Burnside: Cam Ward's Road To The Carolina Hurricanes Hall of Fame

RALEIGH, NC. - The image is indelible all these years later.

Stepping onto the ice for Game 7 of the 2006 Stanley Cup Final in Raleigh, Carolina Hurricanes netminder Cam Ward looked down to the opposite end of the ice and read the sign being held by a fan as though it had been written exclusively for and to the rookie netminder.

"Have Fun."

Almost perfect in its simplicity it was a mantra Ward had lived by throughout his, at that point in time, nascent pro career and would continue to live by throughout what would be a stellar NHL career.

The same phrase - "Have Fun" - was written on the base of all his sticks.

Words to live by.

Sitting in the kitchen of his Raleigh area home, Ward's looks have changed little since that memorable night in Raleigh in June of 2006.
And there is something symmetrical about all of this, a closing of the circle if you will.

Ward's parents Ken and Laurel are in the living room nearby, visiting from the family home in the Edmonton area, where Ken still plays some shinny during the winter.

Ward's wife, Cody, drops by to say hello.

She has recently completed the New York City Marathon which is a story in and of itself.

The backyard features a hockey net, swimming pool, and all manner of space and gear for the couple's children, Nolan, who turned 12 in late November, and Nyla, who turned 10 in January.

There's golf to be played later in the day, if the rain holds off, another match with long-time teammate Justin Williams.

In short, this is home. Has been for a long time, long after Ward and the rest of the Hurricanes celebrated that Game 7 victory in 2006.

But more than home, Ward's place in this community and with this franchise is about to be enshrined forever as he becomes the first player named to the franchise's newly established Hall of Fame.

Current head coach Rod Brind'Amour, captain of that Cup-winning team in 2006, has had his number retired alongside that of teammates Glen Wesley and Hockey Hall of Famer Ron Francis. But this new endeavor is something somehow more tangible. It's no surprise that Brind'Amour played no small part in the development of the team's Hall of Fame process, just as it's no surprise that he wholeheartedly supports the Ward selection.

"We've been around now long enough to have a history," Brind'Amour said. "You need to, I think, to appreciate the history and the guys that come before you. That's a big thing for me. He was as good as any. He put his time in. Did it right. He's an easy one to put him in, right? It was easy."

"There's a couple more that are going to be easy," Brind'Amour added. "And I think fans love it because they grew up with him. A lot of these fans have grown up with Cam Ward."

If it's true that a generation of Hurricanes fans grew up with Ward, then it is equally true that Ward grew up with the Hurricanes and with Raleigh.

Ward was selected 25th overall in the 2002 draft.

Although understated and soft-spoken throughout his NHL career - a career that included 701 regular season games - Ward's arrival in training camp in Raleigh created a bit of a stir.

"We were at the old rink, the Rec Zone, during training camp, and I'm like who's that kid?" Brind'Amour said. "I didn't even know who he was. I don't even know if I knew his name. As a player, you don't pay attention to who your draft picks are. I mean, you just didn't. Prove it when you get here. And on the first day of practice I'm like, 'there's something here with that kid.' I remember that today."

Ken Ward worked for concrete and construction materials giant Lafarge Canada as a sales manager for Western Canada. The family moved several times during Ward's youth but the family ultimately settled in the Edmonton suburb of Sherwood Park when Ward was in middle school.

Ken was also a goaltender and played at the college level, although he is quick to downplay his own playing career. Still, it wasn't the level of play that left an indelible impression on his son but rather the exposure to the hockey environment as a whole and the position of goaltender specifically.

"I do remember him coming in (the locker room) and just grabbing a stick or knocking a ball or puck around and enjoying those times," Ken recalled. "And I do remember I had a team jacket made up specifically for him. We were playing for the Saskatoon Outlaws and we went to a tournament in Banff and he wore that jacket religiously to all the games. We have a very neat family picture of Cameron and I with our backs to the camera both wearing our team jackets and he must have been three years old at that time, three or four."

