By Bruce Berlet
The saddest, most shocking day in the life of Paul Lawless ended up shaping his very existence.
When Lawless was 13 years old, his father, Bruce, died suddenly of a heart attack an hour before he was to have double bypass surgery.
“When you’re having a double bypass, you’re like an outpatient,” Lawless said. “But it was one of those freaky things that happen.”
It was especially traumatic for Lawless because his father got him started in hockey a decade earlier when he and a neighbor flooded the schoolyard next to the family’s house in Toronto every winter. Then his dad and friend would put a hockey stick between them to help Paul get his balance so he could skate between them.
After her husband’s death, Jean Lawless, Paul’s mother, immediately leapt into the job of being a dual parent, sitting down her son to discuss how they would handle the unexpected tragedy.
“My mother and I are still the best friends on the planet,” said Lawless, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he moved in 2005 to get involved in real estate and now owns a ticket company, ProTix. “I can remember sitting there balling my ears out when my mother walked in my room and said, ‘There’s nothing we can do about what just happened.’ She did it in a very sympathetic way, but the bottom line was we could mourn for the rest of our lives or we could pull our bootstraps up and move on.
“Believe me, my father didn’t leave a whole lot of money behind. My mother had never worked, so she had to go get a job and paid for her son, me, to continue to play at the highest level. As a kid at the time, you don’t realize the expense, the cost and the time (of hockey). She could have very easily said we can’t afford to do this, so who knows where I would have ended up.”
Lawless said he owes everything to his mother…
“I had more fun with my life after my father died,” he said. “To this day, that’s always been my approach on life: We’re going to be dead a lot longer than we’re alive, so I look at life in a very different way than a lot of other people. That conversation with my mother has always stuck with me, and that’s what I live by.
“Losing my dad just numbed me. I couldn’t believe it. I know I lost a big piece of my life when he died, and I’ve made up for it by living my life to the most ever since. When my feet land on the floor every day, it’s going to be a great day. I’ve always been happy-go-lucky, and nothing has changed.”
Lawless’ life dramatically changed again in 1982 when he was the Hartford Whalers’ first-round pick (14th overall), leading off the best draft in franchise history. Others selected that year included right wing and future captain Kevin Dineen (third round), defenseman Ulf Samuelsson (fourth) and center Ray Ferraro (fifth).
“That was helluva draft year for the Whale,” Lawless said.
Lawless, who turns 46 on July 2, spent parts of four injury-plagued seasons with the Whalers, getting 49 goals and 68 assists in 204 games, before being traded to the Philadelphia Flyers for wing Lindsay Carson on Jan. 22, 1988. But shockingly for Lawless, he wasn’t with the Flyers for long. After future Whalers general manager and current Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke became Lawless’ agent through an introduction by Dineen, Lawless was acquired by Burke, then GM of the Vancouver Canucks, for defenseman Willie Huber on March 1, 1988.
On Feb. 27, 1989, Lawless was traded to the Maple Leafs, the team he followed so closely as a youngster, for the rights to Peter Deboer. He had one assist in 13 games with the Maple Leafs to finish his NHL career with 49 goals and 77 assists in 238 games.
“(Owner) Harold Ballard was still alive, and here I was playing for a team that I watched as a kid,” Lawless said. “I loved playing with (Hall of Fame defenseman) Bjore Salming, who I had watched while I was growing up, but it was such a poorly run organization that you can see why those kinds of teams will never win. Then you see guys like (Chicago Blackhawks majority owner) Rocky Wirtz, who genuinely cares about the team, goes out and spends the money and now is holding up the hardware (Stanley Cup).
“You need more guys like Rocky Wirtz, and I’m fortunate to be good friends with (former Whalers defenseman and current Blackhawks coach) Joel Quenneville because he’s one of the good ones. I talk to him and his wife, Boo, all the time. You can’t not be happy for the guy.”
Lawless began chasing his dream to play in the NHL when his father got him skating at 3 years old. He began playing at 5 and went to his first NHL game, Maple Leafs versus Boston Bruins, with his dad at 8. The younger Lawless immediately became hooked on hockey forever, so much so that he didn’t play any other sports growing up in Toronto.
