THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501220208
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HARRY MINIUM, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 311 lines
John Brophy just might be the area's most recognizable sports figure.
The Hampton Roads Admirals' fiery, white-haired coach is easily spotted in a crowd - even one of nearly 9,000 at Scope.
His reputation is hard to hide, too. As a player, he chalked up the most penalty minutes in minor league hockey history and once declared: ``It was my solemn duty to kill everybody in front of my net.''
As a coach, he has fought with fans, been arrested for brawling, and regularly rips opposing players - and his own - in the press.
But well-hidden from the public is a John Brophy most people wouldn't recognize:
A voracious reader, a student of history whose favorite TV stations are the Discovery Channel and the Arts and Entertainment Network.
An animal lover who pampers his dog and spoils his grandchildren, a caddie for his girlfriend on the LPGA Tour.
Nancy White, a pro golfer who shares a Virginia Beach home with him, knows both John Brophys, and much prefers the second.
``He's not at all like the guy behind the bench,'' White said. ``He's a funny, funny man and a gentle, kind man. You'd basically figure I'd be a dead woman if he had that kind of a temper away from hockey.
``But he's not that way at home. That's something that stays on the job. Away from the job, he's a totally different man.''
On the job, Brophy has helped make Hampton Roads one of the most successful franchises in minor league hockey. Under Brophy, the only coach they've ever had, the Admirals have won two ECHL titles in five years and sold out Scope 38 times.
Brophy's distinctive style - he wears boots and bolo ties - and antics on the bench have made him a big part of the show at Scope.
``It's hard to say how much he's meant to our success,'' Admirals president Blake Cullen said. ``But I shudder to think what would have happened if he hadn't been here.''
A hockey vagabond since age 17, Brophy is in his sixth season with the Admirals - the longest he has been one place as a player or a coach. At 62, it appears he might have found a home in Hampton Roads.
Brophy, one of eight children of a railroad engineer, grew up in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, a Canadian province settled by the Scots and Irish - two cultures with a healthy history of fighting.
Brophy is pictured in his scrapbook winning the long jump in the 1948 Highland Games, an annual Scottish rite. Brophy admits he was not as successful academically.
``I used to walk right into Morrison High School, right out the back door and right over to the rink,'' he said. ``They had a fire in school one day, and I went out and never came back. I remember teachers saying, `You're going to starve.' I haven't been hungry a day in my life.''
Brophy left home at 17 to play junior hockey in Halifax. Newspaper clippings noted that in one game, he sent two players ``to the dressing room for repairs'' because of his violent checking.
Ernie Fitzsimmons, a hockey historian from New Brunswick, remembers seeing Brophy play senior hockey in the early 1950s.
``He could be dirty,'' Fitzsimmons said. ``If a guy went around him, Brophy would take a two-hander at him like an ax. He was fearless, a fearless hockey player.''
That aggressiveness served him well in his 19-year career in the rough-and-tumble Eastern Hockey League.
Brophy, nicknamed ``Boom Boom'' as a young pro, accumulated 4,444 penalty minutes during his career, which Fitzsimmons says is a minor-league record that may never be broken.
In Brophy's era, players wore fewer pads than today, and no headgear. Brophy recalls having two teeth removed from the top of his head after a collision with a player. Players often were separated from fans by fences, not plexiglass, or not separated at all.
Players truly bent on inflicting damage fought with sticks. Some often eschewed painkillers when they received stitches.
ECHL commissioner Pat Kelly played in the Eastern League against Brophy, and later coached against him in the Southern League. Kelly acknowledges that he and Brophy ``threw down our gloves a few times.''
``I was involved in some stick fights, and when I think back on it, I wonder what was wrong with all of us,'' Kelly said. ``I guess we were all young and figured nothing would ever happen to us.''
White says she is horrified when she hears Brophy recount tales of old hockey battles.
``Sometimes, when I'm listening to him telling a story about how he broke somebody's leg and is so proud of it, I can't believe it's him,'' she said. ``It's hard to imagine in my wildest dreams that he was ever like that. He's certainly not like that now.''
Brophy was suspended in 1967, allegedly for punching an official. He says that story isn't quite true.
``I didn't punch anybody,'' he said. ``I shoved him.
``I bumped into him and he took a dive over backwards to make it look dramatic. When he got up, I said, `If you want to do that . . . ' and pushed him right down.''
One story says Brophy avoided arrest for hitting a fan with a stick in Greensboro by being carried onto the team bus in a stick bag - another allegation he denies.
On another night he had to be escorted out of the Greensboro Coliseum by police - for his own protection from the fans.
All the while, Brophy was having the time of his life. With Long Island, he became a golfing buddy of New York Yankees' star Whitey Ford.
``I played on three championship teams (one in Long Island, two in Charlotte), and I loved it all, every damn minute,'' he said. ``We bused everywhere, and we had buses break down all over the country.
``I played hockey in the winter and was an ironworker in the summer. I'd work 100 stories up. I worked a lot in New York and all over the Maritimes.
``How much overtime I worked depended on how much I needed for a party that weekend. If I needed $500 that weekend, that's how much I made.
