Behind By A Century On The Tragically Hip Way

We’re three-and-a-half years away from the one-hundredth anniversary of Kingston’s only trip to the Memorial Cup in 1926. A century of futility the current day Frontenacs hope to end by hosting the 2024 tournament, with competing bids from Niagara/St.Catharines and Sault St. Marie.

The Leon’s Centre has its limitations including just one CHL calibre dressing room, just another reason why in 2008 it should have been built over two city blocks, but I digress. The biggest obstacle for Kingston to overcome is the same as the two previous failed bids in the past fifteen-years, proving you have a team that can compete. That’s not easy when the fifty-year history of the franchise shows they have never been as far as a league final.

By comparison, consider the Guelph Storm celebrating thirty-years as an OHL franchise this season. They have been to six Memorial Cups and two previous Guelph franchises won a Memorial Cup; the Platers & the Biltmore’s.

If Shane Wright comes back, which is looking more and more unlikely, the Fronts could flip him to a contender and perhaps put some pieces in place to make a legit run in 2023-24.

Barring a windfall for Wright (and they need good young players not future draft picks) it’s hard to see them having the team needed to host. We have the amenities, a great downtown, a recent track record of hosting big events and the history no other city can match; the Memorial Cup was founded here by Capt. James T. Sutherland in 1919. What we really need is a team that can compete at that level.

Wright On The Wrong Path

Seattle’s handling of Shane Wright is puzzling to most. Playing just over seven minutes a night and scratched for ten of the first seventeen games isn’t doing much for his development. Paul MacFarland is on the Seattle coaching staff; he clearly knows the Fronts organization inside and out and some believe the hesitation for Seattle to send Wright back here is a lack of faith that he gets the proper development he needs. Even last season on most nights Wright was far from being the best player on his own team, a return to junior hockey wouldn’t be a step back for him.

Wright appears headed to the AHL for a 2-week ‘conditioning stint’, followed by the World Juniors where it is hoped he can play a major role for Team Canada. Not the path most were expecting for the fourth overall pick in the NHL draft. If he does return to Kingston in January, the time to maximize his value may have already past. Several major OHL trades have already happened in the past week, while Wright sits as a healthy scratch in Seattle the list of potential trading partners is shrinking.

Do What Stu Did

How do you know when you have lived an extraordinary life? When at age one-hundred you fill the chapel at your funeral. That was the send-off Stu Crawford received at his Remembrance Day service, a reflection of the lives he touched and the gentleman he was. At age 23, then a young navigator in WWII he parachuted out of a Lancaster on its way down and landed alone in Germany in the darkness of night. Somehow he made his way home to Kingston and navigated his way through an incredible life.

Stu played hockey at Queen’s in the 40s, he then became the circulation manager at the Kingston Whig-Standard for the next several decades where he gave hundreds of Kingston kids their first chance at a job delivering the Whig-Standard and learning a few important life lessons along the way. I was one of those kids, ten-years-old when I started delivering the Whig in Portsmouth. Stu always made you feel getting the paper to the door was just as important as the work already done by the writers, photographers, editors and printers.

In 2018, there was Stu at the celebration of life for long-time Royal Kingston Curling Club icemaker Rod Leeder. Surprised to see Stu, he told me he was paying his respects, ‘to one of my boys’, Rod had delivered the paper in Portsmouth some fifty years earlier. That tells you all you need to know about the man.

Earlier this year Queen’s named its dressing room after Stu, and future generations of Queen’s players will know Stu’s story and more importantly know that character matters when you wear the tri-colour. A stick tap to Brett Gibson and others for making that happen while Stu could enjoy it.

In a 2012 interview with the Whig’s Patrick Kennedy, Stu reflected on his life of giving and community involvement by simply saying, “If you say yes, more than you say no, you will live a meaningful and impactful life.”  The secret to a successful and fulfilling life can be summed up in those words. He will be missed and remembered.

Mark Potter is Past President of the Original Hockey Hall of Fame, an honoured member of the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame and a sports broadcaster for four decades.