Wild tales from hockey’s penalty box – The San Diego Union-Tribune
It is very likely that not another San Diegan, alive or gone, has seen more hockey games in this city than Jim Lockwood.
He grew up in Point Loma and started doing statistics for the original San Diego Gulls in 1972 and has worked for all six versions of franchises in seven different leagues over 45 years.
A retired firefighter, Lockwood has been paid $10 to $20 a game to occupy the best seat in the house at the San Diego Sports Arena, now the Valley View Casino Center, as the attendant for the visiting team’s penalty box.
Or it is the worst spot, depending on the night, because there are times when Lockwood needs a postgame shower to wash off the blood and beer.
Through the seasons, Lockwood, 65, has done penalty babysitting for legends Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Hull – the latter once starting a fight while he already was in the penalty box.
And on his craziest night ever, Lockwood brawled and threw some punches of his own when fans sent the glass barrier crashing down on him and some players.
He’s heard some of the best one-liners in sports and other trash talking best left to fourth-graders in a sand box. If they chose to cuss, that is.
“It’s stuff like that that makes the penalty box something special,” Lockwood said.
“People think a monkey could do this – open and close a door. But there’s a lot that goes into it. The biggest thing is that you’re there to protect the players. You respect them; you protect them. That’s your job, no matter how crazy or stupid they can get.
“The penalty box,” Lockwood asserts, “is the second-most important place in the game besides the players’ box.”
For years, Lockwood worked the penalty boxes with his good friend, Rick Smith, though both are easing their way toward retirement. Lockwood has worked a handful of Gulls games this season, trading shifts with George Glover, a longtime hockey official in town who also has worked in numerous capacities through the years.
They have seen some entertaining stuff – most of it involving what some hockey fans are most thirsty for – the fighting.
The scuffles probably reached their peak in the Gulls’ time in the West Coast Hockey League from 1995 to 2003. Unaffiliated to any NHL clubs, the WCHL teams valued a good fighter as much as a stick handler for the entertainment value, and some goons delivered.
Glover remembers a night in which two players began a scuffle in one corner, stopped, skated to center ice like it was a boxing ring, and went at each other like Ali-Frazier.
“They were going to make a show out of it and the crowd was going crazy. They love that stuff,” Glover said.
“The funny thing is that on their way back to the (penalty) box, they’re talking back and forth. ‘You all right?’ ‘Yeah, I’m all right. You threw some good punches in there.’ ‘Yeah, you did, too.’ “
Lockwood said a Gull from last year, Brian McGrattan, could deliver an unmerciful needle to opponents as they went to their respective boxes.
“He would just belittle the guy,” Lockwood said. “He’d say stuff like, ‘I talk to your teammates all of the time and everybody hates you. I even talked to your family and they don’t like you anymore.’ He was really funny. It was endless.”
Glover, who served as an on-ice linesman for some time, said referees often went over each team’s lineup before a game so as to keep an eye on those who were most likely to fight.
The Gulls had a well-known brawler, Chad Wagner, and Glover chuckled when he recalled, “Chad would come onto the ice, and I’d ask him, ‘You got any plans for this shift?’ He’d tell me if he did.“
Last season, a Gulls off-ice official who normally works statistics, Melissa Helm, wanted to try manning the visiting penalty box with Lockwood. She didn’t have a good night.
At one point, San Diego’s Stu Bickel and Ontario’s Jordan Samuels-Thomas – who is now a Gull – got into a fight and went to their boxes. Bickel then heaved a water bottle across at Samuels-Thomas, and it missed. Bickel launched another missile, and it ricocheted off the glass and struck Helm in the head.
Helm got it high and low, because on another penalty, the exiting player swung open the door and pinned her to the wall.
“I don’t think she’s worked the penalty box again,” Lockwood said.
Lockwood, who is 6-feet-3, has only been manhandled once by a player. That guy happened to be 6-foot-2 “Big Bad” John Badduke, one of the game’s most infamous fighters from the early 1990s. Badduke was serving a penalty when the benches cleared for a brawl, and Lockwood tried to stop him from joining in.
“He literally picked me up, moved me a couple feet to the left, and set me down,” Lockwood recalled with a laugh. “His strength was incredible. I called him ‘sir’ after that.”
It’s no wonder that when another famous enforcer, Tie Domi, came into the box for a visit one night, Lockwood admitted to the player’s face, “I’m nervous as hell. I’ve been doing this stuff for years and I’m a pushover.”
“He laughed,” Lockwood said. “He asked, ‘How could a big guy like you be so scared?’ “
Lockwood’s heft may have saved him from serious injury on a night at the Sports Arena in the early 2000s.
A Gulls’ game against Fresno – bitter rivals and frequent brawling partners – got wildly out of hand, and when the Falcons’ Greg Spenrath was sent off for fighting, riled up fans behind the penalty box began to pound the plastic glass. Then they started pushing, and almost inevitably the barrier collapsed on top of Lockwood, Spenrath and another player.
The fans spilled onto the box and the ice, with the Fresno players charging over to join the melee.
Lockwood’s survival instincts kicked in and he started throwing punches – not at the players, the fans.
“I got in a few good licks, let me tell you,” Lockwood said. “I guarantee some fans got hurt that night. It was a pretty good free-for-all.”
Lockwood says now that it’s not the players who concern him; it’s fans.
“They’ll throw all kinds of stuff – full cups of beer,” Lockwood said. “Sometimes I’ll come out of there soaked.”
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