Don Cherry gets no love from Leafs great Rick Vaive

Ouch! Do you agree with the Leafs’ legend?

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Don Cherry gets no love from Leafs great Rick Vaive
Zuma Press

It’s always great for fans to get a chance to catch up with a great player from the game and on Tuesday, they got to hear from Toronto Maple Leafs great Rick Vaive, who fell like commenting on a lot of things happening lately as he was a guest on TheScore.com. Most importantly, he was there to promote his memoir “Catch 22: My Battles, in Hockey and Life” which hit bookstores last week. The book is centered around Vaive debunking the widely held notion that all professional athletes are perfectly happy, fabulously rich, and immune to mental illnesses.

“Let’s put it this way: There’s been struggles, not just on the ice but off the ice,” said Vaive. 

He admits that he grew up in a household plagued with alcoholism, and as an adult, battled anxiety as well as substance-abuse issues.

He was also asked about a lot of things from his past in this interesting interview by TheScore, and one question (and its answer!) got a lot of attention from fans when asked about his experience working as an assistant coach under Don Cherry in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), who told him he “couldn’t coach a good f——g peewee team.” 

Vaive did not hold back when describing Grapes and his work ethic. 

“(Pauses) I don’t even know what word to use. Controlling? Controlling. And he’s sticking his nose in all the time. That’s the way he was. What you see on “Coach’s Corner” is what you get with the man himself. It’s no different.”

TheScore wanted to dig further, asking if Vaive and Cherry ever patched up the wounds from your time together running the IceDogs and are now on good terms. 

That answer is just as good. 

“I don’t see him very often. I see him at banquets and different things, and I always say hello, how are things, and all of that. I hold no grudge against the guy. It’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. Although I think that experience may have affected my ability to get another coaching job. But, you know what, I treat him as I treat everybody else: Very nicely.”

We are not surprising to hear about Cherry’s temperament - it was easy to see on the air of Hockey Night in Canada and certainly behind a team’s bench. I just love the fact that Vaive still believes it’s Grapes’ fault if he had no luck coaching. 

I can imagine them working together in this movie: 


Source: The Score