Uncovering the Wisdom of Cam Neely, One More Time
Here’s a short story only my hockey buddies will understand. For years, I’ve carried a quote around in my head that I first read in a Sports Illustrated profile of Cam Neely, one of my all-time favorite players. The interview came during the 1993–94 NHL season, one of Neely’s best, where he scored 50 goals and tallied 74 points in only 49 games.
Vancouver’s Pavel Bure led all goal scorers with 60. Then again, he did it in 76 games, just four short of a full season.
Why the abbreviated schedule for Cam? Thanks to a collision with Ulf Samuelsson, Neely had to skip practices and regularly take nights off in order to nurse a wonky left knee that could swell full of fluid from overuse. The rehab and training regimen was grueling, but incredibly effective, according to SI, as it was informed by years of experience the Bruins training staff had acquired through working with Bobby Orr and Gord Kluzak as they struggled with knee ailments that ended their careers prematurely.
At the time, I was less than a year into my return to the game, having abandoned it as a “tweener” right before Lake Placid (I’m all about bad timing). In addition to supplementing practices with late-night pickup and endless free skating sessions, I was inhaling written content about the game at a breakneck pace, looking for any edge I could find to improve my play on the ice (and it always needed improvement). So, on a Saturday afternoon as I waited for the crack squad at an Alexandria, Va. Jiffy Lube to change my oil, I was happy to pass the time with a Leigh Montville essay about Neely’s incredible season (“Day-to-Day for Life”).
For years I seemed to recall that Neely simply said, “Hockey is a fast game, but not so fast that you can’t think about what you’re doing before you do it.”
After rattling around my head for a couple of decades, it came to the fore again only a few weeks ago as I sat in a classroom at Northwestern University. I was in town for a week for a seminar in leadership, all part of my masters program in marketing communications. During one of the lectures, a professor shared a list of leadership behaviors, and right at the top of the list was, “hit the pause button.” After all, while thinking fast was important, things don’t move so fast that you can’t carefully consider your options in order to make the best decision you could.
Boom. In an instant, the wisdom of Cam was top of mind once again. But one thing bothered me. Was that exactly what Cam really said?
So, late on Friday afternoon, I dove back into the SI Vault, the online archive that serves as a treasure trove of sports memories. And that’s when I discovered that time and tide had done a little sneaky editing. Here’s what Cam really said.
“When I was injured [Bruin general manager], Harry Sinden told me to watch some games from the press box, to see what I could learn,” Neely says. “I never had watched much from up there. I found a couple of things. First of all, the game looks a lot easier up there. Second, I found that you have more time to do things on the ice than you think. Not a lot of time, but some. I think that helped. I have a different perspective on the game now, too. It still means a lot, but it doesn’t mean everything. I can leave the game when I go home.”
Granted, I’m not the first person to “misremember” a quote like this one. For years, former Major League manager Leo Durocher was known for saying, “Nice guys finish last.” But even though Durocher bought into the myth later in life, it wasn’t exactly that way.
But back to Cam. Now that I’ve returned to this piece, I can’t help but conclude that while the line I remembered deserves to be a treasured piece of hockey wisdom, the back end of the quote is one that we should all practice: “I have a different perspective on the game now, too. It still means a lot, but it doesn’t mean everything. I can leave the game when I go home.”
So in tribute to Cam, and for the sake of friends and family, here’s hoping you leave it all at the office tonight before you go home.
*Photo by RCHDJ10 used under a Creative Commons License.
