Hello, boys.
That salute, often combined with a devilish grin, was the greeting we got all the time when Jim Kelley walked into the sports department of The Buffalo News.
Monday marks 10 years since we lost him at the much-too-young age of 61. The NHL is still trying to figure out what shape its 2021 season might be in – and Kelley would undoubtedly prefer this space focus on that topic – but I'm going to instead use this edition for Kelley stories.
This is forever Kelley's space. He created this column. I'm just its current keeper. Let's start with a big tale of his integrity.
In 2010 for the Sabres' 40th anniversary, The News surveyed current and former staff members to determine the top 40 players in franchise history. There were 13 voters and I had 12 sets of votes submitted. The only one missing was Kelley's, and he was in the throes of treatment for pancreatic cancer.
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I didn't want to bother him for the ballot, but we needed it. The reason? Gilbert Perreault and Dominik Hasek were tied in points for the No. 1 spot. Kelley was going to be the tiebreaking vote.
I opted to get a head-start on writing because Perreault was certainly going to be the No. 1 choice. After all, Kelley had been famously attacked in the Marine Midland Arena hallway by Hasek during the 1997 playoffs after columns that correctly questioned the severity of a knee injury Hasek was dealing with.
Steve Jones, the executive sports editor at the time, called Kelley to ask about the ballot. Kelley emailed me his apology – good lord, none was needed – and said he would send it to me later that day. And he did.
Kelley got us all good. He voted for Hasek. I called him and the conversation went like this:
"Kell, I gotta talk to you about this ballot."
Kelley was laughing.
"Never thought I'd vote for Dom, right?"
"Nope. I'll tell you now: You broke the tie with Perreault. Your vote makes Hasek No. 1."
He was laughing even harder.
"Well, Dom was certifiably crazy, but he's a goalie so we excuse that. And he got so upset that night that he ruined a perfectly good shirt. But he might be the greatest player at his position in the history of the game and he was the hardest-working player I've ever seen. There's your vote."
In any language
A summer afternoon in 1986. I'm an intern working on some mindless story. Kelley is in the office, too, sitting across from me.
"Let's get a story today, shall we? Mike, my boy, watch this."
Kelley dialed the phone and broke into halting South Buffalo-tinged French.
"Gilbert? Bon jour, mon ami. J'appelle du pays du rouge, du blanc et du bleu (I asked him later for the translation and he provided 'Hello, my friend. I'm calling from the land of the red, white and blue'). Jim Kelley here. What's that? Hey, slow down. I gave you all the French I got for now. So you tell me: You gonna play a little hockey this year or not?"
After that type of greeting, Gilbert Perreault gave Kelley the scoop: He would be returning to the Sabres for the 1986-87 season rather than retiring.
Airwaves
Over time, Kelley became a major player representing Buffalo on radio and television shows. He's most remembered for the legendary "Sharpshooters" with Mike Robitaille on WNSA, a 4-year run that was appointment radio on gamedays.
"It was pure, and it was raw, and it was great. They transcended sports talk, and even radio," Sharpshooters producer Steve Cichon wrote at Buffalostories.com. "I'm not speaking in hyperbole here, but for me, listening was like watching ballet or listening to great music. Masters, but not arrogantly erudite. These two Buffalo hockey greats ... talking on the radio, made everyone listening feel like they were in on the conversation."
Kelley was a guest in 1995 on the first installment of Hockey Night in Canada's "Satellite Hot Stove," appearing with Ron McLean from Toronto, while John Davidson was in New York and Jim Hughson was in Vancouver. Once a month, he would be in Toronto for Leafs TV's 2-hour Sunday show, "The Reporters." In his later years, Kelley was a co-host on The Fan 590 in Toronto with Bob McCown, the city's sports radio giant.
