Grant Fuhr was like that. He had that same cool demeanor. If Grant said three words in a sentence it was a busy day. When he was in net, Grant didn’t do much talking. Once in a while he’d bark, “Arrgh!” or holler out, “Hey!” But he was always steady and calm under fire.
A calm goalie has an incredible effect on a team. I remember, in the 1987 finals, we lost Game Six 3–2 in Philadelphia. We had two days to get ready for Game Seven. We had a light skate on the second day, then everyone went their own way. After morning skate on game day, one of the reporters asked Grant what he had done to prepare for the big game. He surprised everyone by telling the group that he had played golf.
“How many holes?” someone asked.
“Thirty-six,” was his answer.
Someone asked why, suggesting that two rounds of golf was a bit much before a big game.
“Because it was getting too dark to play fifty-four,” was his reply. And the guys loved it. That sense of calm was just what we needed to hear. And we weren’t disappointed. He stood on his head in a 3–1 win.
That fall, I was sitting on the bench at the Canada Cup in the second game against the Soviets. It was 5–5 late in the third, and Grant was in net. The guy beside me on the bench (Dale Hawerchuk) wasn’t an Oiler, so I turned to reassure him. “They’ve got five,” I told him. “But we could play another seven periods and they wouldn’t get another.” And they didn’t.
Grant was probably the greatest athlete I ever played with. He’s the tenth winningest goalie in regular season—third in playoff wins in NHL history. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d have four championship rings.
In Georges Vezina’s whole career, from 1910 to 1925, he never missed a game. He made 328 consecutive starts in the regular season and 39 more in the playoffs.
• • •
By November 28, 1925, Vezina had lost thirty-five pounds since training camp. The Canadiens were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, a new team in the NHL, and that night Vezina showed up paler and more haggard-looking than usual. He stopped shots in the first period but left the ice coughing up blood. He stayed in the dressing room with only his pads off hoping he’d feel good enough to go out again. But he was having a tough time breathing, and with a temperature of 102 he could barely move. The next day he saw his doctor. Tuberculosis was the diagnosis.
Vezina came back one more time to pick up his sweater. Léo Dandurand told reporters that Vezina had “tears running down his cheeks,” and so did everyone else who was there. He returned to Chicoutimi and died the next spring on March 27, 1926. It was a sad day for hockey.
At the start of the next season, the team owners, Léo Dandurand, Louis Letourneau, and Joseph Cattarinich, honored their goalie by donating the Vezina Trophy to the NHL. It is awarded to the goalie who lets in the fewest goals. (Today the league’s GMs vote to select the season’s best goalie.)
In 1987–88, Grant Fuhr played all nine Canada Cup games. We beat the Soviets to win the tournament, and then he played seventy-five regular-season and nineteen playoff games to win the Stanley Cup against the Bruins. That year, Grant won the Vezina.
Ten
THE LADY BYNG
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. If you can’t catch the guy you’re chasing on the backcheck, it’s never a bad idea to tap your stick or call for a drop pass. Every once in a while the guy will just hand you the puck without looking. Everyone has done it, and everyone has been fooled into giving away the puck at one point or another.
I say it’s never a bad idea, but as with anything in hockey, eventually you’re going to come face-to-face with the guy you tricked. In 1922, Ottawa rookie King Clancy called for a pass from Canadiens tough guy Sprague Cleghorn, then turned around and scored when he got the puck. As the teams were leaving the ice, Cleghorn called over in a friendly voice, “Hey, Clancy!” Clancy turned and Cleghorn knocked him out cold.
In the stands that night was Lady Evelyn Byng, wife of the governor general of Canada. Lord Byng had been in command of the 100,000 Canadian troops who fought at Vimy Ridge and finally figured out how to crack the previously impregnable German defenses. It was one of the most important battles of the First World War, and certainly the most famous in Canadian history. After the war, Byng was knighted, and in 1921 he was appointed governor general.
When the Byngs moved to Ottawa they both became big hockey fans. The Senators were their team. Lady Byng gave her staff strict instructions not to book any events for Saturday nights, because she hated to miss the Senators’ games.
