Warrior hair: Barry Melrose becomes a member of the mullet hall of fame
Monday, July 26, 2004

Posted by GSH-Editor

Barry Melrose is going into the hall of fame. Not for hockey, 33 points in 300 games as a player or 79 wins as a coach are not enshrinable numbers, even for a place that honours Harold Ballard as a member. No, tonight during their game against the Portland Pirates, the Manchester Monarchs are inducting the Kelvington, Sask., native into the mullet hall of fame.Melrose, the former NHLer and coach of the Los Angeles Kings, derided by none other than Don Cherry during the 1993 playoffs as Billy Ray Cyprus (a reference to the egregiously mulleted country star Billy Ray Cyrus with the achy, breaky singing career), is accepting the honour in the spirit in which it was offered."It's going to be a blast," said Melrose, now an analyst for ESPN. "I grew up in the American Hockey League and I coached in the AHL, so I know what the AHL is all about. If I can get seven or eight thousand people in their building to have a good time, I'm all for it."

In an interview yesterday, Melrose said he still sports the oft-derided 'do."It's long, but I have had long hair my whole life," he said. "At my age, usually people are poking fun at guys for not having any hair, so I'm pretty lucky that way, I feel."For those unfamiliar with the mullet, the look is close-cropped on the sides and top, flowing in the back. Otherwise known as "the short-long" or the "10-90" (10% on top, 90% in the back), in Canada the most famous euphemism is "hockey hair."

For reasons unknown and never rationally explained, it's been at times de rigeur for the shinny set, cascading out of the backs of countless helmets and over innumerable shoulder pads in arenas and rinks across Canada. Melrose cited one-time Flin Flon Bomber, Kelowna Buckaroo and NHLer Gene Carr as his hair hero, but said he never selected players based on looks or locks."I didn't care if a guy was bald, I didn't care if he had hair down to his ass," Melrose said. "If he played hard, he was going to play for me."The versatile and adaptable mullet has cropped up in many athletic realms. In baseball, Randy Johnson, Rod Beck and retired Phillie John Kruk all sported the look. Former B.C. Lion and NFL sack king Mark Gastineau's hair was prodigiously long. Andre Agassi, before his follicular challenged present, wore a platinum mullet in his "Image is everything" days and women's tennis legend Martina Navratilova proved it was a gender neutral style.But, it's hockey where the mullet is most recognized and revered.In a current ad campaign, an American beer company satirizes the fictional town of Hockey Falls, where even babies have mullets.

The Great One, Wayne Gretzky was a member of the mullet club for a time, while former L.A Kings defenceman Brian Engblom's mullet was an all-time classic. Wendel Clark, the former Maple Leaf captain and another Kelvington boy, has many a mulleted photo from his early NHL days. Among today's players, Jaromir Jagr, Mike Ricci, Kevin and Derian Hatcher have showcased shoulder-length manes. "Because the mullet is warrior hair," Melrose explained. "What kind of hair did Mel Gibson have in Braveheart. It's warrior hair and hockey players are warriors. That's why they're attracted to that type of hair."Jon Crabbe, the Monarchs' director of marketing said as part of the festivities at tonight's nearly sold-out game (about 100 tickets were left in the 9,893-seat arena as of yesterday afternoon), the team will give out free mullet wigs to the first 4,000 men into the building.

There will be music from the mullet's 1980s heyday and celebrity mullet-offs on the scoreboard, Gretzky v. Jagr as well as non-sports figures, such as actors Patrick Swayze and Kurt Russell going mano-a-hairdo.Crabbe said he first cultivated the idea a couple of years ago, but before this year he could never find a supplier of mullet wigs cheap enough to justify the expense.But through connections, he found a Chinese supplier with mullet wigs at around US$3 a pop for what was quite likely the largest mass-mullet wig order in human history.The un-mulleted Crabbe said the team's average attendance is 8,800 per game, so the extra 1,000 or so seat sales is really a secondary benefit for the approximately US$12,000 spent on wigs.

"The real boost is the talk value, the entire town is talking about it," said Crabbe, 28, and originally from Buffalo, N.Y. "It's kind of gone beyond expectations. I really didn't understand that there were that many people who knew what the mullet was. You talk to people, in hockey especially, and you bring up the word 'mullet' and they start laughing."Already he's done about 10 interviews with media outlets around North America and this week, the anchors on a local news broadcast wore mullets for part of their newscast.In a scandal that may mar mullet night, however, Crabbe said apart from the slightly mulletish mane of team mascot Max the lion, the Monarchs don't really have a player with a mullet on their roster. In fact, last year's coaching staff forced defenceman Joe Rullier to trim his hair.That may change, says Jie Matar, a Toronto hair stylist to the stars. The hairdo, he said, perhaps with tongue in cheek, could be making a comeback."On the runways now, it's always on and it's kind of casual because it matches the mohawk and it's all from the same kind of philosophy," Matar said. "And people like to always look fresh and young and hip and it has lots of architecture. People really like it."

Melrose agrees it's coming back."Just like any other great fashion, it's like a great three-piece suit," he said while arguing for the mullet's enduring quality. "Why do you want to be a guy that changes everything. If you change every time someone in the newspapers tells you to change, I don't think you have much character. That tells me a guy with no backbone."But he is loath to predict who will follow him into the Mullet Hall of Fame. "You've got to wait and see who's eligible and done the homework," he said. "That's not a decision you can make a year ahead. Obviously guys can lose their hair in a year or grow their hair in a year. It's just like a Norris trophy, it's who is going good at the moment."