by Bobby Orr
When it came time to finalize the roster for opening night, everyone was on pins and needles. We all wanted to be in the lineup, and there were more players than roster spots. We could only dress seventeen players and two goalies. Someone was going to be disappointed.
• • •
Eventually, it was time to get down to business as we prepared for our regular-season debut against the Detroit Red Wings. My father had made the trip to Boston with some of his buddies, and having Dad there meant a lot to me. He would end up being with me for some of the greatest times in my career. The Boston fans were hungry for a new era to begin for this particular Bruins team.
I was so excited, I arrived just after lunchtime for the 7:30 game. When I walked into the dressing room that day, I was looking for something very important. Back then there were no limits on the number of players a team could carry. Especially early in the season, we found out whether we were playing when we walked into the dressing room and saw if the trainer had hung up our sweater. If you didn’t see your number, you were watching from the stands.
And there it was. My sweater (no one called them jerseys) hanging there in my stall. If I remember correctly, I had worn several numbers, including 27 and 30, as well as number 4 for some of the intra-squad and exhibition games during training camp. Back then, there were no names on the sweaters, just the team logo on the front and a number on the back. The number on mine was 4.
I hadn’t asked for that particular number. At that time in the league, a rookie wouldn’t have thought of requesting a specific number. You were just relieved to have received a sweater with any number on it at all. I had worn number 2 throughout minor hockey and junior, but when they assigned me number 4, I was more than happy to have it. Besides, my old number 2 was not available, because it had been worn by the legendary Bruin Eddie Shore and was now hanging in the Garden rafters in retirement. The season before, 1965–66, number 4 had been worn by Al Langlois, but he was no longer with the organization, so it was available. And that is what someone told the trainer to hang in my stall. I suppose there is a pleasing rhyme between four and Orr, and it is all the more pleasing in a Boston accent. But trust me, matching that number with my last name was not a plan of mine. I would have worn whatever number they gave me.
That first league game in the NHL was a thrill for me for a number of reasons, not least because I knew I would be squaring off against the guy who wore number 9 for Detroit. It would be impossible to exaggerate the admiration I had (and still have) for Gordie Howe. Everyone coming into the league has to deal with the strange reality of playing with and against guys he grew up admiring, but I had the challenge of doing it in my first game, against the player I think is the best to have ever played.
During that first game, I got into it a bit with my hero. It seems I’d made a couple of mistakes early in the game. The first, as he later told me, was that I’d got my elbow a little high on him (though I like to think I was smarter than that, and that Gordie must have fingered the wrong guy). The second was that I later spent a split second admiring a pass I’d made to a teammate as I cruised into the offensive zone. One moment I was looking at the puck, and the next I was lying on the ice, the victim of a classic Gordie Howe elbow. Mr. Hockey was towering over me, staring down with what can only be described as a stern glare. I understood the message loud and clear: Gordie wanted the rookie to know who the boss was. Five years earlier in Parry Sound, he had warned me to watch out for his elbows after I got to the league. Turns out he hadn’t been kidding.
I was a rookie, so in an instant I had several teammates come to my defense. There I was, at the bottom of a scrum, feeling the consequences of my first encounter with one of the fiercest competitors in the game. It wasn’t that I thought Howe was a great guy for flattening me. But it also wasn’t as though I hadn’t asked for it. He was just paying me back, with a bit of interest. So, as I looked up through a maze of legs and arms, I blurted out to my fellow Bruins something to the effect of, “It’s okay, guys, I deserved that.”
That was the end of the hostilities, and I like to think I gained a measure of respect from Gordie in the process. Those types of things happened often in the old NHL, and I believe it speaks to the respect players had for each other. There were lines you just didn’t cross.
Not that I felt Gordie was off limits after that. Later in the game, I got into another minor tiff with him, as did my defensive partner, Gilles Marotte. We both took a bit of a run at him, and I guess Gordie felt he had to deliver his earlier warning again, and perhaps a bit more forcefully. Now, I have always been a firm believer that you should never back down. Backing down only makes it worse. But that night I couldn’t think of anything much worse than dropping the gloves with Gordie Howe. At the end of that shift, I looked over my shoulder, and there was Gordie, looming up behind us, looking even more menacing than before and offering us a few choice words. I looked at Gilles and said, “Just keep going . . . get to the bench.”
I ran into Gordie a few times that first game, and many more times over the years. I don’t think anyone ever enjoyed playing against him. He could beat you with skill, he could beat you with brute strength, and that neighborly smile hid a truly terrifying ferocity. But I have wonderful memories of Mr. Hockey, and he remains at the top of my list as the best who ever played the game.
That first game was a victory for us, and I had an assist for my first point in the NHL. The newspaper people wrote it up like it was the greatest assist ever seen in the Boston Garden. I think I was just trying to get a shot on net and ended up accomplishing little more than shoveling the puck toward the goalie. I was lucky that someone was there to jam the loose puck home for a goal. In reality it wasn’t much of a play. However it happened, I was happy to have my first NHL point and to get a win.