Still, what Lady Byng saw often horrified her. Back then, hockey was known as “hell on ice.” She hated to see fans throwing garbage and coins on the ice and stopping the game, and she cringed at some of the violence that was so common back then. If you believed in the British sense of gentlemanly fair play, you probably saw room for improvement in the NHL of the 1920s.
Sprague Cleghorn had been a key man in Ottawa’s two Stanley Cup–winning teams in 1919–20 and 1920–21. He hit like a train and could move the puck. But most people thought of him as a tough guy. The Senators’ owner and manager, Tommy Gorman, said that Sprague was always “ready, willing and eager to swing fists or stick any time.”
Maybe he was a little too ready. Cleghorn was traded to Montreal in 1921. Whether he was bitter about the trade or just in a bad mood, Cleghorn was a one-man wrecking crew when the Habs visited the heavily favored Senators on February 1, 1922.
In the first period Cleghorn sent Ottawa’s left-winger Eddie Gerard to the hospital with a stick just over his eye as he skated by. Next, he went after Senators’ superstar Frank Nighbor and broke his arm. In the third period, he ran Cy Denneny into the boards from behind and sent him off on a stretcher. All three players missed the next two games. Because of how Gerard was cut, Cleghorn was accused of playing with a nail on his stick. The Ottawa police wanted to arrest him but nobody could prove it.
Like the rest of the crowd that night who booed every time Cleghorn came on for a shift, Lady Byng was upset. She was a fan of Frank Nighbor. A lot of people were. Fans followed him the way they would Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard in the years ahead. No one wanted to see a guy like that getting his arm broken. As it happened, Nighbor was also her neighbor.
The Senators won the Stanley Cup the next year, 1922–23, and then lost to the Canadiens in the 1923–24 playoffs. In 1924–25, when the ownership changed hands, they failed to make the playoffs for the first time in seven years. That spring, Frank Nighbor received an invitation to drop by the governor general’s residence, Rideau Hall, to see Lady Byng.
He came in and she walked him into the drawing room, where there was a tall, silver cup on a marble stand. She said, “Frank, do you think the NHL would allow Lord Byng and me to donate this cup as an annual award to the player who shows great ability, gentlemanly conduct and sportsmanlike behavior?” Frank told her they’d probably be happy to. She nodded and then asked him to pick it up. “Well then, I present this trophy to you, Frank Nighbor, as the most sportsmanlike player for 1925.”
That probably marked a change in the game. Fighting was just part of the play back then. It was a part of my era too, but thanks to skill players in the 1920s like Frank Nighbor and Frank Boucher, who were part of the first generation of hockey players who didn’t want to fight, a code started to develop. If you don’t go looking for trouble, no one should expect you to fight.
I played with and against so many of them—Peter Driscoll, Dave Semenko, Marty McSorley, Dave Hunter. All the Hunter brothers were gamers. These were honest tough guys. People have the wrong idea about them. They think they’re crazy or that they like violence. That’s very rarely the case. They weren’t cheap-shot guys. They weren’t trying to run guys after whistles.
Don Cherry always argues that if players are allowed to fight, they’ll police themselves. He says tough guys fight tough guys in order to calm the wa
ters. And he’s right. What people don’t realize is that 90 percent of the time when two tough guys fight, they are all fired up like boxers, but they aren’t angry. They fight for a reason—to protect a teammate or to change the momentum of a game. They actually prevent violence. If there is a beef, it’s better to settle it right there. It’s when things go unaddressed (or a score is lopsided) that a game gets out of hand. A lot of times the tough guys are among the smartest guys on the team. They are strategists. They’re always some of the most popular guys in the locker room, and often the funniest. Players respect the fact they are risking their necks to protect the team. It’s probably no coincidence that fans love them too.
But no one needs to see the Frank Nighbors of the league fighting. Lady Byng thought guys like that should be allowed to play the game, and she was right.