Is there a moment that distills the path that young Cam Ward would follow?

Ken laughs. Yes, there is although it's probably not as Hallmark movie worthy as you might expect.

Ward's father recalled renting a bulky video camera to chronicle some of his son's first hockey exploits. At the time Ward was six or seven and playing cross-ice hockey with players using only a third of the ice and playing side to side to improve skating and skills. On this particular day, Ward was wearing regular hockey gear as Ken tried to master the video machine.

"And I put it on my shoulder and I watched and videotaped and unfortunately it's on the tape and what I say to my wife, Laurel, 'I say why did we rent this thing? All the kid wants to do is go stand in the net and be the goalie. He's not doing anything.'"

Ward recalls the freedom of outdoor games of shinny on backyard rinks. And he recalled the lure of the one position where there is one left to cover for mistakes.

"I was always drawn to it, to the importance and being relied on in the game," Ward said. "The old saying, either you're the hero or the goat, but I always wanted to be in a position to make or break the game and that's what drew me to it."

Long-time Red Deer Rebels owner, GM and coach, Brent Sutter met Ward when the young netminder was a 16-year-old at Red Deer's WHL training camp. Sutter sent Ward back to AAA midget so he could play lots of games, but as a 17-year-old Ward's prowess changed the entire Red Deer organization's outlook vis a vis goaltending.

"As a 17-year-old, his first day of training camp, we knew that we had a real special goalie," Sutter said.

Coming off a Memorial Cup championship, Sutter felt so strongly about Ward, he traded the team's more established netminder and handed the reins over to Ward.

"He was stellar," Sutter said. "The way he played; he'd just take games over. He could singlehandedly win games. There's a reason he was taken in the first round and he lived up to that."

In Red Deer, everything had to be black. Black mask, pads, glove, blocker. But at Ward's first NHL camp in Raleigh, Ward was set up with all new white gear.

"I remember Wally (Tatomir, the long-time Hurricanes equipment manager) telling me I should get white equipment. At that time the general thinking was that it looked bigger so I ordered that. And then I got sent back to Red Deer in my all-white gear," Ward said.

"I remember Brent did not like that I had all white equipment and he told me. He said 'those better be black by the end of the year' meaning with puck marks," Ward said with a laugh.

Ward spent the 2004-05 lockout season in Lowell with the Hurricanes' American Hockey League affiliate and then, when the NHL resumed in the fall of 2005, Ward was installed as backup to veteran Martin Gerber who had been acquired from Anaheim in June of 2004.

During the first game of the season in Tampa, Gerber was injured and Ward came in and played the third period.

"I think I let in one from Dave Andreychuk. I remember him standing in front of me," Ward recalled. "Dave Andreychuk turned and was staring at me screening me and I was like this is unbelievable. He's huge I couldn't see a thing. I think he ended up scoring on a wraparound."

Ward started the team's home opener against Pittsburgh and stymied Zigmund Palffy and a couple of guys named Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby to earn a victory in a shootout.

At one point during that rookie season, Ward was sent back to Lowell. He was there only briefly and recalled head coach Tom Rowe telling him that he expected this would be his last trip to the AHL.

"And sure enough, it was," said Ward.

'The Hurricanes were one of the biggest surprises of the 2005-06 season finishing with 112 points, second-most in the Eastern Conference. The Hurricanes drew Montreal in the first round but Gerber was in poor health and the Hurricanes dropped Game 1 at home 6-1, then Game 2, 6-5 in double-overtime. Gerber was lifted early in Game 2 and Ward got his first taste of playoff hockey.

Long-time broadcast analyst and former netminder Tripp Tracy recalled talking to then-goaltending coach Greg Stefan after Game 2 about the hole the team was in and what the right call was vis a vis the goaltending.

"I'm just an announcer. But I said Stef he's got to go to Wardo," Tracy recalled. "And Stef's very passionate and he's saying, 'I know, I know. I'm in there pounding the desk.'"

