Eddie Olczyk had a long and successful career. He was drafted third overall in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, playing a total of 16 years in the league split between six teams.
In 1994, he won the Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012. He played a total of 1,031 games in the NHL, notching 342 goals and 452 assists.
During his career, Eddie’s children also played hockey. Sometimes, he had the opportunity to go see them play, and in his book he recalls one specific game.
It was fun in the beginning, but ended with him being kicked out.
Eddie’s six-year-old son, who’s also named Eddie, played a game with the St. Lebanon Hornets at the same arena where he got initiated as a rookie with the Chicago Blackhawks.
It was the day after a game with the Penguins, and Eddie Olczyk was, as he recalls in his book, “tired and agitated.” He started to get angry with the amateur referee, who called an intentional offside.
“There’s maybe 55 parents in the rink. Thes kids don’t know their right shoe from their left shoe and this guy’s calling an intentional offside?,” Olczyk recalls in the book “Eddie Olczyk: Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life.”
Eddie had seen enough and decided to tell the referee his opinion of it all.
But that would come with a prize.
“‘Come on, ref, what do you think this is, the NHL’, I yell out. ‘Let the kids play,'”, Eddie writes. “As he was going down to the other end for the faceoff, I see him turn back and look at me. I’m about 25 yards away and he blows his whistle and yells, ‘You, out.'”
Eddie was stunned. The amateur referee was making him leave the arena. The Hornet’s manager came over to him, telling him the game wouldn’t start until he had left.
Eddie’s son Tommy, who was with him, asked, “Are you going to tell Mom?”. The NHL star didn’t answer, and the two had to watch the rest of the game from the back wall.
“I was punished and had to go in the timeout corner and watch the rest of the game. It wasn’t the last time aI yelled at an amateur referee but it was the first and only time I have been thrown out of one of my kid’s games,” Eddie Olczyk writes.
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