Madsen Finally Gets an "A"

Madsen gets between Baltimore's Phil Bourque
 and an unidentified Adirondack player.

After enduring that one season in the Central League, Madsen’s career path took a big Northern turn, both literally and figuratively, the following summer when the AHL returned to Baltimore that summer, opening the door for Madsen's return to his home state, and finally, an AHL position, sans NHL contract.

“The way it was back then is that the NHL had guys that were on a two-way, who were referees only, or you had guys who were assigned to the minors and would float around between the AHL or the CHL. There were a ton of referees that I worked with who went on to the NHL who are still around, but a lot also a lot who aged out, said Madsen, who by my count and exhaustive research, worked with 27 referees who spent time in the NHL during their careers, with the list being a variable A-to-Z, from Blaine Angus to Scott Zelkin.  

“They started doing a thing with linesmen where they would be on a 40-40 deal. The idea when I first started the idea of officiating in terms of the NHL was to work in the minors, and then next season you get an NHL contract, or you're in the NHL,” said Madsen, who, just like most of the current AHL linesmen, are deemed contactors. Interestingly, the linesmen of Madsen’s era, while provided with some expenses and basic equipment, unless one counts skates as basic equipment, which up until the latter years of Madsen’s career were bought out of pocket.   

“Then, a new regime came in from management that they started meaning guys in because they felt that you would get your maybe five games this year in the NHL, then the next year 30, and the next be in the NHL full-time if you had progressed enough. That way it wasn't a rude introduction to the players, because like in any vocation some people try to take advantage of you and their thinking was that weaning you in it allowed for more relationship building with the players and coaches. Once they get to know you, it makes a difference.”

In the summer of 1983, not long after the culmination of his third season of work as a professional linesman, Madsen received a call out of the blue from Mark Rudolph, then the Director of Officiating for USA Hockey at the time. Rudolph was inquiring as to Madsen’s availability to come out to Colorado Springs for a week to officiate some games at the National Sports Festival, all the while being so confident that Madsen would replay in the affirmative, that he had already booked a flight and sent the ticket. 

Madsen enthusiastically accepted the offer and after arriving found out that he and 11 others from around the United States, including Mike Condon (who died tragically at a young age after manning the lines for many games in Baltimore), had been selected for what turned out to be a selection tool for the 1984 Olympics, and although he later disappointingly found out that he didn’t make the final cut, he enjoyed the competition and the opportunity and cherishes the memory.

Fans who have only started watching hockey within the last dozen or so years, will never truly know the type of game that hockey was prior to time. Sure there is YouTube, but that video will never be able to truly capture the intensity, intimidation, and oftentimes chaos, that was very much par for the course in hockey back then, particularly in the minors.

Of course, being based in Baltimore and being assigned so many games involving the Jacks, Madsen developed a solid working relationship with Baltimore’s resident tough guy during their years being affiliated with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Bennett Wolf. Despite their working relationship from working in such close quarters, particularly during Wolf’s many quarrels with opponents, don’t get the impression that he gave Wolf or any Skipjacks player preferential treatment.

"I really prided myself on being fair on the faceoffs and the fights, said Madsen, dramatically emphasizing his point after being asked was it difficult to be impartial to the club representing his home area when officiating. “I always felt as a linesman that if you were fair on both of them, you would have the ultimate respect. On the faceoffs, the centermen would always try to get an advantage on each other and you, they would time you. As far as fights, you never want to see anyone get hurt, but I also wasn't going to get hurt.”

This leads to the question, how do linesmen know when it’s the right time to interject in a fight, and when they do, is there a technique, or is it all a matter of adjusting on the fly?

“We would let guys go because we know they are not boxers. But if we saw two guys that were wingnuts, so to speak, we're going to watch ourselves a little bit more, because we don't know what they're going to do, so we would communicate Then we’d let those guys go, and it was usually only for a few seconds because hockey fights usually don't last that long. Then, we would definitely go in and there and break it up.”

“You go in there back-to-back with your fellow linesman, then you grab the player by one arm and tuck it in, then after driving your head into his chest, you start skating towards him. Then, you get the other arm tucked in and at that point most guys back down. But if a guy went down (from a punch), I would immediately go down and try to wedge in between him and the other guy, and I’d cover him up as best as I could and say to him, don't move I’m taking it in the back. If you move your arm, you're getting one in the face. The bottom line was to protect the players as best you could. Remember this is not a street fight, these guys are professional athletes, and they still want to play.”  

Who knew that on-ice relationships were such an important part of an on-ice official's role? 

“There were times when I'd make a call, and if not for the fact that I had a relationship with the coach, they would have been yelling and swearing at me. But because of the relationship, they would just say, hey Gary, what are you doing? Or, hey Gary, you need to be in better position, you made a bad call and you need to be in this spot. Instead of yelling at you, they would say something during a timeout or break in play.”

