For the most part, the coaches were pretty good. There was the odd guy who would get a little personal and question your mother’s ancestry, but most liked to hoot and holler on occasion, just to let off a little steam. If a new coach started to rant, I might suggest he “get a little time in the League before you start calling me an asshole.” One coach called me “Wicks.” I informed him that my friends called me “Ron,” and those who did not know me as well could call me “Mr. Wicks.” For years he always called me Mr. Wicks — and he was twenty years my senior.
One of the finest compliments was extended to me came after I retired: Linesman Gerard Gauthier, a pal of mine, told me that Scotty Bowman, the great Hall of Fame coach, had mentioned to him that he would be comfortable having me referee his road games. Upon reflection, I really believe I was fair to the visiting team. I bent over backwards not to be labelled a homer. Some nights I may have gone too far, hence the police escorts out of the building, but hey, you got to meet a lot of new friends that way.
Scotty was an excitable individual. One night at home in Buffalo, his Sabres were winning 5–1 with about five minutes left in the game, and he was running up and down the bench encouraging his players. He did not want them to let the other team back into the game. I asked the Sabres trainer who was winning the game, and he just smiled. If I owned a team, Scotty would be my coach.
Scotty really did not like to compliment too many players or referees. In one interview around 1975, he said Wicks was getting better as a referee, or, perhaps, not as bad as he used to be! Coming from Scotty that was a fine endorsement!
Honourable mention for coaching would include “Toe” Blake, “Punch” Imlach, Fred Shero, and Al Arbour. I would include Edmonton Oilers’ Glen Sather, but not for his playing skills, as I had seen him play. Whenever “Slats” would get on my case for being a lousy ref, I might mention that he was the future consideration in most trades while he was a player. The players on his team thought it was hilarious that we would natter back and forth — he on the bench, and me on the ice. Edmonton was so cocky and good in the early ’80s that we referees had to do something to keep them a little in line. Apparently, Edmonton’s great breakout offence, accentuating skating and the need for open ice, came from Sather watching a Swedish midget team do their thing.
Punch would get down on referees pretty good but, again, seemed to tolerate linesmen. While working the lines in the early ’60s, I was required to fly on the Leafs’ charter from Toronto to Boston after the Saturday night games. Punch would sit me up in first class with “King” Clancy, his assistant GM, and him, while all the players, who filed by on their way to steerage at the back of the plane, needled me along the way. (I can still taste the good steaks we first-class flyers got, while the players nibbled on their cold sandwiches.)
Don Cherry and I had an interesting relationship; he really could not get me too perturbed, and I knew that bugged him. I had refereed a game in Boston on a Thursday and was scheduled to head out of town for Toronto on the Friday. However, on Friday morning, a snowstorm had engulfed the whole northeastern United States, and I was told to stick around and officiate at the Saturday afternoon game in Boston, as it was to be on national TV. During the Saturday game, I casually told Don that I might be compelled to stay over and do the Sunday game in Boston (three in a row!). He went on television that afternoon and said he would fire up his snowmobile, drive me to the airport, and personally make sure I got out of town. My dad, way up in Sudbury, got a chuckle out of that line.
Don Cherry and Ron out for a skate, ca. 1978.
Author’s Collection
Don and referees were like oil and water. I really did not let him bother me. When he started to squawk, I would take out my hankie and pretend to blow my nose and wipe an imaginary tear from my eye. That really infuriated him, but we generally kept things cool. One night in Montreal, Don was complaining that he was not getting any power plays because I had assessed three consecutive penalties on his Bruins. When I finally called a penalty on Montreal, Don figured he was going to decline the man advantage, and send out one player less to start play. I called his bluff, and told Boston captain Brad Park that they had ten seconds to ice a proper lineup or he would really be at even strength, as I was getting ready to impose a minor penalty on Boston for delay of game. Some nights they would really try to test you! (I’m not going to comment on his boss, Bruins GM Harry Sinden, as my lawyer told me to beware of libel laws.)
