There will be laundry: Inside Senators’ dressing room, equipment staff set the tone

Draw back the curtain of an NHL club and you are bound to catch a glimpse of its beating heart. 

I refer to the guys who glide in and out of a dressing room as stealthily as Tim Stützle on a rush up ice. Effortless. Quiet. You hardly notice them slide a pair of freshly sharpened skates onto the hooks above a player’s stall, or whisk a laundry basket out for another load. It is their capable hands that will reach over the boards to hand a stick to a player whose twig has snapped, in a single motion as slick as the baton handoff between sprinters on Canada’s Olympic champion relay team. 

Stützle might drive the Ottawa Senators’ attack, and Brady Tkachuk leads with his force and will, but behind the scenes, four men run the NHL dressing room and environs of the Canadian Tire Centre: John Forget, head equipment manager, Ian Cox and Alex Menezes, assistant equipment managers and their assistant Bram Karp, the youngest of the group at 28.

If Ottawa’s hockey team is a family, as it likes to think of itself, its equipment crew is as close as any four brothers. They know their jobs so well that no one has to be told what to do. 

“We could go an entire day, literally muzzled and not talk to each other and still get everything done,” says Cox, who joined the Senators in 2015, the same year as the manager who hired him, Forget. 

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Who dreams of a career mending and sewing hockey gear, sharpening skates, loading massive bags of equipment and doing endless laundry while keeping 20 professional hockey players content in their dressing room bubble? 

Probably no one. Until it gets in your blood, then it’s habit-forming. 

In elementary school during the late 1980s, Johnny Forget could look out his classroom window to see the OHL Oshawa Generals team bus in the Civic Auditorium parking lot, loading up players and gear for a road trip. He daydreamed about his Generals heroes heading off to hockey adventures in Peterborough or Ottawa, or perhaps a northern swing through Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. 

Forget’s parents would take him to Generals games, and he watched stars like Eric Lindros and later, Marc Savard, light up major junior before big careers in the NHL. Following the path of the great Bobby Orr, Lindros and Savard were luminous in an OHL town like Oshawa.

Forget played the game, of course, and was finishing up a business degree at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough when he confronted a bit of an existential crisis. His college hockey career was winding down; he knew he wasn’t going to make the pros and wondered how to stay connected to the game. 

On a whim, he sent an email to the Oshawa Legionaires Junior A team, asking for work. Forget had worked at a Play It Again sports store. He knew how to sharpen a pair of skates and figured that would be an asset. When the Legionaires said yes, he was so excited he printed out the email and kept it. It wasn’t even a paying job. He was Johnny, the volunteer. No matter. With a main gig at a local golf course, Forget would hang around the Legionaires team whenever he could, doing odd jobs. The golf course boss was a big hockey guy, so he’d always let Forget go to the rink when he was needed. 

Location matters. In real estate and life.

Inside the old Civic arena (since demolished and replaced), the Legionaires’ room was next to that of the headlining Generals, where legendary equipment guru Bryan Boyes presided. Boyes would go on to be equipment manager for Canada at several world junior tournaments, where his motto was: “All we want the kids to do is show up and play, let us look after everything else.” 

Words to live by for up-and-coming equipment jockeys.

Boyes would order sticks (wooden, back then) for both of the Oshawa junior teams. Sticks came in just two patterns, Generals 1 or Generals 2, right and left.  Forget got to know Boyes a little bit, watched and learned from him. And when Boyes’ assistant left for a job with the Vaughn goalie pad company, Forget summoned up the courage to march into Boyes’ office. 

Boyes was vacuuming the floor and had to shut off the machine to listen to the kid standing before him. 

“I don’t know how or why I did it, but I walked into his room and said, ‘I want this job.’”

He kind of hesitated, gave me this awkward look, like I have to give this some thought — but that’s how I ended up working in this business.”

Forget moved on to the AHL Hamilton Bulldogs, owned by a guy named Michael Andlauer. Together, they won a Calder Cup in 2007. 

Forget, 44, tells his fellow staff it’s a great lesson in not burning bridges. On a video last season to mark Forget’s 1,500 professional game, Andlauer joked that he bought the Senators just to reunite with his chief equipment guy. Imagine, though, if Andlauer and Forget had not gotten along well in Hamilton. The new Senators owner could have changed over his equipment staff as he did other departments inside the Sens organization.

Instead, he knew and liked Forget and Forget loves the staff he has worked with for a decade, in most cases.

As you might guess, equipment crews aren’t in it for the glory or attention. They are the proverbial unsung heroes of an NHL operation. But once in a while, the players let them know how they feel. At the celebration for pro game No. 1,500, Forget, his staff and every single Senators player wore “Wanted: Dead or Alive” John Forget shirts, a batch of Forget pucks was unveiled, and he received the demonstrative gift of a gorgeous new Ski-Doo snowmobile for his favourite winter pastime. 

Johnny wept openly as he sat on the machine. 

“I appreciate you appreciating me,” Forget said. 