In fact, Madsen said that his relationship with Wolf, who he says was one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet despite the role he played on his club, often saved him from verbal abuse for other players, primarily as a result of the respect that Madsen had gained from him, telling the chirper to “shut up”. But that’s not to say that he didn’t get an earful from time to time, as he recalled one eventful encounter with the Hershey Bears’ Kevin McCarthy. 

“Hershey meant (box office) money when they played in Baltimore, and this was one of those games when there was a big crowd, and I'll never forget this. The clock is winding down three, two, one, and Kevin McCarthy comes down the ice, and Kevin is a great guy. Anyhow, he rips a slapshot at the buzzer and it goes in, and if it's good, it counted, I'm talking right at the buzzer. Kevin was at the blue line and he's right in front of me about three feet away, and I blew the whistle (for offsides right away), because way on the other side of the ice, a Hershey player was a good two feet in the zone before the shot. It was definitely offsides, but Kevin and his teammates were still celebrating. But I knew what I saw, and it was offsides no matter what. But, of course, Hershey didn’t see it that way.”

“I'm like no (goal, due to the offsides), and he makes a beeline to me, and I'm getting ripped left and right. I said Kevin, look at the tape because every game was recorded back then, but he's still going on and on. Finally, I looked right at him and said, Kevin, if I'm wrong, and I knew I was right, I'll buy you dinner after the game (Hershey hosted the Jacks the next night in their barn). The next night we were skating around, and this is the kind of classy guy that he was. As the players came out, I'm looking around and Kevin immediately skated up to me and says Gary, Gary, Gary, you were right. From that time forward I never had a problem with Kevin because he respected how I handled it. By the way, he never did buy me that dinner, I just shrugged it off.”

When asked if he’d ever made a bad call, Madsen replied both comically and diplomatically, undoubtedly, doing the officials association proud with his reply. 

“Officials will never tell you that they made a bad call, it's just that some are better than others, he chuckled. “If I knew I was right, I was right, and I would say dead on I was there, and they would respect you for that. You're convinced (what you see) and you make the call. But if I was in the wrong position, I would listen.”

After the Bandits departed for Portland following the completion of their 1996-97, and still without an NHL deal, Madsen made the decision to keep officiating another season, manning the lines primarily in Hershey, but also making the occasional journey to other stops on the circuit, but that would turn out to be his last season as an AHL official. 

“I worked one more season primarily in Hershey, and that was really hard. The reason it was is that you need a lot of games, and there were a lot of guys already there. At that point, I knew that my path in the NHL was done. I was just there having a good time enjoying it, but I said to myself I was done. It was probably mutual, just because they knew that it wasn't going to work. And it wasn't that they didn't want me around, it's just that it wasn't working any longer.” 

Nobody ever wants to see their dreams end, but if you were a longtime AHL official who worked primarily in the Baltimore rink, where the conditions were less than ideal, and the crowds scant in the cavernous complex, going out in the Hersheypark Arena, definitely softened the blow and the reality of the end of the road. 

Madsen displays some fancy footwork
on a faceoff at Hersheypark Arena.

“There's the NHL, and that's great, but when you're in the minors, there was no greater place to do a game than the HersheyPark Arena, particularly on a Saturday night. The seats, all wooden because they were old, went vertical, not spread out horizontally like a lot of arenas,” Madsen mused, a soft smile recalling his swan song.  

“Our locker room was underneath the stands and you could see the contour of the concrete in there. Then, there was a little chute where we walked out onto the ice, and as you came out you could see the dangling feet of the fans before finally seeing the ice. There's a thing that I tell people about HersheyPark Arena that is really unique, and I called it feeling the air. You don't know if you feel the air because air says there. But when you went into Hershey, against Rochester or Baltimore with 7,200 fans and standing room only, you would go out on the ice and almost feel the air that you were skating into because there was so much intensity in the building due to so much energy being focused down to ice level because of the design. 

“(Before you knew it) You'd look up at the clock and there would be like three minutes left in the period, and you'd say where did the time go? Granted, there may have been 15 or so stoppages and faceoffs, but it was so intense that you only looked up at the clock on penalties.”

Such the consummate professional was Madsen, that when his cousin Mike would lean over the glass and wave to Gary, all he would receive in return was an inconspicuous nod of his head. 

Sadly for Baltimore boosters like Mike, who somehow managed to refrain from proudly shouting “that’s my cousin” while the smooth-skating Gary glided effortlessly around the rink, his red hair refusing to succumb to the forces of nature before he paused to meticulously check the twine for a gaping hole, their days of viewing games in person in Baltimore are gone for the foreseeable future, and maybe forever.