“They tried to get me to play some school sports, but I had no interest,” Lawless said. “I was playing too much hockey and didn’t have any time for anything else. It was hockey, hockey, hockey from the time I got up to the time I was daydreaming at school looking out the window to the time I got home with a hockey stick in my hand.
“And hockey never was a day of work. My parents used to let me stay up and watch ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ while I was growing up, and I never got through a game because I was in the backroom playing. I was so fired up and said, ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’ When I went to my first Maple Leafs game, I just couldn’t believe it. I was hooked and can remember sitting right behind the Leafs goal. I don’t remember if the Leafs won, but they stunk, and nothing has changed. They’ve got some good players, but they just can’t seem to figure it out.”
Lawless graduated through the youth hockey programs in and around Toronto, including after his father died in 1977.
“I think his death made me grow up a little early in a lot of ways,” Lawless said.
Lawless played four years of bantam and midget hockey for the
Wexford Raiders and then was a 1981 first-round pick of the Windsor
Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League, where he had 70 goals and 94
assists in 156 games. After splitting two seasons with the Whalers and
Spitfires, he played with the IHL’s Salt Lake Golden Eagles and on the
American Hockey League regular season champion Binghamton Whalers in
1984-85.
As his NHL career wound down, Lawless also played for the IHL’s Milwaukee Admirals, AHL’s Newmarket Saints, Davos and Lusanne in Switzerland, Bolzano in Italy and Graz in Austria before completing the 1992-93 season with the AHL’s New Haven Senators and IHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones.
“It was great (in Europe),” Lawless said, chuckling. “It was like I was on a paid vacation and had all expenses taken care of. How about hanging out in the Swiss Alps? How great is that? And backchecking was optional. I only had to do it on Wednesday and Thursday and not on weekends. It was perfect.”
Lawless, noted for his speed, went to the Anaheim Mighty Ducks’ training camp in September 1993 but didn’t earn a spot on the roster because the team was concerned he had a small hole in his heart that was causing him to tire too quickly. But the condition, which Lawless inherited from his father, did not prevent him from resuming playing in the minor leagues. He spent the next three seasons with the Cyclones before purchasing a share of the Austin Ice Bats of the Western Professional Hockey League with former Whalers teammate Blaine Stoughton before the 1996-97 season.
Lawless split that season with the Cyclones and Ice Bats before announcing his retirement and becoming Austin’s assistant coach on Nov. 21, 1997. He remained in that post until Feb. 10, 1998, when he was named interim head coach through the end of the season. He finished his playing career with three games in two seasons with Austin and coached the Ice Bats to a 7-6-0-1 record in 1997-98.
Lawless had co-ownership of the Ice Bats until March 1999, then purchased a share of the East Coast Hockey League’s Cincinnati Cyclones in September 2001 and was named vice president of hockey operations on Sept. 26. He held that position until March 5, 2002, when he was named the Cyclones’ interim coach, compiling a 10-2-1 record before relinquishing the post on June 7, 2002.
“I got involved with Stoughton, and we had a real good run in Cincinnati and Austin,” Lawless said. “We owned the team and enjoyed it, but then it got time to sell, and we moved on.”
Lawless returned to Cincinnati, which is still Stoughton’s hometown, until Collins talked him into moving to Scottsdale, where he started his ticket company about two years ago.
“It couldn’t have worked out any better,” Lawless said. “I love the ticket business because I’m good at getting out there in front of people.”
Lawless loves his new business almost as much as the Whalers.
“I never experienced anything like the team we had in Hartford,” Lawless said. “One of the five lies of hockey is that I don’t care how I do as long as the team wins. In most cases, that’s very, very true, but when I was with the Whale, especially in those three years (in the mid-1980s) when we really had a big run, it was such a unique hockey team. Everyone on that team, except maybe for one or two guys who shall go unnamed, had such a combination of camaraderie and trust. Everybody was out there for the same purpose, which is so rare these days.
“It was so nice, and we didn’t really realize it until after the fact. But, man, we had such a great bunch of guys. Everyone got along, which was really, really rare.”
