MOMENTS, MEMORIES and MADNESS with STEVE CAMERON: How I came to love hockey — and how a sandwich paid the price

This is a story about a roast beef sandwich.

Specifically…

A roast beef sandwich that took flight.

Long before the tale’s most dramatic moment, however, events were set in motion that led to comedy, silliness, frustration — yet still, honestly, perhaps a good bit of fun.

It started in the unremarkable industrial town of Port Huron, Mich.

The only thing I actually know about Port Huron is that it had a hockey rink, and that’s where I fell hopelessly in love with the sport.

At the time, I was a reporter and columnist for the Topeka Capital-Journal, though I was based in Kansas City.

When that metropolis was awarded a National Hockey League expansion franchise that would begin play in 1974, part of my job involved covering the birth of the Kansas City Scouts.

Oh, I knew a little about the NHL going into this thing — but I’d never seen a game up close.

So, when I was sent to Port Huron and the Scouts’ first-ever training camp, I really had no idea what was about to happen.

EVEN NOW, I can see and hear the action as that group of castoffs, never-made-its and an occasional legit prospect skated furiously up and down in a dark, gloomy building.

Some member of the Scouts organization gave me a Xerox copy of the team roster, and asked if I’d like to go stand behind one of the goals during a scrimmage.

Sure, I would.

And that’s when love struck.

I mean, I had no idea…

The speed of the action was breathtaking, and I remember vividly when the first slap shot sailed wide of goalie Michel Plasse and struck the glass in front of me.

Of course, I flinched and probably jumped backwards.

Then I got used to what I was seeing, and couldn’t believe what these guys could do on ice skates.

I thought: The Scouts are going to be at the bottom of the NHL ladder, or near it (Washington had been granted a franchise the same year), so how fantastic must the GOOD teams really be.

Plasse was making one magical save after another right in front of me, and it seemed he was unbeatable.

A couple of months later in Montreal, I learned that Plasse wasn’t quite so miraculous with Guy Lafleur bearing down on him.

AH, BUT hockey itself had hooked me.

I covered the Scouts’ first game, at historic Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

Kansas City fell behind 2-0, but then Scouts captain Simon Nolet whistled home a slap shot from the right circle, and the new kids were on the board.

The Leafs won 6-2, which was expected, but the game itself wasn’t all that one-sided.

Hey, I was in Toronto.

In hockey heaven.

Predictably, the Scouts went on to have an awful season (15-54-11), mostly because the expansion pool included almost no one with speed or good enough hands to finish around the net.

See, I was getting it.

There were bright spots, too.

GM Sid Abel, a wonderful gentleman in addition to being a Hall of Famer who centered the famous “Production Line” in Detroit alongside Gordie Howe, made a couple of terrific trades — and even landed a true blue-chipper in center Guy Charron.

Things looked better for the 1975-76 season, with the hope that more results would draw bigger crowds and stamp Kansas City as a true hockey town.

THEN I got a phone call.

I had a terrific job, covering the Royals, Chiefs, Scouts and the NBA Kings, but this was perhaps the only bait at which I would have jumped.

The Scouts offered me the role of public relations director — with a plush company car and a significant pay raise.

I leaped into it.

Seriously.

We did things at Kemper Arena that second year that make me proud to this day.

For instance, it’s customary to put together a package of press notes for the media at each home game.

OK, but when Montreal arrived with its army of reporters, we actually had our press notes also available in French.

We created a press lounge out of an empty storeroom, setting it up like a neat little restaurant for each game — and then tearing it down again the next morning.

We found six young ladies who could skate (after auditions), and had them bring refreshments to the media during games, and afterwards, three of our ladies — they were all dressed to the Scouts theme — would escort each of the game’s three stars out onto the ice.

Shoot, we were lighting up the NHL.

THE TEAM, however, was not.

Actually, we got off to a promising start and just after Christmas, the plucky Scouts were just a single point behind St. Louis for a playoff spot.

Alas, the bottom fell out.

When he was overruled on a player move, coach Bep Guidolin simply quit with no warning.

Everyone learned, right at that point, that the franchise was underfunded, and that basically we had no money.

Guidolin was replaced by Eddie Bush, a good guy who had been an amateur coach in Canada.

Management tried to rev up interest by signing Steve Durbano, a madman whose wife once chased him through a restaurant with a meat cleaver.

Durbano played just 37 games, yet led the NHL with 209 penalty minutes.

The weird thing was that Durbano actually had talent — he could really skate and he had a powerhouse shot.

But as soon as somebody bumped him on the ice…

Bush exploded in the dressing room one night and said: “What’s the matter, Stephen? Is your helmet on too tight?”

It was one of the few times I laughed in several months.

SO, WE come to the roast beef sandwich.

Our staffers delivered food and drinks to the media just prior to each period break, and somebody handed me the sandwich.

It seemed that we’d lost a million games by then — we won ONE game of our last 44 and finished the season with a 30-game winless streak.

We were playing Los Angeles that night, and normally slick Kings goalie Rogie Vachon was having a stinker.

He’d basically handed us a 4-2 lead as the second period was ending.

Everybody felt we were going to end up smiling for once.

There were four seconds left in the period, with a faceoff coming in our end.

I remember thinking: Please just win the faceoff, and let’s relax.

Except…

We won the faceoff, and then one of our many inept defensemen, backed up deep in his own zone, made the dumbest play I’ve ever seen in hockey.

Instead of just holding the puck and letting the horn sound to end the period, he tried to throw the thing out the zone.

I still see it.

One of the Kings knocked down the puck, quickly shot what turned out to be a knuckler through a sea of bodies — and it sailed over the shoulder of goalie Denis Herron at 19:59.8.

Now, team personnel absolutely MUST act professionally.

Always.

INSTEAD, I went briefly insane and fired that roast beef sandwich against the wall of the press box.

The mark of beef and cheese remained there for years.

Hell, it might STILL be there.

But that play, something you wouldn’t see in PeeWee hockey, finished me.

And I’ll always wonder if it was the instant that finished hockey in Kansas City.

Sure, we ran out of money – seriously, near the end of the season we actually signed a player, Henry Boucha, who was blind in one eye.

Hilarious and sad, all at once.

There was an amazing extra chapter to this hockey adventure, by the way.

The Scouts were sold to an investment group, who moved the team to Denver.

Then a year later, I returned to my lifetime profession and took a columnist job with the Denver Post.

The Scouts were called the Rockies by then, and they were still terrible.

But at least they snapped that 30-game winless streak on their first night in Colorado.

Also, believe it or not, I still love hockey — and roast beef sandwiches.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.

Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball, once per month during the offseason.