Eventually, they were separated a third time and led away to their dressing rooms. But Clackson had other ideas. As soon as the officials’ backs were turned, he calmly put his helmet back on and skated back out onto the ice, and challenged any Oiler who was willing. Dave Hunter was game, and away they went.
When Glen Sather saw Clackson on the ice, he picked up a water bottle and threw it at him. Suddenly, someone behind Glen tried to come over the glass. It was Ho Hum. In his hand he had a big open safety pin full of keys and he was holding it like a knife. As Glen was moving back and forth trying to dodge the safety pin, Clackson picked up the water bottle and started spraying Glen, who was wearing one of his hand-tailored wool suits. This went on for a couple of minutes until the police grabbed Ho Hum by one leg, pulled him off the glass, and handcuffed him.
A week later, Kim drove over to Alexander Graham Bell’s for lunch. He sat down and Ho Hum came over. When Clackson offered him tickets to the next game, Ho Hum shook his head, “No more hockey for me, thank you.”
• • •
Hockey got off to a rough start in Pittsburgh. It’s tough to win when the odds are stacked against you, and it’s tough to learn how to win when the tradition isn’t there. For a long time, the Penguins seemed destined for the same fate as the Seals. The Igloo was full of empty seats, the team had declared bankruptcy once, and a lot of people expected them to relocate. They lost a lot, and they did not draft well. But every once in a while, a guy comes along who is magnificent enough to completely change a city. When the Penguins got their chance to draft someone like that, they made no mistake.
On his very first shift in the NHL, Mario Lemieux robbed future Hall of Famer Ray Bourque of the puck, skated in on net, and buried it. It was his first shot as a pro. Not a bad start for a franchise that hadn’t had a winning season since 1979. He scored 100 points as a rookie, and 141 in his second season, which put him in second in the scoring race. In his fourth season he scored 168 points, and beat me in the scoring race.
There was pretty much nothing Mario couldn’t do. He came within a point of scoring 200 points one season. He had an eight-point game in which he scored in every way a player can—even strength, power play, penalty kill, penalty shot, and empty-net. He was so powerful, and so smooth, that he could do whatever he wanted out there. Imagine being so good that an absolute legend like Jaromir Jagr is the second-best player on your team.
The Penguins were barely holding on when the Magnificent Mario arrived. It wasn’t long before the Penguins were one of the most intimidating teams in the league. (And now they are easily one of luckiest. It’s one thing to be able to draft Mario and Jagr to one team—now they have Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.) Today, Mario has his name on the Cup as both player and owner—the only person ever to do that. But that kind of dominance seemed a long way away in 1967.
Twenty-Three
THE PHILADELPHIA FLYERS
Whenever a player is interviewed after winning the Stanley Cup, the first thing he does is thank his parents. There is just no way anyone makes it to the NHL without an unbelievable amount of sacrifice and support. And it’s not just parents. It’s all the coaches and volunteers who keep minor hockey running. I certainly was very lucky in the way my parents brought me up and helped me along. There is no way I could thank them enough.
My parents gave me every opportunity to succeed, and when I was fourteen that meant leaving home. I wanted to play for a team in Toronto called the Young Nationals. Anyone who has played minor hockey at a serious level has probably come across a Young Nats team at a tournament somewhere in North America. A ton of great players have come through that program, including Paul Coffey, Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy, Eric Lindros, and more recently Tyler Seguin and Jeff Skinner. You can see why my parents thought that playing with the Nats would be a good opportunity for me. They signed over guardianship to a Toronto couple, Bill and Rita Cornish, so that I could live in Toronto. The Cornishes were unbelievable to me. Over the years we became very close.
I showed up for school in September, but a week before the season started, the Ontario Minor Hockey Association suspended me and another kid named Brian Rorabach, on the grounds that we were not entitled to play in Toronto, since he was from Brighton, Ontario, and my home address was down the highway in Brantford. We went to court to challenge the suspension, but we lost. Rorabach appealed to a higher court and won, but I didn’t want to miss more of the season in court. I wanted to play hockey.
