A lifelong goalie looks to pass on his love of the game by training young goalies and helping fans understand the sport.
By STEPHEN HEGARTY
Published June 29, 2004
CLEARWATER - Norman Dann stands behind the hockey goal, dispensing encouragement and advice as his 9-year-old goalie protege contends with 11 stick-wielding boys whacking pucks.
Dann wears a Labatt Blue cap tight on his head. The broad pads on his legs make him look like a cowboy on skates. With his constant chatter, he sounds like a streetwise Yoda.
"Watch the puck," Dann says to the young goalie. "Don't watch the man; keep your eye on that puck. Watch that puck all the way to your stick."
Two, maybe three times a week, Dann, 66, makes the one-hour trek from his home in Wesley Chapel to the Sunblades Ice Arena in Clearwater to work with young goalies. Most of the remaining days of the week, he drives to rinks in Oldsmar, Brandon or Ellenton, looking for ice time.
Norm Dann is a man on a mission.
Besides the obvious goal of playing hockey, he aims to enlighten those uneducated in the ways of ice hockey. He has a lot of work to do.
With the Tampa Bay Lightning's inspiring run to the Stanley Cup, the Tampa Bay area has seen a heretofore improbable spurt of interest in ice hockey. Kids with more padding than the Michelin Man are showing up for Hockey 101 classes in record numbers.
Thirty-something men and women with balance and fitness issues are streaming into adult leagues.
"People watch the Lightning on TV, and they think, "Hey, I want to try that,' " said Jessica Damico, youth hockey director at the Ice Sports Forum in Brandon. She estimated that youth leagues have doubled their usual summer numbers. Adult league numbers are also up.
Dann could not be happier. But like many longtime hockey fans who have patiently explained "offsides" and "icing" to the uninitiated, he wants these new fans to truly understand the game he loves.
"Don't get me wrong - people aren't stupid. But a lot of people are ignorant about the game," Dann said. "If you don't understand it, it's just a bunch of guys running all over the place beating each other with sticks."
If people truly understood hockey, Dann figures, they would become lifelong fans as he did more than a half century ago.
While doing his part as ambassador to the game, Dann sometimes stops short and asks with mock seriousness: "Did I mention that I love this game?" He asks that a lot. He does not wait for an answer.
* * *
Dann grew up as one of the luckiest kids living near St. Catharine's in Ontario. His parents built a full-sized rink in back of the house. Parents always knew where their kids were: at the rink behind the Danns' place.
The scrappy young Dann started out at age 5, playing defender. Then the team goalie got hurt.
"I guess I was the dumbest-looking one on the bench," Dann said. "They put me in goal. I've been there ever since."
He once dreamed of a career in the National Hockey League and made it as far as the Chicago Black Hawks farm team. But Dann suffered a broken leg when he was near his peak. He stayed active in the game and tells stories of seeing promise in a skinny Canadian kid named Vincent Lecavalier. A few years ago, he occasionally shared the ice with Lightning players at the former Ice Palace, now the St. Pete Times Forum.
Considering his 60-plus years of hockey - most of it in goal and much of it without a helmet or mask - Dann is surprisingly unmarked. But look close, and you can see the thin scar hidden in the brow over his left eye. Or the scar in the crease along his cheek, or the scar high on his forehead.
The inventory of violence to his person adds up to more than 350 stitches on the face and head, eight broken noses, one broken jaw and one broken leg. That doesn't include the dings, gashes and bruises that didn't require formal medical intervention.
To Dann, they are badges of honor. He rolls up his sleeve to reveal an angry reddish-purple knob above his elbow sustained in a recent hockey game. "Isn't that a beauty?" he said.
Dann has a ready answer to the question frequently asked of hockey players.
"Sure, these are my teeth," Dann said. "I paid for them."
Despite the physical punishment, Dann still fills his evenings and weekends with hockey. One way or another, he is on the ice five, six times a week. Much of that time he's coaching.
"Not too many coaches have been in goal, so it's great to have Norm out there working with them," said Jody Peavey, coach of the Tampa Bay Junior Lightning Squirt A-level team.
"Norm is a goalie through and through," Peavey said. "Let's just say you have to be a little bit different to let people fire hard rubber at you like that."
Whether he is officially coaching, Dann is always educating.
"When you're in goal, you see the whole ice. You see things the other guys don't see," Dann said.
During games, he shouts out instructions. During breaks, he talks strategy and positioning. When adult league teammates go out for a beer, Dann scribbles on napkins to illustrate the best way to execute an offsides trap.
And at least a couple of days a week, he works with youngsters learning to put their heavily padded bodies in the way of offending pucks.
"It makes all the difference in the world to have Norm working with him," said Trish Brown, whose son, 9-year-old Anthony, trains with Dann on Fridays. "He's great with the kids, and he knows all the fine points."
The family initially put off Anthony's requests to play hockey because, as Mrs. Brown explained, "We weren't ready to make that commitment."
Now the family has spent roughly $3,000 on goalie equipment for Anthony. (Using rented skates, a beginner could start playing after an investment of about $125 on equipment.)
"Once you get into it, that's it," Mrs. Brown said. "You're hooked."
* * *
What Norm Dann really yearns for is a return of Peter Puck.
The animated hockey puck character created in the early 1970s by the Hanna-Barbera folks (who brought us the Flintstones) was created to explain hockey's finer points.
The wisecracking cartoon Puck segments ran during breaks in hockey telecasts.
Old-school hockey fans still haven't gotten over Peter Puck's demise in 1980.
"That's what you need, something that explains the rules so that people understand it," Dann said.
He seems genuinely pained at the prospect of new fans puzzling over an offsides call or a penalty.
If you understand those finer points, he figures, the game looks less like mayhem on skates and more like the apotheosis of athletic achievement.
When you know enough to keep an eye on the blue line or understand the sound strategy of plastering the opposing player into the wall, Dann said, "then you notice the beautiful flow of the game."
"That's key for us," said Bill Wickett, spokesman for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
"We're looking to develop hockey fans for the long term. The more kids that put on skates and the more kids understand the game, the better."
The folks who run the area skating rinks are reveling in the shot of enthusiasm brought on by the Stanley Cup championship. They pray for lasting effects.
"We're seeing a lot of new faces; the question is how many stick with it," said Glyn Jones, rink manager at Tampa Bay Skating Academy in Oldsmar.
Dann thinks those are needless concerns.
"They'll stick with it, so long as they don't mind falling down a few times," Dann said. "If they can get their skating skills down, everything comes together.
"I'm telling you, once these kids get started, they love it."
Dann stops short and smiles for a moment. Then he says it again: "Did I mention I love this game?"
Stephen Hegarty covers central Pasco community news and transportation. He can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is hegarty@sptimes.com
