asleep in his chair. The astonished parents didn’t know whether to wake him up or cover him up and leave the room. Moments later, he awoke and completed the discourse on Johnny.

*****

Devin Smith, now of the NHLPA, who lived at Roger’s house while attending Trent University in Peterborough, says it would take no end of coaxing to get Neilson to watch something on television other than hockey. Finally, he might relent and agree to a movie.

Only one problem.

“The minute he sat down to watch it, he’d fall asleep,” says Smith. “But he could watch hockey, including the late games, no problem.”

*****

In the mid-1990s, after being fired by the New York Rangers, Neilson toured New Zealand and Australia with Smith and Kent Pearce, sons of Neilson associates Ron Smith and Tom Pearce.

Nice idea, the tour, if only Roger would remember it’s always safer when he’s on the passenger side of the car. Maybe the location of the steering wheel threw him off?

“When we first got to Australia, we rented this old beat-up car, and remember, you’re driving on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road,” says Pearce. “And it had a manual stick shift, on the steering column. So here’s the three of us, not one of us knowing how to drive this thing. We got Rog in the seat and we took off out of the car-rental place, and he goes to make a left-hand turn, forgets he’s on the wrong side of the road, misses a mailbox by inches. Now we’re up on the sidewalk and people are scattering left and right. Roger stopped right on the sidewalk and got someone else to take over.”

*****

Roger loved Harvey’s breakfast sandwiches, so much so that they affected his concentration. At a Harvey’s drive-through in Ottawa, Neilson had no hands on the wheel while negotiating a sandwich and coffee. As if matters were not bad enough, he was exiting via a one-way entrance and slammed into a car driven by a startled and angry woman. Angry, that is, until she got out and recognized Roger.

*****

Young friends Todd Ervin, Landry Smith, and his brother, Devin, were driving with Roger in Vancouver one time when he fell asleep after stopping at a red light. The light turned green, and red again, before Roger woke up. Suddenly, he bolted awake and said, “What’s wrong with this light that it’s taking so long?”

The boys howled.

*****

Many of his acolytes believe Roger would occasionally pretend to be dozing off on a trip so that a worried passenger would rush to take the wheel while the car was still moving. Broadcaster Greg Millen says Neilson crossed four lanes of the 401 near Toronto while dozing off. “I just yelled at him and wouldn’t let him drive any more.”

*****

“I wouldn’t let him drive,” echoes Lynn Ervin, mother of Roger’s dear friend Todd. “I’d been to visit him in Peterborough one time, and he was taking me to the airport in Toronto. I insisted on taking the wheel because I was afraid he’d fall asleep. I also remember driving through the streets of Toronto and people would recognize Roger and poke their head into the open window and say hi when the car was stopped at a light.

*****

As if he didn’t have enough trouble driving, it was sometimes all Roger could do to find his car. Parking lots were his worst nightmare, particularly at the Centrum Plaza in Kanata, near the Corel Centre, home of the Ottawa Senators, where he’d lose his car coming out of Denny’s Restaurant.

“The guy who built this place should be shot,” fumed Neilson, in uncharacteristically un-Christian fashion.

The combination of the Centrum lot and a rental car was too much for him altogether.

In his first season with Ottawa, Roger’s Toyota truck was banged up in the Corel Centre parking lot and had to go in for repairs. He could not keep track of his replacement vehicle.

“What kind of car was it?” asked a reporter.

“A Sunbird or a Firebird or something,” he said.

“That plaza over on Terry Fox Drive,” he continued, referring to the dreaded Centrum Plaza, “is one of the most confusing in the world. Twice I’ve come out of there and gotten in the wrong car. I’ve had to say to people, ‘Sorry, I have a red sports car, too.’”

*****

The record shows that Neilson was losing cars long before he arrived in Ottawa. Devin Smith remembers Roger fumbling to get into a car, not his own, but convinced it was his because the keys worked. He started the car, noticed the ashtray was full of cigarette butts and said, “Somebody’s been smoking in my car!”


From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

The best hockey book of the season”
–Globe and Mail


From the Hardcover edition.