Whalers managing general partner Howard Baldwin also made a lasting impression on Lawless, especially after the 1985-86 team beat the Quebec Nordiques to win the only playoff series in franchise history. The Whalers then lost in the division finals in Game 7 on Claude Lemieux’s overtime goal for the Montreal Canadiens, who went on to win the Stanley Cup. Ironically, Lawless missed the end of the 1986-87 season and the start of the playoffs with a broken right hand sustained when he was slashed in front of the net by Lemieux during an April 1 game at Montreal.
“Howard was always dressed to the T’s, and I always liked his really nice, high-end shoes,” Lawless recalled. “I said, ‘Howard, if we win this series (against Quebec), how about we each get a pair of those shoes?’ After we beat Quebec, there was a pair of those Gucci shoes in everyone’s locker, and I’ll never forget it. Howard came through large with his Gucci shoes.”
Lawless then paused, chuckled and added, “Now, granted, he used to wear the suede leather and he just gave us the plain leather, but, hey, we were in no place to bitch and complain. Honestly, it was funnier than hell, but ole Howard came through.”
Lawless also won’t ever forget the parade through downtown Hartford after the Whalers lost to the Canadiens.
“It was such a shame that that (bleeping) Claude Lemieux scored that goal,” Lawless said. “The parade was amazing, but can you imagine that little town of Hartford if we had won?”
Lawless said the community aspect of the Whalers still brings chills. It started when Lawless met restaurant entrepreneur Billy Collins when he first came to Hartford and has frequently returned, the last 10 years to play with his longtime friend in the member-guest golf tournament at Wampanoag Country Club in West Hartford, where Collins lives.
“I know everyone (at Wampanoag) because I used to be a member there,” Lawless said. “Billy got me hooked up with a friend in Scottsdale, and ultimately I’d like to get into another market like Hartford because I still know a lot of people there.”
Lawless was especially touched one year when he met a father (and son), who was more excited about talking with him about the Whalers and how much they meant to him and his family and that his kids were raised watching the team than he was about playing in the tournament.
“You didn’t realize at the time how important (the Whalers were) to peoples’ lives and how much we brought to the community and what we did for the kids at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford,” Lawless said. “I can still remember going into the cancer ward and taking so much for granted when you had this little kid who all he wanted to do is meet a hockey player. You’re like, ‘Hey, I’m Paul Lawless,’ but you make his life by just being there. It was incredible, and it still stays with you.
“Once a Whaler, always a Whaler. That’s why my memories of Hartford are so huge.”
And that included his career-high, six-point game against his hometown Maple Leafs on Jan. 4, 1987.
“I remember Jack Evans, God rest his soul, saying, ‘Stand up and wave to the crowd,’ ” Lawless said, impersonating the late coach’s slow, deep voice. “I didn’t know if I should (stand up) or if Jack would give me (bleep) if I did. I’ll never forget that night, along with so many other memories, unlike any other team I was associated with.
“I had a great career in Cincinnati, where I was making as much money as I did with the Whale and had my number was retired. But I love going back (to Hartford) every year and hate the last day of the member-guest knowing I have to leave. I love playing the Wampanoag course and others in the area like Avon, and it’s so much fun just seeing the old guys who used to go to all the games. It’s just great.”
Several former Whalers players still live in the area, and Lawless annually travels back to Hartford to see Collins & Co. and goes to Toronto to see his mother and friends, all while playing golf as much as he can. And he wants to help Baldwin and his new Whalers Sports & Entertainment group with its projects to try to re-energize the Hartford hockey market with a Whalers Summer Reunion and Fan Fest on Aug. 12-14 and a Whalers Hockey Fest 2011 on Feb. 11-20 that will include as many as 20 outdoor games at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.
“I want to do as much as I can for Howard and get the momentum going behind him,” said Lawless, who played on the Whalers’ off-season charity softball team. “There aren’t a lot of transient people in Hartford like there are in Scottsdale and Phoenix, and when I come back to Hartford in the summertime, I have guys who are 20 years older than me coming up all the time saying, ‘Hey, Paul, back in the 1980s, when you guys had that run, was unbelievable.’ ”
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Posted by: cheap Jordans | 10/20/2010 at 07:47 AM
Great read Paul
You forgot to mention all our street hockey games
Thanks Paul
Dan Ludlow
Posted by: Dan Ludlow | 11/19/2010 at 08:34 PM