Returning Wrangler Madill shaken up in Japan

It was March 11, and Mike Madill was hungry.

A few days earlier, the Nippon Paper Cranes, the hockey team for which he was a defenseman in the Asia League, were eliminated from the playoffs by the Tohoku Free Blades (the favorite Asia League team of the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd).

Madill was not named "Young Guy of the Year," what the Asia League calls its top rookie. But he had a pretty good season, good enough that the ohmonos, the big shots down at corporate headquarters in Tokyo, wanted this particular import back. Domo arigato, Madill-san.

He had acquired a taste for Ashaii beer -- tastes like Budweiser, he said -- and Japanese culture. Just like Jamie McLennan, the former Calgary Flames goalie who had played for the Cranes, had said Madill would. And for once, his shoulders didn't ache, like they did after each of his three seasons with the Las Vegas Wranglers.

Japanese hockey players are good skaters, but they are smaller than Canadian players and don't hit nearly as hard, Madill says. And they are respectful of their elders. Madill said the entire Asia League schedule was played without a fight. Again.

Nonetheless, it had been a great experience, playing pro hockey in Japan, even greater than this 29-year-old from Kirkland, Quebec, had imagined it. And he made three times more money than had he played another year of minor league hockey in the States.

Madill was planning to marry his Las Vegas girlfriend, Autumn Belanger, who impersonated Lady Gaga in the "American Superstars" show at the Stratosphere. The extra yen would come in handy.

These were some of the things going through Madill's head when he thought he would make some pasta.

It was at that point that his old but still efficient (like most things Japanese) third-story apartment in Kushiro, Hokkaido, on Japan's northern island, began to shimmy like a Polynesian girl doing the Hula Hoop.

Madill's washer and dryer started to screech and rumble, as if somebody had switched them on. A force of nature had switched them on.

This was the beginning of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Mike Madill picked up his video camera and began to film his washer and dryer screeching and rumbling.

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The quake's epicenter in the western Pacific Ocean was 45 miles east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tohoku. The nearest major city was Sendai, about 81 miles away. Sendai is 656 miles from Kushiro. Madill and his teammates had flown in and out of the Sendai airport, and used its train station, during the playoff series against the Free Blades.

After the tsunami's 133-foot waves crashed to shore, they showed the Sendai airport on Japanese television. It looked as if somebody had turned a giant hose on it, and left it running for a hundred years.

Until then, Madill said he felt as if he had been cast as an extra in a disaster movie. Somewhere off the Japanese coast, perhaps Godzilla and the Three-Headed Monster were standing toe-to-toe, dissin' each other and breathing fire. Not to make light of a terrible tragedy, but to Madill, that's sort of what it felt like. He was 656 miles away. It wasn't yet a terrible tragedy.

The quake lasted a few minutes. His washer and dryer had stopped screeching and rumbling, and the hanging light fixtures in his apartment had stopped swaying. Madill noticed a mirror that was now hanging crooked.

There was a knock on the door. One of the Cranes' goalies, who lived across the hall, thought they should move to higher ground. Chris Yule, a teammate born in Edmonton who had lived in Japan for 16 years, said his parents had room at their place. It was there they watched Japanese television, and saw the havoc wreaked by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it spawned.

There were 15,641 confirmed deaths, and early estimates placed the property damage at anywhere from $15 billion to $35 billion. The emotional damage was even greater.

When he saw the destruction, heard of those damage estimates, saw the Sendai airport and train station under water, Madill said it didn't feel like he was in a bad science fiction movie any more. It became all too real.

It was officially a tragedy.

"It just seemed spooky," he said. "Like in a movie, you don't think it could be that serious. But people get hurt. A lot of people had it much worse than us."

They were still caring for people who were hurt, looking for people who were missing, when Madill returned to lower ground to gather his things. None of his teammates had lost family members in the earthquake and tsunami and chaos that ensued. Luck, Madill said. Pure luck. Sometimes the puck hits you square between the eyes. And sometimes it lights a red lamp 656 miles away.

Mike Madill is back in Las Vegas now. He married Autumn Belanger, got his green card renewed and signed another contract with the Wranglers. It won't be long before somebody from the Stockton Thunder or Bakersfield Condors, some guy on the checking line trying to make a name for himself, will take a run at him. Sticks will be raised, gloves will be dropped. Madill's shoulders will begin to ache again.

But he will never forget drinking Ashaii beer with his former Japanese teammates, and that day in March when his washer and dryer began to screech and rumble. 

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.