Guarding the Net: Norman Haugen's Story

When Norm first started playing shinny & road hockey the boys could not afford pucks or nets. So the boys improvised by using the snow to fashion a makeshift net and used horse dung, better know as “road apples”, for their pucks. The boy playing goal often used old catalogues attached to his shins with rubber bands for leg protection. Norm was left handed and in 1955, when he started in goal, the team did not have a left handed goalie glove. One of the players on the team, Ken Rostad, who was also left-handed had a left handed baseball glove which he offered to Norm. Norm promptly took it to “John the Shoemaker” who managed to convert the ball glove to a goalie trapper which Norm continued to use for a number of years with some outstanding goal keeping. Most goaltenders started wearing masks during these years. Norm tried several styles of masks but found they hindered his vision and decided he could play better without them. Luckily, he was only hit once on the chin by a puck and clipped once on the forehead by a skate while he was sprawled on the ice.

When Norm was 17, he and Donnie Stratillo went to Moose Jaw to try out for the Junior A Moose Jaw Canucks. There were 6 young men in the try-outs. Norm went into the try-out using his old “home-made” trapper and wearing a pair of borrowed goalie skates which were a size too small and caused his toes to curl up. But in spite of these obstacles, he made the cut to the final three. The team management called him aside and told that him that they had chosen Ken Balm as their number one goaltender and a local goalie as their back-up. They asked Norm, who was eligible to play one more season as a Juvenile, if he would consider staying in Moose Jaw and playing for their Juvenile team and then try the following year as a Junior. Norm decided to return home instead and play with his hometown team.

In the 1965-66 hockey season Norm had moved to Eastend and was playing goal for the Eastend Jets in the Whitemud League as well as continuing to play for the Shaunavon Badgers. The Jets, with Norm in goal, won the League championship and his jacket is proudly displayed in the Eastend arena.

In 1967 Norm moved back to Shaunavon and continued as the Badgers goalie. They often played exhibition games against some of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League teams such as Father Athol Murray’s Notre Dame Hounds and the Swift Current Broncos. Norm especially liked playing these teams because of the calibre of play. He knew he would be very challenged and kept extremely busy in the net. In February of 1967 the Badgers played the Broncos, and only Norm’s phenomenal goalkeeping kept the Badgers from being thoroughly trounced. The coach of the Broncos was so impressed with Norm’s goal tending that when the game was over, he approached Norm and asked him if he was interested in playing at a much higher level. The Broncos coach was friends with Howie Milford, the coach of the Des Moines Iowa Oak Leafs, a professional minor league team and the farm team for the Boston Bruins. Norm was very interested and when the hockey season ended he spent his summer preparing for the try-out. With the help of a few friends, they put a sheet of waxed plywood (to replicate the ice) back behind the Shaunavon Standard Newspaper building and peppered him with pucks. Norm was in full goalie equipment in the heat of the summer and all this practice put him in top condition. And then the heartbreaking letter arrived from Howie Milford. He thanked Norm for his interest in coming for a try-out with the Oak Leafs but informed him that Eddie Johnson, a goaltender, was going for a tryout for the Boston Bruins and if he didn’t make it, he would be coming to the Oak Leafs as their number one goaltender. He added that they already had several back-up goalies and wished Norm the best of luck in his future endeavours. Despite Norm’s deep disappointment, he continued as the Badgers goalie until 1970 when he and his family moved to Nipawin, Saskatchewan where he became their number one goalie. But he left the Badgers goalie position in the capable hands of young Bruce Kohl.

Norm also excelled in baseball and figure skating, playing ball for the Shaunavon Badgers as their pitcher and first baseman, and performing duets with Bonnie Mitchell at the winter carnivals. He treasures his wonderful memories of his teammates over the years; Donnie Stratillo, Bill and Jim Hardin, Gerry and Roy Cowan, Gary ‘Doc’ Houston, Eddie and Dave Grubbe, Ron Pearpoint, the Goulet brothers, Ken Billington, Vern Grobowsky, Carl ‘Whipsy’ Wilton, Ken Scott, Lawrence Park, Bill Hubert, Rocky Braget, Clare Hunter, Bruce Kohl and Bob Sand to name just a few. Norm still loves returning to Shaunavon every year for Boomtown Days, to visit his sister Betty Petryna and her family, and to reminisce of the glory days of the Badgers hockey and baseball teams with his old friends.

article submitted by Norm and Carol Haugen