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In the chilly stillness of the
First Union Arena, the
Zamboni lazily erases all
traces of the morning skate as
the locker room throbs to the
chorus of Metallica’s “Enter
Sandman.”
Reporters file in as players
exit the showers, lining up for
6 o’clock sound bites with boys
of winter still skating in late
spring.
It’s 10:45 a.m. in The House
That Bonvie
Built.
“The media
darling,” chirps
center Darcy
Verot, shooting
a wry smile
over at the
Sandman himself, the rough and-tumble right wing who
sold every seat in the arena
when his team couldn’t regularly beat anyone but itself.
“Funny,” No. 27 says with a
grin, and he means it. He’s nobody special, just another average Joe who comes to work
and takes care of business un
til it’s time to drag himself
back home and do a little living before the next shift starts.
There’s no “I” in team, and
Dennis Bonvie never misses
an opportunity to remind anyone in earshot.
But wherever the story of
these Penguins goes from this
moment less than eight hours
before they host the Saint
John Flames in Game 3 of the
Calder Cup Final, it begins
with Dennis Bonvie.
When the team debuted two
Octobers ago without a bona
fide star or even home ice for
the first 13 games, it was Bonvie who stepped up and into
the hearts and imaginations of
area fans.
People here work shifts.
Bonvie skates them.
Hard.
And from the first face-off
at First Union, nobody has
ever been able to get the house
rockin’ like Dennis the Menace.
He didn’t actually build it,
of course, no matter how many
homemade signs say so at
game time. The heavy lifting
went to the taxpayers, many of
whom couldn’t tell a hip check
from a coat check, and
couldn’t care less.
But the arena was built for
guys (and gals, thank you) like
Bonvie, everyday people who
wear their blue collars on
their sleeves and stubbornly
cling to the belief that sweat
plus faith times a little luck is
the only foolproof formula for
success.
It’s that very equation, Bonvie says, that got him a shot at
punching out opponents the
past eight years instead of
punching a timeclock for the
next 30.
“Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve
tried to be the type of player
that shows up and gives a full
effort every night,” he says, attributing his strong work
ethic to his parents, who
raised him in Antigonish,
Nova Scotia, a hardscrabble
hamlet with a population of
about 20,000.
“It was definitely instilled
through them,” he says. “My
mother is a dedicated home
maker and my father works in
a pulp and paper plant. My
brother works there, too.
“No doubt, if I don’t get a
couple breaks here and there,
I’d be working at the same
plant.”
He didn’t exactly set the
world on fire when he broke
into the AHL in 1993 with the
Cape Breton affiliate of the Edmonton Oilers, picking up just
one goal and 10 assists in his
first 63 games as a pro. Those
numbers didn’t add up to
much, however, stacked
against the 278 penalty minutes he amassed on his way to
2,003 — the AHL record.
“The coach liked my attitude, so he kept me around,”
Bonvie says. “I’m not just a
guy who’s going to go out
there and fight, but if that’s
what it takes, it’s fine by me.
I’ll do whatever it takes to help
my hockey team win. A lot of
times it’s the role players and
grinders that make the difference.”
And man, can he grind.
On ice, Bonvie is a tempera
mental tornado out to level
anything in its path, a relent
less working-class dog of dubious pedigree snarling in the
faces of opponents, his hackles
and fists up for anything.
“It sounds kinda harsh,” he
says matter-of-factly, “but I
fight because that’s what I get
paid to do. I’m here to play
that rough style of hockey I’ve
always played, that’s my role.
“But I don’t do that stuff off
the ice. I try to be the best person I can be off the ice, and
that’s what I try to show the
younger guys. It’s not written
anywhere in the contract that
you have to put your best face
forward and go out and be a
positive part of the community, but I think that’s a big
part of the job.”
Which is precisely what
makes Bonvie special.
In an age glutted by athletes
who prize platinum paychecks
and SportsCenter mentions
above winning and appear in
police lineups as often as the
playoffs, Bonvie is the welcome anomaly who gives all
he’s got all the time and respects his sport and its fans
too much to let either down.
“I hope you got what you
needed,” he says as he gets
ready to head home for a few
hours downtime with Kelly,
his wife of five years.
“Everything but the end,” I
tell him.
And that’s fine by me.
CHRIS KELLY is a staff writer
and columnist for the Scranton
Times-Tribune. E-mail him at ckelly@timesshamrock.com. |
