I once met Captain Video and, before you ask, he was nothing like Captain America, Batman or even Darth Vader. Beneath Roger Neilson’s nom-de-plume was a real man, in more ways than one, a man who should (and will) never be forgotten.
He was a hockey coach. He was called other things besides Captain Video — eccentric, coach’s coach, Pollyanna, and the “unknown coach” when Toronto owner Harold Ballard tried to send him behind the bench with a bag over his head. He was the first to incorporate video in analyzing hockey, hence the nickname.
Neilson was a quintessential hockey coach, because that’s what he did for 52 years, and because what he left behind will benefit — forever — people who don’t play hockey.
The people he influenced on the ice generally loved him, and they were many, in part because he spread himself around by being head coach for seven National Hockey League teams after Toronto. They also thought he was good. Only 30 coaches in history coached more than his 1,000 games. Many haven’t matched his winning percentage (.541), among them Paul Maurice, coach of the current defending Stanley Cup champions.
Despite all the statistics and characterizations, Neilson is probably best-known for being a towel waver. You read that right. The towel he raised on the end of a hockey stick — as in “we surrender” — was to protest officiating that created a three-goal deficit for his Vancouver Canucks. “Sometimes you have to do that,” he told me a decade later. “When you think about it, waving something is really a good outlet for the emotions. I’d like to do it myself if I was in the stands.”
That was 1982. That means there two generations of fans are now in the stands doing just that, especially during playoffs, likely with no idea why they’re doing it. Neilson’s “towel power” became a staple around the league, prompting him to tell broadcaster Dick Irvin: “I just wish I’d had the concession.”
His Canucks came back to beat Chicago in 1982, and Neilson went from associate coach to head coach. Towel power secured his job for another 18 months, then he moved on to Los Angeles, New York, Florida, Philadelphia and Ottawa. Today, there is a statue of him outside the Canucks’ arena, complete with the raised stick and towel. Today, in Ottawa, Roger Neilson Children’s Hospice supports kids who will never play hockey, and parents who may never experience the joys of parenting.
It opened in 2006, three years after he died (cancer) and Larry Pearson, one of Neilson’s Peterborough high school students, said this about his former gym teacher and coach:
“Success is to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to earn the betrayal of false friends. Success is to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others and to leave the world a little bit better, whether through a healthy child, a garden patch or an improved social condition for others. Success is to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. That is to have succeeded. That is Roger.”
On how many coaching epitaphs would include that?
