CANORA - One of the most highly anticipated evenings of Hockey Day in Saskatchewan 2025 was the Goal Line Gala banquet on Jan. 17 at the Sylvia Fedoruk Centre.
Raising funds for Canora’s hoped for project, constructing a new community centre which will include an ice rink, was a central focus of the evening, and bidding was highly competitive at the live auction. Among the items sold were a Conner Bedard Chicago Blackhawks jersey for $2,000, and a package consisting of two Country Thunder platinum VIP tickets along with an autographed guitar for $1,525.
Monday Nooner Podcast hosts Barney and Brandon were the MC's for the evening, and were joined by special guests, Local Legend Don Chesney, and former NHL enforcer Marty McSorley on the Hot Stove.
Don Chesney
When he joined Barney and Brandon on stage, Chesney said, “I’m really glad to be here with you folks tonight.”
He said organizer Dean Wilgosh of Canora originally contacted him and asked him to be part of the evening.
“Marty McSorley, he’ll bring in about 85 per cent of the ticket sales. The Nooner guys, they’ll take care of about 10 per cent. So you’re kind of the filler guy, you’ll look after that last five per cent or so.”
Chesney said he grew up on a family cattle ranch south of Yorkton.
“We didn’t even have a combine.”
He recalled being the proud owner of a Bonanza (classic TV show) lunch pail, attending a one-room school house with 23 kids, ranging from Grades 1-8.
One day at school, Chesney recalls the teacher asking everyone what they wanted to do when they grow up. Typical answers included: farmer, nurse, teacher, firefighter, astronaut. When it came to Chesney’s turn, he piped up, “I want to be a hockey guy.”
The teacher hadn’t followed up with any of the other students, but she asked Chesney to explain his choice.
“I want to play some minor pro hockey, get into coaching, then be a general manager, win a championship, then do some scouting,” which is exactly what he did.
But at the time, apparently the teacher told Chesney, “That’s the dumbest story I’ve heard.”
Chesney’s tenure as general manager of the Yorkton Terriers included a national championship, winning the Royal Bank Cup in 2014.
Even with a skeptical teacher, Chesney said his mom told him, “You’ve got a lot of try. If you want to, go ahead and be a hockey guy.”
She helped him get started, sending him off to a hockey school in New Brunswick, supplied with egg salad sandwiches, bologna and a crab apple fruit sealer.
“Before that, the furthest east I had ever been was going to Whitewood for a bull sale.”
Later on, Chesney’s coaching career involved several stops, including Canora.
“After I got fired in Melville, I coached in Canora in 1995. The late Jerry Gabora called and told me, ‘Don, we’re looking for a coach here.’ I asked if we could talk in person, and he and another guy met me at a restaurant.
“Jerry asked me, ‘How much did you make in Melville.’ I told him it was $32,000 plus bonuses. Well, they couldn’t match that. So I asked Jerry how much they paid their referees. That was $40 per game. ‘Well, I’ve gotta be worth at least that much,’ I replied.”
Gabora said he and his partner needed to speak in private. After a few minutes he came back, “We have good news, Don, we’re going to pay you a ref-and-a-half, so $60 per game.”
Chesney accepted the offer with a condition, “Give me a chunk of Canora poppy seed bread for every road trip,” and they had a deal.
He recognizes that without that Canora job, he may have never won the national championship with Yorkton.
“Who knows, I may be a plumber today.”
Marty McSorley
Following Chesney, Marty McSorley took his turn on the Hot Stove.
“For me, coming out to Saskatchewan and Alberta is such an automatic, and it’s mainly because of the great people.”
McSorley grew up on a farm in southern Ontario, in a family with 10 kids.
“When I was in Grade 1, I had a chance to play in an organized hockey game for the first time,” he said. “It was our first day of artificial ice. The rink was packed, I saw a bunch of my aunts and uncles. We won 3-2, it was awesome.”
McSorley remembers watching NHL old timers play at around the same age.
“I was mesmerized, it was magical,” he said, adding with tears in his eyes, “Then fast forward to about eight years ago, I took a team of NHL old timers back to my home town. It was wonderful.”
Growing up, McSorley and his older brothers didn’t always get along, and he remembers his father telling them, “Don’t fight in the house, go outside,” so they did. “When I got to be about 16, I started winning.”
“We used to play hockey in this old chicken barn that only had one door. Well, if one of us was winning 9-8, there was going to be a fight.”
Eventually he tried out for the Belleville Bulls junior team, which was looking for someone to protect their skill players. During the tryouts, McSorley recalls getting into a lot of fights.
When other players asked him why he was doing so much fighting, he quickly replied, “Fighting you guys is easy, it’s a lot harder going back to the farm and fighting my brothers.”
Some people have said McSorley had a lot of lucky breaks that helped him get to the NHL, but he disagrees.
“I didn’t get drafted, so then you have to make your own breaks. I would go to the rink, skate by myself, skate with other guys, whatever I could do, and I was invited to the Pittsburgh training camp.”
He remembers playing against a lot of great players in the NHL, including Guy Lafleur.
“I hit him, he went down and I got a penalty, so I complained to the ref. He just told me, ‘You don’t hit Guy Lafleur in Montreal!’”
McSorley remembers the Penguins playing in Philadelphia against the Flyers, also known as the Broad Street Bullies.
“Our team was scared to death, but I thought it was awesome. I fought Paul Holmgren, who was a great player, and I guess it ticked them off. I’m only 20 years old, and the next time we played in Philly, they called up Dave Brown and Darryl Stanley just to fight me, so I fought them both in that game. I was proud, I didn’t take a step back.”
It seems McSorley made an impression on Glen Sather, because the Edmonton Oilers eventually traded for him.
“Edmonton was wonderful,” McSorley recalled. “Every game was really important to the other team wherever we went. We got everyone’s best game and their best goalie. I remember we lost in Toronto one year when they were way out of the playoffs, and it was like they had won the Stanley Cup.”
He believes one of the reasons the Oilers were so successful is that “They had a character team, they were good people. Everyone wanted me to get better.”
Other than winning two Stanley Cups with the Oilers, one of McSorley’s favourite memories involves Mark Messier.
“They had me playing on a line with him for three days in practice. But when it didn’t happen in a game, some of the guys told me they felt sorry for me. I told them, ‘Sorry for what? I got to play with Mark Messier for three days.’”
Of course, McSorley was well known for being Wayne Gretzky’s protector, and they spent a lot of time together on and off the ice, both in Edmonton and when they were traded to Los Angeles together.
“One day at practice, Wayne told me, ‘I have the best wife in the world. Janet bought me this great Valentine’s Day present.’ It turns out it was a new red Ferrari. ‘That’s a $350,000 car, now you have to reciprocate,’ I told him. ‘Why do you have to ruin the moment,’ Gretzky replied.
Not long after, Gretzky drove his Valentine’s present to a home game, and took too long to get out of the car. Turns out, he didn’t know how to open the door.
A pivotal moment for Gretzky came when tennis star Monica Seles was stabbed by a fan in 1993.
“We’re targets,” said Gretzky. “Not me, you’re a target,” McSorley replied. But after that, Gretzky never went anywhere alone.
McSorley said, even in the NHL, kids form the farm usually get a lot of respect.
“We used to feel that college kids had it too easy. Farm kids, they usually know how to work through things. Once when I was in the minors, our team bus broke down. I told them I could fix it, since I had fixed vehicles on the farm. I slid the gears back into place, and off we went.”
As he left the stage, McSorley had one more message for his Canora audience.
“You guys should be proud of yourselves. If you get this community centre project done, you’ll be making a footprint that will last a long time.”
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