All that is left now are the enduring memories, all made possible by the efforts of the countless players who represented the city, and Madsen, who endured years of being bruised, punched, taunted, and verbally abused to "officially" ensure they would be lasting ones. 

Madsen Makes His Way To The "A"

By: John Sparenberg 

There were many players who came through Baltimore donning the colors of the Baltimore Skipjacks as they arrived in "Charm City" as fresh-faced youngsters striving to reach the pinnacle of professional hockey, the National Hockey League. Among those names were Phil Bourque, Mitch Lamoureaux, and Jon Casey, to name only a few.

Then, there were the talented veterans looking to regain a regular spot on an NHL roster, with Paul Gardner, Mike Gillis, and Mark Hunter, standing out on that list. But, there was another man, one who never donned a Jacks jersey, but one who logged many miles and took to the ice in many of the clubs’ clashes on his quest to reach the Big Show and was an integral part of the happenings and history of the club, and he is linesman, Gary Madsen.

Madsen, who grew up in the Loch Raven Village area, first took to the ice at the age of 10 when his dad, who grew up in Highlandtown and had been involved with skating for years in rinks like the old Carlin’s Iceland in Baltimore City, took him to the Orchard Ice Rink on a Wednesday night. Those Wednesday night outings soon became a regular occurrence, and that led to regular Saturday visits as well, and before long, Madsen, who hadn’t been involved in many other sports up to that time, had caught the skating bug but had not yet been infected with hockey fever. However, that most pleasant of ailments would soon be running through the course of his veins, thanks to one fateful night at Orchard. 

“I don't remember the guy’s name, but he was always recruiting for Baltimore Youth Hockey, and he asked me if I had ever thought about playing ice hockey. I said sure, and I ended up going the next season and just played in-house and that was my evolution from ice skating to ice hockey. It became like, just the biggest thing I want to do. I'd go up to the tennis courts, just taking it taking a stick and a ball and going and shooting at the fence of the tennis courts. And then I would come home and play in the backyard or sometimes we'd play in the street.”

"Then, when I was about 16, I started playing some travel. Back then, you had to play house (first) and then you got to play travel. So, you had that responsibility of playing house (first). With travel, I started to get a lot better, Madsen said, briefly pausing to carefully choose his words before continuing. I don't want to say I was a really good hockey player, but I got to be pretty good.”

Madsen, continued, “Then I started working at the ice rink, and I was a rink guard all of the way from grade school through high school. I went to Calvert Hall (located about a mile from the Orchard Ice Rink) and graduated in 1975, so I was at the rink pretty much every single day. When it was when in the fall and they were making ice, that's what I was doing, sometimes in the middle of the night I was at the rink spraying water to make the ice.” 

Playing at Orchard with the Mercurys of the Chesapeake League where he played against the likes of another local boy, Steve Wirth, and AHL Hall of Fame member, Jim Bartlett, Madsen continued to refine his playing skills, catching the eye of his younger cousin, Mike Madsen, who said, “I didn’t have his skating skills, or his overall hockey abilities, but watching him play at a very young age inspired me and encouraged me to keep paying. Great memories!.” 

By virtue of being at the rink so much, Madsen found a calling for his services one evening for a game on the sheet, but he wouldn’t be playing on this occasion, instead, he’d pull on the zebra stripes and be an official. 

“I had never done it before, but I gave it a try. It was just a house game, and I had no training as a referee, but I mean I knew what to do essentially just through osmosis. I just got out there and said you know it's just a kid’s game and the guys said we just need somebody out to help, and I liked it. So, I joined the local Baltimore officiating group, which back then was run by Mr. Doug Lauf (who was a longtime off-ice official at the Baltimore Civic Center/Arena). I then continued to officiate, and I started getting better at it.”

Who knows why anybody, particularly a well-educated graduate of the esteemed Calvert Hall, would want to continue to pursue a career in officiating, particularly at the professional level, where in addition to the constant critique of their work from their bosses, one must constantly be subjected to the continuous catcalls from fans, who have been known to you know, on occasion, have a biased opinion favoring the club they fervently root for on every call an on-ice official makes. In Madsen’s case, it may have been the notorious Baltimore summer weather, where the humidity has been known to alter one's thinking. 

“One summer I decided that I really liked being an official, and I started researching how to how to get better, and I found a refereeing school in Milton, Ontario that was run by Bruce Hood (then a veteran NHL referee, but now deceased), and a lot of future NHL referees went to that school.” 

“I found out the school was for a week, so I saved my money and then booked a flight to Canada, arriving on a Sunday to start the daily schooling the next day, and then flying back home on Friday, said Madsen, noting that while he supported himself financially in this venture, his parents were very supportive of his pursuit, but with this caveat.