``I had a great time after the games. One night when I was at New Haven, we eliminated Johnstown from the playoffs, then kicked the ---- out of them in the bar after the game.''
Brophy married in the 1950s, but it didn't last. Brophy won't talk about the marriage, but he is proud of the two children it produced - and his two grandchildren.
The violent minor league antics of the time inspired the movie ``Slap Shot,'' in which Paul Newman played a character based in part on Brophy.
Brophy reviles ``Slap Shot,'' even though three of his former players had major roles in the movie.
When asked by his players last season during a trip to Raleigh to put a tape of the movie into the bus' VCR, Brophy threw the tape to the floor and kicked it out the door.
``Nothing in that movie ever happened,'' he said. ``There was a lot of fighting in that movie, and there was a lot of fighting in the Eastern League. But there were also a lot of great hockey players. That wasn't in the movie.''
Brophy was not a great player. A good defenseman with an average stick and above-average desire, he soon realized he would not reach the NHL.
``But I wanted to play hockey,'' he said. ``It was all I knew.''
He kept skating until he was 40, playing 73 games for the Jersey Devils in 1972-73 and accumulating 12 points and 220 penalty minutes before turning to coaching.
Brophy broke in as head coach of Long Island in the North American Hockey League in 1973-74, then came to Hampton for four seasons as coach of the old Gulls.
Brophy's drive to win and ability to motivate propelled him up the ranks as a coach. In '84 he was named assistant coach for Toronto.
Two years later, he was named head coach of the Maple Leafs - a dream come true for a lifelong Toronto fan.
``Standing on the back of the bench at Maple Leaf Gardens was everything you ever heard about,'' Brophy said. ``From the time you're growing up in Canada, you know all about the Maple Leafs. I have great memories of Toronto, great memories.''
Brophy endeared himself to Toronto fans with his intensity. He upbraided players, even highly paid superstars, though not with the same ferocity as he had in the minors. And he worked tirelessly.
Much as the fans loved Brophy, the players were a different story.
``We had some prima donnas,'' said Rick Vaive, who is the head coach of the South Carolina Stingrays and played under Brophy in Birmingham and Toronto. ``We had some players who just didn't want to play his way.''
Brophy took the Leafs to the Norris Division finals his first season and the semifinals the next, but was fired at midseason of his third year.
White met Brophy during his second year with the Leafs, thanks to Rick Fraser, a sports writer for the Toronto Star who covered the Leafs and golf. Brophy was an avid golfer; White an avid Leafs fan. Both were unattached.
``It made sense to me that they should meet,'' Fraser said.
White, a speed skater who missed making the Canadian Olympic team by 1/10 of a second, recalls the first time she was attracted to Brophy.
``I was watching him on television,'' she said. ``I turned to a friend and said, `Isn't that the sexiest man you've ever seen?' ''
White, 35, says there was only one problem the day they met - Brophy's propensity for profanity, in particular the ``f'' word.
``The first time I met him, he said it twice and said, `Excuse me, excuse me,' '' White recalled. ``It was so funny. He couldn't help himself.''
He still can't.
``When he uses it twice in a sentence, he's in a good mood,'' said Amy Dyches, the Admirals' public relations director. ``When he says it three times, look out.
``He's the only person I know who uses it as a noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb and every other part of speech.''
Brophy and White hit it off immediately, and when he was fired by the Leafs, he looked to her and to his brother Tom for solace.
``We went to stay with Tom in Orlando,'' White said. ``It was such big news in Toronto. It was very difficult for John. He was a mess. It really hit him hard.''
Brophy began caddying for White a few months later. While at an LPGA event in Chesapeake, he asked TV reporters if there was still hockey in Hampton Roads. Told of an ECHL franchise planned for Norfolk, he said he'd love to be its coach.
Reporters quickly relayed the word to Cullen, and within a week Brophy signed a contract. He then persuaded White to come with him to Hampton Roads.
Six years later - an eternity by Brophy's standards - they're still here.
Brophy could retire tomorrow if he so desired. Though not wealthy, he has saved enough to live comfortably.
``I tried to spend it all,'' he said, ``but I failed.''
But comfortable to Brophy means being active. He says he couldn't stand to sit on the beach in Florida.
``I wouldn't know what the hell to do with myself,'' he said.
He is a conditioning fanatic who watches his diet and runs, lifts weights and skates nearly every day. During practice, he skates with players, barking orders and mixing it up with his stick.
``The guy could put on skates and play with us now and hold his own,'' Admirals captain Dennis McEwen said.
``I'll tell you how involved he gets with us. One day he was working with us and pinned me to the boards and I thought for a minute that he was going to drop the gloves and go after me. That's how worked up he gets.''
Brophy suffers through each loss as if it's a personal tragedy. Buffalo Sabres coach John Muckler, who played with Brophy in Charlotte and Baltimore and coached him long enough to trade him three times, says Brophy is the fiercest competitor he's ever met.
``I haven't met a hockey player who wanted to win more than he did,'' Muckler said. ``The guy just can't stand to lose. That's what makes him such a good coach.''