So I had two choices. I could go home, or I could play for the high school team at Upper Canada College, a private school in Toronto. I didn’t really want to do either. Luckily, the coach of the Nats’ Junior B team (where Murray Howe played), which is a level higher than minor hockey, invited me to come watch a practice. So of course I went. I was about 5’6” at the time, and weighed about 120 pounds. Those Junior B guys looked huge. But after practice, the coach said, “You know, you could play here.” I nervously told him, “Yeah, I think I can.” My dad just said, “Oh my God, you’re going to get killed.”
Playing there changed my life in a lot of ways, and it also changed my game. One of the most exciting players in the NHL back then was Bobby Clarke. He wasn’t a big guy, but he played fearlessly, and part of that was because he played smart. Nats coach Gene Popeil gave me some great advice. He told me to watch the way Clarke played, particularly in the corners and behind the net, and especially on the power play.
Back then, if you were wearing a Toronto Marlies jacket you could get a standing-room ticket to a Leafs game for a dollar. So whenever the Flyers were in town I would take the subway down to Maple Leaf Gardens to see Bobby Clarke take the warm-up. And then I would pay careful attention when the Flyers were on the power play. Clarke could control the pace by positioning himself in the seams of the defensive coverage. If guys started chasing him, the seams would only get bigger and someone would be open. And of course, when he was behind the net, no one could touch him.
Whenever someone asks me how I started controlling the offense from behind the net, the only honest answer is that I studied Bobby Clarke doing it. And it worked pretty well for me.
In 1981, I scored fifty goals in thirty-nine games. Five of those came in the thirty-ninth game, against Philadelphia. I talked to a lot of people in the dressing room afterward, and it took quite a while to get ready to leave. When the dust settled a little, one of the trainers told me that Bobby Clarke wanted to say hello.
I just couldn’t believe that Clarke had waited all that time to have a word with me—it was incredibly gracious. And I’ll never forget what he said. “You know, with Bobby Orr, at least I knew where he was out there. With you, I can’t even find you half the time.” He was laughing, of course, but it was still a huge compliment coming from someone I admired so much growing up.
Clarke went on to become one of the most respected executives in the league and was appointed to run Team Canada for the 1998 Olympics in Nagano—which means he was probably the most respected hockey mind in Canada. He and I would have coffee every morning for a couple of hours in the Olympic Village with Bob Gainey, another very smart hockey player and executive, who also had his fair share of Stanley Cup rings. We would talk about the old times, and players we knew, and the young guys coming up. When you’re talking hockey with guys who love the game, time stands still.
• • •
Philadelphia is a sports town. The league was looking for television markets, and thanks to the city’s three professional teams in football, baseball, and basketball, Philadelphia was already the fourth largest television market in the country. (The NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles had been around since 1933; baseball’s Phillies—the oldest sports team with the same name in the same city in the United States—got their start in 1883; and basketball’s 76ers had been in the city since 1963.) As a matter of fact, Philadelphia had already had an NHL team before 1967. The Philadelphia Quakers lasted for
all of one season in 1930–31. Their record was 4–36–4, which still stands as a record for fewest wins by an NHL team. Not surprisingly, the fans weren’t interested.
When Ed Snider, part owner of the Eagles (and my eventual neighbor and friend), heard about the NHL expansion, he was sure he could make it work. The 76ers, who’d picked up Wilt Chamberlain in 1965 and won the NBA Championship in 1967, wanted a new building, which could double as a hockey arena. So Snider partnered up with his brother-in-law, Jerry Schiff; Bill Putnam, a young New York financial adviser; and another Eagles owner, Jerry Wolman. They put in a bid and acquired the franchise.
GM Bud Poile hired Keith Allen to coach. Snider bought the American Hockey League’s Quebec Aces for $350,000 to kick-start the team and got some great players—guys like André Lacroix, Jean-Guy Gendron, and Bill Sutherland. Then Allen spent a year scouting the Original Six, and in the expansion draft they got Bernie Parent in goal and then two solid defensemen, Ed Van Impe and Joe Watson. In other words, they did what many smart teams do: they built from back to front.