My first goal came a few nights later, again in Boston. Toward the end of the game, I got a point shot past the Montreal Canadiens’ Gump Worsley to tie the game. As a rule, I don’t talk about goals I’ve scored, but I will never forget that one. The fans at the Garden were on their feet, not because the goal was a work of art—it was their way of welcoming me to Boston. Those fans went out of their way to make me feel at home. I always found the cheers deeply humbling. When you hear that, you just want to give back. So that goal was the start of a very special relationship.
• • •
I can’t say that opposing players around the league embraced me quite as warmly. Right from that very first game against the Red Wings, players came at me to see if I could take the heat. They wanted to see if I belonged. Part of the rookie experience is that players around the league want to know if you will stand up for yourself. While I knew I had great teammates who would come to my aid if need be, I felt I had to make my own statement and that no one could do it for me. Mind you, I never fought unless there was a good reason to, and I never fought unless I was angry. If you mix it up with somebody at that level and you aren’t into it, you can get hurt in a hurry.
I guess you could say I was the type of player who was kind of a pain to play against, because I would go after opponents and make contact. I never went looking for trouble, but being aggressive was just the way the game was supposed to be played. I knew perfectly well that if I was going to go after guys, they were going to be that way with me. It works both ways. There were things you did and things you didn’t do. So I knew what to expect.
But when I say I liked to play aggressively, I really mean a couple of things. First, I was aggressive in that I wanted the puck on my stick, and that meant I would be in the action for a lot of the time I was on the ice. If you want to carry the play a lot, then you have to expect to be hit. And second, if that aggression took a more physical form, then you could probably expect some retaliation. That was just the law of the land. I didn’t expect others to fight my battles for me, particularly since I knew they were coming. They were coming because I was a rookie, they were com
ing because I got a bit more press than other eighteen-year-olds, and they were coming because I didn’t shy away from contact. Other teams had always tried to intimidate me, so it’s not as though I was surprised that guys would try to push me around in the NHL. They may have been stronger and punched harder, but I figured there was no way to avoid the challenges, so there was no point trying to. And if you’re going to answer a challenge, you’d better go about it like you mean it.
• • •
For the rest of the season, we never did have a winning record again after our victory on opening night. Still, I was told to move out of the hotel. When they tell you to go get a place, it means you’re probably sticking around for a while, because if the team sends you down after that, they are stuck paying your rent.
Once I got the green light to settle down, I had to decide where I was going to go, and with whom. Joe Watson was my first roommate on the Bruins, but unfortunately that arrangement would only last one season. We lost Joe to the Philadelphia Flyers during the 1967 expansion draft, and he would go on to have a great career in Philly, where he would win two Stanley Cups. But at least for my first year we shared a place together, and often found ourselves on the ice as playing partners as well.
But Joe wasn’t my only roommate that rookie year. There were a couple of other players we shared a house with, and they represent yet another example of those times when you realize how small the hockey circle really can be. They were two of the players I had faced off against in the Memorial Cup the previous spring, Ross Lonsberry and Ted Hodgson. They had been playing for the Edmonton Oil Kings in that series, but Edmonton had added them only after eliminating the team they had played for all season, the Estevan Bruins—it turned out that both were Bruins property as well.
The four of us eventually decided to rent a place right on the water in the town of Little Nahant. The guys who took the rooms in the front of the building soon understood how cold the winds could be coming off the water. They would jack the thermostat up so they could at least stay tolerably warm, as those winds blew right through the walls. Fortunately, my room was in the back, and I didn’t have to contend with all of that wind. That was the good news. The bad news was that whenever they turned up the heat, my room became a sauna, and I could barely stand it. Unfortunately for Ross and Ted, both players were eventually reassigned to a minor-league team in Oklahoma City, so two of my four roomies were suddenly gone. That’s one of the tough parts of being a pro athlete, and having to pick up and move, often on short notice, is just a hazard of the profession.
But for those of us lucky enough to stick with the big club, we were members of the Bruins, living on our own, and enjoying the view. It was all very exciting for a young guy, and those were the best of times as I made my way around the Boston area trying to familiarize myself with the lifestyle of a professional hockey player. It was exciting, but also foreign. The security blanket of a mother and father or billet home wasn’t there anymore, and there would be no one doing your laundry at home. Meals wouldn’t be cooked, and other details of day-to-day living would have to be figured out, and all of that in combination was quite an adjustment. But to be honest, a lot of our meals, especially on game days, were eaten at the Surf Restaurant down on the waterfront. I mostly went for steak and eggs around noon to be ready to play. While we could all handle a fry pan if we had to, most of us preferred the restaurant fare instead.
There were other little things about the lifestyle as well, like the fact that suddenly there were bills coming in that had to be paid. I wasn’t up on that kind of bookkeeping, so I had a lot to sift through in a very short period. I had a lawyer representing me who assured me that many of those little details would be taken care of, and I had no reason to doubt that information. Unfortunately, my lack of attention would cost me dearly in the years ahead. But at that moment I hardly gave money a second thought. All I really wanted to focus on was hockey.