His brutal practice sessions, and behavior after losses, are legendary.
Twice last season he punched holes through the windshield of the team bus after losses. After another loss he left the team waiting in the parking lot of a restaurant in Greensboro for a half hour in freezing weather. A few weeks later he moved the entire team to the first six rows of the bus while he sat in back by himself. He said he didn't want to sit near any ``losers.''
This season Brophy is coaching the hottest team in the ECHL - Hampton Roads has gone from the league cellar to a first-place tie with Richmond, winning 15 of their last 17 games - in part because Brophy jump-started the Admirals.
After a 3-0 loss to Roanoke, he had them skate at Scope while fans hissed and booed. He threatened to trade the lot of them, invited the media into his dressing room while he dressed down his players, and between periods of a game last weekend in Roanoke suspended two players for taking ``dumb penalties.''
Jim Brown, one of the players suspended at Roanoke, says the Admirals understand their coach.
``Mr. Brophy does things like that to motivate us,'' he said. ``He doesn't mean it personally. He does it to make a point, to make us better players. It's hard to take sometimes, but it works. Just look at his record.''
Brophy says he doesn't ask any more of his players than he was asked to do.
``I know things are different today, that you can't point a gun at a player's head,'' he said. ``But what other job can you get away with not doing the best you can? I try to push players harder than they've ever been pushed. I do that to make them better.
``Not one player in that locker room has said he doesn't want to go to the next level. They all dream of moving up. It's my job to push them, so that they'll get to the next level if they possibly can. That's why I'm here.''
His passion to excel carries over to the golf course. Admirals forward Kelly Sorensen, a golf teacher in the offseason, recalls being asked by Brophy to play nine holes one afternoon.
``We went over to Stumpy Lake,'' he said, ``and went down to the driving range where Nancy was giving lessons.''
They never made it to the course.
``We started hitting balls at 1 o'clock and didn't get off the range until 6:30,'' Sorensen said. ``I had blisters on my hands. He got in there and started working on my swing.
``I'm the golf pro and he's telling me what to do. But that's the way he is. He's driven, in whatever he does. There's no half speed with John Brophy.''
Brophy survives on 3-4 hours of sleep a night, and often can't sleep at all when his team loses.
``When the Admirals lose, he basically can't function,'' White said. ``He takes losing very, very hard. He doesn't pay attention to what you're saying, his mind is so much on hockey.
``When we were going through the losing streak earlier this season, he was really, really hurting.
``He just can't stand to lose.''
Some Admirals officials worry that the expansion in higher leagues - the IHL will add at least two new teams next season - could lure Brophy away.
It nearly happened last summer, when Chicago of the IHL tried to get Brophy to interview. Had Brophy agreed, sources in Chicago say he would have been a leading candidate.
Cullen worries about losing Brophy to Orlando, home of Brophy's brother Tom, and a warm-weather spot where White's golf game could prosper in the winter. Orlando recently received an IHL expansion franchise.
Cullen called Pat Williams, the general manager of Orlando whom he has know for years, to recommend Brophy.
``I'd hate to lose him, but he means too much to me to see this opportunity go by if he might regret it down the road,'' Cullen said.
Though Cullen won't reveal Brophy's salary, it is widely believed to be the most lucrative in the ECHL. Brophy also receives an unspecified percentage of gate receipts.
Nonetheless, Cullen says he probably could not match a salary offer from an IHL team.
Something Cullen can offer is fan adoration. Wherever Brophy goes, heads turn.
``Whenever we go out, people are all over John,'' White said. ``I used to hate it. People come by to say hi, ask for an autograph or to wish him luck.
``He's always accepted it and loved it. He feels like if he goes out, it should be expected.''
Assistant coach Al MacIsaac says he thinks Brophy might still have the bug to go to a higher league.
``He's accomplished everything at this level,'' MacIsaac said. ``He's proven he's the best coach in the ECHL. I wonder if there's that urge to give it one more try at a higher level.''
Brophy says there isn't.
``Why should I leave?'' he said. ``I have the best job in hockey.
``If and when I retire, I'll do so with a clean conscience. I know I've given all I have. Every year, I've done my best for whomever I was playing or coaching.
``I don't know how much longer I'll coach. I've won close to 800 games (738). Not many people can say that. Stay until I win 1,000? I just might.''
Muckler suspects that his former teammate will stay with the Admirals.
``We were kids together in Baltimore, and John has been one of my closest friends ever since,'' Muckler said. ``I'll be surprised if he ever leaves Norfolk, very surprised.
``It takes awhile for some people to find their niche, to find a place where they're truly happy. I think John's found his there.''
Brophy has said before that he'll ``probably coach here forever.'' Cullen would like nothing better.
``I've never put it in writing or told him that, but he's our coach as long as he wants to be,'' Cullen said. ``He has a lifetime contract.'' ILLUSTRATION: PAUL AIKEN/Staff color photos
Nancy White and John Brophy at their Virginia Beach home.
Photos courtesy of JOHN BROPHY
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
Graphic
BROPHY BY THE NUMBERS
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY HOCKEY COACH by CNB