Anderson's day finally comes
Cam Cole, Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, November 04, 2008
No less vivid than any of these memories of the 1980s Edmonton Oilers is that of Glenn Anderson under a head of damn-the-torpedoes steam, with a half-step on the defenceman, holding him off with one hand while cradling the puck with his stick in the other, driving to the net off-balance, on one skate, and somehow spiriting the puck past the goalie while jaded reporters stifled grins and looked at one another, thinking: "How'd he do that?"
In fact, the now 48-year-old son of a Burnaby, B.C., fisherman was such an enormous piece of the puzzle for a team that won five Stanley Cups in seven years - he scored so many goals, playoff goals, big playoff goals, playoff overtime goals - that from 2002 to 2007, the members of the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee had to fudge the truth when asked: "Why isn't he in?"
But it was never about the credentials. Those were impeccable.
It was about Glenn being Glenn. Like Manny being Manny.
Anderson last played in the NHL in 1996, so by 2001 he was eligible for Hall admission.
"Not without a ticket," said the committee, which, in the years after having to expel Alan Eagleson from membership, was wary of anyone whose character flaws might embarrass the Hall down the road.
And heaven knows, Glenn Anderson had some.
But maybe he's sorted a few of them out, in middle age. We can hope. So, apparently, can the Hall of Fame.
Anderson was sitting in the middle of Manhattan's Columbus Circle, just off Central Park, with his six-year-old daughter Autumn, when the National Hockey League found him Tuesday and put him on a conference call with reporters, in advance of his induction next Monday - with former Canuck and Red Wing Igor Larionov, linesman Ray Scapinello, and longtime Western Hockey League boss Ed Chynoweth - to the HHOF's Class of 2008.
Only once did he refer to the length of the wait for approval. Only once did he admit that "off-ice activities" might have been what kept him on the outside looking in, while players like New York Islanders' Clark Gillies (179 fewer goals, 402 fewer points, two fewer Stanley Cups) and Bernie Federko and Cam Neely, whose playoff points combined don't add up to Anderson's (and neither of whom ever won a Cup) made it into the Hall.
"It's up to the committee, and the committee changes every few years. It's hard to judge what gets you in or keeps you out," Anderson said. "Is it ‘You have to do this, this and this' or does what you do off the ice, is that material or immaterial? I don't really know what the guidelines are. Was it stats? Was it championships? It's not written in stone."
What it was, the thing that kept him out, was a brief relationship with a then 27-year-old student in Edmonton that produced a son whom, after nine years, Anderson stopped supporting. The case went to court, Anderson pleaded that he was broke despite owning two houses in Turks and Caicos. It was sordid stuff, and by the time it was all over, "dead-beat dad" might as well have been tattooed on Anderson's forehead.
That was six years ago, right around the time he and his wife Susan, who now live on New York's Upper West Side, were having Autumn. Still making a small income through occasional appearances on behalf of the Rangers, with whom he won his sixth Cup in 1994, Anderson sounds a little more grown up, perhaps, but not exactly like your average hockey player.
This is one of the Hall's most eclectic classes, a group that underlines why it isn't just the NHL Hall of Fame. Think of it: a pioneer of the Russian hockey emigration, a junior hockey builder, a linesman . . . and an extraterrestrial.
That would be Anderson, whom some journalist dubbed "Mork" in his Oiler days - after the Robin Williams TV character from space - because he came across as a smart-ass, a bit aloof, or just plain weird.
"I'm really glad I don't march to the same drummer as everyone else," he said Tuesday. "I think if anything, it's an attribute."
Not many Canadian kids had made it out of U.S. colleges in those days, but Anderson had. Coach Marshall Johnston at Denver University set him on a path that would take him to the Canadian Olympic team in 1980 and, before he was done, time served with hockey clubs in Edmonton, Toronto, New York, St. Louis, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
He always was, and remains, a complicated dude. On one hand, the whole dead-beat dad thing. On the other, his relationship with Father David Bauer, the iconic head of Canada's Olympic hockey program for a generation, who was still around - though not coaching - the 1980 squad.
"It jump-started (my career)," he said. "To be part of an Olympic program at a time when they were all amateur athletes . . . whatever energy I had left at the end of a day, Father Bauer would summon me over to the monastery there in Calgary by the 4-H club. We had endless conversations about the human spirit and the political end of (hockey), that the North American league is not the only league, there are other options, if you don't happen to make it you can fall back on schooling or ... it really opened my eyes to a broader picture.
"I don't want to say that my hockey career was just in the professional ranks in North America, I was very proud and honoured to be part of Team Canada and international competition and wear the Canadian maple leaf proud. And hopefully I did my country justice by representing them."
In the 1980 Olympics, Canada finished sixth, ending with a 6-4 loss to the Soviets - "God, I cried for two hours straight after we lost to the Russians. We were winning going into the third period," Anderson said, a few years later - and then the Olympic program was dissolved.
Anderson, feeling betrayed, "settled" for playing with the Oilers, who had drafted him in 1979 in the fourth round. The team's ability to amass a Murderer's Row of incredible talent over a few years in the draft - Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier, Anderson, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Grant Fuhr - didn't say much for the world of professional hockey scouting at the time, he said.
"The draft really pulled that team together, and the players just revolved around Gretz - I mean, when you're playing with the best player in the world, you start doing things you never even dreamed about doing."
Five Stanley Cups later, he was traded to Toronto with Fuhr, but he would win one more Cup before he was done. Though there wasn't much left in the tank, he scored three goals for the Rangers in the 1994 playoffs. Two of them were game-winners.
He didn't waste many.
"As I get closer to the day, we get to reflect on a life history, and what transpired, and how did I get where I am? And the more I think about it, and talk to other people, the more things pop up. The memories just come back in floods," he said.
"It's an unbelievable honour, and I'm humbled by it. I don't know what kind of plaque or picture of me they'll have in there, but I hear there are ghosts in the Hall of Fame, and I could just imagine my picture probably looking right at Father Bauer or Glen Sather, and some day, when the lights are out and nobody's there, I could hear Slats going: ‘It's past curfew, you better go back to bed.'"
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