McKeck’s introduces the Cody Burger after local hockey star
Posted By Ryan Pyette
Posted 6 months ago
Editor’s note: This article was written in the spring when Walt McKechnie was named to the London Sports Hall of Fame. Since that time, the retired NHLer has sold his Haliburton restaurant.
Brampton Battalion captain and OHL MVP Cody Hodgson led the Canadian world junior hockey team to gold this year.
Back home in Haliburton, former NHLer Walt McKechnie found a tasty way to celebrate the local hero at his bar and grill called McKeck’s Place.
Introducing . . . the Cody Burger.
“It had peameal bacon and cheddar cheese on it,” McKechnie, 61, said by phone. “All Canadian things. You always want to do what you can to recognize guys like Hodgson in their home town.”
Now, it’s McKechnie’s turn. The London native can’t put ketchup or mustard on his next award -- a plaque heading to the John Labatt Centre as one of seven 2009 inductees in the London Sports Hall of Fame.
McKechnie is joined by late wrestler Harry Geris, early Montreal Canadien Goldie Prodger, Sunningdale golf director Patty Howard, rec sports organizer Bill Farquharson, longtime radio and TV personality Pete James and the 1877 London Tecumsehs baseball team.
“People ask me every day if I’m from around here [Haliburton],” said McKechnie, a heady player who spent 15 NHL seasons with eight different teams. “Nope, I’m from London. They ask where I graduated and I tell them The Strand [pool hall] on King Street. My buddy Leonard Bonk and I would go down there and maybe some people thought that was wasted time. But it gave me street smarts. I had that.”
McKechnie had a quick childhood. He played junior hockey with the London Nationals by the age of 14.
“I loved to play and I couldn’t get enough of it,” he said. “I just saw an advertisement for free ice and that’s why I went out with the Nationals so young. They ended up keeping me. Playing against guys 18, 19 years old, it made me grow up fast.”
He was a first-round pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs and rookie of the year with the Phoenix Roadrunners of the Western league in 1968.
He is known for bouncing around the league, a personal playoff drought for much of the 1970s and landing with some historically bad franchises like Charlie Finley’s California Golden Seals, the Cleveland Barons and Don Cherry’s Colorado Rockies.
“I was a journeyman,” McKechnie said. “There was really one brutal year (in 1977-78). I had finished (a 25-goal season) with Detroit, then played for Team Canada in the summer (at the world championships). I was traded to Washington and the Capitals started 0-14-2. Tom McVie -- that great coach -- tried to save his own job and blamed me for the start and I was shipped out to Cleveland. I started the next year in Minnesota camp, when the North Stars and Cleveland had the same owners, and then landed in Toronto.
“I played on six, seven teams that one year.”
McKechnie ended up skating for three Original Six teams -- Detroit, Boston and the Maple Leafs. Part of his lore as a veteran with the 1978-79 Leafs was verbal jousting with head coach Floyd Smith.
“One time, we played Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and gave up 21 goals in three games so Monday’s usually an optional practice, but they made it mandatory. Floyd had us doing three-on-nothing rushes for 45 minutes. I told him I played 12 years in the NHL and I’ve never seen a three-on-oh. Maybe we should work on the defensive zone. Floyd kicked me off the ice. I was in the room for a couple of minutes and I hear the door and it’s [ex-London Knight] Dan Maloney coming in. He said, ‘I told Floyd I agreed with you so he kicked me off, too.’ “
McKechnie scored at least 20 goals four times and wound up just 45 games short of 1,000 in his career.
“That kind of bugged me,” he said. “I begged to stay on. I went with my buddy J.P. Parise [whose son Zach is a New Jersey Devils star] to be a player-assistant coach of the Salt Lake Golden Eagles [Minnesota’s farm team] in 1983. Lou Nanne was the North Stars GM and he called me at Christmas and told me, ‘We’re going to stay with the young guys like Dennis Maruk and Bobby Smith,’ so I told him, ‘Well then, consider me retired.’ I just went on the bench for the rest of the year.”
McKechnie went to Haliburton every year since 1970 to work at a summer hockey camp. He bought the bar in 1986 and has filled it with hockey memorabilia. “In the room we call the Pub, there’s a picture of our Ryerson public school team that won the London peewee hockey championship when I was in Grade 8. Robbie Nash was the coach . . . he came in to McKeck’s once and I took him and showed them that picture. He couldn’t believe it. It was a lot of fun. I still remember the guys on that team and to go into the London hall of fame, it’s truly an honour.”
