Blanchette: Chiefs clear their cobwebs five years later

Twenty-five years ago, hockey as we know it ended.

Mick Vukota scored a natural hat trick. In the National Hockey League. In a span of exactly 5 minutes.

At the time, he was just three years removed from being the most popular thing on ice in Spokane other than a case of Rainier, and that many into an NHL career that would stretch to 12 seasons, the first 10 with the New York Islanders, who were roughing up the Washington Capitals this night.

The details are not important, except to note that Caps goalie Don Beaupre banged his stick on the ice presumably out of sheer embarrassment and a Caps TV broadcaster noted with a hint of disgust, “That’s not Bryan Trottier out there.”

This was not Mick Vukota’s take, however.

“This game was at the end of October,” he recalled, “and I’m doing the math on the flight home thinking if I keep this up, I’ll have 20 goals and 200 (penalty) minutes. That’s pretty legit. That’s a nice paycheck.

“By Christmas, I’m thinking, OK, 300 minutes and 10 goals – that’s not the worst thing. By February, well …”

By February, well, maybe Don Beaupre was no longer having Mick Vukota nightmares.

Oh, and one other postscript to that momentous game. After his hat trick, as reported in the New York Times, Vukota hunted down the Caps’ Alan May, high-sticked him, picked a fight, knocked him to the ice and punched him in the head.

“Spontaneous thing,” Vukota said.

The spontaneous thought here 5 years ago when the Spokane Chiefs didn’t include Vukota in their Top 25 players in the franchise’s first 25 years was that the voters were woozy from a knock to the head. But that was a pretty salty list as it was, so Vukota going in today as the Chiefs add another five to mark 30 years is fine and proper and will keep the laughs coming for the next 30 years.

It was Vukota and his Chiefs teammate who created an appetite for junior hockey in a senior amateur town after the club moved from Kelowna in 1985. And no Chief was embraced as enthusiastically as the big banger from Saskatoon.

Possibly it didn’t hurt that Vukota would “get suspended now and then” and watch a few games from the stands, chatting up the civilians.

“When I went to camp with the Caps (after his 19-year-old season), we’re sitting in the Capital Centre after a rookie game watching another one,” he said. “This huge guy comes out from the tunnel and asks, ‘Which one of you is Mick Vukota?’ I’m thinking, ‘Now what?’ And he says, ‘I’m Mark Rypien.’ ”

Seems one of those civilians had been Rypien’s father, Bob – who’d suggested the Washington Redskins quarterback take the NHL hopeful from back home out to dinner.

Vukota even bought some acreage near his Spokane billets, Gail and Sharon Holden, with intent to build a postcareer home. But his East Coast-born first wife nixed it after their first off-season back here.

“Those hockey alumni – the Old-Timers,” he said. “I trained wicked hard, but every weekend it was some outing with them – golf, rodeos, horseshoe tournaments. It was nonstop fun.”

So now home is Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts – hence the “wicked” – where he’s coached four sons through youth hockey and now has a 7-month-old with his second wife, Lauren.

Vukota doesn’t need to check the stats – 17 goals, 2,071 penalty minutes – to put his NHL career in perspective. He might have netted 25 goals his last year in Spokane, but he always knew what was going to get him on a team: moving the puck, meting out justice. Sometimes he went to extremes to make an impression. In Caps camp, he started a brawl in a rookie game against New Jersey in warmups, a la “Slap Shot.”

Late in his career, he was sent down to the IHL’s Utah Grizzlies, where former Chiefs coach Butch Goring was behind the bench. Finding himself on the power-play first line, Vukota dug out a puck from his own end, crossed the red line and dumped it into the corner.

“Butch goes, ‘Hey, here a 2-on-1 is a scoring opportunity – we’d at least like to get a shot on goal,’ ” Vukota said. “It had been a decade of being a robot.”

And his persona was forged long before that, trying to make the jump from midget to Tier II in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

“The invitation came and it said, ‘Dear Bill,” Vukota said with a laugh. “Then ‘Bill’ was crossed out and ‘Mike’ was written over it. The little coach planned on having the toughest team in the league, and the first 12 faceoffs in camp there was a fight without a pass being made.”

Vukota is 48 now, 17 years removed from his last NHL shift – and three from his last scrap.

The Cape Cod Bluefins of the Federal League signed him and the high school coach to one-day contracts in 2012 to hype the first pro game in Edgartown.

“You’re not going to fight, are you?” his son asked.

“I’m going to fight the biggest guy on the ice,” blustered Dad.

That turned out to be Jason McCrimmon – 6-foot-5, 240 pounds, the “Motor City Hitter.”

“I got a couple of shots in,” Vukota reported, “but I couldn’t move my neck and back for two weeks. A bad decision made at happy hour.”

But at least his kid – and everyone else – knew that was Mick Vukota out there.