by Bobby Orr
After Montreal, we followed up with a round against the representatives from the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League, North Bay, and managed to win that matchup as well. That put us into the Eastern Canada championship against the Shawinigan Bruins out of Quebec, another tough series, which we also won. All of those rounds led us to the place we had dreamed of getting to, the Memorial Cup championship for junior hockey supremacy in Canada. Back then, it wasn’t a round-robin tournament. It was a seven-game showdown between the eastern and western representatives. That year, we came out of the east, and the western representatives were the Edmonton Oil Kings.
The Kings were a great team—it seemed they represented the west in the Memorial Cup just about every year—and had been bolstered by the addition of some key players, such as Ross Lonsberry and Ted Hodgson, right before the series began. A future Boston Bruins teammate, Garnet “Ace” Bailey, was on that team as well. The series was to be played at Maple Leaf Gardens, and the stage was set. Except for one thing. At some point, either near the end of the Shawinigan series or during a practice leading up to the Memorial Cup, I had pulled a groin muscle. It was a serious injury in that it severely restricted my ability to skate. If you have ever suffered through that kind of muscle strain, you know how painful it can be. The only real way to fix it is with extended rest—something that was not an option. It was nothing that would affect me long term. It just hurt a lot. In the short term, however, that kind of injury meant that the Memorial Cup would end up being a very difficult series for me. I had my fair share of injuries throughout my career, but the timing of that particular injury has always baffled me.
Normally, groin problems tend to happen early in a hockey season, perhaps during training camp, as the muscles try to get accustomed to the workload of a new year. I had never experienced that kind of injury and discomfort so late in a hockey season. It was just a piece of bad luck, and that can happen to any athlete at any time, especially when your sport involves a lot of stretching, reaching, and contact. There was nothing I could do about it except try to convince myself that it didn’t hurt.
When Mr. Emms, the GM of the Bruins, caught wind of the problem, he told my father he was not going to allow me to play in the Memorial Cup final series at all. There were more important things at stake down the road in Boston, according to him. He didn’t want anyone coming to training camp as damaged goods. He wanted to protect his investment. But my father knew better. After my future boss informed my dad of his prohibition, my father looked at him and said, “I don’t know about that one, Mr. Emms.” My dad was right. There was no way I wasn’t going to suit up.
I had spent four years of my junior career trying to get to this point. I was the captain of the team, and even if I had to head over the boards with only one good leg, I was determined to try it. Bep Guidolin, our coach, was caught in the middle. He was employed by the Bruins, so when the boss said not to play someone, I suppose he had good reason to do as he was told. On the other hand, he was the coach of a team in the Memorial Cup. If he thought I could help the team win, it was his job to put me out there. But neither Bep nor Mr. Emms nor anyone else was going to keep me out of the lineup, so he really had no choice other than to put me on the roster.
Allowing me to play probably cost Bep his job eventually. The injury restricted my ability to move to the point where I really couldn’t contribute the way I wanted to in that series. We eventually lost in six games. Though we were all disappointed not to have been able to bring that trophy back to Oshawa, it was a great learning experience in high-level playoff hockey. That experience would come in handy down the road during my hockey career.
By the time I finished my fourth year of junior hockey, in the spring of 1966, I had turned eighteen. It was traditional in those days that pro teams would bring prospects at that age to their first pro camp, and so it was with the Bruins and me. In my four years as a member of the Oshawa Generals, I had gained several inches and added some much-needed muscle. Perhaps most importantly, another benefit of my stay in Oshawa was that it had given me the confidence that I could play with the big boys.
Some players, and often their parents as well, seem in a hurry to get to the National Hockey League, even if a little seasoning in junior hockey or the minors might be better for the player in the long run. Some guys step right out of junior and light up the NHL in their rookie season, though they are few and far between. Others, even very high draft picks, take years to develop. Others still, also very high picks, fail completely. If you are a kid who has dominated his peers since playing atom, it can be a real shock to find yourself playing against guys bigger, tougher, and craftier than you. You may not be getting time on the power play or the penalty kill, and you might find yourself sitting on the bench more than you ever have. And you’re probably not going to like it. Sometimes, it’s just better to slow down the process and develop properly. There is no rush.
I was one of those players who was ready for the move into pro hockey at eighteen, but many more are not. Getting as much seasoning as possible is a smart way to prepare a young athlete for the highest levels of the game. After all, professional athletics is a marathon, not a sprint.
Still, while I was ready for pro hockey from a skill perspective, I have often wondered if one of the reasons I suffered so many knee injuries as a pro was because I started playing against men at such a young age. All the contact against bigger opponents might have caused excessive wear and tear. Add to that the beating my body took as a little fourteen-year-old when I started junior hockey, and it leads you to wonder if I might have avoided some of my injuries if I’d started out along my junior path a year or two later.
But sometimes an athlete has to be moved along in order to be challenged. No one wants to play bantam hockey if he can play junior. No one is going to stick around in junior if there is a roster spot waiting for him in the NHL. I am not the only kid who has been in a hurry to fulfill a dream. In some rare cases, it simply doesn’t make sense to hold a player back just because of age. But that decision will not be made by Mom or Dad or the player. It will inevitably be made by the team that holds his rights.
Ready or not, my junior career with the Generals was over. The training I had experienced in Oshawa set me up for the next phase of my hockey life. Four years had gone by in a hurry. Now, it was on to Boston to try to earn a spot in the NHL. My dream was that Boston would become my new home for what would hopefully be a long professional career.
Four
A ROOKIE IN BOSTON: 1966–1967
I never thought there was any guarantee I would play professional hockey. In my own mind, it was never a lock. There is a depressingly long list of highly touted junior players who never make an impact in the NHL, just as some of the very best players were late-round picks, or were even undrafted. Both the unexpected failures and unexpected successes show that scouts’ opinions depend on a considerable amount of guesswork. I knew enough then to know that those people who were expecting so much from me could have been wrong. It was up to me to prove them right. I figured I had served my apprenticeship in junior and that the time had come to move on. But that just meant I had an opportunity to earn a job. It didn’t mean there was one waiting for me.
I signed my first professional contract in the summer of 1966. I was aboard a cabin cruiser belonging to Bruins GM Hap Emms, on Lake Simcoe, near Barrie, Ontario. My parents had hired an agent to handle my finances and negotiate that deal, and he was there to preside over the signing to officially launch my professional career. I had known that the day was coming, as I had signed a C Form years before and the Bruins were the only team I could play for. But it was still quite a thrill to get my name on a contract, and I can’t say I was disappointed by the salary I would be earning if I made the team: $25,000 as a base salary for two years, plus bonuses for games played (not a suit this time). It was more money than I’d ever seen.
That fall, I attended my initial
NHL training camp with the Bruins. Many NHL teams in those days held training camp in cities away from home. In 1966, the Bruins camp was in London, Ontario, at the old Treasure Island rink. At the time, it was the home of the London Nationals of the OHA, now the London Knights of the OHL.
I can remember the anticipation I felt as I headed down Highway 401 toward London and that training camp. An athlete in any sport will experience a variety of feelings when he or she is about to be put to the test. I was about to find myself among the best men of my profession. I was about to enter into a world of people I had read about in the papers, seen on television—in some cases, these were guys I regarded as heroes.
I didn’t know what was about to happen. I had been to training camps before, but never a pro camp. I had played the game at a pretty high level, but not the highest. I was still not a match physically for a lot of the people I would be playing against—when I was eighteen, I was still just five feet eleven and 165 pounds. But those junior training camps had at least given me an idea of what was to come, so I had that going for me. I was braced for it. I knew I would be tested along with all the other rookies, just as I’d been tested as a fourteen-year-old trying to make my first junior team in Oshawa. Yes, the talent level would be different, but the process would probably be similar. Certainly, that was what I kept telling myself.
I believed I was far from a shoo-in to make the team, and I didn’t have a clue what awaited me if I didn’t make the NHL roster. Times were different back then, and players weren’t in control of their careers the way kids are now. We didn’t understand the way the business worked, because we had little reason to. I didn’t know if I could be assigned to one of the Bruins’ minor-league teams as an eighteen-year-old, or even where all their farm teams were. I knew that management could always send me back to Oshawa, but I had little interest in spending a fifth year in junior. I knew what I wanted. I went into camp without much of a plan beyond doing whatever it took to stick with the team.
I was in great shape that August. Maybe not the kind of game-ready shape today’s players maintain nearly twelve months of the year, but I had spent the summer with training camp in mind. I remember jogging in work boots to build up my leg strength and cardio. Sometimes I’d get on a bike and do some cycling as well, and I don’t know how many sit-ups I did (no one called it “working the core” back then). I also used a homemade contraption I developed for strengthening my wrists and forearms. It was a brick attached to a rope, which I tied to a short section of an old broom handle. I would grip the broom handle, hold my arms straight out, and roll that brick up to the top, then unroll it back down. I knew I had to get stronger if I was going to have a chance in the NHL.
I also had a workout bench where I did a few presses and curls. It was always light weight and high repetition. That was about it for my workouts. Most current NHL players take their gym work very seriously—my sessions in the summer of 1966 must look pretty relaxed by today’s standards. But those were the times, and that was the way I did things.
As I made my way off the Wellington Street exit ramp into London, it was too late to worry about what I had done to prepare. Whatever work I’d put in would have to do. I was absolutely focused on my first pro training camp, and nothing else really mattered.
My immediate concern was to find the team hotel. I checked in, received my key, and made my way to my room. When I opened the door, there, stretched out before me, resting on his bed and smoking a cigar, was the man who would be my first roommate. I recognized who it was right away. He was the captain of the Boston Bruins, Johnny Bucyk. I walked over to him, stuck out my hand, and said, “Hello, Mr. Bucyk, pleasure to meet you. I’m Bobby Orr.”
