Monday, May 07, 2018
John Druce- Leading the Way
The entire
village of Wellington, and, dare I say, the whole population of
Prince Edward County, have risen to the occasion in support of the
Wellington Dukes. The Dukes have already won one big piece of
hardware, the Buckland Cup, and are now in Dryden in search of
another, the Dudley-Hewitt Cup.
I spoke recently with
Randy Uens, the Vice-President of hockey operations for the Dukes.
Randy paid tribute to his head coach, John Druce, and to his
assistant, Derek Smith. Many Duke fans will remember “Smitty” as
a really solid defenceman who moved on to several higher ranks in
hockey, including the NHL.
Druce is most famous
for an incredible playoff stretch he had with the Washington
Capitals. He had split the season between the Baltimore Skipjacks and
the Capitals. He played 15 games in the playoffs that year,
1989-1990, and scored 14 goals. In any interview-type situations,
that is the first subject that comes up. Druce is tired of it. His
pro hockey career began in 1986, following three years with the
Peterborough Petes.
He was selected in the
second round, 40th overall, by the Capitals, and spent two
years with the Binghampton Whalers. The following year he went to the
Skipjacks, and spent the next ten years, for the most part in the
NHL. He finished his pro career in Germany with Hannover and
Augsburg. He scored 113 goals in the NHL, and added 239 assists in
531 regular season games.
His most recent
coaching experience, outside Wellington, was with the Cobourg
Cougars. He led them to the Royal Bank Cup which they won last spring
in Cobourg. He then returned to his other lives in Peterborough,
selling for Freedom 55, and involving himself in the restaurant
business. A few years ago, John lost his daughter to leukemia. Since
that time he has spearheaded research efforts to find a cure through
the “Peddle for Hope” organization. Pretty busy guy.
Randy Uens knew John
through the old Peterborough hockey connections: Herb Raglan, Steve
Chiasson, Brent Tully, to name a few. The town has always been a
hockey hotbed, and many NHL players and retirees spend their summers
there dropping a line or two in Stony Lake, humming Ronnie Hawkins
tunes while they fish.
Last January 4th,
Randy was able to convince Druce that it would be a good idea to come
to Wellington to finish the season. Which leads us to the present:
the round-robin, four team series in Dryden.
On two other occasions,
the Dukes have been on the brink of capturing the Canadian Hockey
Championship at this level, “Junior A”, once in Prince Edward
Island, and once in Alberta.
As they line up on the
blue lines for the 2018-2019 season, many Wellingtonians would like
to see that Royal Bank Cup banner unfurled at the “DukeDome”.
The games will be shown
at the arena in the Highland Hall. I expect to see you there.
James Hurst.
April 30, 2018
Thursday, May 03, 2018
Sixty years ago, Mighty Macs ruled Canadian senior hockey
By Paul Svoboda, The Intelligencer
Belleville went bonkers.
Sixty
years ago today — May 1, 1958 — the city's senior hockey club,
the McFarlands, captured the Allan Cup as national champions and with
it, a ticket to Czechoslovakia for the 1959 world championships,
which they would also win.
Down
3-1 in the best-of-seven Allan Cup final against the Kelowna Packers,
with the entire series played in the Okanagan valley town, the Mighty
Macs battled back with three straight wins to claim Canadian senior
hockey supremacy. Game 7 ended 8-5 in favour of the MacFarlands and
loyal Belleville fans, listening back home on radio, went nuts.
Days
later, when the team returned home via cross-Canada train, the lead
headline on the front page of The Intelligencer proclaimed: “Fifty
thousand welcome Macs home.”
Wearing
cowboy hats, which they'd picked up during a stopover in Calgary, the
Macs were thrown a victory parade unlike anything Belleville had
ever experienced before. Riding in convertibles, players and team
officials waved and cheered and hollered along with what appeared to
be twice the population of Belleville at that time, all crammed
downtown and seemingly delirious with joy.
"Never
in the history of this city has Front Street rocked and rolled to the
acclaim of thousands,” read The Intelligencer story. “People
stood in some places 10 deep, cheering and waving as the motorcade
went by.”
Macs
goaltender, Gordie Bell, was especially moved by the outpouring of
love from Belleville's hockey faithful.
"I
think this is the most wonderful reception I've ever experienced,”
Bell told The Intelligencer. “I'm very glad we won because I would
hate to lose and have to come back and face such a swell bunch of
people.”
Team
owner, Harvey McFarland, simply called it “the proudest moment of
my life.”
Reporter
Denny Boyd saluted the Macs and their stunning comeback with these
words in a story that appeared in the Vancouver Sun after the Allan
Cup final:
"Those
Macs, a rag-tag Senior B team two years ago, used courage for a
crutch as they plodded up what seemed an insurmountable hill to
become the senior amateur hockey champions of Canada. Thursday
night, they reached the summit. They defeated the Packers 8-5 with a
defeat-defying rally that shook the blossoms of fruit trees for miles
around.”
May
1, 1958. A date never to be forgotten in Belleville. The day the city
ruled Canadian senior hockey.
• Belleville
McFarlands 1958 Allan Cup national championship roster:
Eddie Marineau,
Jean-Paul Payette, Wayne (Weiner) Brown, Barton Bradley, Keith
MacDonald, Lionel Botly, Armand (Bep) Guidolin, Joe Lepine, Keith
Montgomery, Davey Jones, Donald (Turk) Barclay, Floyd Crawford
(captain), John Muretich, Gordie Bell, Maurice (Moe) Benoit, Russell
Kowalchuk, Gerry Goyer, Hilary (Minnie) Menard, Ike Hildebrand
(player-coach), Drury Denyes (manager) and
Arthur
Charlton (trainer).
Minnie Menard
