It’s a stretch to say the Everett Silvertips won this season because of Bob Evans, their amiable and wildly amusing bus driver.
But darned if this white-haired, wise-crackin’, guitar-playin’ fella with the down-home Tennessee twang doesn’t make those long road trips through the Western Hockey League hinterlands just a bit more tolerable.
Everyone, it seems, from Everett head coach Kevin Constantine to the assistant coaches to the team’s traveling staff to all the Silvertips players, has a favorite “Bob” story. Or, in the case of Constantine, a growing log of one-liners called “Bob-isms,” so precious he saves them on his laptop computer.
Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald
“Most of them are hilarious,” said Constantine, the often stern-faced coach who enjoys a good yuk off the ice. “Some of them are probably more colorful than you’d ordinarily see in the average family newspaper. But then again, he’s (traveling) with a group of guys. And these things are non-stop.
“The guy just makes me laugh,” Constantine added. “I’ve only written down about a tenth of the little quotes that come out of his mouth and I’m already up to a hundred.”
Evans, you see, produces quips at about the same rate most people exhale. He will happily poke fun at anyone, most often himself. If, for instance, he takes a wrong turn (which seems to happen at least once every road trip), he will remark wryly, “I could get lost in a cul-de-sac.”
Or, when the talk turns to matrimony: “I’ve been married three times and have a couple of broken guitars to prove it.”
Though Evans, who is 64, probably could have made a career in stand-up comedy, his real love is music. A stint in the Navy brought him to the Northwest – he was stationed at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard in the early 1960s – and he stayed on after leaving the service, singing and playing his guitar, mostly in local clubs.
About seven years ago, Evans began driving a bus. Though he still performs from time to time (often showing up to play with musicians he knows at Seattle-area clubs), he now drives charters for performers and other celebrities, politicians, church and civic groups, tours, and school sports teams.
And the Silvertips. He started driving for the team a year ago and has done most of their road trips this season. Evans is old enough to be a grandfather to almost everyone on the bus, but he still relishes the gig.
The players, he said, “are a great bunch of guys. I like ‘em all.”
And they must like him, he figures, given the good-natured gibes that come his way. When the team got stuck behind a poky driver the other day, center Torrie Wheat chided Evans, telling him the bugs were hitting the back of the bus.
All in good fun, said defenseman Shaun Heshka, who calls Evans “a real character. … He likes to joke around and he’ll make you laugh all night. He’s one of a kind, definitely.”
“Before we get going (on a trip),” added defenseman Cody Thoring, “he always comes to the back of the bus and starts telling his stories, telling jokes. All the time, he’s joking around.”
Then there is Constantine, who can fuss and fume at times, particularly when the Silvertips are not playing well. You might think a cranky coach and an offbeat bus driver on an extended road trip would be a combustible pair – oil and water mixed with gasoline, one might say – but somehow the two men not only get along, they are downright chummy.
“(Evans) is actually quite therapeutic,” said James Stucky, the team’s equipment manager. “Kevin can get pretty worked up. Win or lose, he gets pretty animated, so I think it’s good medicine when Bob says, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ or something like that. It just kind of breaks the ice.”
Well, sometimes. Earlier this season, Constantine got on the bus after a bad game in Spokane, looking like he just swallowed a bumblebee. Taking his usual seat, right behind Evans, he gave the driver a glowering, leave-me-alone look.
“And I said, ‘Coach, it was a damn game,’” Evans related with a laugh. “I said, ‘It’s hard to drive the bus 400 miles with somebody that looks like my ex-wife sitting there.’ And he said, ‘This conversation is ending.’ And I said, ‘The hell it is, it’s just beginning.’”
That Evans lived to tell the story says something about the two men and their shared friendship.
“He just makes those long bus rides a heck of a lot shorter,” Constantine said. “He’s not overbearing. He’s not a pain in the butt at all. He just likes to yak when you’re ready for it.
“People think that when the game is over, you want to rehash it. But a lot of times when it’s over, win or lose, you don’t want to talk hockey at all. You want to put it to bed and not think about it again until you have to. So sometimes it’s fun to be around somebody that knows life from a little different angle, and that’s him.”
“Kevin’s a great guy,” Evans said. “We’re good buddies.”
Plenty of people drives buses, of course, but not all are suited for the grueling WHL road trips and the mish-mash of moods that crop up with any team over a long season. “We’ve run a few (drivers) off this year,” Stucky acknowledged.
Evans, though, “brings a side of Kevin out that not many people see,” he said. “And that’s what’s good about Bob. He’s got this ‘I don’t care’ attitude and the guys love him. It’s really a good fit.”
In a rare moment of straight-faced sincerity, Evans agrees.
“I love this team,” he said. “I’ve become friends with each and every one of these of people.
“I just feel like family with them.”
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