Don Cherry always checked who was going to referee his games. He has reportedly said, “If Ron Wicks was the referee my team was in for a tough time!” Don is also reported to have said about me, “This guy always hated the Bruins, and when he gave us a penalty he looked at our bench and smiled. Funny thing, he used to get hit with the puck a lot when he refereed our games, especially around the head! In fact he came to our bench one time and said, ‘If I get hit one more time with the puck, I’m going to hand out misconducts.’ We just laughed. Imagine the announcement: ten-minute misconduct for hitting the ref with the puck!”12
In 1979, Don took the blame for the infamous “too many men on the ice” penalty that helped eliminate the Bruins from winning the Stanley Cup, and it cost him his job. As referees, we were quite aware of how our decisions could affect others.
When I went into the real estate business after retiring from refereeing, Don was quoted in the Mississauga News as saying, “Ron Wicks was as honest and straightforward as they come.” After having to put up with Don’s posturing and BS for years, I must say I felt flattered by his comments.
It had been raining in Vancouver for several weeks when I refereed there on a Wednesday night, and the home crowd was not too pleased with my work. When I showed up on the following Saturday night, I could hear a chorus of boos cascading throughout the building. I skated over to the PA announcer and struck up a deal: if he would announce that the referee for that night’s game, Ron Wicks, was “back by popular demand,” I would curtsy at centre ice. We both kept our bargain, and, of course, the crowd went nuts. Even Harry Neale, the Vancouver coach, thought it was kind of funny. I told him I was taking the heat off him! The same fans eventually helped run him out of town a few years later.
Bumper sticker made for Ron.
Author’s Collection
I heard about it from my bosses and was told to stick to refereeing and not choreographing my introduction.
Harry was a great guy. One night, when he called me over to his bench, I thought he was going to complain about something. He told me his players were driving him crazy and he had to get away from the team. He asked me to join him for a beer after the game, which I did. Tom Watt, who was Harry’s assistant coach in Vancouver, regaled me with a story recently, on how I had blown my whistle to start the second period of a game, right in Harry’s ear, sending him about three feet in the air. When I retired as a referee, I was thrilled to get a “well done” letter from Harry. We did have fun — at times.
Claude Ruel of the Canadiens was a fine coach. He would get fairly excited at times — an understatement, to say the least! I recall his last game as a coach, when Edmonton eliminated Montreal in 1981 in the first round of the playoffs. He came into our referees’ room after the game to congratulate the officials on doing a fine job. A pretty classy move on the part of a coach who knew he was soon going to be out of a job — and he was.
Claude went back to his first love, which was talent searching and scouting the minors for prospects. I remember Claude and Weston Adams, who was one of the owners of the Boston Bruins, travelling together out West scouting players. Claude told him, “Mr. Adams, you are a millionaire trying to become a scout; I am a scout trying to become a millionaire.”
The Quebec Nordiques coach, Michel Bergeron, and I were on a first-name basis. He loved to hear himself holler, and I loved to practise my French in response. One night the Maple Leafs were playing in Quebec City, and, of course, I was the maudit anglais referee. As play went into the Nordiques’ end, Michel was screaming at me about something he thought should have been called. The play reversed, and Quebec now had possession of the puck, and the Nordiques player was skating over centre ice — right in front of his bench. Bergeron was still yelling at me, so I blew the whistle, stopping play, and asked him in my best Grade 4 French, “Would you like to speak with me?” My linesman Ray Scapinello said I was going to get hell for stopping the play, but I really did not give a damn. We aired our differences, and the game moved on.
The referees appreciate the amount of pressure coaches in the League are under — coaches get heat from everybody — their owners and GMs, fans, and the media.The players can slack it at times and the coaches get canned. Again, the same rules could apply to the referees, when the coaches get on their backs, referees can be released from their jobs. We should both change places for one period of an exhibition game to see how the other side feels!
Clarence Sutherland Campbell had quite a resumé. He was a Rhodes Scholar, a Nuremberg War Trial judge, and a former NHL referee, prior to being appointed League president in 1946.
