Hockey Hall of Fame Legend Stan Mikita Diagnosed With Dementia

Mikita in his playing prime

 
This is far from an obituary – hopefully no one will need to write one of those for Stan Mikita anytime soon.

But it is a tribute. One of so many, if you care to search the internet, on this remarkable hockey figure.

There is a good reason why the news that Stan Mikita, a player generally regarded as the best centre to grace hockey in the 1960s, has that awful disease, dementia, elicited such an emotional and tangible response.

It was there for all to see, in newspapers, on television and on radio and not just in Chicago, either, where he is beloved in a way that few Blackhawks alum can match – and perhaps only the great man, Bobby Hull, is more feted in this hockey-mad town than Mikita – but all around the hockey world. The so-called “Scooter Line” that Mikita anchored with Ken Wharram to his right and either Ab McDonald or Doug Mohns to the left – remains one of the more famous offensive combinations in the game’s history.

In the constant, day-to-day news cycle of hockey, it takes a particular sort of story to pierce the thick layer of team and player updates, and the devastating news about Mikita’s worsening condition has done just that. Not simply because dementia is perhaps one of the cruellest diseases that can afflict a human being, one that, more often than not, ravages a person’s mind but not their body, causing memory loss to the point where no one is recognisable to them – not sons, daughters, brothers, husbands, wives, anyone…

Stan Mikita is a good man. He was an even better man than he was a player, and, of course, he was a brilliant player, possessed of a wicked right-handed shot and the sort of scoring touch that we have rarely seen since. It’s talent that comes along once in a generation. How blessed were the ‘Hawks to see Hull and Mikita on the ice together?

Without a doubt, Stan Mikita is a legend, and will always be. They don’t send you into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto for no good reason. He led the League in scoring four times in the sixties, and tied Hull’s then-record of 97 points in 1966-67. That mark has only been broken twice since then: by Phil Esposito and Wayne Gretzky. That’s rarefied air to be breathing.

His on-ice partnership with Hull – they were the key cogs in a Chicago machine that was the most powerful offense of the 1960s – turned into a long-lasting friendship. They pioneered the curved stick, changing the dynamic of offensive hockey forever more than anyone to that point, probably to the detriment of goalies everywhere.

Rightly so, the two are Blackhawks ambassadors, and legends in the minds of fans everywhere, and have adjacent statues outside United Centre. They’re the only two NHLers given that honour in Chicago, and they are in most fitting company: Michael Jordan’s likeness is but a Mikita wrist shot away. It is a wonderful and deserved tribute, and one can easily mount an argument that both Mikita and Hull have done as much, and even more, for hockey in Chicago as Roenick, Chelios, Savard and Esposito.

Indeed, it was in Hull’s company that I met Stan Mikita, on a chilly Chicago night the fall after the Blackhawks won the first of their two recent Stanley Cup titles. The game hadn’t gone so well – the Columbus Blue Jackets were dominating, and ended up winning handily – but that mattered for little when I was escorted through the bowels of United Centre, and up to a vast suite on the corporate level, where Hull and Mikita were holding court, part of their goodwill ambassadorial roles, for which the Blackhawks should be congratulated. You can’t build the history of your franchise without simultaneously honouring it’s past.

It was one of those ‘pinch me, I’m dreaming’ moments. I’d flown in from Las Vegas that morning, was tired out of my mind, and, for a while there, I thought I was dreaming. To this day, I haven’t forgotten the night, and I doubt I ever will. In fact, I can still remember minute details about that half hour I spent in the company of those legends, and I was incredibly impressed by the way that Mikita took time out to speak to me.

During that conversation, it was as though we were the only two people in the suite. We might as well have been, for he listened and asked questions and listened some more as I explained how someone from Australia explained how I’d fallen in love with the fastest game on ice. He was fantastic. Really fantastic.

“Do you even have snow in Australia?” Mikita asked as I tried not to lose my mind examining the Stanley Cup ring that the Blackhawks gave him following their 2009-10 championship year, ending what, at the time, was the longest championship drought in hockey. It’s a conversation that, however short, will stick with me probably for the rest of my life. He and Hull are as close to hockey royalty in Chicago, and elsewhere, too. For a hockey fan, it doesn’t get much better than that.

There’s a reason why Stan Mikita was the first player in the rich history of the Chicago Blackhawks to have his jersey retired. There’s a reason why he was ranked at 17 on The Hockey News’ list of the 100 greatest hockey players ever – and, for good measure, the highest non-Canadian on that list; he is a native of Sokolce in the Slovak Republic, though he later became a naturalised Canadian – and there is a reason why Mikita is so respected by the current crop of Blackhawks.

There was no hyperbole, no character exaggeration in the many reports detailing Mikita’s condition, and it is indeed a shame to realise that one of the great people in hockey has been struck down by one of the worst conditions known to man. At least, we can remember Mikita as the fast-shooting, smooth-skating centre who led the Blackhawks to Stanley Cup glory in 1960-61. And the guy who starred as himself in Wayne’s World.

Life can be desperately unfair. The disease is indiscriminate in who it claims, and, unfortunately on this occasion, it’s claimed a great one – great player, greater man. You know he won’t give in without one almighty shake at it.