EDMONTON — They gather often here, those Glory Years Oilers, for the closing of an old building or the opening of a new one. For anniversaries of Cups won, and pretty much any other reason they can think of to fly in, tell some lies, and re-live the 80s one more time.
This reunion was a first, however. One nobody fathomed would come this soon.
“Most of the celebrations in here have been pretty darned good. This is one that’s taken a different turn,” said Mark Messier, on a day Edmonton and the hockey world celebrated the life of David John Semenko, who died at age 59, the first of the old gang to go. “I think everyone in the building today looks at their own mortality, their own lives, their futures… We’re not here forever, that’s for sure. Today was a reminder of that. A tough day, for sure.”
Mortality? When you’re winning five Stanley Cups while scoring 400-plus goals a season, the ride is never supposed to end. The worst thing that could ever happen happened in 1986, and when Steve Smith came back the next fall he was fine. In fact, he was a better man for it.
Today, hair-thinning, they are a greyer and more vulnerable group, with pancreatic cancer having defeated the one man among them who was undefeatable in his day.
This one really stung. They all do, and they all will. But Semenko was different, the biggest figure among them.
“He was a brother, a big brother,” former Oilers coach and GM Glen Sather said. “The guy who instilled the spirit that we stood for in all situations.”
That spirit Sather spoke of was one of a different era. When a team had to believe it could waltz into some angry NHL buildings — Philadelphia, Calgary, Boston — and win. And not just on the scoreboard.
Those Oilers had lots of scorers, plenty of guys who could fight, and they never lacked for goaltending. But there was only one Semenko, whose presence was an arm around the shoulder of the entire group.
“He made us all bigger, stronger, taller than we were,” said Paul Coffey.
And funny? Dave was funny.
His sense of timing and wit ran congruent with how he handled the role he played, perhaps the only “toughest man in the game” never to have recorded 10 fights in the same season. (Bob Probert and Tie Domi combined for nine seasons with 20-plus fights.)
One story, if we may, about the night during the playoffs when anthem singer/country star Brett Kissel’s microphone didn’t work. You’ll recall that Kissel got the Rogers Place crowd singing and the fans crooned both anthems, making a memorable night out of a performer’s worst nightmare.
Not long after, the still-flustered Kissel ran into Semenko.
Semenko: “That was pretty special out there.”
Kissel: “Wow. It sure was, Dave.”
Semenko “Well kid, maybe you shouldn’t sing more often.”
On Thursday they laughed so hard they cried, mostly re-telling stories that displayed Semenko’s ample sense of humour. But the underlying theme is that, among this almost-perfect team that had every base covered during its reign, Semenko exceeded in his roles the way Messier, Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson et al did at theirs.
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Every ‘team’ has someone like Semenko, whether it’s the office organizer or the guy who rents the ice, buys the uniforms and arranges the games while everyone else just shows up with a cheque and their equipment bag. The star never does that stuff, or the CEO. But it needs to get done.
In the context of perhaps the greatest team in National Hockey League history, that person was Semenko, whose very role was to be there for everyone else. Very seldom would an opposing player skate up to the giant Semenko and gave him a spear, or a slash. His fights were, almost to the bout, in defence of or retribution for a teammate.
The role by definition about the well-being of the 19 other players on the team. And the movie always ended the same way: with Semenko the one in harm’s way, voluntarily, because it was his role to do so.
That player barely exists anymore, having been regulated out of the game, and perhaps we’re better off for that. But we wonder if, down the road, 3,000 fans and a passel of alumni will come out to the funeral of a guy who forechecked hard and made smart dumps.
On Thursday, Anderson read scripture. Gretzky told stories that made us laugh. Fans filled four or five sections of Rogers Place, and we learned that Hannah Semenko did not only inherit her father’s deep-set eyes, but his sense of humour as well.
And Sather, who had quietly helped Semenko through life, was patently dejected.
“It’s true, we were a family,” said the Oilers patriarch, who had climbed creakily up the stairs to the podium. “I was seen as a father figure, and I’ve lost a son.”
