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Heading to the Winter Classic Alumni Game by Brad Marsh

December 31, 2013, 12:32 PM ET [15 Comments]
Eklund
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HockeyBuzz's Brad Marsh is participating in the annual Winter Classic Alumni Game for the second time. He played in the New Year's Eve 2011 edition, donning a Philadelphia Flyers sweater. Today, the alumnus of both the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs will play in Maple Leafs colors. Later, he will have ongoing coverage of behind-the-scenes Winter Classic activities in his usual blog space in the top center section of our site.

Follow Brad on Twitter at @bradmarshnhl


ON THE MOVE AGAIN
By Brad Marsh

Driving to Detroit to prepare the Winter Classic brought back a lot of memories for me. Not so much as a former Red Wings player but from the time my family and I were living here in Detroit.

As I was behind the wheel, I heard Liev Schreiber's voice in my head, narrating my own lead-up to the Winter Classic Alumni game. So after watching HBO's 24/7 crew follow the young guys around off the ice and at their homes, I thought I’d share a little about the cities I lived in and the places I went.

Many people are surprised when I tell them that Detroit was one of our favourite places to live. I very rarely rate the teams that I played for, because to me the object was to play in the NHL and make a living. To that regard, it did not matter where I played so long as there was a spot for me somewhere. Yes, some franchises are a little better than others but really you are splitting hairs in terms of the working conditions, especially in today's NHL when so much is dictated by the NHLPA and agents.

My wife Patty and I always embraced the communities where we lived. I was always comfortable going to the rink and, as I have said in previous blogs, the dressing was like home to me. For the family's sake, it was very important that our home was comfortable and located in a good neighborhood with abundant nearby resources for our children.

The Marsh family lived in seven different houses over an eight-year period, so it was very important to choose our home based on the community it was in and not just how nice the house was, especially when our kids were in school. Many people are surprised to hear of the sheer number of different houses that we lived in but when you get traded you quite often rent a house until you know what your future may or not be with your new team.

Additionally, for players from my era, if you owned a house in one city, you simply couldn’t afford to buy another one, so you rented a house (very often the one belonging to the player that you got traded for!).

In our case we owned a house in Philadelphia -- actually in South Jersey -- that was our home base for many years. We loved it there. After I got picked up by Toronto in the 1988 waiver draft we rented a house in Toronto, and when the season was over we went back to New Jersey.

This trend would continue until I retired in 1993 and we decided to stay in Ottawa - we then sold our house in New Jersey and built a house in Ottawa. In all of the houses we lived in, we went to great lengths to make them our home, even if it was only for a few months. We didn’t want it to feel like just another rented house.

My experience of moving around was pretty typical of journeyman players, especially the ones from when I played. Many of the players in today's Alumni Game had similar lives. To give you a personal glimpse as to what family life was like for many of us, here’s my own story of the homes and neighborhoods in which I lived in over the years during my years in the NHL.

My first time living away from home was in Atlanta, when I was an NHL rookie with the Flames. It was the first time I lived somewhere else other than the three-bedroom rancher I grew up in on Baseline Rd in London.

I moved in with a family when I went to Atlanta, they were friends of Cliff Fletcher the GM of Atlanta. It was a great setup, a big beautiful house in the suburbs of Atlanta, three square meals a day, laundry done; It really did help me ease into life in NHL, and I owed them a debt of gratitude.

As good as it was and as well as I was treated, I soon became very envious of the other single guys on the team living in their own places. Just prior to Christmas, Red Lawrence was called up from the minors. He played extremely well and was told to get his own place after the holidays.

Red didn’t have to ask me twice to move in with him! We moved in to a two-bedroom townhouse. I don’t remember much about that place but I do remember that I never had any clean clothes and I had to learn to cook real quick! I bought a big stereo and had the tunes always blasting away.

In Atlanta, two places stand out as my favorite spots in town. Timonthy John's Irish Tavern was a great place to have a drink and have fun. This place was the hockey fan hangout. The funny part about this bar was that our assistant coach Tim Ecclestone owned the bar! It is still going strong there today. The restaurant that I enjoyed going to was Aunt Fanny's Cabin, featuring the best fried chicken I have ever had.

Aunt Fanny’s was a famous landmark but the name and image are not very politically correct today; maybe delving a little too deep into the racial stereotypes of rural American south. The food, however, was excellent! As Paul Stewart mentioned in his blog yesterday, maintaining a healthy diet was not a big priority for the majority of NHL players in those days. I was definitely one of the guys who only got serious about conditioning and fitness a little later in my career. As a rookie, though, I enjoyed my share of Aunt Fanny's famous fried chicken and biscuits without worrying about the fat content or the number of calories.

