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At Melrose Place, Folks Are Abuzz About Barry's Lightning Move

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By SCOTT CARTER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 25, 2008

About the same time Barry Melrose was introduced as the Tampa Bay Lightning's new head coach late Tuesday morning, folks in Melrose's hometown of Kelvington, Saskatchewan, nearly 2,500 miles from Tampa in central Canada, were starting to prepare for another sleepy day in the rural farming community.

The news that Melrose was once again a National Hockey League coach after a 13-year absence had yet to hit the office of the Northeast Chronicle, Kelvington's weekly newspaper. Publisher Kathryn Wade quickly summed up how Melrose's return to the NHL would be greeted in his boyhood home.

"We're all amazingly thrilled," said Wade, who has known the Melrose family for years. "It's a very small town. Barry is related to nearly everybody in town."

Far removed from Hollywood Barry, the quick-witted, sharp-dressed and famous-haired Melrose NHL fans know, is small-town Barry, the gregarious kid raised on a farm and who, when he was 13, sold three pigs he raised for $67 to buy his first pair of hockey skates.

"You play hockey in the winter and fastball softball in the summer," Melrose's cousin Wendel Clark, a former NHL player, said of their hometown. "It's pretty much the same there today."

That first pair of skates helped Melrose develop into one of Canada's top junior players in the early 1970s, paving the way to a future in the NHL and a life far removed from the farm where his parents, Jim and Norrie, raised their four kids: Vickie, Barry, Cindy and Warren.

Vickie, the oldest, moved away to become an elementary school principal in Weyburn, about four hours south. Warren still farms in Kelvington. Cindy married a farmer in their hometown, which, according to a 2006 census, is home to 866 of Canada's 31.6 million residents.

Meanwhile, Barry Melrose's skill at the local hockey rink, managed most of his youth by Jim and Les Clark, Wendel's father and a cousin of Melrose's mother, offered an escape from the farm life that Barry knew growing up.

"He is not really a farm boy," Vickie said Tuesday, reminiscing about the time her younger brother got his head stuck in a door leading to a stall full of chickens. "Barry is scared to death of chickens. He might be a big, macho man, but throw a chicken at him and he'll be running."

A Very Close Family

As you can tell, the Melrose clan grew up close, sharing chores and barbs on a farm that included growing grain and raising cattle and pigs.

Jim and Norrie have died, but Melrose and his siblings try to gather in Kelvington each summer for a week or two. They talk politics - Melrose became a U.S. citizen in 1998 - and whatever else comes up at the dinner table.

"He took to the American way of life," Vickie said. "We argue politics all the time. He really knows how to push my buttons."

"I love America," Melrose said Tuesday. "I love what it stands for. I love the people. I love that it's you that makes your own way. The Americans don't expect others to take care of them, ... yet they're the most giving and generous people in the world."

ESPN anchor Steve Levy, who considers Melrose one of his closest friends after working together at the all-sports network for the past 12 years, went to Kelvington three consecutive summers with Melrose. Melrose picked him up at the airport the first year - 2 1/2 hours away - but told Levy to rent a car the next time.

"There are no stoplights there," Levy said. "This is a small town, kind of like something right out of the movies."

Levy knew Melrose was a popular figure back home, but he didn't expect to drive by a welcome sign professing Kelvington as "Canada's Hockey Factory." Melrose and five other former NHL players from the town are featured on the sign in full uniform on their hockey cards.

Since last coaching in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings during the 1994-95 season, Melrose gained the same popularity at ESPN's campus in Bristol, Conn., often going to dinner and golfing with camera operators and TV personalities alike. When news spread that Melrose was leaving to replace John Tortorella, the mood changed instantly.

"The hair and the clothes are fancy, but it probably stops there," Levy said of Melrose's public persona. "Everybody loves him at ESPN. It almost seems like there is a death in Bristol. People are genuinely upset that he is not going to be around campus anymore."

That doesn't surprise Dwight McMillan, who first crossed paths with a young Melrose.

'He Is A Local Hero'

McMillan had heard about the talented junior hockey player from Kelvington, so he recruited him to play for the Weyburn Red Wings of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. McMillan has coached the Red Wings for 33 years and still considers Melrose as perhaps his most prized pupil.

"Up here in our area, he is a local hero," McMillan said. "He still phones and talks to people like myself. His family, they knew what it was like to work hard and to do things right."

All those mornings working on his parents' farm taught Melrose about discipline, hard work and that nothing comes free. As he got older, others noticed Melrose's intelligence and his ability to persuade others to follow his example.

"He always did well in school without trying," Vickey said. "He is a leader."

Eventually, opportunities to coach followed his playing career. By the time Melrose finished his first season as an NHL head coach in 1993 with the Los Angeles Kings, he was considered one of hockey's flashiest figures. He led the Kings to the Stanley Cup Finals his first season, losing to Montreal in five games.

During his three seasons behind the Kings' bench, Melrose developed a reputation as a people person, no matter if he was talking to his star player at the time, Wayne Gretzky, or a janitor at the Los Angeles Forum, the Kings' former home.

Longtime Kings trainer Pete Demers, who retired in 2006 after 34 years, recalls talking to Melrose several times one season when Demers headed the NHL Trainers Association. He sought advice on motivating people to make necessary changes in the industry.

"He is a regular guy," Demers said. "Barry had time to listen and compassion for what you were trying to do."

Melrose will now bring his flashy-yet-humble approach to the Lightning, a team that finished last in the NHL last season only four years after winning the Stanley Cup.

All of Kelvington and surrounding Saskatchewan will be watching to see if the hometown boy can make them even more proud.

"Barry is extremely intelligent," said Wade, the newspaper publisher. "He is not just a hockey jock. Barry knows exactly what he needs, exactly what he is trying to get, and exactly how to get it."

Reporter Brett McMurphy contributed to this report. Reporter Scott Carter can be reached at scarter@tampatrib.com or (850) 294-3088. (850) 294-3088.

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