He would work late in his office most evenings (he ended up marrying his secretary). I recall on numerous occasions calling in incident reports after games, and he would be there late in the evening. He would answer the phone in his office with the greeting, “Campbell here.” He was generally available to talk to, but, unfortunately, I feel he tried to do most things himself, and this caused certain issues like pensions not to get the attention they may have deserved.
NHL President Campbell and John Ziegler.
Bruce Bennett Studio
He was fairly proficient at using big words, especially around us athletes. I remember he once sent the referees a letter saying that the “emolument” from the job of refereeing had increased significantly in the past few years. I wasn’t sure if the word meant the amount of abuse that we were taking, so I went to the dictionary once again. It means salary and benefits — but I’m not sure I agreed with him.
We had problems in Quebec, as the PA announcements were made in French only. On occasion, screw-ups took place due to miscommunication — not understanding who was supposed to come out of the penalty box and at what time, and so on. I had more than a slight disagreement with the club owner, Marcel Aubut, about this matter. In fact, he complained to the League about it and we had to bring in the lawyers to smooth things over. He stated that he would allow the announcements in English providing the rest of the clubs made them in French.
Mr. Aubut made headlines years later when he traded the rights to Eric Lindros, to two teams at the same time. Lindros was traded to both the Rangers and the Flyers simultaneously. A ruling was made that eventually awarded him to the Flyers. Aubut ultimately ended up selling the club, and it moved to Colorado, where they won the Stanley Cup the following year. It was sad, because the Nordiques were a great team in a wonderful city. The fans had supported them, and the team just bailed out on them and relocated to the lucrative American Midwest. (The same thing happened to the Winnipeg Jets, who defected to Phoenix several years ago, and look at the mess they are in now.)
When I retired in 1986, I received a nice note from Marcel saying how he had enjoyed our “rocky” relationship over the years. Me too, Marcel!
NHL officials, ca. 1969
National Hockey League
The original owner of the expansion Los Angeles Kings, Mr. Cooke went by the name of Jack Kent Cooke; in the 1980s, he hired a new general manger for the Kings by the name of Jake Milford. Jack mentioned to Jake that “Jake” was not a dignified enough nickname for a GM of one of his teams. When Jake informed Jack that his first name was actually Jack, he was told that there was only going to be one Jack in the organization — Jack Kent Cooke. So, Jack “Jake” Milford was summarily re-baptized John “Jake” Milford when he was in his mid-sixties.
Jack Kent Cooke started in the media business in Northern Ontario in the 1940s, owned the Toronto Globe and Mail, and moved to California in the mid-1960s. He ultimately left the West Coast and purchased the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. He was quite a businessman. Once, he was asked if his Los Angeles hockey club would do well, seeing there were so many Canadians out there, and when attendance was not up to par, he replied that he felt these Canadians had left Canada because they hated hockey!
“Thank God for the United States of America.” These words were uttered in a courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1998, by Canadian hockey player Carl Brewer, following the conviction of Alan Eagleson, former executive director of the NHL Players Association, for fraud.
This was the culmination of a long battle by the players to right some wrongs that had taken place over a number of years between the players and their pension situation. A group of retired players successfully sued over misappropriated surplus pension benefits, and gained further justice in 1998 when Eagleson was convicted on charges of fraud, racketeering, and embezzlement. Eagleson pleaded guilty and was imprisoned after it was revealed that he had abused his position for many years by defrauding his clients and skimming money from tournaments. He was disbarred from the practice of law by the Law Society of Upper Canada, and had to resign from the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Carl Brewer was one of Eagleson’s loudest and most active opponents, and played a major role, not only in bringing Eagleson’s actions to light, but also forcing Eagleson to resign from the Hockey Hall of Fame.13
Al Eagleson. “Thank God for the United States of America.”
Alan King, Ottawa Citizen
12 Presumably I may be allowed equal time to comment on Don’s statement; after all it’s my book, not his. Occasionally, I might have wiped an imaginary tear from my eye while listening to his whining, but I can’t recall ever smiling at him as I was imposing a penalty on his team (at least I don’t think I did, Don).
13 Brewer started his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1958. He won three Stanley Cups with Toronto. His brief stint with hockey in Finland made such an impact on Finnish hockey that he was inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame.