by Bobby Orr
“I agree with Bobby Clarke when he said that Bobby Orr was so good there should have been a higher league than the NHL for him to play in. I also agree with my buddy Serge Savard, who said that there are players, stars, and superstars, and then there is Bobby Orr. Bobby’s last season in Boston says it all: Forty-six goals. Eighty-nine assists. A hundred and one penalty minutes. And people don’t believe it when I tell them his plus/minus was 124. And think, he did this when he was twenty-eight, when most defensemen are just getting going. What would he have done if he had played past thirty? Bobby’s life was like a shooting star. He was so much better than everyone else, no one was even close. Then he retired on top. And we never saw him play again.”
—Don Cherry, broadcaster and coach of the Boston Bruins, 1974–79
“From the first time I watched Bobby skate I knew he was going to be the kind of player that comes along maybe once in a lifetime. He changed the game of hockey forever. What made Bobby so special, though, is that he is the nicest, kindest, most giving person you will ever meet. In my opinion, Bobby is number one in all categories, and it’s a joy to have him as a friend.”
—Gordie Howe, four-time Stanley Cup winner with the Detroit Red Wings, six-time Hart Trophy winner, six-time Art Ross Trophy winner
“Bobby reached levels of play on the ice that have been and always will be unattainable by defensemen. For those of us who know him personally, his character is equally unmatched. Bobby Orr’s book should be a must-read.”
—Denis Potvin, four-time Stanley Cup champion with the New York Islanders, three-time Norris Trophy winner
“There have been many outstanding players in the history of the National Hockey League, and Bobby Orr sits at the top of the class. It was an honor and a great pleasure to be on the same ice as him. His memoir will be a must-read for hockey fans everywhere.”
—Jean Béliveau, ten-time Stanley Cup winner with the Montreal Canadiens, winner of the Art Ross, Conn Smythe, and Hart Trophies
“Early in my career I would often be asked, ‘Do you try and pattern yourself after Bobby Orr?’ My answer was always, ‘No, there’s only one Bobby Orr.’”
—Paul Coffey, four-time Stanley Cup winner with Edmonton and Pittsburgh, three-time Norris Trophy winner
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Copyright © 2013 by Robert Orr
Foreword copyright © 2013 by Royce Tennant
Afterword copyright © 2013 by Vern Stenlund
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Orr, Bobby, 1948–
Orr : my story / Bobby Orr.
p. cm
ISBN 978-1-101-63564-3
1. Orr, Bobby, 1948– 2. Hockey players—Canada—Biography. 3. Boston Bruins (Hockey team)—History. I. Title.
GV848.5.O7.A33 2013 2013024246
796.962092—dc23
[B]
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
I dedicate this book to the following people
who have meant so much to me throughout my life:
My wife, Peggy; our two boys, Darren and Brent;
daughters-in-law, Chelsea and Kelley;
grandchildren, Alexis and Braxton;
my mother- and father-in-law, Clara and Bill Wood;
and finally, my parents, Arva and Doug Orr.
Thank you, one and all.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY ROYCE TENNANT
INTRODUCTION
One PARRY SOUND
Two LESSONS FROM MY PARENTS
Three OSHAWA
Four A ROOKIE IN BOSTON: 1966–1967
Five TOWARD THE CUP: 1967–1970
Six HEAVEN IS BLACK AND GOLD: 1970–1975
Seven GRAPES
Eight THE LAST YEARS: 1975–1979
Nine ABOUT ALAN EAGLESON
Ten FINAL ACT AND BEYOND
Eleven STATE OF THE GAME
EPILOGUE
APPENDICES
Some Awards and Recognitions: A Personal Perspective
Contracts
Career Statistics and Records
AFTERWORD
PHOTOGRAPHS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCES
PHOTO CREDITS
INDEX
FOREWORD
The boys needed a coach, so I volunteered. It’s the same thing that happens all across our great country every hockey season, and that year would be no different. They were a good bunch of lads, every one of them, and each was special in his own way. But one who would eventually join us was special in a different way.
He was a minor squirt playing up in the full-squirt division, and the first time I set eyes on him, I couldn’t help but think how scrawny he was, that a good gust of wind might knock him over. He was polite, very respectful, and seemed to have a smile permanently pasted on his face. He was a good-looking boy who had a brush cut and came from a nice family. By January, he was so dominant within his division that we decided to move him up to the squirt all-stars, and that was where our paths crossed.
I will always remember the first time I saw him skate in a practice. You might think I’m exaggerating, but from that very first moment, I knew he had “it.” When he started to move those skates, it was like nothing I had ever seen on a sheet of ice. His skating was effortless, with a beautiful rhythm to it, his stride so smooth he didn’t look like he was even trying. He was a little bit bowlegged, actually, and I had him playing right wing. There was no doubt he was special, and I just knew he had a gift never before seen in our game. Time would prove me right.
Those were different days, and not once did I ever have a parent complain to me for any reason. They never sat near the bench during a game, never asked about ice time for their child. During that particular year, the parents created little green-and-white ribbons that had a shamrock on them, and they wore those ribbons the entire season in support of the boys and the team. That youngster with the brush cut had wonderful parents as well: Arva and Doug. Even though it became obvious as the year wore on that their son was the best of the best, they never once asked for any special consideration. No, Doug never played the big-shot father. Those were different days indeed.
The years pass, and a lifetime seems to go by in an instant. I’m told that the young boy is a grandfather now. He has lived a life that should be an example for everyone who achieves greatness of how to be humble and unselfish and how to treat others. It was a joy to be able to coach him for that season and the next year as well, to get to know him as a person as well as player, and it is a great honor to be asked to reminisce about him now.
But in my mind he’s still eight years old, his time as a legend is yet to come, and his future success is all out there somewhere in front of him. I’m with him
on a cold, distant January day at an outdoor rink in Parry Sound, and I’m watching him skate the length of the ice, completing a drill during one of our practices.
And I can’t help but wonder if that boy could play as a defenseman.
Royce Tennant
INTRODUCTION
I was up at 5 A.M. The day, May 10, 2010, was just like any other day. One thing was different, though. It had been a long time since I had experienced game-day butterflies. But there I was, up before dawn, focused on only one thing. As the day wore on, I didn’t feel like making conversation. Over the course of that morning, I was surrounded by friends and family. I shook the hands of countless well-wishers—celebrities, fans, other athletes, politicians.
I wish I could have enjoyed every moment. And I hope I managed to return some of the warmth all those people showed me. But the thing is, I was so tense I could hardly make conversation even with old friends.
It was the prospect of stepping up to a podium that was making me anxious. I’ve had to face some microphones over the years, of course, and speak to crowds. But to say I don’t relish stepping onto a podium to talk about myself doesn’t go nearly far enough. A lot of people don’t enjoy public speaking, and I’m one of them.
I was scheduled to appear outside the TD Garden, beside where the old Boston Garden used to stand. That’s where I was forty years earlier to the day. I scored a goal there on May 10, 1970. The photographer who had been sitting on a stool behind the glass at the corner of the ice had left his seat for a few minutes, and Ray Lussier sat down in his place moments before the puck came to me and I tapped it in, moments before I was tripped and flew into the air. Lussier snapped a photo, and he captured a moment that came to stand for so much that Boston Bruins fans, and hockey fans everywhere, hold dear.
Forty years later, I was back in the neighborhood. And so were many of the guys who had been there when the photo was taken. Bucyk, Sanderson, Doak, Hodge, McKenzie, Marcotte, Coach Sinden, and former Bruins general manager Milt Schmidt. Mayor Menino was there, and Bruins president John Wentzell, and team owner Jeremy Jacobs. There were also a couple of good buddies from the Red Sox in attendance, David “Big Papi” Ortiz plus the great knuckleball pitcher Tim Wakefield, and that meant the world to me. My son Darren and daughter-in-law Chelsea came with our granddaughter, Alexis. And, of course, the fans.
I had to speak to them all, because I was in that photograph. The photo had been cast as a statue. And there I was for the unveiling. It was a clear spring day. The cameras were crowded around. The Bruins were in the second round of the playoffs, and the city was buzzing. Everything seemed to be in place.
But the last thing I wanted to do was stand in front of a microphone and talk about myself or relive a moment of glory. I wasn’t looking for praise, and I certainly wasn’t there to take credit. If anything, I wanted to explain that the credit for that moment should be shared much more widely.
I suddenly remembered the first time I had ever seen the photograph of that now-famous flying goal. I was in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, at the Colonial Hotel, having breakfast with my dad and his buddies. It was the morning after we had won the Cup, the morning after I scored that goal. May 11, 1970. You can imagine what the mood was like. It’s not every day you fulfill a dream, and it’s probably more rare to be able to share a moment like that with your father.
I don’t really remember what we talked about at breakfast. There would have been some animated conversation, then maybe a period of silence. It takes a while to get used to getting what you’ve been striving toward for so long. Then someone handed me a copy of the Boston Record-American, and there it was, me flying through the air with that look of surprise and joy written all over my face. I didn’t think much about it at the time. The goal was only a few hours old. I’m not the kind of guy who will sit in a crowded restaurant looking at pictures of himself. And I had a parade to get ready for. So I didn’t look at that photo for long.
But that parade is now a distant memory while the photo has lingered. It has more than lingered, actually. It has become one of the most famous images in the game. Not because it’s me—it’s a great photo no matter who is flying through the air. And though I hardly glanced at it in 1970, forty-something years later it conjures up that life-changing game like nothing else: the old Boston Garden packed well past capacity, the noise and humidity as we headed into overtime.
The play took only seconds to unfold. And the photo records only one instant of those few seconds. Yet, for me at least, it captures not just that one play, not just that one steamy May afternoon. Everyone on that Bruins team had done a lot of things right to get to overtime. Rick Smith had already had a two-point night. Our top scorers had been doing the work they’d been doing all season and through the first two rounds of the playoffs. Except for me. I hadn’t scored yet in the series against St. Louis. It was the rest of the guys who got us to that first minute of overtime. I don’t know what others see when they look at that photo, but I don’t see just one guy scoring a goal.
The strange thing about the photo—me, arms outstretched, flying through the air as though nothing else matters—is that I was never really big on celebrating goals. I know most guys like to celebrate after scoring, but I always found it disrespectful. It’s not the way I played the game. And yet, there I am, in that famous photo, hands in the air. I could try to blame Blues defenseman Noel Picard’s wayward stick and argue that he tripped me. But I have to admit it was a jump for joy, trip or no trip.
Perhaps the better representation would have been to capture the moment a few seconds after my leap—when my teammates piled on me and the rest of the Bruins poured over the boards to join in and celebrate that victory. It wasn’t really just my goal, and it wasn’t just my celebration, either. There was a mob on the ice, guys in Bruins black and gold, but also the coaches and trainers. The Garden was roaring. It wasn’t just one happy guy, flying through the air by himself. But for whatever reason, there was always that famous photo, plucking that one moment out of time.
And now there was this statue—I don’t know how many pounds of gleaming bronze—telling the same story. It is a beautiful piece of art, don’t get me wrong. But I was struck by what the statue didn’t say. By capturing a single moment, it had to leave out the moments before and after. By depicting a single person, it left out all the people who won the Cup that year, and all the people who helped us win it—and also the fans who shared in that victory. It would have meant a lot less to score that goal in an empty Boston Garden, just as it would have been absurd to be the only person at the unveiling of the statue. These aren’t things that happen to anyone alone. Part of what I want to accomplish with this book is to go beyond that moment in time so that the story around that moment can make better sense.
It’s strange to be writing about myself, though. Over all the years I was in the spotlight, I very rarely read about myself. There have been books and magazine and newspaper articles, but I never saw the point in reading them. Whether a writer was praising me or burying me never really mattered, since I was generally first in line to criticize myself. There wasn’t a whole lot a journalist could say about my game that would come as news to me. If he wanted to mention some blunder I’d made, I could always add a few more examples. If he wanted to describe a particularly good play, I could probably counter that I’d been lucky, or that the play wouldn’t have happened if not for a smart move by a teammate at the other end of the ice. And if I made what I thought was a pretty good play, that was, after all, what I was paid to do. I didn’t need to read about it. I knew when I’d played poorly, and I knew when I’d played well. The whole team did.
Sometimes you do everything right and the puck bounces the wrong way. Sometimes you play poorly and get lucky. But on the whole, if you play the game right, you’ll get the results you are looking for. The guys in the room all knew that. And if on occasion we forgot how to be honest with ourselves, there were
leaders with us who would sort us out. The coaching staff was always more than willing to bring us back to reality in a hurry, too. I mean no disrespect to sportswriters by any of this, but no amount of information provided by any writer was going to alter our view of the game.
In any case, I simply did not enjoy reading about myself. So imagine my hesitancy in sitting down to write a book. Tens of thousands of words about myself. What I did. What I thought. That’s not my idea of a good time.
• • •
The idea of writing a book has been brought up many times over the years, and all kinds of people have come forward with their own unique slant on how I might approach it. They have offered to write the authorized version of my life, but frankly I have never been interested. What many of them actually wanted was some sort of tell-all account that would dig up dirt then shovel it on people I used to know. I don’t claim to be a saint, but that is not my cup of tea and never will be. This book has to be better and go deeper than that.
I think that three points need to be made here as you begin reading the pages that follow. First, I am not particularly comfortable talking or writing at length about other people in a negative way, especially in a format like this, which has the potential to be so much more. Call me old-fashioned, but when I was growing up, and especially playing sports, we learned that you don’t throw someone under the bus. Mind you, I have no problem sharing the truth when it comes to a particular topic or event, as you are about to see. But telling the truth and piling on are two different things entirely.
Second, much has been written about my personal life and career over the years, and a lot of what has made its way into print was neither provided nor approved by me. Everyone is welcome to their opinion, and I suppose that some people remember things differently. But facts are facts. I am glad to have the opportunity to offer a few opinions of my own.