On opening day they held a parade down Broad Street with the players sitting on top of convertibles as they made their way to the Spectrum. Ed always said that there were more people in the parade than actually watching it. That would change sooner than anyone thought, but they still had some tough luck ahead of them. On March 1 of their first season, a storm tore part of the roof off their brand-new building, and so they had to play their last seven home games on the road. They finished first in the western division, but lost to St. Louis in a seven-game semifinal. In their second season, they were eliminated by the Blues once again, only this time they were swept. Noel Picard (the Blues defenseman immortalized in the famous photo of Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring his most famous goal) and the Plager brothers were really hard on the Philadelphia players. As Ed watched his team get shoved around, he told Keith Allen that they would never be outmuscled like that again.
• • •
The first universal amateur draft year was 1969. Bobby Clarke, who played for Manitoba’s Flin Flon Bombers, had been ripping up the Western Canada Hockey League for two years, winning the scoring title both years and being named MVP in 1969. (He had also won the scoring title and the MVP award two years earlier, when the Bombers were playing in a different league.) The WCHL was incredibly tough hockey, and absolutely nothing slowed Clarke down. He was unstoppable.
Or almost. When he was fourteen he was diagnosed with diabetes. He’d learned how to inject himself with insulin, and no one who saw him play ever doubted his energy levels. But the diabetes scared off the GMs.
The draft was held in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. In those days it wasn’t the big event that it is now. Today, a team will host the draft in its arena with hundreds of team personnel and thousands of fans in the stands. The entire first round is covered on live national television and all the top picks show up with their families and their agents. Back then, though, the GMs just sat around a table, and had a time limit of three minutes per pick. The scouts would phone up the picks and invite them to training camp in the fall.
Despite dominating junior for three years, Clarke went unclaimed in the first round. (The Flyers took Bob Currier. He never played a game in the NHL.) Although scouts were raving about this kid who had been dominating junior for three years, Clarke’s diabetes made him seem too risky. Bobby’s coach, Pat Ginnell, had taken him down to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, figuring that a clean report from the doctors there would turn the NHL GMs around. It didn’t.
But Ed Snider had done his homework. He made a call to a doctor in Philadelphia, who told him that as long as Bobby lived a healthy lifestyle there would be no problem. So Snider told Bud Poile to go for it. The Flyers picked Clarke in the second round, seventeenth overall.
As soon as Philadelphia took Bobby, the other teams figured the Flyers must have known something they didn’t. Detroit Red Wings head scout Jimmy Skinner came up to Keith Allen and Bud Poile and offered four good players for Bobby. Poile said “No thanks.” Later, legendary Montreal GM Sam Pollock called Ed Snider and offered him five players and two top draft picks for Bobby. Ed said “No way.” Pollock said he agreed that it was a smart move to keep him. And it was. Clarke turned out to be one of the great steals in draft history. No one in his draft year came close to matching his impact in the league.
But Clarke had a rough start in the NHL. He fainted during one of the workouts at training camp. The coaching staff got nervous. A few practices later, it happened again. Luckily, the team trainer, Frank Lewis, knew something about diabetes. When Bobby admitted that he was skipping breakfast, Lewis put him on a diet of energy-rich foods, including candy bars and orange juice with sugar cubes stirred in. (Personally, I loved the concession food. I’d have a couple of hot dogs an hour or so before the game, and maybe some popcorn and a Coke. I remember guys in the locker room eating pizza. I also remember Guy Lafleur chain-smoking cigarettes between periods at the 1981 Canada Cup. Gordie Howe would sometimes play a game on a chocolate milkshake. We just had no idea about nutrition.)
In the fifth and sixth round that year, the Flyers picked up two big guys from Saskatchewan, Dave Schultz and Don Saleski—and that was the beginning of the Broad Street Bullies. After all, Ed Snider had made it clear: the Flyers would never get manhandled by St. Louis or anybody else ever again.
• • •
Fred Shero was hired as the Flyers coach in 1971. Fred was a real pioneer in the game. He’d have the guys practice with a tennis ball to sharpen their stickhandling touch and reflexes. He’d also have them bunny hop up and down the ice to loud music in order to build their legs. Things like that made the guys laugh and brought them closer together. The exercises also made them better.