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Ian Cox followed a similar path to his pal Forget, except in Halifax, Nova Scotia, instead of Ontario. 

On Cox’s very first day of classes at Nova Scotia Community College (Truro campus), a teacher walked into the room and mentioned that the local Junior A team, the Truro Bearcats, needed an equipment guy. Like Forget, Cox had some previous sports store experience that made him a perfect fit for a team’s support staff.

And how is this for serendipity? The job with the Bearcats qualified as a work term practicum needed for his Community Recreation courses at the college. 

That program itself, with a focus on event planning, anatomy and physiology, has proved useful in Cox’s career in hockey. After graduating, Cox spent six years honing his skills with the Junior A Bearcats. He was learning techniques he could use at a higher level, no different from the player prospects he was assisting. Off-ice, instead of on. Away from the rink, Cox was employed at a home for senior citizens. 

Like Forget, Cox graduated to major junior, in his case, the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL. From there, he worked with the AHL St. John IceCaps. When the parent Winnipeg Jets decided in 2015 to move their AHL affiliate closer to the NHL club, Cox and his wife, Megan, were preparing for a move to Manitoba. As luck would have it, Cox received a phone call from Forget at that time, offering him a job as assistant equipment manager with the Senators.

“We just told the movers that we were taking our stuff to Ottawa now,” Cox says.

Cox hit a major milestone of his own last season, pro game No. 1,000. The Senators sent him and his wife on a once-in-a-lifetime golf trip to Scotland, along with new golf shoes and other gifts.

The players wore “Cox 1,000 Games” t-shirts emblazoned with an image of Cox riding a mountain bike.

Cox, 42 now, battled his emotions as he tried to put the moment into words. 

“It’s a long way from Truro, Nova Scotia and Junior A hockey and working at a seniors home, playing bingo with the old people every day,” Cox said.

“Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be standing here today,” he said, facing a roomful of Senators players and staff. “You treat us so well. And I get to work with my best friends every day. It’s the best.” 

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Spezza’s trail of dust

Alex Menezes and Bram Karp are the local talents on the crew, Ottawa residents who got jobs with their hometown NHL club. Menezes, who has been with the group the longest, was working in the building in 2011 when his connection with the equipment staff paid off in a job as a dressing room attendant. 

That morphed into full-time work, and now Menezes is part of the three-man team (with Forget and Cox) that travels with the Senators on every road trip. Menezes goes back long enough to remember when a few Senators players were still wielding blow torches and sandpaper to file and shape wooden sticks. 

Former Senators captain Jason Spezza was one of the last of the wooden stick warriors in the NHL. They had to practically rip that last wooden stick out of his hand as everything shifted to fibreglass, carbon and aramid. (Even when he yielded to composite sticks, Spezza hung onto the feel of his Sherwood wood stick a bit longer by inserting a wooden blade into a composite shaft or finding a composite stick with some wood elements in the blade. He felt he had better control of the puck with wood). 

Menezes recalls having to clean up all the wood shavings and “shrapnel” after Spezza got through manipulating his sticks for a game. 

“When he was done in the stick room, I would have to wait, before his meeting, and I would go and finish cleaning up that room because there was just stuff everywhere,” Menezes says. The goal was to keep other players from stepping on the debris with their skate blades. “Spezz would be in there for like an hour before the game playing with his sticks.”

And before Spezza, I recall Alexei Yashin working on his stick curves forever. Back in the day, players were constantly experimenting with their sticks — think of Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita creating wicked hooks — but Forget says the sticks today are so consistent from the manufacturer that players don’t have to fiddle with them nearly as much. 

Setting the mood

Ask the equipment crew about the best and worst aspects of the job, and the response is universal. The best part is coming to the rink every day to work with the players.

“It’s not like a 9-to-5 job where you look at the clock and say, ‘Is it lunch yet?’” Menezes says. “Here it’s like, geez, it’s already two o’clock. It’s pretty special.”

The most difficult stems from the long hours and time away from family. 

Forget and his wife, Sheena, have three children — Holden, Hudson and Hailey. 

The staff’s most important function at the rink? You might think it would be the care of skates or equipment, but it comes down to their roles as people. 

“I think the equipment side of things becomes almost secondary to the personal side and how we as a group carry ourselves on a daily basis, because it directly affects the players,” Forget says. 

“More than one boss has said to us,” Cox adds, “you’re the first people players see when they come in in the morning and the last ones they see when they leave. So we set the tone.”

Winning impacts everyone’s mood at the rink. For equipment staff, the job doesn’t change during a winning or losing streak, but the atmosphere alters mightily. 

It’s a lot easier to kid around, player to staff and vice-versa, when the team is performing as it has been during this current run by the Senators. 

“Little problems don’t turn into big problems when you’re winning,” Forget says. 

A day in the life

Here’s a typical game day for the equipment staff:

7 a.m. Arrive at the rink and begin the prep work ahead of the 10:30 morning skate of the home team. Practice jerseys and socks in the stalls. Skates all sharpened. Laundry up to date. 

