Habby Helped Put World Juniors on Map

Royals boss helped put world junior event on the map

BY CLEVE DHEENSAW, TIMESCOLONIST.COM DECEMBER 22, 2011 11:04 PM

The growth of the world junior hockey championship into a big deal, at least in Canada, can be traced back to that now-storied rag-tag group that assembled to play for Canada in 1982 and which now celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Marc Habscheid, GM and head coach of the WHL’s Victoria Royals, and Mark Morrison, former GM and head coach of the ECHL’s Victoria Salmon Kings, both played on that team, which became Canada’s first gold medallist in the world junior tournament. Paul Cyr of Port Alberni was also on the roster.

“When you look back at moments that are etched in history, it almost always happened by accident,” said Habscheid, then a starry junior with the Saskatoon Blades, while Morrison and Cyr were explosive forwards with the Victoria Cougars.

“I didn’t even know anything much about the Canadian junior national team program. The general feeling was: What is it, anyway? Some guys didn’t want to go. Eventually, they got 20 of us together.”

The key to the unexpected success of that group came from the top, said Habscheid.

“We had a good coach in Dave King,” said Habscheid. “He was light years ahead of anybody and we jelled as a team.”

Most Canadians at that time hadn’t a clue about the world juniors.

“Only one of our games was on TV and the rest on CBC Radio,” recalled Habscheid, who recorded six goals and 12 points in the 1982 tournament.

The world junior tournament back then was a straight round robin. It was quite by happenstance that Canada’s final game against the Czech Republic in Rochester, Minnesota, turned out to be the one in which the gold medal could be won.

Habscheid recalls a modest crowd of about a handful in a cold and drafty 2,000-seat rink for a game that would decide a world title. To say this wasn’t a big thing to the average Canadian sports fan would be an understatement.

The whole scene was so lax that Canadian GM Sherry Bassin got hold of a gold medal before the game and passed it around the Canadian dressing room.

“Bassin said we could touch it but couldn’t hold it because we hadn’t earned it yet.”

But by the end of the game, Habscheid, Morrison, Cyr and their teammates had indeed earned it and those gold medals were hanging from their necks.

Then came the moment, captured on shaky footage by a single camera, that seemed to galvanize a nation when later shown on Canadian newscasts. There was no recording of O Canada available at the tiny rink so the players were told just to exit the ice after the medal presentations.

But the Canadian players would have none of that and locked arms and belted out an a capella version of

O Canada. Shown later, that seemed to capture lightning in a bottle on an almost emotional and kinetic level across Canada and the mystique of the world junior tournament was born.

“That locking of arms and singing of O Canada is a tradition that still goes on,” noted Habscheid, proudly.

Morrison, now assistant coach of St. John’s of the American Hockey League, captained Canada the following year to a bronze medal at the 1983 world junior tournament in Leningrad. Cyr was also on that 1983 team.

Habscheid went on to coach at the world juniors, winning silver in 2003 in Halifax to become the first person to both play for and coach the Canadian team.