"He had no fear. He had a tremendous amount of knowledge and he wasn't just a hockey guy," former Hockey Night in Canada producer John Shannon said by phone Friday from Toronto. "The key thing for all of us, and I say this tongue-in-cheek, was he could speak Canadian but be American. He knew our strengths and weaknesses, never a time you felt he didn't know what we were all about, but he could still give us an American perspective and that was ever-so-important. He did an outstanding job with that. He was so fair. Those of us that read him on a regular basis always knew that."
Around Kelley's boards
• What in the world would Kelley say about Pegula ownership and the last nine years of Sabres chaos? I certainly would have called to ask him many times.
• The downtown ballpark, 1998. Kelley joined me for a Bisons' game, a 17-3 loss to Pawtucket. I read his column the next morning and just about spit out my cereal. There were classic rips all the way through it like this: "There was pitching so shamelessly bad it would make Monica Lewinsky's lawyers blush." And this one: "The game went 3 hours, 38 minutes and there wasn't even a fight. These people put a hockey team to shame. Don't they know fighting is part of baseball?"
• Founding Fathers Pub, Buffalo. Any number of Saturday nights/Sunday mornings in the late 1980s. A bunch of us would be in the office all night putting together the Sunday paper. Kelley would be on the road with the Sabres in places like Montreal or Quebec City.
We'd go to the bar after the final edition was done, arriving around 1:30 a.m. We were 1 1/2 miles away. Kelley beat us there thanks to the Sabres' charter from Quebec.
"Where ya been, boys?" he'd greet us. "Game didn't go overtime, eh?"
• Kelley loved the travel but hated the time away from his family. I particularly remember talking to him a lot during the 1987 Stanley Cup final as Edmonton blew a 3-1 lead over Philadelphia, causing a pair of extra cross-continent trips for the media before winning the Cup in Game 7.
I was in the office the night after Edmonton's win, where we saw Kelley on CBC as one of the first writers into the winning locker room. His wife and fellow longtime News employee, Susan, had his two daughters in the newsroom as he was coming there from the airport (probably to give her all the scraps of paper needed to put together his expense accounts). The girls were both under 10. That was quite a reunion in the middle of the room when he walked in.
One final standing O
Kelley was named by the Hockey News as one of the "100 People of Power and Influence" in the game in 2002. He was a consultant for the IOC when NHLers went to the Olympics for the first time in Nagano, Japan, in 1998. He won the Elmer Ferguson Award in 2004 for meritorious service in journalism to the game and his plaque sits in the Great Hall of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. He's in the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. And he was inducted into the Sabres Hall of Fame in 2011, just a couple of months after his death.
Jones, who had been friends with Kelley for more than 30 years, was asked by Susan Kelley to address the First Niagara Center crowd on Jim's behalf that night.
"I was so honored to do that. He was friends to all of us," Jones said. "I remember thinking I kind of wished we could have done it in the Aud instead of the new place. ... He knew everybody in the Aud. Every guy in that building. He was friends with all of them."
Jones said he wanted his remarks to touch the fans in the top rows of the 300 level, the beer vendors, the security guards, the ushers. When fellow News staffer Tom Borrelli died in 2008, Jones called for a standing ovation at Borrelli's post-funeral lunch. He did it again for Kelley and 19,000 responded to his request.
"That was great for Tom and it certainly would apply to Jim," Jones said. "We're not ballplayers. We never get on the ice, on the field, in the batter's box. We always hear all those standing 'Os' and it makes us feel good to be there and hear them. Nothing better than a standing 'O' when you're part of it. Jim deserved a standing ovation. His family certainly deserved it. His wife, his daughters and grandchildren were all there. They deserved it. That was a great moment in my life. It choked me up."
After leaving The News, Kelley worked for FoxSports.com, ESPN.com and Sportsnet.ca. He filed his final column, on then-Leafs GM Brian Burke, for Sportsnet in the early-morning hours of Nov. 30, 2010, and died later that day in Buffalo General Hospital. A section of Washington Street between The News and KeyBank Center was renamed "Jim Kelley Way" in 2011 and the street sign remains today in front of (716) Food & Sport.
