Forgive me if I'm a little weepy this evening. The Love of my Hockey Life, Cam Neely, had
his #8 retired at the Fleet Center in Boston this evening.
I knew Cam was gonna be Something Special when he was a 17-year-old playing his junior hockey for the Portland Winterhawks in the WHL. A lot of the "hockey heads" in Portland touted Kenny Yaremchuk as the player to break out in the NHL, but when I saw Cam, I saw a player who was big, who actually could skate*, about as tough as they come, and he could score goals. (*Throughout Cam's career, I always could spot him on the ice without even seeing a sweater number...just looking at the way he skated, I could spot him.) And, he was a big, sweet, goofy kid that I was immediately smitten with!
The good news was Vancouver drafted him, so he'd be close to home (he's from Comox, B.C.). The bad news was, Vancouver drafted him. And didn't really know what to do with him. So he spent part of his rookie year back in Portland, then got called up to Vancouver, but still didn't play much. He was used mostly in that tough-guy role.
June 6, 1996: Cam's 21st birthday and he is traded to the Boston Bruins. June 7, 1996: I read the transactions in the newspaper and see that Cam Neely was traded from Vancouver to Boston and let out a whoop that was heard all over Portland! My favourite player (along with Ray Bourque), going to the team I love most in all of sport! And I knew that this was an organization that would know what to do with him (after all, they had the likes of Eddie Shore and Terry O'Reilly)!
At first, he played angry and fought...a lot. Who could blame him? His father was diagnosed with brain cancer not long after Cam went to Boston, and here he was a continent away (he lost both his parents to cancer shortly after he came to Boston). Part-way into Cam's first season with the "Broons", Terry O'Reilly was named head coach. He saw everything that Cam was and everything he could be. He convinced Cam that he was even more valuable to the team on the ice than he was in the penalty box. He basically told him, "be tough, but pick your battles". And when Mike Milbury became the Bruins next head coach, he gave Cam the same advice.
Cam took the advice to heart...and made himself into the prototypical "power forward" in hockey. He never backed down from a hit, or a fight, and managed a couple of 50-goal seasons, including one season where he scored 50 goals in just 44 games (a feat topped only by Wayne Gretzky who scored 50/39). At the height of his career, you just felt it--whenever Cam Neely took his shift, something BIG was going to happen on the ice. Big hit. Big fight. Big goal.
Then came the dirty hit by Ulf Samuelsson. The more "objective journalist" would call the hit "questionable", but there is no question in my mind. It was a damn, dirty hit. I won't say much more about Ulf Samuelsson because I have nothing good to say about him. Players like him cheapen the sport. It took the better part of two years for Cam to recover from Samuelsson's hit, but the damage was done and it was permanent. A deep thigh bruise turned into a calcification (roughly the size of a brick!), injuries that left the knees wonky, and the eventual career killer: the hip injury.
5 September, 1996: Cam Neely tearfully announces his retirement from hockey. But it wasn't the way he had planned to go out...and it hurt like hell. It hurt to see how much it was hurting him. He wasn't finished with hockey yet, and a couple years later tried to make a comeback. But the hip just wouldn't let him. And he announced his retirement again. Only this time, he was mostly at peace with it.
Cam Neely found life after hockey. He married and had two children. He opened the Cam Neely House, a place for families of cancer patients to stay during cancer treatments, opened in memory--and honour--of his parents.
He has earned his place in the rafters next to Eddie Shore, Dit Clapper, Phil Esposito, Terry O'Reilly, John Bucyk, Lionel Hitchman, Milt Schmidt, Bobby Orr and Raymond Bourque. And I'll even argue that he's earned a place in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
But, then, I'm biased... ;-)