9 a.m. By now, the prep work is done. As the players arrive, equipment guys cater to any requests from players ahead of the skate. 

10:30 a.m. Monitor morning skate. Provide equipment assistance as needed. 

11:30 a.m. Begin post-skate work. Gather laundry and clean up the room. Sharpen skates and cut sticks as needed. Put tracking tags in game jerseys. More laundry!

12:30-3 p.m. Some free time. Most of the staff stay at the rink and have lunch. Work out. Take a pre-game nap.

3:20 p.m. Hang game jerseys and socks in stalls. Turn off the heaters or fans in the dressing room. 

3:40 p.m. The first players will arrive.

Pre-game: Bram and the game night staff set up both player benches, penalty boxes and the referees’ room. The rest of the staff are busy helping players and coaches as needed.

6 p.m. Monitor the pre-game skate. 

7-10 p.m. During the game, staff are ready for any emergency. A chipped or cracked skate blade that needs replacing. Towels. Sticks. Hockey Night In Canada gave Forget and Cox some love during a December game for their quick actions to get a stick into the hands of Tkachuk, who continued a rush up ice. Forget had one foot on the boards and leaned over with the stick for Tkachuk to grab in a single motion. 

Intermission: Wipe and clean visors. Dry gloves. Various repairs to equipment. Some sharpening. 

Post-game: Clean up and straighten the room. Do some laundry and put out more laundry for the next day. 

11-11:30 p.m.: General duties until the last player leaves. 

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A few equipment quirks from this interview and from a Q&A session the staff did with fans earlier this season:

• Preferences run the gamut when it comes to having sharp blades or less of an edge. Forget says the radius of hollow for Senators players ranges from ⅜ (more grip) to 1.5 inches (more glide). The most common cut is ⅝. 

• Most time in the equipment room: Anton Forsberg.

• Old guy gear: Claude Giroux has older, custom shoulder pads and a stick pattern he hasn’t altered in years. 

• Skates alone keep the equipment guys busy. 

“We sharpen them before every game, and then after the game, we will check them before the next practice,” Forget says. “We redo all of the guys’ skates that have nicks. If there’s another game, they all get redone. So, basically, they’re done every time they step on the ice. And sometimes during the game, too.” 

Getting the edge

“Some guys, you can count on it, they’re going to change their blades four times in a game. Then there’s some guys that could probably walk out to the parking lot (on skates) and come back and play,” Cox says.

What has changed, Forget says, is the idea that you might miss a shift or two because of a skate issue. You just change out the blade. 

The laundry demands would put maid service to shame. They do a load first thing in the morning, one right before practice. After practice a few loads. If one of the dryers goes down, it’s a minor irritant. But if it’s a washer, that’s a problem. 

On the road

Travel on an off-day is easier, but when the team flies out after a game (home or away) to a road destination, the team and entourage often arrive well past midnight. While players and coaches unwind at the hotel and get to bed, the equipment staff heads right to the rink to get some laundry cleaned and dried and start setting up for the next day. 

Shawn Markwick, the team’s massage therapist, and Jeremy Benoit, the strength and conditioning coach, will accompany Forget, Cox and Menezes, and the five of them can get everything done in about an hour. 

Cox says it’s about two hours from when the plane lands and the guys are back at the hotel, their work complete. Time for a few precious hours of sleep. 

While Bram Karp does not travel with the team, he has an important job back home, meeting the incoming road team at the Ottawa airport to help them set up back at the CTC. Some of the other NHL staff will be self-reliant and not need much help, while others will count on Karp to put in the work at the CTC. 

Player appreciation

Nobody knows more about the efforts of the equipment crew than the players they serve. 

“The hours they put in, the number of sleepless nights they’ve been through — they’re the last guys out of the rink and the first here in the morning,” said alternate captain Thomas Chabot when Cox was honoured for Game No. 1,000.  “They make our jobs easy. Everything is ready for game time.”

At 28, forward Adam Gaudette has been with several different NHL organizations. 

So when he says the Ottawa equipment crew “is probably the best group of training and equipment staff I’ve been around,” that carries some weight. 

“First and foremost, they’re just all good guys,” Gaudette says. “It’s easy to come to the rink and talk to them, get to know them, hang out. And you know, whatever you want they provide without hesitation — they really cater to our needs.”

For example, Gaudette has a certain type of stick tape wax he favours. It’s a little softer than most of the brands, going on the tape more easily and providing more grip. They didn’t stock it here, but the crew made a point of ordering it and getting it into Gaudette’s hands. 

He will also get a new pair of gloves every week or two.

“There’s no asking them twice or waiting around because they get it for you right away,” Gaudette says. 

Interestingly, when I spoke to the four equipment staffers, they agreed that Gaudette is one of the low-maintenance guys in the Senators’ room. Nick Jensen is another.  

One more thing to note: I get the sense from Senators staff that they believe this is a special group of players this season, more mature, focused and united toward the goal of playing winning hockey. 

That just makes the staff want to work harder on the team’s behalf. 

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