Keith Magnuson

by Doug Feldmann

  * * *

  If the 1972 off-season talk in hockey was not centered around the encroachment of the WHA on the NHL’s turf, it instead focused upon the monumental upcoming “Summit Series” in September, an eight-game slate in which Canadian-born NHL stars would take on the best players of the Soviet Union for the first time, in a battleground of the Cold War.

  Sinden of the Bruins was selected as the head coach of the NHL contingent, but when invitations went out from the league to select players with whom he would work, Bobby Hull was not among them. Bill Wirtz was in charge of the North American side of the contract negotiations for the series, and had inserted a stipulation that all participating players had to be under a signed NHL contract by the beginning of the tournament. Naturally, it was believed that Wirtz was using this angle as leverage in his contract negotiations with Hull, believing that Hull—who had a strong desire to play for his home country in the Series—would accept less money to stay with the Hawks as September drew closer. The alleged gamesmanship by Wirtz caused dissension, even among his fellow power brokers in hockey who believed the requirement would affect other players besides Hull.

  “I don’t care if he signed with a team in China,” scoffed Toronto Maple Leafs owner Howard Ballard in response to the Hull-Wirtz feud. “He’s a Canadian and should be on the Canadian team.”

  Even so, this response was seen by Joyce as posturing by Ballard, who was not really willing to risk losing the benefits of being part of the Series.

  “His objections to [Clarence] Campbell’s and Wirtz’s end run weren’t so deeply felt that he was going to decline having his arena [Maple Leaf Gardens] as Team Canada’s training camp home and site of Game 2 of the Summit Series,” Joyce pointed out. The first four games would be held at professional venues across Canada (the Montreal Forum, the Maple Leaf Gardens, the Winnipeg Arena, and the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver), while the final four contests would take place at the Luzhniki Ice Palace in Moscow. In the end, Wirtz’s rule would stand—it was definite that Hull would not play in the Summit Series.

  “Sinden, who had privately wished to have Hull on the roster, would see his own Bruins Cheevers and Sanderson excluded for the same reason as well,” Joyce continued. “Bobby Hull was out. It wouldn’t be the last time the NHL left him twisting in the wind.”

  Magnuson was disappointed that he had to sit out the Summit Series himself—not because of a contract issue, but rather because he needed to further rehabilitate his knee during the summer of 1972. (He had been among those who received an invitational letter to try out for the team.) Maggie would have significant company in watching from the sideline. Orr had withstood much pain in his own knee in leading the Bruins to the Cup in May 1972, a prelude to his own surgery that summer which left the Canadian team without his services as well.

  As the first game of the Summit Series commenced in Montreal, the normally reserved hockey crowd in that city was more raucous than usual; few in Canada could recall a time in that country when so much national pride was at stake. And when Phil Esposito scored less than a minute after the first puck was dropped, it appeared that the series would be the “laugher” that many NHL followers expected it would be.

  But the Soviets were intent on applying a form of a “rope-a-dope” on the Canadians. As Magnuson had noted from his college days at Denver, the Soviets displayed superior physical conditioning as compared to the NHL players, appearing to be sprinting around the ice at full speed even late into the third period. As September was typically the time of year when the NHL players were just arriving at training camps for purpose of getting into shape (as opposed to today’s players who train year-round), they noticed that their international counterparts were far ahead of them.

  A flurry of Soviet shots on Dryden’s home ice resulted in several going past him in a 7–3 win for the Russians in the opener. Tony Esposito responded well in the second contest, however, and led an NHL team awoken from its slumber to a 4–1 win in Toronto.

  After a 4–4 tie in Winnipeg, the NHL team put on another unenthused showing in Game 4 at Vancouver in a 5–3 defeat, and then proceeded to blow a 4–1 lead in a 5–4 loss in Game 5 in Moscow which put the Canadians one defeat away from losing the Series altogether. Being booed off the ice at the end of the game in Vancouver, many of the NHL players—especially Phil Esposito—publicly voiced their disgust for the lack of support from the fans.

  Perhaps sensing that something extraordinary was now needed to boost his team’s energy, former Montreal intimidator John Ferguson—an assistant coach with the Canadian team—turned to one of the emerging personalities in hockey to jolt the squad. Center Bobby Clarke was 23 years old at the time, fresh off his claim to the Bill Masterton Trophy from the end of the 1972 season, which, named for the former University of Denver and NHL player, annually goes to the player who “best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey.” Clarke had won the award for his ability to overcome the diabetic seizures he suffered at the start of his career. He was one of the rising stars of the league by the fall of 1972, part of an improving Philadelphia Flyers squad that was threatening to make a leap into the upper echelon of NHL teams in the coming season.

  Clarke, however, had also already gained a sullied reputation around the league as a win-at-all-costs type of player and agitator, and Ferguson decided to use these traits to the Canadian team’s advantage. In Game 6 in Moscow, he directed Clarke to go after Soviet star forward Valeri Kharlamov; and while not being specific as to the method, Ferguson instructed the player to render Kharlamov “ineffective” for the remainder of the contest.

