The
Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup on Sunday. The day after, it didn’t really
matter to me all that much.
Three days
after the death of Gordie Howe, hockey lost another legend in retired Michigan
State University head coach Ron Mason, who passed away at age 76 early in the morning
on June 13. Unlike Mr. Hockey, whom I met only once at an NHL All-Star Game in New York City, I knew Ron
Mason personally, and a lot longer.
I never
called him Ron. It was always "Coach".
Back in the
fall of 1994, three years after graduating from Boston College and spending
time at BC, Alaska Fairbanks, and with the NHL and the New Jersey Devils, I
packed my bags again and drove 10 hours west with my father to take a position
as the sports information intern for hockey at Michigan State. I stayed there
for two seasons, 82 games, and 53 victories. While MSU didn't win any titles
(came close a couple of times) or raise any banners to the rafters of Munn Ice
Arena in my largely non-descript tenure, in a lot of ways those were some of
the best years of my life.
If you’ve
ever seen the 2014 Brad Pitt film "Fury" about a World War II Sherman
tank crew in Nazi Germany, you know that the credo that was passed along among
his five-man gang about their insular existence, that they were each living the
"best job I ever had". That's how I feel about my time at State—and a
lot of that had to do with Spartan Hockey and Ron Mason.
A year-and-a half before I arrived in Michigan, Coach had broken retired Boston College
head coach Len Ceglarksi’s record for career NCAA victories. Even the vending
machines on the concourse at Munn paid him homage, electronic letters scrolling
around price listings with the words “Welcome to Munn Arena—Home of the Winningest
Coach in North American College Hockey.”
“Roman, could
we get that fixed?” he asked me early on. “It makes it sound like there’s some
guy in France
I have to beat.”
I'd actually
seen Coach on the Spartan bench before I ever worked at State. The first time
was in 1988, when MSU edged Harvard, 6-5, at Bright
Hockey Center
in Cambridge, Mass. in the NCAA Tournament. A
year-and-a-half-later, it was at BC as State rebounded to win, 5-3, at Conte
Forum, eight months after the Spartans won a best-of-three NCAA quarterfinal
series at Munn over the Eagles. I didn't actually meet him until five years
later, though, when I walked into Munn and shook hands with him outside his
office.
"You're
not a member of the media, Roman, you're one of us," he told me
matter-of-factly.
That was my
life the next 20 months, dealing and traveling with MSU Hockey, overseeing the
press box at home and acting as a liaison on the road. Besides taking care of
publicity, I’d also take a spin on the ice at Munn every chance I got. Not as impressive
as it sounds, since I didn’t start skating seriously until I was 15, but I can
ice the puck with the best of them.
I got hurt
playing in the Sunday night league at Munn one weekend when some opposing behemoth
dumped me on the ice and I ruptured my left trapezius muscle, which blew up
like a balloon. I convalesced the next day in the training room, with Spartan players
snickering that I had suffered a writing injury, then being minutely impressed
when I said I actually gotten hurt playing hockey. I remember telling myself
don’t fall asleep, even though I was tired from waking up in pain several times the night before, because I wanted to be ready when Coach invariably came in.
Of course, I
nodded off—and of course, he walked in while I was out cold.
“Roman, you
dying or what?!” came a booming voice that could only belong to him.
Hey, Coach. Nope, still alive, just nursing this pesky trapezius.
At the
Spartan Hockey Awards Banquet following the 1994-1995 season, Coach told the
crowd, to some laughs, that I was a frustrated hockey player. I'm still a
frustrated player, Coach, I'm just older now than I was back then. (My next
goal in Saturday night pick-up against other, almost 50-year-old men and much,
much faster kids home from college will be dedicated to him—hopefully I don't
tear up my good knee doing it.) He also said that night that I wrote some nice
things about the team, which coming from him meant quite a bit.
That’s
because Coach was Spartan Hockey, whether it was at Munn, on campus, or
anywhere else in town. His radio show on Wednesday nights, first at Sneekers and
then at Reno's East, was a mainstay, even when I
left East Lansing and was living elsewhere in Michigan. He'd talk to
anybody and everybody, always passing on his vast knowledge of the game.
He had presence,
he had personality, and he also had compassion. My first trip to Lake Superior State, I got sick, but still made the
game. It was an important Central Collegiate Hockey Association contest, yet
the first thing Coach asked me when I got to the rink was how I was feeling.
Two league points on the line, and he was asking how the PR guy was. I
appreciated that, although we settled for a tie after leading
by two goals and got no movies on the five-and-a half hour ride home from the
Soo, in the days before tablets and smart phones. At least we got sandwiches.
Coach could also
be tough on you personally at times, whether you were a player or not. My
second year, assists sometimes got screwed up on the scoresheet. (Anson Carter,
you probably should have had several more helpers your senior year—hope that
didn't impact your NHL chances). In retrospect, I’d rightfully bear the brunt
when errors like that occurred, and Coach would let me know in no uncertain
terms.
You didn't
want to have Coach scowling at you. Besides making you uncomfortable, you felt
like you had let him down. He had a way of how he wanted things done, and as
I’ve learned over the years, working with other highly-successful coaches, it’s better
to just do things their way because they’ve got it down pat. Heck, he once even
rearranged my tie for me (with the players watching) at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit because he didn’t like way
I fashioned the knot.
At MSU, doing
things Coach’s way included making sure to call a long-distance hotline and get out-of-town scores
following our own game, especially league contests. (There was no real Internet
back then to check results.) He’d just be sitting there near the locker room,
often talking to a reporter, then would look directly at me and simply say “Scores?”
Better not tell him you couldn’t get through.