Brind'Amour remembers the lead-up to Game 3 as though it was happening today, and remembers head coach Peter Laviolette asking Brind'Amour to come into his office at the rink.

"I remember that vividly. It was the first time I'd ever been in the coaches' office in my, well, how many years had I been there at that point? I'd never been down in the coaches' office," Brind'Amour said with a laugh. "I remember, it was funny to go in the office. I'm like oh, so this is how it looks. And we sat at the desk and he was like, 'I think I'm making a change.' And I think he was wanting me to have a discussion and I said 'okay.' And I left."

Although Ward hadn't played much as a rookie and it was clear Gerber was 'the' guy for the Hurricanes, the fact that Ward was going to get a shot in a critical situation didn't cause so much as a ripple in the room.

"He (Laviolette) was thinking was it going to mess with our group? It was 'no, we've got faith in him too. Let's go.' It was just that quick of a conversation," Brind'Amour said.

Ward was about to get on the elevator in the team's hotel in downtown Montreal when Laviolette pulled him aside.

"And I remember him asking me if I was ready. And I believe I replied 'I've been waiting for this my whole life,'" Ward recalled.

"Just pure excitement. To get that opportunity. And then I'll never forget starting Game 3 and just kind of going out for warmups and doing my typical routine of stretching at center ice and taking a moment just kind of to look up and embrace the atmosphere that the Bell Center provides," Ward said.

"I thought kind of like how cool is this? No matter what happens tonight I'm going to enjoy the moment and have some fun," he said.
And why not?

"That was my whole mentality throughout that entire playoff run was to embrace it and to have fun with it. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it," Ward said.

"I was just able to go out there and play freely and I thrive on the atmosphere," he said.

Tracy, over the years, has frequently referred to the Bell Center as the place where the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup.

He might not be wrong.

Montreal is "as hostile an environment as I've ever played in," said veteran Matt Cullen, who had joined the Hurricanes before the 2005-06 season.

"So I can't imagine what he was feeling."

"Sure enough, he just played some unbelievable hockey and ran with it from there," Cullen, a three-time Cup winner, added. "I still look back at that in amazement."

The reality was if the Hurricanes lost Game 3 of that opening-round series their season was as good as over.

But Carolina eked out a 2-1 victory in Game 3 with Brind'Amour tying the game midway through the third and Eric Staal scoring early in overtime. Ward would win four straight games to send the Hurricanes to the second round against New Jersey. He allowed just five goals in those four games.

"We were comfortable with Cam, but probably not as comfortable as he made us feel after the first two games in Montreal," long-time NHLer Ray Whitney, a member of that '06 squad, said with a laugh.

Whitney is also from the Edmonton area and had worked out with Ward prior to his arrival in the NHL. Whitney and his wife took Ward and Cody, under their wing. When there were dinners and gathers at the Whitney house in Raleigh the Wards were always on the invite list.

"You take care of those kinds of people," Whitney said.

Whitney recalled two heart-to-hearts with Ward. One was before Game 3 against Montreal in '06. He reminded Ward of other young netminders like Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur who had run the playoff table in spite of little NHL experience.

"I told him before he even set one foot on the ice, you can win the Conn Smythe," Whitney said.

"I believed it. I always believed in him," the long-time NHLer added.

The second heart-to-heart was after Whitney left the Hurricanes and the team was mired in what would be a decade-long absence from the playoffs.

Whitney left a long message for Ward that reiterated his belief in the netminder.

"I told him how much I believed in him and how he needs to believe in himself, too. It was a heartfelt and truthful message," Whitney said.

Ward later told Whitney he kept that message on his phone for years and would listen to it when he needed a pick-me-up.

Ward is a great example of how everyone expresses their competitive spirit in a different way, Cullen said. Some players or coaches yell or fume or make speeches.

Ward was not that kind of person. At least not outwardly.