When the team was sold to Calgary in 1980, it was at the peak of one of the oil booms in the West. We were all told that we should buy a house because the value would increase dramatically over our careers.

I purchased my first house and paid top dollar for it. It was a little outside of town in a community called Bowness. The house was on the Bow river, it was a great lot with a fire pit down by the river. I hosted many team parties, as you can imagine they were a lot of fun.

The house was a new build, and it still needed a little bit of finishing work done. I negotiated a break in the price and I was to finish the work myself. I figured it’d be no problem; I’d just get the guys from the team to help me. The trim around the windows still had to be painted so I bought a few cases of beer and we went to work.

The work got done at a slow-but-steady pace. Meanwhile, the beer was being consumed at a record pace, so off I went to the beer store to get more. Once I got back, we finished up, cleaned up and everyone went home. I looked up at the house to see how we did and realized that while I was gone, the guys not only painted the trim, they painted all of the windows as well. A lot of laughs the next day at practice!

When I was traded to Philadelphia, I attempted to sell my house but unfortunately for me, the oil boom that was supposed to be so good for us new Calgarians had burst wide open and I couldn’t sell it. When I finally ended up selling, I took a bath. With the losses from the purchase price to what I sold it for, I had basically lost all of my earnings that I had made in my first three years in the NHL.

Anywhere in Calgary, they were so happy to have NHL hockey that anywhere you went in town you got special treatment. It was pretty cool - free dinners, free drinks, no lines. The city of Calgary really treated us like royalty. In Atlanta, we could go out and rarely be recognized by anyone.

After the whole predicament buying a house in Calgary, I was quite happy to rent when I got traded to Philadelphia. After a few years of that, I met my wife Patty, we were soon married and brought our first home together in Cherry Hill; a South Jersey suburb of the Philadelphia metro area.

It was a small, modest house on a very large lot, great for the kids to run around. It was very close to Patty's family and many of my teammates, so it really had the feel of a community. We owned that house for nine years, and it was truly a home. Finally, we sold it to build our house in Ottawa. I still drive by the house when we’re back in Jersey and I do quite often wonder how things may have been different if we had decided to return there, instead of building in Ottawa.

The list of places my family and my Flyers teammates and I enjoyed around there could go on and on, but with apologies to the places I leave out, I’ll share one of my all-time best stories.

There was a place called the Evergreen Tavern located down the street from our practice rink in Voorhees and near Patty's parents' house. It was basically just your neighborhood bar and grill type of place; not much to look at but conveniently located and open 24 hours a day. Regardless of the hour on the clock, it always seemed to have patrons in it.

We had lost Game 7 of the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals to the Edmonton Oilers and we flew home right after the game. We were drowning our sorrows pretty good on the plane and when we landed at Philadelphia International Airport in the wee hours of the morning, we weren’t reading to go home just yet. I started telling everyone we should head to the Evergreen Tavern.

It was around 6 a.m. by the point we started filing into the Tavern. The ensuing party wasn’t just for the players. General manager Bob Clarke was there. Mike Keenan and the coaching staff were also there, the trainers, and some of the other Flyers staff.

Once we were there we decided we wanted to liven up the place, I called Patty's family who were all musicians. Before long, they were all there with all of their instruments. I’m sure we took the 7 a.m. regulars by surprise and even though it’d have been much better if we were there celebrating with the Stanley Cup, it was still a time I’ll never forget. We had taken such a crazy journey together as a team -- not just that season but over the two previous years as well, with largely the same core group of players.

When the Flyers let me go and I signed with Toronto, we started on a bit of a housing carousel. My family lived in three houses in three years. All three houses were located in Mississauga, but in different neighborhoods.

The first one was a three-bedroom rancher just like my house that I grew up in. It didn’t have a dishwasher, so that wasn’t good but all in all not a bad house, simply because it was a great community.

The second year, we rented a house that was to be torn down after I moved out, it was such a good lot that the guy who owned it was going to build a brand new home in place of the old one that we'd rented.

I held the team's year end party at the house. We decided to play darts but there was no dartboards. No problem, the house was scheduled to be demolished as soon as we moved out, so we just drew the dartboards on the wall and proceeded to play darts, simply throwing the darts at the walls.

