Of the 15 hockey teams and nine different leagues Joe Crozier has been with as a player, coach, general manager and owner in the past 35 years, the Rangers this year have given him one of his toughest seasons, the 53-year-old veteran says.
     And it may well be that, the toughest part is yet to come – getting the Kitchener Rangers through two more Ontario Hockey League playoff series to advance in pursuit of the Memorial Cup, a prize which narrowly eluded them last year in Windsor.
     Some would say Crozier is in a no-win situation: if the Rangers win, it was expected; if they don’t, Crozier blew a power-packed team.
     The final assessment of Crozier and the Rangers won’t be made for some time yet, but whatever happens on the playoff trail can’t be much tougher than what Crozier has already experienced in his first year back in junior hockey since his playing days with the Brandon Wheat Kings 32 years ago.
     “Yeah, it’s been a pretty rough season.  So many things have happened.”  Crozier said as he leaned back into his office chair with a can of lemonade and talked about hockey and his personal life.
     “When I first came here, I didn’t know a player from an apple.  I had never looked at midget-age players in my life, I didn’t know the league and I didn’t know my players.  All I knew was what I heard – that the Rangers have some pretty good players.”
     Things started smoothly, the Rangers lost only one of eight exhibition games and went unbeaten in their first 11 league games with 10 wins and a tie.
     But then the Windsor Spitfires – whom the Rangers easily eliminated in four straight games in the first playoff round – marched into Kitchener Oct. 23, and rallied for a 5-3 win and the Rangers were no longer invincible.
     They won six of the next eight games but then, with their lineup ravaged by injuries, they slid into a two-month slump.  Rangers’ fans known for their amazing support, but also among the most critical in the business, began getting on Crozier.  On Dec. 4, during the Rangers’ third straight loss, the hometown fans began singing, “Goodbye Crozier.”
     “It bothered me then and it still bothers me when I think about it,” Crozier said.  “It was the first time anything like that happened to me in all my years of hockey.”
     As the season wore on, fans in other rinks – particularly in Sault Ste. Marie – began heckling Crozier.  “Go back to the Leafs!” was a common cry.
     Crozier was fired by the National Hockey League team in January of 1981 and since then the Leafs have gone from bad to worse.  Junior hockey fans knew of Crozier long before his Leafs days – he was named NHL coach of the year with the Buffalo Sabres in the early 1970’s and a year later was fired – and he had a high profile in both cities.
     “A lot of the time, I think the fans are after my players more than they’re after me,” Crozier said.
     “I know the fans are going to be yelling, so I just shut them out.  You know, it’s funny.  The fans here gave some of the guys quite the riding, but there was only one team in the league – the Soo – that had a better home record than we did and they had only one more point.”  Then flipping through the league stats which he had on his desk, he added: “The Soo was 25-7-2 at home, we were 25-8-1.”
     During the middle months of the schedule, the Rangers were hit with one injury after another, and Crozier constantly had to juggle his lineup.  None of the Rangers’ top three forwards – Brian Bellows, Jeff Larmer and Grant Martin – played more than 54 games in the 68 game schedule, with Larmer missing eight games because of an NHL tryout with the Colorado Rockies.  Rookie defensemen Scott Stevens and Dave Shaw were the only Rangers who played all 68.
     In the midst of the team’s turmoil and the criticism from the fans, Crozier had other problems.  His wife, Bonnie, normally vibrant and her husband’s biggest fan was seriously ill and needed an operation to remove cancerous growth.
     “What made it even tougher was that Bonnie and the family (two children, ages five and six) are living in Toronto and I’m down here.  We see each other as much a we can, but it’s difficult when you’re not together, especially in a situation like that.”
     This is the first year the Crozier’s are living apart since they were married in 1974.  It was Crozier’s second marriage, Bonnie’s first.
     “I’ve had to run three different families this year,” Crozier said.  “There’s my ex-wife and two kids in Vancouver, there’s Bonnie in Toronto and me here.  We’re trying to sell (their Lawerence Park area home, reduced to $319,000 from $425,000), but the market’s not too good right now and we’re still looking in Kitchener.”
     The tension and worry in Crozier’s personal life and with the Rangers began to wear on the normally mild-mannered folksy Crozier.  Often his mind seemed to be in other places and uncharacteristically, he occasionally snapped at reporters and refused at least one interview – that one in the Soo, following a Ranger loss.
     Gradually, things began falling into place.  His wife returned to health, players came off the injury list and the Rangers began winning again.  They lost only three of their last 23 regular season games, set a team record for most wins (44) in a season and clinched their second straight Emms Division pennant, eight points ahead of the Soo.
     When Crozier first came to Kitchener, he said he was looking forward to the challenge of junior hockey because he wanted to teach young players and pass on the knowledge he gleaned during his well-travelled career, which includes four American Hockey League titles as a coach and an Allan Cup crown and Memorial Cup runner-up berth as a player.  He bought and sold the Rochester Americans of the AHL, Vancouver Canucks of the WHLand Quebec Aces of the Quebec League.  He also was in the old World Hockey Association as coach-general manager with Vancouver and Calgary.
     “Teaching is my long suit,” Crozier said.  “The kids here seem to be taking it very well.  The only place I ever had any trouble with the players was in Toronto.  There was so much turmoil and it was publicized so much that everybody knew what was going on.”
     Ask the Ranger players what they think of Crozier and the answers generally are the same – a good coach, a good teacher, a nice man.  They say he’s taken a good team and made it better.  The atmosphere is calm and relaxed, with no ranting or raving by Crozier.
     He’s a shrewd businessman and highly organized, he doesn’t smoke and rarely drinks (“I stopped drinking when I coached Buffalo.  You can’t get up with headaches in the morning.  I had enough headaches all night.”)
     People who spend a lot of time around Crozier seldom say anything bad about him.  The most critical observers are some of the Rangers fans, who – perhaps more than with any other Rangers coach – question just about everything he does and say the team should be playing better.
     True, there were times, especially during the injuries, when the Rangers weren’t themselves, but three loses in the last 27 games and superb hockey in the playoffs against Windsor would seem to indicate Crozier must be doing something right.