My rookie year would have its share of trials. Like any new player in the league, I had a lot to figure out. Perhaps more than forward, defense is a position you have to mature and grow into. If a forward coughs up the puck, it’s a missed opportunity. When a defenseman blunders, the puck often ends up in the back of his net. So rookie defensemen often don’t get a lot of ice time, which is one reason they take a bit longer to develop.
I had plenty of ice time, though. In the fall of 1966, the Boston Bruins just weren’t very good as a hockey team. A building process had to take place, and the early stages of that process were not very pleasant for the organization. But that meant I would get my chance at lots of ice time in the years ahead. It would be on-the-job training, and I would make all kinds of mistakes. The way I played meant that my teammates would have to figure me out and inevitably cover for those errors from time to time.
There were some frustrating nights. I was aware of absolutely every mistake I made, and it gnawed at me. There were things I could do in junior that just didn’t work in the NHL. And when I say that the Bruins weren’t a great team that year, I am talking about myself, too. There were games when we were shelled, and it seemed I was on the ice for every goal against. But it beat sitting on the bench, and if it’s true that you learn from your mistakes, I certainly had plenty of opportunity that year. But coach Harry Sinden kept sending me back out there, and the Boston fans never soured on me, so I never got gun-shy, which is about the worst thing that can happen to a young defenseman. Just the opposite, actually. I was getting more comfortable by the game.
When you add my playing time to all the help and guidance I received from a great bunch of teammates and coaches, it all meant that my rookie campaign would be a pretty positive year. Sometimes in life, you just get lucky. I was very fortunate to be part of that particular group at that particular moment, even if we weren’t very good as a team.
• • •
It was during my rookie season that I suffered my first problem with my left knee. We were playing against the Maple Leafs in early December, and I was on the attack with the puck, trying to slip by the great Toronto defenseman Marcel Pronovost. He had the angle on me, but I tried to squeeze through the shrinking gap between him and the boards. I didn’t make it, and he caught me with a textbook hip-check that wedged me up the boards. It was a clean check, but my knee was pinched and twisted under the force of the hit, and pinned there.
I felt an odd twinge of pain. Not agony, but not a good thing. I didn’t require surgery after that initial bit of damage, but I had to sit out eight games to let it heal. Of course, I was eighteen, and like a lot of eighteen-year-olds, I thought I was indestructible. I believed I would last forever, that the odd injury here and there was simply the cost of doing business in my profession. I waited until the knee felt better, and then I was off to the races again. But I wasn’t as indestructible as I’d imagined.
• • •
That first year in Boston, from a personal perspective, was about finding my way around the league. For the team, it was all about building our program and our identity as a group. At that moment, we weren’t ready to compete for the Cup. In fact, we were the worst team in the league. For the previous few seasons, the best the Bruins could hope for was to beat the New York Rangers in the race for the second-worst record in the league. Never mind the Cup, even the playoffs seemed an unrealistic dream. The year before I arrived in Beantown, the Bruins had finished fifth in a six-team league, and with my arrival all of that was supposed to change in a hurry. Unfortunately, by the end of my rookie season we had dropped from fifth to sixth overall, with a 17–43–10 record, easily the worst in the league. (New York, by contrast, had escaped the cellar and made the playoffs.) So much for the savior from Parry Sound.
I did win the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year, and I was honored, of course. But not for a moment did I think that trophy made me anyone special. The major triumph, in my mind, was that I’d made the team.
I hated los
ing. I won some more trophies in the years ahead, but I can tell you that none of them felt as good as winning. None of them even came close. I scored thirteen goals that first season, but not one of them was a game-winner. And we won only seventeen games.
I went back home that summer feeling pretty despondent. There had been a considerable amount of press leading up to my league debut, and expectations had run high in Boston, both for me and for the team, and there was no getting around the fact that we had let people down. Early on during my time in Oshawa, I had played on some teams that lost a lot of hockey games, but eventually, in my final season, we had a run at a championship. It was not easy having to handle a losing record again, particularly since we were all but out of the playoffs by Christmas.
At the pro level, winning is your job. While I was happy to get back to Parry Sound that summer, I couldn’t wait for it to end. I wanted to get back to business in Boston.
Five
TOWARD THE CUP: 1967–1970
The league I joined as a rookie was the old Original Six, which had existed unchanged for decades. I was lucky enough to play at the end of an era that included legends. But that summer, the league doubled to include new teams in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Oakland, Minnesota, and St. Louis.
The Bruins lost a lot of players in the expansion draft that summer, including future Hall of Fame goalie Bernie Parent, J.P. Parise, Poul Popiel, Wayne Rivers, Ron Schock, Gary Dornhoefer, Bill Goldsworthy, and Wayne Connelly. As I mentioned, I lost a roommate, since Joe Watson was claimed by the Flyers as well.
I had to look for a new place to live, and ended up rooming with goalie Eddie “EJ” Johnston, fellow defenseman Gary Doak, and John “Frosty” Forristall, our team trainer. Frosty was a great guy and someone I grew close to over my career with the Bruins. He was always a part of the team, as was our head trainer, Dan Canney, and that was how they were always treated. Over the next few years, EJ and Gary both got married and moved out, but Frosty and I were together for a while.