I played hockey once. Couldn’t skate, so I played goalie in my rubber boots.
My one hockey story. From February 8, 1989. – JDW
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. – Wayne Gretzky
Have you ever been to a hockey game? It’s a kick. Kinda like a rodeo on ice. The action, to coin a phrase, is furious and fast. The players are skating at something like twenty to thirty miles per hour (20-30 mph) and they spend a great deal of time crashing into each other. A powerful slap of the stick will send the puck hurtling toward the net at speeds approaching one hundred (100) mph. That’s quicker than Nolan Ryan’s fastball.
There’s something strangely elemental about these young ice soldiers, representing different cities, in their distinctive, almost-armored, uniforms. The sticks might as well be spears or lances. maybe it’s not a rodeo, maybe it’s a war.
You have only to watch the fans shoot a puck for prizes between periods to understand how difficult it is to do what these talented young men do so easily, so well.
One of the most talented, and surely one of the most popular of the Winter Hawk’s Dennis Holland. It seems there’s never been a time that the Portland Winter Hawk’s star center has not wanted to play hockey. And not just play the game, but excel at it. This is one young man who truly wants to be the best he can be. Sure, it’s a phrase now cliched by military market – it is also how Dennis Holland has lived his whole life. To be the best he can be.
His best is already very good. Every time he steps on thew ice, he gets better. “Dennis Holland is highly motivated to do well,” says Hawk coach Ken Hodge, “and he wants the people around him to do well.”
At the beginning of Dennis’ hockey career, it was the people around him, his family, who provided the motivation. They are, to put it mildly, athletically oriented. Lee, his mom, and big sister Diane (herself a former soccer and softball player) are enthusiastic supporters. His father Reinie and brother Ken made the game of hockey something to be loved. After all, home is in British Columbia in a town called Vernon. It’s a rural community in a scenic region whose economy depends primarily on farming and tourism. Vernon’s thirty thousand residents take the sport very seriously up there. Very seriously. Like Indiana and basketball.
“I was on skates for the first time at the age of two,” Dennis relates matter-of-factly. At twenty years of age, Dennis doesn’t believe he was pushed. He thinks he did some pulling.
My brother is seventeen years older than I am,” Holland points out. “I have always looked up to him. Ken played semi-pro, and I have always wanted to live up to his achievements. That was my earliest motivation – living up to Ken’s accomplishments.”
Today there are doubtlessly a number of little boys trying to match the performance of Dennis Holland. At every level of the game, he has set the highest standards. Currently leading the Western Hockey League goals scored, he been a top a scorer throughout his career. His biggest game came on November 23, 1988, when he tied a WHL record by scoring seven (7) goals in a single game. A magnificent seven.
Asked how anybody could possibly score so often, Holland responds in a typical low-key fashion. “It’s just something that happened,” he says. “I was in the right place at the right time.”
Of course, success in sports – in all of life – depends on making things happen. And it is the great ones who seem to know best when to be where.
Holland concedes he may be ” a little bit of a gunner,” but putting points on the scorevoard is what the game is all about. “I’ve always had the knack to put the puck in the net,” he points out. “I have the ability to see what’s happening on the ice. I try to work hard… It just comes easy to me.”
Hard work makes it easy.
Brian Shaw, President and General manager of the Winter Hawks, knew Holland was special from the moment he joined the team. In 1986, Holland was brought up to the Hawks for the Memorial Cup playoffs.) “His first season with us, he was commuting from his home,” Shaw recalls. “He’d drive and hour and a half to the airport, fly here, play the game, fly back, then drive and hour and a half back home to Vernon. Dennis was only sixteen years old.” Shaw was impressed to say the least.
In the next campaign, Holland earned Rookie of The Year laurels. Last season he was honored as the team’s most valuable player. He’s been named to the league’s All-Star team. He’s scored a lot of points and he’s helped the Winter Hawks win more than a few hockey games. These past three years, Shaw’s respect for Holland has continued to grow. “Dennis has such intensity. He’ll do anything to win,” says Shaw, a man of some intensity himself. “Dennis is a fierce competitor. Simply fierce. He never asks for anything special, like time off or to miss a practice. He plays when he’s hurt. He’s tough, very tough.”
Dennis Holland has to be tough. He’s relatively small for a hockey player. Just five-foot-ten and one-hundred-and-seventy-five pounds, his size has been a concern since he began competing at age four (4) in a league of older boys. Yet he has never been injured. Holland himself doesn’t let his lack of physical stature bother him. In fact, he’s turned it into a virtue.
“His size is not a detriment,” Shaw succinctly states. Ken Hodge, the winningest coach in Western Hockey League history, explains why. “We cringe in the stands when we see opposing players charging him, but Dennis wants people running at him because that makes his game better,” says Hodge. “He relishes in the physical play because he thinks it opens up more offensive opportunities.”
A marked man, Holland not only relishes physiclal play, he encourages it. One member of the Winter Hawks front office referred to Dennis as an “aggressive, mouthy, chippy player.” Another observer suggested he was “a mixer.” Holland himself sees this as just another part of his style. “I’ll keep talking. I’ll keep chirping,” he says in a low voice. “I’ll keep slashing at their legs with my stick. I try to do something to get them to do something to take a bad penalty. I like to let them know I’m there, that I’m in the game.”
