A man of the game

Hockey great’s feats remembered

By Roger Wickstrom
For the Gazette
HANCOCK — Tough. An elegant stick-handler and a strong skater. A leader on and off the ice.
These are the words friends, teammates and opponents use to describe Frank “Pappy” Gresnick, perhaps the best local defenseman ever to play the game.
“Pappy Gresnick is one of the best ones that came out of the Copper Country as far as defensemen go,” says Joe Bukovich, who played against Gresnick in the 1940s. “For offensive defensemen, you couldn’t beat him.”
“He was a terrific skater, a big man, strong physically,” adds Owen O’Brien, a former right wing on the Calumet-Laurium team for which Gresnick played. “One of the guys you liked to have on your team and (that) the other team hated.”
Both O’Brien and Bukovich say Gresnick was about the best stick handler they played with or against. Add to that his strong skating ability, and he was a force on both ends of the ice.
“He really was a good defensive defenseman, but he was just as good an offensive defenseman as he was a defensive defenseman,” Bukovich says. “I played against a lot of guys and never seen one that could carry the puck as good as Pappy could.”
And hockey in those days was tough. O’Brien says the Northern Michigan-Wisconsin Hockey League, of which Calumet-Laurium and Portage Lake were a part, boasted teams which often gave up players to the pros.
On weekend trips to Sault Ste. Marie, for instance, the Calumet-Laurium team would play the American Soo on Saturday nights and Soo Canada on Sundays, O’Brien says.
“Some of those guys, you’d play against them on a Saturday night and then the next week you’d ’em in the lineup for Toronto. That’s how good they were,” he says.
And among these true professionals in every sense of the word was Gresnick, O’Brien says, recalling how Gresnick laid down the law almost immediately after O’Brien joined the team.
“When I was a youngster the first year I went up there, he said, ‘You, sit there,’ right across from him,” O’Brien says. “I couldn’t get away from him, so if there was something he wanted to say I would hear it. ...
“He was well-liked, but he was strong-willed, too. He demanded a lot. He didn’t like a lazy hockey player, put it that way.”
Gresnick, now 87 and a resident of the Houghton County Medical Care Facility, remembers his hockey playing days fondly. Though recently afflicted by a stroke, his eyes light up like a goal lamp when talking about the old days.
“It was pretty rough in those days,” he says, proud and straight-backed, even from his perch in a wheelchair.
“The refereeing was terrible,” he continues. “They never made too many calls. It was tough those days for the little guy. They took a lot of punishment. They had to skate to get out of their way.”
Born March 1, 1914, in Raymbaultown to Croatian immigrants, Gresnick started playing hockey at a young age. Among his fondest memories, he says, is playing on the area outdoor rinks, learning to stick-handle and skate.
In fact, stick-handling, the art of developing soft enough hands to control the puck yet strong enough hands to let ’er fly, is one of the skills he recommends most to young players.
“If you can stick-handle and skate, you can go a long way,” Gresnick says.
And that old outdoor rink is also where Gresnick picked up his nickname, Pappy. Pronounced “puppy” in the Copper Country, the name came from the Osceola rink where he started playing hockey, he says.
There, a man named Mike Herveat was giving out nicknames to everyone who played. Gresnick got “Pappy,” and it stuck.
O’Brien says the nickname’s pronunciation became “Pappy” around Marquette, apparently because Gresnick lost most of his hair at a young age.
“Pappy was bald real young,” O’Brien says. “At practice and stuff he used to always wear a tuque (although) of course nobody played with headgear at that time.”
Not that he really needed to. Although pretty big at 6 foot 1 inches and 155 pounds, Gresnick says he tried to avoid as many hits as possible, which perhaps explains his puck-handling and skating abilities.
“I know I was pretty good, but there were a lot of good players,” he says. “I focused on stick-handling so I could get by those big guys. And I could skate good to get out of their way.”
But he did get into the occasional scrape.
“When you were pretty good, they’d be all after you, looking to give you the dirt,” he says. “But when you could handle yourself, they didn’t bother you too much.”
Gresnick got his hockey playing start in the Copper Country, helping to organize a team from Raymbaultown and Swedetown that played in the Calumet Independent League.
About the time the Great Depression broke out in the late 1920s, he took a hiatus from hockey, doing construction work for the Works Progress Administration.
He moved out East when he was in his 20s, playing there one year with the Baltimore Rovers of the Eastern Amateur League and later Washington U-Lines of the American League.
Not long after that, World War II broke out, prompting his return to the Copper Country, he says. He didn’t enter the military, but two of his brothers did. One served in the U.S. Navy, the other in the U.S. Army.
After the war, Gresnick returned to hockey, traveling to Marquette to play with the Marquette Millionaires. There, he again met up with “Ching” Johnson, whom “everybody knew ... by his bald head,” Gresnick says.
Gresnick credits Johnson, who went on to play for the New York Rangers, with teaching him many things about the game. And it was Johnson who gave Gresnick a spot on the Washington team and later the Marquette team.
O’Brien says Gresnick was sometimes a showboat when playing before large crowds in Marquette.
“At least once a night in Marquette, he’d make a solo dash down the ice, and if he scored, he’d flip his stick up into the lights and catch it,” O’Brien says. “The people would like that.”
Bukovich adds that Gresnick’s sometimes flashy style was bought and paid for, however.
“He’d stick his stick up in the air and wave to the crowd and everything,” Bukovich says. “He was a showman, but he backed up everything he did, too.”
But O’Brien says Gresnick wasn’t afraid to share what was important about the game.
In one game, for example, O’Brien says he had scored two goals and was streaking down the ice wide open. Gresnick, who was carrying the puck, wouldn’t pass to him.
After the game, O’Brien says they went down into the Calumet Armory’s locker room, which they called the dungeon, and he asked Gresnick “how come you didn’t pass me the puck?”
“He said, ‘Geez, you goal-hungry little bugger, you got two already, how many do you want?’” O’Brien says, adding that Gresnick was a good teammate and good teacher but “if you didn’t put out, he’d let you know in a hurry.”