TORONTO — Vladislav Tretiak boarded a plane in Moscow over the weekend and flew halfway across the world for a 48-hour business trip.
He does it every November. He wouldn’t miss it.
“It’s very important to be here because I have many friends,” Tretiak said Monday before the Hockey Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony. “(Those) who played against me, who played with me. It’s a special life, a special hockey life. Special family here.”
And then, for added emphasis, Tretiak repeated: “Family.”
That’s a fitting word on a night unlike any other you’ll find on the hockey calendar. More than anything, the induction ceremony amounts to an annual reunion for those bound together by a game played with a puck on ice.
Nothing really changes here from one November to the next.
The show, the red carpet, the food, the faces — you can set your watch to it all. There’s a certain comfort to the routine.
The only variety comes from the inductees themselves, with Phil Housley raising his old Jofa helmet in the air on Monday and Sergei Fedorov’s mother recording his speech on an iPhone while he said “I don’t know how we got here” and Nicklas Lidstrom recalling that he knew so little about the Detroit Red Wings when he came to the NHL that he originally asked to wear Gordie Howe’s No. 9.
And then there was Chris Pronger, who thanked his grandparents for giving him a “Finnish temper” but otherwise kept his speech on the straight and narrow.
It was also a night to celebrate the accomplishments of Angela Ruggiero and builders Peter Karmanos Jr. and Bill Hay — not to mention media members Bob McKenzie and Nick Nickson — while the NHL lay dormant until a 10 p.m. ET game between the Coyotes and Ducks.
A friend of mine scored a ticket to the induction a couple years back and tells a story of seeing Tretiak call his family over for a picture at Ken Dryden’s stall in the replica Montreal Canadiens dressing room at the Hall afterwards.
How cool is that?
This is literally a night where the sport comes to life. So many of the old sticks and pucks and sweaters that are found throughout the building belong to the people who gathered together on Monday.
You had Scotty Bowman arriving moments after Tretiak. Steve Yzerman, Brendan Shanahan, Chris Chelios and Tomas Holmstrom helped make it a true Red Wings reunion.
Ron Francis, Gary Bettman, Dale Hawerchuk, Luc Robitaille, Pavel Bure, Bobby Clarke … the list of luminaries shaking hands and trading stories went on and on and on.
“This one’s special with the players that are in,” said Bowman, who was inducted to the Hall in 1991. “It’s a nice weekend. It’s getting bigger and bigger.”
“You sit there and listen to the guys talk about their experiences, the greats of the game,” said six-time Stanley Cup champion Kevin Lowe. “It’s an honour for me to even think that I’m here. We all think about our earliest days and just trying to play the game.
“So it kind of brings everything back to Day 1 of why you started playing hockey.”
Tretiak compiled an unparalleled international career — first rising to prominence while playing for the Soviet Union during the 1972 Summit Series — and gained induction to the Hall in 1989.
He hasn’t missed an opportunity to welcome each new class since, with the inductees seemingly coming from different parts of the globe every year.
“It’s a good opportunity to look at the hockey players from different countries: Sweden, Finland, Czech, Russia, U.S., Canada,” said Tretiak. “It’s unbelievable because we’re friends. It’s very important.
“A long time ago maybe play against (each other) very hard — maybe fighting sometimes — and today it’s the best friends.”
That’s what the game is all about. It’s what this night is all about, too.