But even during that '06 playoff run, when Ward was briefly supplanted by Gerber in the conference final against Buffalo, he worked diligently to be ready when his turn came again as it did near the end of the series. In fact from that point on Ward would never relinquish his grip on the starting job in Carolina.

"Just how he elevated his game," Cullen said. "It just speaks to what a competitive guy he was."

The Hurricanes vanquished Buffalo in an epic seven-game tilt and then faced upstart Edmonton in the 2006 final.

Ward recalled the moment of stepping onto the ice for Game 3, the first game of the final in Edmonton.

"The first thing that I did when I stepped on the ice was look to my left and there were my dad's season tickets (seats) that he used to take me to the game," Ward said. "And it would have been literally two years prior I would have been sitting in those seats watching the Oilers play. And now here I am the starting goaltender in the Stanley Cup finals. It was one of those kind of 'pinch-me' moments that I'll never forget."

The Hurricanes never trailed in the final series but Edmonton proved to be a valiant opponent winning Games 5 and 6 with their season on the line setting up a one-game, winner-take-all in Game 7 in Raleigh.

"My motto was always, the more fun you have the better you do," Ward said. "And I can remember a guy standing with a big large sign behind the net opposing net during the anthem and all it said was 'Have Fun' I was like, man, it's like he's saying it right to me. So that's what we did."

There are moments, of course, for all those players and coaches and staff that they will carry forever from that night.

Ward recalled the locker room in the happy chaos after Game 7.

"Glen Wesley to my right. And to my left was Ray Whitney and Rod Brind'Amour," Ward said. "You're looking at these guys who have played 18-plus seasons and trying to win their first Stanley Cup and just seeing how much it meant to them. So a lot of my motivation was that you wanted to do it for them."

There is no other moment like winning the Stanley Cup. It is a singular event, frozen in time.

But as good as Ward was in leading the Hurricanes to a championship and earning playoff MVP honors in that magical rookie season, it might not have been his crowning achievement as a Hurricane.

That designation might have come three years later during the 2009 playoffs when the Hurricanes knocked off heavily favored New Jersey and Boston in classic seven-game sets before succumbing to eventual Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh in the conference final.

"We weren't as good a team in '09 as we were in '06," Whitney said. "We really had no business beating both those teams to get to the conference final."

There were magical moments from Eric Staal scoring the game-winner late in Game 7 against New Jersey after the Hurricanes were facing a one-goal deficit and of course Scott Walker's emotional game-winner in overtime in Game 7 against Boston. But, in the end, this was Ward's work.

"His best work was probably that '09 run," Whitney said.

Tracy has as good a vantage point on every Hurricane netminder as anyone and he recalls Ward's work in 2009 as having a special place in the pantheon of franchise netminders.

"He was unbelievable," Tracy said. "He was just lights out. He was, I think, the best goaltender in hockey during that stretch of time."

He recalled a save on David Krejci in Game 7 against Boston to keep the Hurricanes' chances alive.

"An A-plus chance that he made look routine," Tracy said. "It's your season on the line. They score, you're done. So I definitely think about that stretch as his best individual segment of his career."

By the time the conference final rolled around Ward was banged up and the Hurricanes were out of gas. The Penguins won in four straight.
Ward wouldn't know it, couldn't know it of course, but it would mark the final playoff experience of his NHL career. It would also mark the start of a long, dry spell for the franchise, which would not return to the post-season until 2019, the first year in Brind'Amour's tenure as head coach.

"Over the course of my career you realize that the hardest thing was to do was to get to the playoffs," Ward said.

"I'm just like everybody else around here. Obviously, I wish that we were in the playoffs more often. To be able to have more opportunities," he added. "That was hard for me to deal with over the course of the years. There were also two years where we lost Game 82 that really stung. Those could have been two more opportunities for us in the playoffs and we all know that once you're in anything can happen."