The same goes for Frank Boucher. By 1935, Boucher had won the Byng seven times. Lady Byng asked him to keep the original trophy and she sent to England for a replica. Boucher thanked her but asked her to take him out of the running in the future so other guys would have a chance at winning. I’ve had the honor of winning the Lady Byng five times and it means a lot to me. It’s a privilege to follow great pioneers of the game like Frank Nighbor and Frank Boucher, Syl Apps and Dave Keon.
But I can tell you it’s not always easy to keep your cool. The first year the Flyers won the Stanley Cup was in 1973–74. They were called the Broad Street Bullies by then. I was thirteen and I remember my dad saying, “This is not good for you.”
I said, “What do you mean it’s not good for me?”
He said, “Hockey’s going to go in that direction. Now the Flyers have won, other teams will imitate them.”
My dad was right. In the NHL, in probably every sport, we’re just a big herd of cows. When one team does it every team does it. It’s like morning skate. When I was with the Oilers and we were winning we did a morning skate, so everybody started doing a morning skate. Then, in 2015, Joel Quenneville’s Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, and he doesn’t do them, so nobody does the morning skate. Everybody wants that edge and you always look to the team that’s most successful.
I tried fighting a couple of times, but my fights were just kind of funny. On December 22, 1982, we were playing the North Stars. That night I was presented with the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year award. I was pretty excited about it. A guy flew in from New York, and he got on the microphone and gave a speech about what a great role model I was for the game. Basically he said I was getting the award because I didn’t fight.
Second shift I was in a fight with Neal Broten. To this day, I have no idea why. It was just one of those things. We were just kind of grabbing each other. It was silly. We were sent to the penalty box and I looked over at him and we both started laughing. I came back to the bench and Dave Semenko said, “That was the worst catfight I’ve ever seen.”
Two years later we were playing Chicago on March 7, 1984. Bob Murray, who now runs the Ducks, was an honest player. He played hard, but he was always fair to me. Back then teams would get a guy to just dog me. And I got frustrated. Bob was just doing his job, but I got mad at him and dropped my gloves at center ice. He grabbed me and flipped me over. I was on the ground staring up at him and he had his fist over my face. He said, “Don’t move. I’m not gonna hit you.”
I said, “Okay. I’m not moving!” But out of the corner of my eye, I could see four sets of legs come over the boards. Messier, Dave Semenko, Dave Hunter, and Donny Jackson. I yelled, “Hey, nobody touch him, he didn’t do anything.” And I saw the legs all swing back onto the bench.
When you look at the guys who have won the Lady Byng, one thing they have in common is that they were incredibly unselfish. Dave Keon, Johnny Bucyk, Jean Ratelle, Butch Goring, and Marcel Dionne had to keep their composure in a league that was pretty wild by today’s standards. In the 80s my teammate Jari Kurri won it, Mike Bossy won it three times with the Islanders, and Joey Mullen won it twice with the Flames. It goes on and on. From Ron Francis to Paul Kariya, Joe Sakic to Pavel Datsyuk. There was never any question about how hard any of those guys played. They just knew how hard you can play and stay within the rules.
Nobody illustrates the spirit of the Lady Byng better than Stan Mikita, possibly the best center of the 1960s. As a rookie, he played on a line with Ted Lindsay, easily one of the most feared guys in the league. Lindsay advised his linemate to earn respect by playing with a mean streak. So that’s what Mikita did, and he ended up being nearly as feared as Lindsay. Until one day he came home from the rink, and his four-year-old daughter asked him why he had been sent to sit by himself after the whistle, when the rest of his line went to sit with all their friends on the bench. When he couldn’t offer a good explanation for himself, he vowed to play a cleaner game. He went on to earn the Lady Byng for his efforts.
Today’s NHL is policed by TV. Before TV, we would go in the locker room at the end of the period and somebody would say, “Did you see that guy cross-check our guy over the head?” And the next period someone would straighten it out. Gordie Howe used to say, “Get a number and get him next time.” Well, you can’t get a number and get him next time anymore because there are now two referees out there, so the officials have a much better sense of what is going on behind the play and there are probably eight TV cameras in the stands. When something happens it’s carefully examined by four NHL employees who go through replay after replay from lots of angles in super slow motion. And if the professional cameras don’t get it, somebody will have it on a cell phone.
