'He would have been dead before it hit the building'
Twenty years after their deaths in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former Los Angeles Kings GM Dave Taylor reflects on the legacy of scouts Ace Bailey and Mark Bavis
Like almost every other NHL team, the Toronto Maple Leafs planned on spending the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, having their players check in for the first day of training camp. Players reported to the Air Canada Centre for fitness testing prior to a scheduled flight to St. John’s, Nfld., where they were to hit the ice the next day. It was not long before the excitement of a new season was replaced by abject shock, terror and sorrow as news of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon began to circulate.
Former Maple Leafs defenseman Jim McKenny was a reporter for Citytv at the time. He had never played with Garnet ‘Ace’ Bailey who, along with fellow Los Angeles Kings scout Mark Bavis, was on United Flight 175, the second plane that went into the towers that day. But McKenny had spent years battling Bailey on the ice and respected him. McKenny opined that, from what he knew of Bailey, there’s no way he was alive by the time the plane hit the tower. McKenny figured Bailey would have confronted the terrorists and fought to his last breath before that plane became an instrument of death.
It turns out, Wayne Gretzky thought exactly the same thing. Bailey was Gretzky’s first roommate and mentor in the World Hockey Association and echoed McKenny’s thoughts when he officially learned of Bailey’s death from then-Kings GM Dave Taylor. “He called once news started to circulate that those guys were on that plane,” Taylor said. “I told him they were and he said, ‘There’s no way Ace was alive if he had any inkling of what was going on there. He would not have sat there. He would have been up fighting and he would have been dead before it hit the building.’ ”
The 31-year-old Bavis and 53-year-old Bailey were two of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the attacks that day. The hockey world is a rather small and insular one and it was rocked by the attacks. Bailey was a former player, a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Boston Bruins in the 1970s who was as gregarious off the ice as he was gritty on it. Bavis was a former star at Boston University who was just starting to find his way in the scouting world. Going into his third year as a U.S. amateur scout with the Kings, Bavis was instrumental in the Kings’ decisions just months before to select David Steckel 30th overall and Mike Cammalleri 49th, two players who went on to have long and successful NHL careers.
Taylor first learned of the attacks early in the morning on the west coast. Another scout, John Stanton out of Ottawa, had called Taylor to tell him that his flight from Toronto that day had been grounded because of a terrorist attack. Taylor went into the office right away and checked with John Wolf, the team’s travel coordinator at the time, who knew every flight the scouts would be on that day. “We knew what flight Mark and Ace were on and we kept calling United and they kept telling us it was missing,” Taylor said. “That’s all they would tell us. I talked to Ace’s wife that morning and it was heartbreaking. She said, ‘I know Ace was on that flight because I dropped him off at the airport.’ It was terrible.” He also called Mike Bavis, Mark’s twin brother and assistant coach at Boston University, who was on a recruiting trip in the U.S. Midwest. “I called Ace’s cell phone and Mark’s cell phone a couple of times, just hoping one of them would answer,” Taylor said. “But nothing. You’re hoping against hope that they’re going to answer, but they were gone.”
News of the attacks was nearly impossible to digest for those who had no connection to the tragedy. But for those who did, including the Kings’ front office, it was infinitely more gut-wrenching. This was supposed to be one of the biggest days of the year for the Kings’ scouting staff. Taylor had scheduled a meeting later in the day with the scouting staff, and he decided to ahead with the meeting because he thought that’s what Bailey and Bavis would have wanted him to do. But it was devastating for the Kings. Bailey used to like to jump on the exercise bike outside the Kings practice facility between on-ice sessions and just that morning, in anticipation of Bailey’s arrival, Kings’ athletic trainer Pete Demers had rolled a bike in the parking lot so that Bailey could ride outside in the sunshine.
Taylor said Saturday will be a reflective day for him. He’ll likely call Bill O’Flaherty, the Kings director of player personnel who would watch the Kings prospects in Manchester and was close to both Bailey and Bavis. He calls O’Flaherty every year on Sept. 11. He’ll think about long time NHL coach Bruce Boudreau, the Manchester Monarchs coach at the time who was scheduled to be on Flight 175, but changed his flight at the last minute because Kings coach Andy Murray wanted him to attend a coaches’ dinner the night before. Twenty years later, the Kings will once again play this season as they have each one since 2001-02 with a decal on the back of their helmets that has a crown with the names ‘Ace’ at the top and ‘Mark’ at the bottom. And their memories live on, Bailey’s through the Ace Bailey Children’s Foundation that has raised millions for the Tuft’s Children Hospital in Boston and Bavis’ through the Mark Bavis Leadership Foundation, which raises money to give scholarships to needy students.
“We still talk about Ace and Mark,” said Taylor, who is now vice-president, hockey operations with the St. Louis Blues. “They left big holes with us.”
Excellent reporting on this tragic story. Thank you.
Thank you for this sad remembrance, Ken.