Lorne’s stories were always the best, including one about teammate ‘Digger’ O’Dell
OKOTOKS, Alta. — Lorne would have loved it.
It was an emotional event, honouring the oft-forgotten scouts charged with finding the next superstars after Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby or Paul Coffey and, just as importantly but much more difficult, the next Kelly Buchberger or Ryan Smyth, heart-and-soul guys on a team. Their jobs — no, their passion — took the scouts to hockey rinks around the world, sitting high in the corners while missing family birthdays and anniversaries because they loved the game so much.
“I made my first trip with Lorne,” said Baumgartner, a full-time scout since 2015 who started a decade earlier as a part-timer with the NHL’s Washington Capitals.
“He took me under his wing right away. And he told the best stories!”
He knew everyone being inducted. Many were close friends, people I got to travel with for there-and-back drives to Medicine Hat, Swift Current, Saskatoon or Brandon, while listening to late inductees Danny Summers, Torchy Schell, Lou Jankowski, Bart Bradley, Gerry Melnyk, Gerry Ehman and Clare Rothermel. That was my childhood, hockey education. All gone now. Not forgotten.
Dad was winding down his playing career with the senior Regina Caps when Father David Bauer invited him to join the national team, becoming Johnston’s teammate, until a younger defenceman retired from the NHL and bumped Lorne from the roster before the 1968 Winter Olympics.
That’s how most scouts get started: Play hockey, switch teams, meet people, learn the game and decide they want to stay involved. Through countless road trips to hundreds of rinks they watch thousands of players, file reports and discuss who they might take with that first-round pick. They become part of a fraternity who, as former player/coach/GM Craig MacTavish said, “Give more to the game than they take.”
Lorne often said he vouched at the draft table for future Oilers captains Buchberger and Smyth, convinced his boss Barry Fraser (another departed Wall inductee and dear friend, whose family sat with ours at the ceremony) to draft goalie Grant Fuhr in the first round of his first draft. But he never much spoke about Peter Soberlak, Michael Henrich or Jesse Niinimäki, first-round selections who didn’t pan out.
I promise to write less about my dad going forward, but his stories were among the best. My favourite was about a former teammate who worked very hard in the corners. Of course hockey players would nickname a hard worker, “Digger O’Dell.” “No,” Lorne would say. “He was an undertaker in the offseason.”
To stay in that frame of mind, about 500 people were at the induction. You know what it’s like at a funeral, when you realize the one person who should really be there is missing?
On Tuesday it felt like lots of people were missing, but so many others stepped forward to fill in for the losses. With a nephew and a son who came along to support me and their grandfather at the huge family reunion, it was joyful!
The Regina Leader-Post has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe.
With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark leaderpost.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.