He also
didn't shy away from his convictions. If Coach didn't know something, which
wasn't often, he'd tell you so. If he did something and you were like "Really?"
he'd tell you flat out, "You're damn right I did."
Besides the
radio show, public appearances and Spartan games, he was also a showman in his
own right. My second year, we opened in California
at the Great Western Freeze-Out, and Coach wielded the microphone up front on
the tour bus near Los Angeles.
At one point he gestured to the side of the road and said knowingly, “There’s
the McDonald’s where Kato Kaelin met with O.J. Simpson.”
As he
continued, I said to one of my friends on the team, “Boy, Coach sure knows
a lot about the O.J case.” To which my friend replied, “Nah, the bus driver’s
feeding him information.” Good show, Coach.
He knew Xs
and Os, obviously, and was the first coach to employ five forwards on the same power
play. He also knew how to put players together to have success—our second line
of Taylor Clarke, Steve Ferranti and Tony Tuzzolino was just tremendous for us my
second season, in terms of puck pressure and putting the puck away—but he also
knew how hockey is predicated on effort and emotion.
“They’re
going to come at you hard this period, trying to get back in it,” I heard him
say in the locker room in Fairbanks between periods as State went for a
three-game sweep. “Don’t let ‘em.”
He simply
loved the game. Back in 1995, our two hockey team statisticians, Amy Bauer and
Rebecca McCurdy, got an MSU women's club team started up, which is still in
existence today and has also won a national club championship. At their very
first game at Munn, Coach was not only watching, he was actually working the
door on the Spartan bench as players changed up.
After two
seasons at MSU, I moved on to the expansion Grand Rapids Griffins of the old
International Hockey League in late 1996. Coach told me after a Spartan game
that fall what a beautiful building the new Van Andel Arena was, and he visited
again that March when State played Minnesota
in the NCAA West Regional. I'd see him intermittently after that, after I moved
back home to New Jersey in 2000, including at the 2006 NCAA East Regional in
Albany when State outlasted New Hampshire but fell to Maine with the Frozen
Four on the line. A year later, the Spartans went all the way in St. Louis, topping Maine
in a Frozen Four semifinal before claiming the national title with a win over
BC (anybody sensing a pattern here?).
I saw Coach at
Munn in 2002 when I visited from Jersey, where I was working in athletics at Montclair State
University, one of the 15 other MSUs
in America.
I told him I was now at another MSU, specifically Montclair, and he said matter-of-factly,
“Yeah, I know where it is.” Of course he did.
The last time
I saw him in East Lansing
was in late summer 2007 in his office at Jenison Field House, where he was
winding down his tenure as State’s athletic director after five years. I showed
up unannounced, just hoping to see him for a minute to say hello. He gave me
ten, despite his busy schedule.
The final time
I actually saw Coach was in late 2008 at the Icebreaker at Boston University.
He was already on the Spartan bus sitting behind Agganis Arena after BU's 2-1
win (I still think MSU goalie Jeff Lerg got bumped out of position on one of
those BU goals). I didn't speak to him, I just waved. He waved back, with a
look on his face that almost said "Is that you?" (I have a habit of
turning up like a proverbial bad hockey penny—ask former BC coach Steve
Cedorchuk how he stepped off a plane in Anchorage, Alaska in August 1991 only
to see me, on my own way up to Fairbanks to work at UAF. Truly a "WTF" moment.)
I last spoke
to Coach in 2013 when he actually called me, just a regular guy from Jersey and now a reporter, on my cell phone. We talked
about the end of the CCHA, for a potential article I was writing, but he also
beamed about his younger grandson, Travis, who had just started out at State
that year as a freshman defenseman. I remember when Travis used to run around
Sneekers with his older brother, Tyler, during Coach's radio shows, and a year after
that phone call I saw Travis playing live as a junior for the Spartans in a
pair of games here at Princeton. I was quite impressed with his hockey sense,
how he moved the puck, and how he didn't panic under pressure—must have had a
good teacher, and good bloodlines.
After MSU
lost to Colorado College
in the 2002 NCAA West Regional in Ann
Arbor (ugh) in his final game behind the Spartan bench,
I read that Coach said he was going to go home and watch an NHL contest. According
to reports, the last thing he did the night before he passed was watch Pittsburgh defeat San
Jose in Game 6 to win the Stanley Cup.
I won't talk
about all of his many, many accomplishments—the wins, the titles, the records,
the trophies, the halls of fame. Others have already done that, comprehensively
and honorably. Things have also changed since my day-to-day time at MSU 20-plus
years ago. I haven't traveled to Michigan
in almost a decade now, the longest time I've been away since I first went there, and I sometimes forget there's no more CCHA and that
State is now a member of the Big Ten for hockey as well.
Although it’s
not a hop, skip and a jump by car from New Jersey
to East Lansing
(about 10 hours one-way), I still feel guilty I wasn’t in attendance for his
wake at Munn. I feel like I should have been there to honor him—but if you
believe in such things, then I feel his spirit will always permeate Munn, and
will still be there the next time I make it out to State.
Hockey itself
has gone dark for another season, and unfortunately so has another legendary
name of the game. My condolences to his wife, Marion (whom I have always called
"Mrs. Mason"), his daughters, Cindy and Tracey, his grandsons, and
all his countless friends and former players, many of whom I've also been
privileged to know over the years.
If I can take
any solace from his passing, it's that I know Coach is up there now with our
mutual friend, Jerry Marshall, another good man who was the longtime Munn
public address announcer for Spartan Hockey. Jerry passed away in early 2008,
after State won its last NCAA hockey championship, and has probably been
waiting for Coach to come along, so he’s in good hands.
Rest in
peace, Coach—and thanks. Go State.