There will always be a place for tough guys who can play the game, like our Oilers enforcers Dave Semenko and Marty McSorley. And fans will always love skill guys who are willing to drop their gloves, like Brendan Shanahan or Wendel Clark. Who can forget Vincent Lecavalier and Jarome Iginla going at it in the 2004 final? Both of those players inspired their benches.
In today’s game, you look at a team like Anaheim, which doesn’t really need a guy to watch over its stars, because Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf don’t need anybody protecting them. Edmonton just picked up Milan Lucic for the same reason. It wasn’t that long ago that both benches would empty and it would be a free-for-all. But now some of these guys are more like Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe—they can take care of themselves.
I really think in the next maybe ten, fifteen years, you won’t see fighting in hockey. You don’t see it in European hockey or in college. More and more guys are coming into the league without ever having fought. For most of our game’s history, fighting just felt normal. The time is coming when not fighting will feel just as normal. It’s slowly being weeded out of the game. I think that would have made Lady Byng very happy.
Eleven
THE FIRST ALL-STAR GAME
Eddie Shore changed the game in a lot of ways. As one of hockey’s first true superstars, he actually helped shape the game we know today. But there is one defining moment everyone involved wished had never happened.
Shore was a generational talent on the blue line—he has one more Hart Trophy to his name than Bobby Orr. And everyone remembers how tough he was. In his first year as a Bruin, Shore got into a fight with Billy Coutu in practice and lost a part of his ear. When the trainer refused to sew it back on, Eddie found a doctor who would. He refused to have it frozen and instead used a little mirror to watch the doctor reattach it. It sounds like a made-up story, but I believe it because I saw things like that with my own eyes. Just ahead of a game in L.A., Marty McSorley yanked his own broken tooth out with a pair of pliers. Our captain in Edmonton, Lee Fogolin, did the same thing with a coat hanger. Shore was as tough as they come.
In 1933, the Leafs were playing the Bruins at Boston Garden in front of 12,000 fans. It was a rough game, lots of penalties. King Clancy, Red Horner, and Ace Bailey were sent out to kill a five-on-three. Bailey was a great stick handler for the Leafs. His manager, Conn Smythe, called him “one of the smoot
hest men in hockey.” Bailey played eight seasons for the Leafs. One year he was the leading scorer in the league with 22 goals and 32 points in 44 games. He was looking at many more years among the league’s best players.
Bailey won the faceoff and ragged the puck for a full minute. He won a second faceoff, ran a bit more time off the clock, then dumped it into the Bruins’ zone. Shore picked it up and started to break up the ice when King Clancy got a piece of him with a hip check and turned the puck over. Shore got up and went after the first blue-and-white sweater he saw. It belonged to Ace Bailey.
He took a run at Bailey and caught him hard from the side. Bailey was airborne, then came down hard on the right side of his head. He was out cold.
Bailey’s teammate Red Horner, a future Hall of Famer who happened to be the league leader in penalty minutes, punched Shore in the mouth and sent him to the ice. Both teams came over the boards, ready to go, but when they saw Shore was unconscious and his head was bleeding, and Bailey was blue and convulsing, they cooled down pretty quickly.
The Leafs carried Bailey into the locker room and the Bruins carried Shore off to theirs. Conn Smythe was trying to make his way to Bailey through some of the fans who’d left their seats and come down into the tunnel for a closer look. One fan named Leonard Kenworthy was pointing at Bailey and yelling that he was faking. Smythe lost it. He punched the guy in the nose and broke his glasses. He was arrested right then and there.
King Clancy cleared the rest of the fans away with his stick. Shore got stitched up and headed over to the Leafs’ dressing room to see Bailey. He told him he was sorry. Bailey replied, “It’s all part of the game, Eddie.” That was the last thing Bailey would remember for the next ten days.
He was rushed to the Audubon Hospital in Boston, where surgeons drilled a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure on his swollen brain. They gave him less than a fifty-fifty chance to live and a priest was called in to give him last rites. There is a story that Frank Selke had to have Bailey’s father intercepted when he arrived from Toronto with a gun to kill Shore.
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