Hockey’s royal family

Published 9:00 pm Monday, October 6, 2003

LAKE STEVENS — Don’t you wish you had invented the sports playoffs system? Or farm teams? Or putting numbers on players’ uniforms?

"Uncle Frank did," Sheelah Patrick Castle said cheerfully.

"He also came up with the blue line in hockey and the forward pass," the Lake Stevens resident added.

It’s true. Castle, who gives her age as 75-plus, is a member of what fans and the National Hockey League call hockey’s royal family — the Patricks.

Castle has been a Red Cross worker for more than 50 years. Whether she was stationed in Zama, Japan, with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s 6th Army in the late 1940s, or stateside, she’s never failed to track the family sport.

How could she not?

Every time Castle, a tall, stately woman with grit in her voice, ticked off another decade or two, yet another generation of Patricks took to the ice in some fashion — either as players, managers, coaches or owners.

The roster includes family patriarch Joseph Patrick, Castle’s grandfather, whose 19th century Canadian logging empire bankrolled sons Lester and Frank Patricks’ fledgling hockey venture.

In 1911, "Uncle Lester and Uncle Frank," as Castle calls them, built Canada’s first indoor ice arenas in Vancouver and Victoria, and launched the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.

The Patrick family owned three teams, the Vancouver Millionaires, who won the Stanley Cup in 1915; the Seattle Metropolitans, who became the first U.S. team to win it all in 1917; and the Victoria Cougars, who snagged the cup in 1925.

In 1928, Lester Patrick became the first coach of the New York Rangers; and his son, Lynn Patrick, played for the Rangers in 1940 and later managed the Boston Bruins.

"Without the Patricks’ innovations, it would be difficult for the defense. There would be no offsides" in the sport of hockey, said Keith Gerhart, spokesman for the Everett Silvertips, the town’s new minor league team.

"I think the Patricks set the rules for hockey forever. They were its founding fathers."

Football later adopted hockey’s playoff system, an innovation of Frank Patrick’s.

Fast forward to 2003.

Castle’s cousin, Craig Patrick, is now general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and cousin Jack Patrick is part owner of the Washington Senators.

And a new generation of Patricks, Ryan and Curtiss, Craig Patrick’s son and nephew, took to the ice at Pennsylvania State University.

That family members created hockey’s present form of play doesn’t seem novel to Castle. After all, she grew up with hockey.

"We ate it for breakfast and lunch and dinner," Castle said.

What is novel for Castle is the Silvertips.

"I never dreamed we’d have a team," said Castle, who moved to Lake Stevens with her husband, Andrew, a native son, in 1984.

"I was so excited when I first heard about it. We’re coming into our own. It’s going to be a whole new experience for Everett."

"If not for this," she said, pointing to her walker, "I would have made it to the Silvertips’ first game."

Castle, who grew up in Vancouver, B.C., strayed from the family legacy when she took a shine to fancy skating — or figure skating — as a toddler. A pity since her mother was a natural to teach her the slapshot.

Her mother, Kathleen Patrick, played for an all-girls hockey team. "She was a forward and she scored the winning goal. They won the Banff, Alberta, championship about 1920," Castle said. "My father was the coach of the team — they fell in love."

Her mother strapped a pair of runners, skate blades, on her shoes when she was 2 years old, and Castle was off.

"I did love to skate," Castle said wistfully.

"It helps when your Grandpa owns all the arenas," quipped Castle’s first cousin, Bev Parsons of Bellevue, who recently visited Lake Stevens.

Castle, who fell a few weeks ago and fractured her leg, appears almost apologetic for not being able to give a skating demonstration.

"I still have my skates," she said. "White leather, beautiful kangaroo skin that I got in my teens, size 12. They were so soft — just like a glove."

Castle retired as the assistant manager of the Red Cross Golden Gate chapter in 1984. But enough coaxing could nudge her to launch a second career as a hockey scout. After all, she knows what to look for in a player.

To make the players ambidextrous, "our cousins would sit down at the dinner table with their hockey team and one week the players would have to use their right hand to eat and the next week, their left."

Now she watches for skating ability.

"Some are good skaters and some are not. You can tell by their stride and how they turn on the ice. The puck is very elusive. The good ones skate like they were born to do it."

The most recent Patrick family reunion took place in 1991 in Vancouver. The entire family flew in from across Canada and the United States.

"Hockey brought a lot of us to the states," said Castle, a U.S. citizen.

Fittingly, the elusive Stanley Cup also came to the reunion, Castle said. That year, (1991) the Pittsburgh Penguins won the cup. Cousin Craig Patrick is the team’s manager.

When "Craig came to the family reunion, he bought two plane tickets so that the Stanley Cup could have its own seat."

Reporter Janice Podsada: 425-339-3029 or podsada@heraldnet.com.