Shero treated his players like men. He encouraged them to argue with him if they didn’t agree with his methods. And if somebody screwed up, he didn’t punish the whole team. He would just sit the guy on the bench for a couple of days. The experience was so embarrassing that the player wouldn’t do it again.
• • •
In 1972, the Flyers made a seven-player deal with Los Angeles. It included a guy who would become a good friend and mentor to me, Bill Flett. Jack Kent Cooke had nicknamed him Cowboy and that’s what everyone called him.
Cowboy Flett was two hundred pounds and over six feet. Very powerful, all arms and chest. His hands were huge and he had a strong grip. He wasn’t mean, but he was strong. No way could you move him if he didn’t want to be moved. He wore a thick, bushy beard that had to be hot as hell, although he always kept it nice and clean. For two years, 1978–79 and 1979–80, I’d sit beside him on the plane when we played together in Edmonton. I remember he smelled like soap, beer, and horses.
Cowboy was a bit of a tragic figure. His dad was Meyer Flett, quite a hockey player himself for the Turner Valley Oilers in the early 1940s. Meyer was a hard man, an oilfield worker. He played senior hockey with Calgary Flames trainer Bearcat Murray, who tells this story: After a game once, when everyone was having a shower, Flett walked past Bearcat, who nudged his buddy and said, “Look at Meyer!” Flett was bruised black and blue from top to bottom. That’s the kind of game he played. Nobody fooled with him, especially not his son.
The Kings traded Bill to Philadelphia when he was twenty-eight, a big, strong winger who hadn’t scored very much. Then he was paired with Bobby Clarke and put up seventy-four points. Bill hadn’t much cared for liquor until he moved to Los Angeles in his early twenties and became a beer drinker. By the time he joined the Flyers he’d had his oilcloth duster custom-made with about eight big pockets on the inside, and he kept a beer in each one.
Cowboy was Bobby Clarke’s roommate on the road. They’d go out and have dinner together, and Bobby would make sure he got in on time at night. In those days you could have a couple beers the night before a game and nobody cared.
Cowboy may have needed guidance off the ice but certainly not on the ice. He really gave it to the goaltenders. If he came down the wing and had a clear shot, not even a scoring opportunity but a clear shot, he’d try to hit the goalie in the head. His theory was that when he came down the next time, the goalie would figure he was going to shoot it high, but instead he’d just slide it along the ice. That’s how smart he was. It wasn’t that he was the fastest or the toughest, but he took being a hockey player very seriously. He partied and all the rest of it, but he was never off his game. He always came up big.
Philadelphia won the Stanley Cup in 1974, when that meant going through a legendary Bruins team. In Game Two of the finals the Flyers were in Boston, twelve minutes into overtime. Cowboy came up the middle and assisted Bobby Clarke to beat them. It was a great play and it turned things around for the Flyers.
Remember, no expansion team had ever won a Cup. And in the Flyers’ previous nineteen regular-season visits to Boston Garden, they hadn’t won once. They gave Boston everything they could handle in Game One, but just when it looked as though they had gone ahead late in the third, Bobby Orr singlehandedly saved the goal, then went the other way to score. Nothing was going to be easy for Philadelphia.
It was Clarke who finally broke through in Game Two, and it was Clarke who led the rest of the way as the first expansion team from 1967 hoisted the Cup. (Though it was Bernie Parent, who the Bruins had left unprotected in the expansion draft, who won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP.) Clarke led again in 1974–75 (and Dave Schultz set a record for penalty minutes), and the Flyers won a second straight Cup. That year they squared off against Buffalo in the first-ever matchup of expansion teams in the final. Game Three of that series is still talked about today as the “Fog Game,” as a May heat wave created so much fog at ice level at the auditorium in Buffalo that players couldn’t see the puck. Officials had to ask them to skate in circles to dissipate the fog. The Flyers lost that game, and the next, but roared back on home ice in Game Five and closed the series out on the road thanks to another shutout from Bernie Parent.
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