  At one point in the game, as Kharlamov raced into the Canadian zone with the puck, Clarke sensed his opportunity and soared in on him at an angle, and from behind. As Clarke approached him, television viewers could plainly see Clarke slide his left hand down the shaft of his stick in joining his right hand at the knob, as if he were a baseball player preparing to take a swing of the bat. With one vicious chop, he violently slashed the heel of the Soviet player. To all watching (games had been sent back to North America on national Canadian networks as well as selected American stations), the blow was as intentional and flagrant as it could be, with Clarke directly in the center of the television camera’s lens. Kharlamov’s ankle was broken instantly. And while he would finish the game at a severely limited capacity, Kharlamov naturally had been neutralized for the final two contests of the series as well.

  Canada won the sixth game 3–2 as a worldwide hockey debate was launched. Some felt Clarke’s attack was an intolerable, cowardly play, while others believed it was an understandable decision by him and Ferguson in order to shift the momentum (some Canadians even called the chop a “patriotic” blow). In any event, the game’s result kept Canada alive in the Series.

  After Paul Henderson scored late to clinch a 4–3 Canada win in Game 7, a heated, winner-take-all eighth match was set for Moscow on September 28. The game was marred by several strange off-the-ice eruptions, such as NHL player agent Alan Eagleson being restrained in the stands by Moscow police in his protest of the goal light not being illuminated after an obvious Canadian goal, and Sinden hurling a chair onto the playing surface in another moment of objection to a referee’s call.

  With anger still lingering from the Kharlamov incident, jeers were exchanged all evening long between the Soviet crowd and Canadian players, and the NHL team found itself trailing 5–3 heading into the final period. The players emerged from the locker room for the final 20 minutes with reckless abandon, however; Montreal forward Yvan Cournoyer and Phil Esposito knotted the score at 5–5 with their goals. Then, with 34 seconds remaining in regulation and a beehive of activity swirling around the Russian net, Henderson tapped in a rebound off an Esposito shot which instantly became known as “the goal all Canadians would remember.” A delirious celebration was set off from Nova Scotia to British Columbia as the NHL took the
series by a 6–5 final score in the last game, swelling the pride of all Canadian hearts with a feeling described by Todd Denault as “one of those rare shared moments in the history of a country, an unforgettable experience, a defining moment.”

  Oddly enough, the moment was so powerful it was difficult to remember there was a full schedule of games still to play back home. “After the excitement of the just-concluded Summit Series,” Denault added, “the upcoming NHL season felt like an anticlimax.”

  For many years, the location of the actual puck that Henderson shot into the net was a mystery. Naturally, many museums as well as private collectors would have liked to have possessed it, but only recently did Bill White—who along with Mikita, Stapleton, and Dennis Hull was a key member of the Canadian team in the series—reveal its location.

  “Pat and I were on the ice when Henderson scored and until the game ended [34 seconds later],” White said in a 2010 interview with Verdi. “Look at the tape. When it’s over, Pat circles around and takes the puck. He’s never really admitted it. In fact, he tells people I have it. I still get calls from reporters asking me why I don’t donate the puck or sell it to the Hockey Hall of Fame. And I tell them, ‘I don’t have it. Pat Stapleton has it. Call him.’”

  In 2010, the Canadian team sweater that Henderson was wearing when he scored the goal was auctioned off for nearly $1.7 million, reputed to be the highest amount ever paid for a single piece of hockey memorabilia.

  * * *

  While it was perhaps “anticlimactic,” as Denault put it, the 1972–73 NHL season nonetheless began with renewed sense of dignity for the sport’s founding nation. Canada’s victory over the Soviets in the Summit Series tempered at least some of the tension that was sure to come from the splitting of major league hockey into two factions.

  As expected, all did not proceed smoothly in the opening acts for the WHA. For example, Hull would be 15 games late in joining the Winnipeg Jets at the start of the year, as the legitimacy of his contract was still being contested by the Hawks well into October. Magnuson, determined to help fill the void of leadership left behind in Chicago, demonstrated as much in his first fight with the new Boston Bruins tough man, Terry O’Reilly, in an exhibition game at the Stadium on September 22 (the night after all of Canada was forlorn with the Game 5 loss during the Summit Series in Moscow).

  “Magnuson flexed his muscles early,” the Tribune proclaimed about the fracas that was launched only a minute into the contest, just as Magnuson was in the process of heading to the penalty box for hooking the Bruins’ Chris Hayes. “Young Terry slammed Keith into the boards. The Hawk defenseman took umbrage and posed in the classic [Johnny] Coulon stance: left hand extended and right cocked.” O’Reilly got the best of him in their initial encounter, however, pinning Magnuson up against the boards and freeing himself for a few good shots. But, once again in the spirit of “cold-dish revenge” in the Howe and Mikita tradition, Magnuson made sure he would get other chances at O’Reilly down the road.