He looked back at me, gave me that big grin of his, stuck out his hand, and said, “Well, from now on it’s Johnny, or Chief, okay?” and that was the beginning of a great friendship. He was low key, considerate, very even-keeled, and he looked after me and many other rookies as well. He made me laugh—something that anyone in a pressure situation will appreciate. We talked often during that first camp, and his words meant a lot to me then, just as they do now. Johnny was a great help to me in making that transition from junior hockey to the pros.
You couldn’t have had a finer person as captain than the Chief. He was not a big speechmaker, but he came to work every day and set the standard with his level of play. He always set the bar high for us, and it made you want to follow suit and set your own example for others. Much like my parents, Johnny let his actions do the talking for him. There can be no doubt that his leadership was a key part of the success the Bruins would enjoy in the years that followed.
How he and the other veterans received me was very important, because I immediately felt comfortable in my surroundings, due in great part to their help. Here was a rookie who could possibly end up taking one of their spots in the lineup, yet the veterans welcomed me and almost immediately made me feel like part of the group. The hard reality was that my job was to earn a spot on the team, and their job was to keep the spot they had already won. One guy’s victory would be another guy’s loss. That is the very basis of pro sport, tough as it may sound. But it’s not personal, and no one ever held it against me that I was there to take someone’s job.
We used to do a little stretching in the hallway before we skated, and many times a veteran would come over and say a few words of encouragement to me as we got ready for battle. Or someone might give me a tap on the shin pads and wish me good luck.
Of course, the veterans can always read if a rookie comes to camp as a cocky kid, and that can hurt you. If I had been a wise guy, I don’t know what the veterans would have done. If they sense that kind of attitude, you can be left behind, but fortunately for me the vets on the Bruins always made me feel included.
In those days, training camp could last upwards of a month—a lot longer than they do today. Many of the vets would arrive in far from peak condition, and they used camp to get back in shape. Remember, a lot of these guys held down blue-collar jobs over the summer. There was no way they had the time to stay in top athletic shape. That’s the way it was back then. And let me tell you, the first few days of stops and starts and blue-red-blues were tough.
We wouldn’t play any actual games against other teams for perhaps the first two weeks after we’d arrived, except for some intra-squad scrimmages. This meant there was plenty of time to wonder whether you were impressing the brass during practice sessions. Eventually, we played a series of exhibition games in cities across Ontario, places like London, Kitchener, Peterborough, and Hamilton.
As those games piled up, I began to get more and more comfortable playing at the professional level. I had probably started out a bit skittish, but after a few games I knew I was holding on to the puck a bit longer, and maybe trying to beat a guy or make a play I wouldn’t have tackled even a few days before. And if a skirmish ever broke out during our exhibition games, I knew that the vets were there if I needed any help. It was comforting to know they had your back.
All the same, I never assumed I was good enough to play. That’s not false modesty. That’s just the way it was, and the way it had been each step of the way. Like my dad had said so many years before, “Just go out, have fun, and let’s see what happens.” That was the attitude I took with me to that first camp, and it was the approach that stayed with me throughout my career.
Of course, as training camp wore on, I couldn’t help but think about where I was going to end up that season. Toward the end of camp, one at a time, players would be called into the room where general manager Hap Emms and head coach Harry Sinden had established their headquarters. Guys would emerge with their faces betraying the news they had just received. Some were headed to Boston, others back to the minors. Truth be told, though, most players, if they are honest with themselves, have a pretty good idea whether they have the talent to stay at that level. My time was coming, I knew it, and I felt I had a chance
.
Finally, my name was called, and I headed in for my own meeting with Mr. Emms and Harry. That is a tough moment for any young player trying to make it, because you never know if you’ve done enough. The reality of the NHL in the mid-1960s was that veterans virtually had a lock on their jobs, so beating one out for a roster spot was no easy task. As I walked into the room, I could see Hap seated at his desk. After I sat down on a chair in front of him, he slowly looked up at me, and in a very matter-of-fact tone said, “You’ll be heading back with us to Boston to finish training camp.” It’s funny. All those years of work, and it all comes down to a few words.
Yet, when I left the room, I still didn’t know if I had made it. I was relieved, of course. Not being cut was exactly what I had hoped for. I had my chance to make the big club, but there was no guarantee, even at that point. All I knew was I had stepped up another rung on the ladder that would get me to the Boston Garden as a member of the Bruins.
I had many doubts during that entire training camp process, and there is no question in my mind that a little fear can be a very powerful motivator. Many successful people I’ve met have expressed having a fear of failure, or perhaps a fear of not really belonging to a group or team. Part of that fear is being aware that your job is on the line. There was a certain confidence inside me, yes, but there was always doubt as well. Professional sport is no easy life, and having a healthy portion of fear probably helped push me toward success.
The remainder of that first training camp went smoothly after we returned to Boston. With each passing day, it became clearer and clearer to me that I could hold my own with the big boys, and I believed I could compete at the NHL level. I wasn’t dominating anybody on the ice, but I was holding my own.