Manitoba Moose

Grapes is picking the Moose in six.

And he's all geared up to give the American Hockey League's Calder Cup Final a plug or two on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

"We always get it on Coach's Corner," Don Cherry told the Sun in an interview from his Toronto-area home. "I always pay attention all the time, because, hey, I spent my whole life there, tell you the truth."

A hard-nosed defenceman who managed just one game in the National Hockey League, Cherry slugged it out for 16 seasons in the minors, a dozen of them in the AHL in the 1950s and '60s.

Five times as a player he won the Calder Cup (although he doesn't count one because he didn't play enough games for his liking).

Don't tell him winning the Calder Cup means less than winning its shinier, more famous NHL cousin.

"It means a lot to me," Cherry said. "A championship is a championship, and it's just as valuable to those guys down there. The degree of joy is just as good as when you win the Stanley Cup, believe me. They feel the same way. They work just as hard, and maybe harder. They don't get to travel the way they do in the NHL. It's pretty bad.

"When they get an injury, you'd better get on the bus and get some ice on it, because you're playing the next night."

No fancy hotels, no convenient, charter flights.

"Charter, are you kiddin'?" Cherry said. "You'd stand at the front of the bus, and it was a long runway."

A coach of the year in both the AHL and NHL, Cherry says Canadians don't give the American League the credit it deserves. In Canada, it's junior hockey or the NHL, it seems.

If some Winnipeg hockey fans still look down their noses at the AHL, even more in Toronto do.

"We got criticized for talking about the American Hockey League in the papers here in Toronto," Cherry said. "I just love it. All you have to do is look at the guys that come up from the American Hockey League. Toronto was bringing up guys from the American Hockey League that were better than the guys that were here. It's such a fine line between them.

"All you have to do is look at all the coaches that come from the American Hockey League. That's where they learn their trade."

Cherry says the next head man destined for a promotion is the one working Manitoba's bench in the Calder Cup Final.

"Scott Arniel, from Kingston, what can I tell you?" said Cherry, himself a proud Kingston son. "Coach of the year, like me. He'll be in the National Hockey League, guaranteed. He's a players coach, you can see that. He knows what's going on, because he played so long.

"If you take a look at the four coaches in the (NHL) semifinals, they were all players who really weren't stars. They were all guys who kind of lived by their wits. If you notice, all the good coaches in the NHL are guys like that."

Coincidentally, Arniel's team is going against the franchise with which Cherry's AHL career began: the Hershey Bears.

"The best rink in the world for watching was the old Hershey arena," Cherry said. "The little village was only 7,000, and we'd have 7,000 or 8,000 at the game, which is unbelievable. And still they're packin' em in down there."

Cherry used to work construction in Hershey during the summers, contributing to its reputation as Chocolatetown, USA, by helping to build a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup factory.

"You can always tell when it's gonna rain, it's got that chocolate smell," Cherry said of the town. "I'll tell ya one thing, a lot of people say they got sick of eatin' chocolate. Not me, boy, I still loved it."

For Cherry it really was The Sweetest Place on Earth, as he met his late wife Rose in Hershey and saw their two kids born there.

But he's still pulling for Arniel's Moose.

"I played baseball with his dad. I've known them all my life, so that's who I'm cheering for."

If the Moose pull it off, Cherry plans to show off a few photos on Coach's Corner, one of actor Jared Keeso, who plays Cherry in the biopic being shot in Manitoba, holding the Calder Cup in a scene from the movie.

And a photo of Arniel from the Winnipeg Sun.

"I've got the picture from your paper," Cherry said. "While I was out there I got that picture of him when he got coach of the year, and I'm gonna put that on. When they win.

"We'll make a big deal of it, whenever it is."

He'd better be right about his prediction, then. And the Stanley Cup Final had better go the distance.

Because the Moose will be hosting Game 6 the same night Detroit and Pittsburgh would be playing Game 7.

Now that would get a thumbs up from the coach.