"Like you said, there were a lot of highs and lows and part of my character is I cared a lot about the organization. And in doing that in turn there were years where that kind of hurt me because it affected me so much. I so badly wanted to be part of the solution and have success here. And there were just years when things didn't go our way. And losing is hard on you. It probably made me lose my hair a little bit too early," Ward said with a laugh.

The first impulse is to draw a line from those moments of glory and near-glory in 2006 and 2009 to being named to the Hurricanes' Hall of Fame. And if that was all there was, fine, you can make the case Cam Ward belongs here.

But dig a little deeper and you understand more clearly what goes into this kind of career and hence this kind of honor and it helps explain why this team Hall of Fame induction is about so much more than two long playoff runs.

"I think of him as a massive competitor that hated losing; that never threw his teammates under the bus especially when we struggled defensively," Tracy said. "Not winning wore on him. I think that he and Eric Staal both felt a major obligation the way the Hurricanes invested in them to perform. And it was a challenging stretch. There were certainly days that it was difficult for him. But I think where my dad (who considered Ward his favorite Hurricane) had the massive appreciation for him and rightly so was that he was honest and he continued to dig in and trudge through all of it."

The reality is that in the years that followed 2009, the Hurricanes weren't a contender. They weren't a salary cap team but rather a budget team. There were seasons when they were close, achingly close, to making the playoffs only to fade in the final days of the season.

"Twice we lost on the final day of the regular season," Ward recalled.

Ken Ward understands the complexity of his son's career. The moments for which he is renowned and the moments that in many ways challenged him are difficult to reconcile in some ways.

"You've alluded to 2006 and 2009, both the pinnacles of Cam's career," Ken Ward said. "But what I reflect upon are all the years that the team didn't achieve that success and Cameron's dedication and effort never wavered. He tried as hard as he could to put that team in the best possible position throughout all those years. And so we talk about the 13-year career here, and two of which resulted in playoffs, so that means 11 didn't.

And I'm as proud of him for the manner in which he conducted himself through those 11 years, as I am the joy that we experienced in 2006 and 2009."
"We're far more proud of who he is than what he accomplished in his career and that was borne out throughout those periods," Ken Ward added. "That's where the qualities that you hope to see in a child as they develop materialize and Cameron has never wavered in regard to the fact of being everything that we'd hoped he would be in a son."

Sutter, like many who played alongside Ward or observed his career in Carolina, believes Ward being honored by the team is as much about honoring the person as the player.

"He's one of those individuals that he treats people the way he likes to be treated," Sutter said. "He's very respectful. He was raised in that environment. He was so well-grounded. There was never a game, from a coach's perspective, that I didn't trust Cam in. That's just the way he was."

Cullen, who left the Hurricanes and then returned for a second stint that included the 2009 run, believes there couldn't be a better choice for the inaugural induction.

"I just think of what a huge piece he was in Carolina getting to the next level as a franchise," Cullen said. "There's really no one who deserves (the team's Hall of Fame honor) more. I just think Cam is such a great choice to be in there. He was such a big part of it."

Current assistant coach Tim Gleason played alongside Ward and became not just a friend, but a business associate in a successful wine-making venture that began a decade ago. He doesn't think about the saves Ward made but the personal qualities Ward possesses that transcend hockey.

"To me, he's just a good person. That alone stands above all really," Gleason said. "It goes back to the fact he's a family man, he's a great father. I think it's just all the work he's put into it. And to see him be able to celebrate and for his family to celebrate it and his friends to celebrate it. I think that's probably more important to allow his family to know this is what dad did, this is what Cam did. From a family standpoint, it's a huge night for him. There are not many words I can say other than just a great person and that he's carried that throughout his whole career ever since I've known him."

Ward, of course, is humbled by the induction.

"I think it's great that the organization is doing this," he said.

"When you look back at the 25 years, you realize how many great players and how many great people have come through this organization. To be selected as the first inductee aside from the retired numbers, I was really humbled and honored by that. And to have Roddy present it to me makes it even more special."

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