Coach Hodge sees this side of Holland as just another example of his competitive spirit. “He plays a lot of mind games on the ice,” Hodge says. “He’s an antagonist. The fact is that he’s 175 pounds and he works people to his advantage. The more annoyed opposing players are with him, the more effective he becomes. He is probably very antagonizing to play against.”
Arguably the most popular of the Winter Hawk players, Holland is thought of much differently around the league. “Every team has a players that fans from opposing teams love to hate,” relates Tim Daugherty, director of sales and media relations. “Dennis Holland is ours.” What better testimony can there be to Holland’s abilities?
There is something that is just plain irksome about a little guy coming into your turf, scooting around like that, inflicting all that damage, creating all that mayhem, embarrassing the home team. A big guy beating you is not so hard to take, but this pesky little guy, this Dennis Holland. It’s hard to swallow around the league. It’s irksome and not a little infuriating.
Holland has been accused of less than ethical play by some of those out-of-town fans, but his explanation sheds some light on the intensity with which he plays. “I guess you could say that other teams have accused me of taking dives or putting on an act in games. But that’s because I want to win hockey games for the teams I play on,” Holland explains. “I go out and try to win hockey games the best I can. Sometimes it’s scoring goals, other times it’s overacting when I get hooked or slashed. But I am always trying to help the team win. After all, isn’t that why we are playing the game in the first place?”
That’s clearly why Dennis Holland is playing. Wining is very important to this guy, who must have something of a Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde personality. On the ice, he’s an in-your-face demon who will do anything to win; off the ice, he’s a polite, quiet fellow with his head screwed on right.
A 1987 graduate of Clackamas High School was a good student who rejected several college scholarships. He thinks about pursuing a business career, probably something to do with accounting.
Mostly, he thinks about hockey. (When asked to name his favorite movie, his instant response was “Slapshot” in which Paul Newman starred as – you guess it – a hockey player.)
It seems he’s always been thinking about hockey. It’s that lifelong goal. Drafted No. 3 by the Detroit Red Wings, he is looking forward to the life of a professional in the major leagues.
“My earliest goal was to play in the National Hockey League,” Holland says, determination creeping into his voice. “That’s probably every Canadian boy’s dream.”
The dream. Always the dream. Holland’s biggest thrill came last year when he got to play in an exhibition game for the Red Wings against the St. Louis Blues. Asked how he played, he paused as if to relive the moment.
“I got a goal.”
“To me,” Tim Daugherty says about Holland and his teammates, “these guys work harder than the pros because they’re trying to prove themselves, they’re trying to prove that they belong in the NHL. These kids skate faster than the pros, they hit harder.”
Holland hits as hard as anybody his size, harder than many bigger players. It’s his skating that needs work. Brian Shaw says Dennis’ skating could be a little quicker. “That’s the general knock put on him. But he’s deceiving,” Shaw opines. “He more than makes up for it with his smarts.”
Like Shaw, Hodge points out Holland could be quicker on his skates. The coach points that out, as if doing his job as an expert of the sport. Then he talks like an expert on the subject of Dennis Holland. The business-like tone leaves his voice, evaporated by the warmth of admiration.
“Dennis has the ability to play in the NHL and I think he’ll do very well.”
When Ken Hodge says he thinks Holland will do very well, you can pretty much take that statement to the bank and get a large unsecured loan. Hodge, to put it both simply and mildly, knows his hockey. With nearly twenty (20) years of coaching experience, he knows his hockey players. Coach Hodge respects young Mr. Holland.
“Dennis wants it all,” Hodge says. “Very, very seldom do we see Dennis play badly. He had an off night recently, but he didn’t have a bad night. Dennis doesn’t have bad nights…. He studies the game when he’s on the bench… He is a very, very effective player when he has the puck… Mentally he’s so tough that he’ll make the play when other people would give up on it.” And so it goes.
Black helmet, red gloves, white leggings, black pants. A white jersey with an Indian brave’s profile on the front and No. 15 on the back. Skates. That’s the outfit Dennis Holland wears to work. It’s the same outfit (except for the numerical designation) all of the Winter Hawks wear.
What happens to this mild-mannered youngster that he becomes superhero with a change of clothes? What makes him stand out? What makes Dennis Holland special?
Ken Hodge knows. “He is a very fine young man who breathes fire when he’s on the ice. His biggest asset is his pride and his ability to compete,” says the Winter Hawk coach. “The more important the game, the better Dennis Holland performs. He responds to pressure situations; he rises to them.”
This, too, Hodge understands. “I don’t think Dennis feels pressure. I don’t think any athlete who truly believes in himself feels pressure.”
Dennis Holland believes in himself, and he believes he can still improve. That’s the pressure. That’s the motivation. If Dennis Holland doesn’t become a star in professional hockey, it won’t be because he didn’t try as hard as he could. No, it won’t be that. After all, big brother is still watching.
Epilogue. Dennis Holland played for fourteen years in ten professional leagues.
Never the majors. Never the NHL.
Somehow I suspect he gave it his all. Even played two years of roller hockey. Whatever that is.
I am betting he left the rink with nothing more to give.
The effort was big league.
