A hockey hall of famer isn’t upset an Okotoks road hockey team is using his world-renowned name.
In fact, Jim “Bearcat” Murray is delighted some hockey enthusiasts are calling themselves the Okotoks Bearcats in his honour when they play in Hockey Night in Canada’s Play On! street hockey tournament in February.
“I had no idea this was happening but I think it is awesome,” said the hall-of-fame hockey trainer. “I think my dad would be very proud because he was the original Bearcat.”
The original Bearcat likely had to stick his head out the front door and yell to get his potlicker of a son to come home for dinner.
“Oh heck yeah, we played all the time,” Murray said about road hockey. “We lived in the green house at the bottom of the stairs (on Elma Street southwest of Okotoks Junior High School) and it seemed like we were always playing in front of our house… we played nearly every day.”
Bearcat moved to Okotoks in 1937, back in the days when a young boy would have his ear bent to the radio to hear Foster Hewitt call a Leafs’ game on Hockey Night in Canada.
However, it wasn’t the NHL stars the young Bearcat and his pals tried to emulate near Elma Street back in the 1940s.
“Back in those days our heroes were guys who played Senior hockey in Okotoks,” Murray said. “Guys like Don Anderson, Arnie Thorson, Bruce Fisher and Bobby Miller. Some of these guys had gone to war and we really looked up to them.”
Road conditions were a bit different in those days. He said the roads would get so packed down in the cold winter months he was able to skate on them. But it was boots for road hockey that most often were worn on the youngsters’ feet.
As for moving nets for vehicles, that was not an issue. They didn’t have nets for road hockey.
“We would use rocks, sticks but usually a pile of snow,” Bearcat said.
Even when Bearcat moved out of the house, the hockey continued in front of the Murray home.
“Cowboy Bill Flett used to play with my younger brother, Norman, in front of our house,” Murray said.
Flett would go from Elma Street to Broad Street. He won a Stanley Cup with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1974.
Back in Bearcat’s day, the youngsters were tough, but Murray doesn’t recall ever having to use his future training skills.
“I don’t remember anybody ever getting hurt,” Bearcat said with a chuckle.