..."As long as you continue to do it, and don't stop caring, if you stop is when I'll mimic your stop. As long as you continue, we'll support you."

Madsen continued, switching gears back to the hockey school “They had great teaching and I had a great time. All totaled there had to be over 100 people at the school that week, ranging from kids as young as eight to men in their 50's. There were classroom sessions, in addition to on-ice sessions, and of course, there were games too. In the games, you would go out for 10-minute stints, and then your crew would come off and another three-man crew would go on, with the purpose of everybody getting a chance to fit in.”

That year at the Hood school led to another, and then finally, a third, and by that time the school's instructors,  having witnessed his talents firsthand for three years, had started to work him harder, and that hard work paid off, with Madsen landing his first professional job as a linesman in the Eastern Hockey League, where he would be primarily stationed in Baltimore, an appointment that he modestly called, "just being lucky.”  

Toiling in the minors, particularly the low minors like the EHL was, is not your typical career path in professional hockey. Usually, with a few notable exceptions such as the Clippers’ Warren Young, who would eventually go on to the NHL and earn a million-dollar salary thanks to riding shotgun with the legendary Mario Lemieux in Pittsburgh, the loop was the highest level they would scale on the hockey ladder.

Many of the games in the EHL were played in small cities, with Baltimore being the exception, with sparse crowds in attendance, Baltimore not being the exception, played in dimly lit arenas, with less than ideal conditions for the players and officials. Also, rarely would be the occasion when I scout was on hand to take in a game and take a close look at a prospect, but Madsen had shown enough in his work at the school to warrant the decision-makers at the institution to keep closer tabs on his development.

“You have to have talent, but it's also political and being in the right spot at the right time. There are so many factors that figure into making it. It's a fact that there aren't a lot of openings because it's a finite group of people, and generally you only get in because somebody got fired, hurt, or retired.”

“They knew who was in the league and the scouts came around a few times that season. Then the next season Bob Hodges and John D'Amico (both former veteran NHL linesmen) came up to me and said, you know, you’ve got a really good shot at getting into the AHL based on where you are right now (skill-wise and geographically), and we'll do what we can to help you.”

For whatever reason, Madsen’s body of work, along with the influence of Hodges and D’Amico was not enough to secure him a coveted spot in the AHL, which only consisted of 11 teams at that point in time. However, all hope was not lost in Madsen’s pursuit to continue his career growth at a higher level, as Hodges and D’Amico were about to put him in touch with a contact in the Central Hockey League, Bud Poile, commissioner of the CHL, and the father of former Washington Capitals GM, David Poile. The younger Poile would go on to become the GM of the Caps, including the time when they were affiliated with the Skipjacks.

Despite having already earned his accounting degree and having a good job in the Baltimore area, Madsen decided it was time to leave behind some of that stability and hit the road, taking a huge leap of faith and venturing to Music City USA to become a CHL official, as he inched ever so slowly to the ultimate of goal of earning an NHL contract. 

“I didn't even have an apartment lined up yet, but I put a U-Haul behind my car, hitched it up, and drove to Nashville, where I would be based. I still had to work because you don't make a lot of money. But I ended up getting into a partnership with the firm that I worked for, and they got me a job doing accounting in Nashville, and fortunately, I was able to find an apartment after I got down there.” 

Because of budget constraints, linesmen in the minors tend to be locally based, and Madsen estimates that around 70% of the games that he did were in Nashville, but he put plenty of miles on the odometer, making other stops around the loop, and although he didn’t go everywhere as the Johnny Cash “I’ve Been Everywhere” says if you use your imagination while reciting the following stops you might feel like he did; Wichita, Nashville, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, Dallas, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. 

“They got me out of my usual zone (Nashville) every once in a while, but mostly you stayed in your own territory. Which is good, but, it's also problematic because you get one team all of the time instead of seeing multiple teams, and that can be tough on an official. On the good side of that coin, being local guaranteed a lot of work, but it also creates a bit of an issue with you being over-exposed. Granted, I was looking at this from a lineman's perspective and not a referee, because it's a non-issue with them because they are always traveling.”

Again, showing enough development to warrant another promotion of sorts, Madsen saw his first professional post-season action in the CHL 1982 playoffs, working alongside the referee who also worked with him in his first regular-season game in the “C”, Don Koharski, who started his professional career as a linesman. 

"Before that first game, which was Wichita at Nashville, we were in the locker room and Koho looked over at me and asked me if I was nervous, and I said yeah. He said I can tell and then he proceeded to tell me not to worry about it because these guys love him. That's just what he was out on the ice, a presence, and a personality. So, we go out on the ice and we're skating around and I took a peek over. There were four or five Wichita guys chasing after him just trying to say hello. That's the relationship that he had with players. He was well-liked by the players which was a credit to him.”