For Bert Godin, the Olympic experience in Turin won’t be rich with tales of breathtaking, mountain scenery or a positively Bode Miller-like review of Italian nightlife.
Not for the first week, at least.
Godin, a Lewiston native now living in Chesterfield, Mo., is one of numerous National Hockey League all-stars gearing up for the international tournament that is one of the marquee events of the Winter Games. He won’t set a blade on the ice, however. His work is making sure the other big names get that opportunity.
Now in his ninth year as head equipment manager for the St. Louis Blues, Godin is part of a team representing Easton, the hockey equipment manufacturer. There is no gold medal in it, merely the satisfaction of sharpening blades and mending torn sweaters for athletes who might skate away with adornment around their necks.
“They’ve had the service contract since the Lillehammer Games,” Godin said of his temporary employer. “If any of the teams need anything from sticks to skate sharpening to sewing, we do it for them.”
This is the third Olympics for Godin, and it is typically a time-consuming gig.
Coverage is needed at the hockey venue from 6 a.m. until midnight to cover the men’s and women’s divisions. That schedule prevails until the medal round, when Godin hopes to become slightly more of a tourist.
“I didn’t get out much in Nagano or Salt Lake City,” he said. “In Nagano, we were living on a mountain ski resort, and it took up a lot of time just getting back and forth every day. There are two or three other equipment managers working in shifts, so there should be a little more time for sightseeing later on.”
Godin’s work is reflective of the Olympic spirit. Most of the North American stars Godin has encountered in his NHL travels won’t need his assistance this week and next. But the breakup of the Soviet Union, the growth of hockey around the world and the evolution of the women’s game have changed the tournament dramatically during Godin’s Olympic career.
He sees the gap between the haves and have-nots behind the scenes.
“The teams that are contenders for a medal – the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Finland – they tend to be pretty well stocked,” Godin said. “We do a lot more work for the teams like Kazakhstan, China and Japan.”
Despite Lewiston’s rich hockey tradition, Godin preferred baseball as a child. He remained with that first love through high school and college. But when a college classmate helped connect him to a job as equipment manager for the Hampton Aces of the Eastern Hockey League in 1979, Godin found his professional calling.
Later, he served with the Maine Mariners before joining the Detroit Red Wings as their head equipment manager in 1983, the same year ageless Steve Yzerman made his NHL debut.
Godin left hockey for the construction industry for six years, but he returned to the rink with the Cleveland Lumberjacks of the International Hockey League in 1992. St. Louis hired him prior to the 1997-98 season.
While the last-place Blues are in a fire-sale mode at the moment, beat writer Dan O’Neill of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently penned a column proclaiming Godin one of five indispensable parts of the team. “He’s the best equipment manager in the biz,” O’Neill wrote.
“Hockey is a different breed of athlete,” said Godin. “The players are very easy to deal with compared to baseball, basketball and football, from what I can tell. And I get my summers off. In baseball, I’d only be off in the winter.”
And if you must work in the winter, there’s no better place to earn a paycheck than an event that the entire world is watching.
“As a kid, I always watched the Olympics, and like every other kid, you dream of representing your country,” Godin said. “To be able to represent your country in any capacity, it’s very exciting.”
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