THE UNSEEN HEROES

Keeping Canucks on the ice

One of the more exciting
aspects of last year’s run for
the wire with the Vancouver
Canucks was the way the
team kept coming back in
spite of injuries, game after
game.

It was a show of courage
and determination; a

| Ken Fleger |

challenge that everyone rose
to with a passion that won't
be forgotten around the west
coast city no matter how
well this year’s edition of the
Canucks perform. It was a
gutsy and feisty show.

Yet there were a couple of
guys who received little
public acclaim during that
late season and playoff run
who deserve far more
recognition. Without them
that dash to the front of the
pack might have been well
nigh impossible.

You see them when you go
to a Canucks game. They
wander up and down behind

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trying to stay out
off he way way of of Resser Neilson.
Probably you never see them
do much more than throw a
towel around a sweating
player's neck, hand a new
Stick over the boards, or

occasionally heip an injured —

player from the ice.

Yet like the iceberg,
you're only seeing the tip of
the work that Ken Flieger
and Larry Ashley = ac-
complish with the Canucks.

Hockey is a tough.
physical game that takes its
toll of the human body no
matter how weil conditioned
and finely tuned. And being
a professional business,
those finely tuned bodies
must be kept on the ice.
That's where the training
team of Fleger and Ashicy
come into play.

Players at a professional
level play with bumps and
bruises. For most of them it’s
just the way things are. But
bumps and bruises, strains
uncomfortable. But let Larry
Ashley get you and chances
are that he can effect some
minor miracle cure and have
you back in action. And not
ony back im action, but fil to

pia
One of the big dangers for
Staff and team
doctors is in putting a player
on the ice followmg an
injury before he’s ready. It’s
something that recent court
cases have frowned on, and
it's something that Ashiey,
the doctors and the players
don't want cither.

Ashicy, who has more

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Of course not. And that's
where Ken Fleger comes in.
Sixteen years a_ trainer,
Fleger has been all over the
continent with the WHA, the
Western Hockey League,
the Central League and now
Canucks. Fleger is the guy
who has to keep the skates
sharp and the sticks in-
dividually warped and taped
for each player on the roster.

Like all professional
athletes in any sport, the
various bits of equipment
become extensions of each
player’s personality and such

B9 - Sunday, September 26, 1982 - North Shore News

items like sticks and skates
must be imprinted with the
particular idiosyncracies of
the indivudual.

Each player has his
preference for how he wants
his blades sharpened and
just how wants his stick
taped and shaped.

Ken Fleger has to learn all
these individual preferences
and then do it. Giving a
player skates not sharpened
the way he wants them
would be somewhat
equivalent to forcing him to
wear two left shoes, and

giving him the wrong stick
would be like trying to make
a left hander from a right
hander.

At this level of the game,
Fleger can't be content just
with knowing what the
players want. He also has to
learn the characteristics of
each ice surface the team
plays on over the season.
The ice can cause him to
alter and change the
sharpening of the skates, and
perhaps even the sticks.

Again a full time job with
plenty of homework.

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