![]() Thornton and Patrick would remain friendly, stopping to chat whenever they passed each other at TD Garden. “What he sees, and what he executes, is like a different game,” said Patrick of what Gord liked in Thornton’s sometimes daring playmaking. Thornton provided hope for a franchise that had just missed the playoffs for the first time in 30 years.Īnd when Thornton first took the ice for the Bruins, Gord’s appreciation for his game swelled.īy 1997, The Tragically Hip had become the most popular band in Canada, partly on the strength of Downie’s wild creativity on stage, his body-contorting dancing and unchained poetic musings.ĭownie was a different breed, and in Thornton, Downie saw someone who also made a name for himself by breaking from the mould. It follows then that Gord would appreciate Thornton, too, given that Sinden selected him. The singer who adored the team he was now playing for, in part, because of the man who drafted him. Thornton sat stunned as he glimpsed into the life of his favourite singer. “Back in the day, we supported every move Harry made,” Downie told Bob McKenzie in his book “Hockey Confidential” of his Bruins fandom. Downie’s parents asked Sinden to be godfather to their children. As a minor league coach, Sinden also worked in real estate and sold the Downies their home in Amherstview, outside of Kingston, Ont. Harry Sinden, then the team’s general manager, was a family friend. The Downie family obsession with the Bruins began at a young age. He said he and his brother talk nearly every day about their favourite team, a fact highlighted in Downie’s 2017 song and ode to his brother, “You, Me and the B’s.” Thornton, a wide-eyed teenage fan of the band at heart, asks about Gord Downie and Patrick details his favourite singer’s obsession with the Bruins. He works for the team, doing everything from producing interviews to DJ’ing games. Patrick is a lifelong Bruins fan who lives in Boston. When the interview finishes, Thornton and Patrick Downie connect. “That’s Gord Downie’s brother,” the interviewer says, and Thornton’s smile grows wider. The interviewer points behind him, to a man clad in black holding a boom mic. The Tragically Hip was played in his minor hockey locker rooms when he was as young as 12, he says, around the time 1991’s “Road Apples” was released. “Oh, you like that band?” the interviewer asks. Thornton’s wide smile, already his trademark, flashes and he says: “The Tragically Hip.” The musician helped him find a better path, one that eventually led him to the Toronto Maple Leafs.Īnd, Thornton says, “He made me a better person.” In a rare interview on a topic he has often declined to address, Thornton said he was thankful to have Downie in his life. “There was always an open door for Joe,” says Patrick.Īnd in those meetings, Thornton both grew closer with Downie, and became a changed man. ![]() Instead, they created an environment where Downie could rest when he needed to, focus on being around his children and make more music, as were his wishes.īut those rules didn’t apply to Joe Thornton, Downie’s favourite hockey player, who over time became a close friend. Gord Downie’s family, led by his brother and newfound caretaker, Patrick, were not necessarily open to regular visits from anyone who wanted to wish Downie well. The Tragically Hip’s final tour had finished months earlier. And the hockey player knows this meeting, which he kept private from his teammates, might be the last with his friend. The two friends share laughter because they have to: the musician is in a bout with terminal brain cancer. The hockey player wakes up the sleepy park with his boisterous laugh as the musician describes his game. Beside him stands the other man: an adored Canadian rock musician, regaling him with exploits from the hundreds of games of shinny he’s played as a goalie on that rink. ![]()
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