I got the call the following morning that the landlord had changed his mind. He was going keep the house for one more year than demolish it. Whoops! I learned to spackle real quick.

In our third year with the Leafs, we decided it was time to buy a house. I was 32 years old, which was old for that era and Floyd Smith, the GM of the Leafs at the time, offered me a five-year contract. I signed it and figured they had plans for me to be part of the leadership group of the team for several years to come, so we bought a house in anticipation of a long stay in Toronto.

Little did I know that that year would be my final one as a Leaf. We really never established ourselves in this house as things went south fast for me with the team. We were never comfortable in it, knowing that we would be moving again soon. I was traded to Detroit, the house went up for sale. Once again, I lost considerable money on the transaction.

Anywhere in Toronto, fans and the various owners were very happy to have you in their place. My favorite place to stop with the guys for a cold beer and a bite to eat after the game was the Blue Goose Tavern.

The patrons there were awesome; just hard working regular people. They were people who appreciated anyone that put in a honest effort and they appreciated that I was basically just an ordinary man who was lucky enough to have the chance to wear a hockey uniform for a living. It felt good to fit in in a place like that.

In Detroit, we rented former Red Wing player Glen Hanlon's house in Grosse Point, and it was a great place to live. Choosing a place to live can be very difficult under any circumstances but it is even harder when looking for that perfect rental for both NHL hockey and family purposes.

For one thing, the house had to be close to the rink, because you did not want to be sitting in traffic all day. It had to be close to the schools and they had to be good schools, parks are important, the shopping district had to be convenient.

Glen's house had it all, it was 15 minutes away from Joe Louis Arena and we could walk to all of the other amenities, it was great. My daughter, Madeline, was born there and there was even a hospital a few blocks away that we could also walk to. The icing on the cake was that our neighbors were terrific.

All of these memories were very much in my mind as I arrived in Michigan for the Winter Classic Alumni Game preparations.

Two social places come to mind in the Detroit area, both were close and both very unique. The Cadieux Cafe was a Belgian-style bar, they had great wings and great mussels. It was also a road bike racing bar (a huge sport in Belgium) I was real comfortable with the clientele there as I was and still am very much into cycling. The cyclists would meet every Thursday and they went out for long bike rides, and in the off-season I would join them. I really enjoyed the riding and it got me hooked on competitive cycling.

The other place was on the main street in Grosse Point, it was called Saunders. That place featured the best ice cream I have ever had. As an NHL veteran, I was much more careful about taking care of my body by this point, but I had to make an exception for Saunders. We would walk there as a family, and I ordered a banana split every time.

When we moved to Ottawa, we decided to rent in Kanata; a suburb about 20 minutes from downtown, where our practice facility. With Ottawa being a new franchise, nobody on the team owned a house yet, so we all rented. We collectively chose to rent basically in the same neighborhood. That was really special because you could always count on each other for anything.

Apart from socializing as teammates, quite often you would just stop by someone’s house to talk over coffee or a tea or just to see their kids play with yours. It was much like how you would visit with your brothers or sisters when you lived in the same neighborhood.

Many current Senators players still live in the Kanata area, they still practice there and the NHL arena is close by. Once we decided to retire in Kanata, we built a house about a block away from the house we rented. We’ve moved since then but our new house is right around the corner, in the same neighborhood.

Kanata is a great place to live, raise a family and from a NHL standpoint it great it wonderful because it has everything you would ever need and the rink is 5 to 10 away.

Much like Calgary and Toronto - Ottawa loves its hockey players, but my favorite place since day one is Trattoria Italia. It’s an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, if you are ever in Ottawa you have to go. It isn’t far from the Civic Center where we used to play and I’d often go there after practice. The owners, Domenic and Pat, have always been great hosts and it’s great seeing the same faces around there after so many years.

As I said earlier, coming back to Detroit for the Winter Classic has brought back a flood of memories; not just for this town, but for all the cities that I have called home.

My teammates and I never lived nearly as lavishly as the current guys on the 24/7 show, but I’m pretty sure a TV series about a few of my teams back in the day might’ve got better ratings. It had it all: comedy and laughter, drama and tears, heartwarming family moments, and outrageous and unprintable (but perfect for a cable reality series) stories that were almost too wild to be true.

Through my hockey career, I’ve been very lucky to live in some great communities and meet so great people. I sure am excited to be back in Detroit, catching up with some old friends.

Stay tuned for a first-hand recap of all the Winter Classic festivities, both on and off the ice!
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