  Six weeks after the regular season started, Magnuson had a first-time bout with another new pugilist entering the NHL. Dave Schultz was already a legend in the Juniors system, having racked up more than 350 penalty minutes in remote Canadian villages in the minor leagues in each of the past three seasons. And when the Hawks met the Flyers at the latter’s wondrous five-year-old home, the Spectrum, on November 9, 1972, Magnuson and Schultz soon converged. They began throwing hands without much of a prelude or warning—in one of at least 20 fights that Schultz would have in his first NHL year—and the Flyers rookie proved himself a force with which to be reckoned, even at the top level of the sport. He landed right cross after right cross upon Magnuson, who flailed away in return, kept taking shots, and still kept coming back too Schultz for more.

  “My first meeting with Magnuson was typical of the manner in which a hockey fight between two ice cops begins,” Schultz remembered about that evening. The two players had collided behind the Chicago net, and Schultz launched a preemptive strike before Magnuson could get him first. “I drove him in the mouth with my right,” the Philadelphia player said. “In a split second his lips were redder than his hair. Blood red.”

  Schultz’s assault had been so quick that it was reported that Magnuson, when assisted in the training room, did not know who it was who hit him—despite being keenly aware of Schultz’s reputation from his days in the Juniors, and readying for him as Magnuson prepared his pregame plans in the locker room.

  “I felt I had to prove myself,” Schultz continued. “Magnuson had already been in the league for three years and had earned a reputation as a good and very energetic fighter.”

  Magnuson returned later in the game and chided Schultz from the moment he returned to the ice. Midway through the third period, Schultz got his stick up on Magnuson again, and garnered another five-minute major penalty for drawing blood. Keith’s lip was severed once again with a blow that required a few more stitches, but the resultant penalty also resulted in a power-play goal by Dennis Hull. It was becoming commonplace for Philadelphia to regularly try to intimidate opponents who came into the Spectrum, but Keith remained unfazed. “Magnuson is just so busy all the time,” former Flyers coach Vic Stasiuk had said back in 1970. “He gets the hell beat out of him, but he keeps coming back for more. You have to like a kid like that.”

  While the nucleus of the strong Black Hawks teams of years past was still in place—even without his famous linemate in Hull, Mikita enjoyed his best start ever to a season in posting eight points in his first three games—there were still growing pains to be endured as the club proceeded without the Golden Jet. The St. Louis Blues beating the Hawks 3–1 on October 15—which was the first time the Blues had beaten Chicago on Stadium ice in five years. (St. Louis had been 0–11–3 in their previous 14 visits to the Stadium; the Blues would take the next game on Madison Street as well, on December 27.) The loss also ended a 16-game unbeaten streak for the Hawks in regular season play, dating back to the previous year. And by midseason, it was evident that the other expansion teams with which the Hawks had been placed in the Western Division were showing marked improvement. In February 1973, the surging Flyers—with the irrepressible Clarke leading the way and the rookie Schultz now hammering away at everyone in sight—won in the Stadium for the first time ever. It was the same week that the precocious Clarke was named their captain, believed to be the youngest in league history, and the Philadelphia club was suddenly becoming a major player in the standings. Schultz would wind up leading the NHL in penalty minutes with 259 in his rookie season, a warning to the rest of the league that a surly collection of renegades was forming in Philadelphia.

  So Reay continued to make adjustments, which included the occasional pairing of Magnuson with physical rookie Phil Russell on the defensive line, to give the aging Jarrett more rest. Russell, the Hawks’ first-round pick from the previous year’s draft, brought not only scoring abilities to the back line but relieved some of the fighting load off Magnuson with his own tough, aggressive spirit. So did another rookie brought to the roster, University of North Dakota product and 1968’s ninth-overall pick John Marks, who possessed approximately the same size as Russell (6'2", 205) and who displayed a penchant for left wing as well as defenseman. Marks, a collegiate opponent of Magnuson’s, was paired on the blue line with White; Reay then moved Stapleton to center to free up his skating ability, a position he last played in the Western Hockey League in 1964–65 at Portland, where he scored 29 goals during the season.

  Just a few months after he left town, Chicago hockey fans would have chance to see Hull skate on local ice once again as the Winnipeg Jets arrived on December 22 to take on the Cougars. The Cougars’ home ice was the International Amphitheatre, a quaint, small arena on the city’s south side and adjacent to the infamous old Chicago Stockyards, which had just closed in the previous year after more than a century of operation. The Amphitheatre had been made famous worldwide fo
ur years earlier in hosting the meetings of the raucous 1968 Democratic National Convention, in which Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley hollered from the crowd against speakers at the podium who were denouncing the violence occurring in the city streets as the convention proceeded.

  While the Amphitheatre had its charm and coziness, the Chicago Stadium still commanded the top local indoor events of the era as the “Amp” was relegated to hosting little more than Cougars games and the circus. (The majority of the Amphitheatre’s business had revolved around livestock shows, a trend which naturally diminished in the wake of the Stockyards closing in 1971.) The Bulls moved from the Amphitheatre to the Stadium after their first season of play (1967), and in January 1973, the Stadium hosted its first NBA All-Star Game. Popular music acts continued to fill the Stadium as well; in addition to Elvis Presley’s two-day stop there the previous summer, January 3, 1973, saw 1960s icon Bob Dylan appear in the Stadium for the initial show on his first tour in eight years.

  As he emerged from the visitors’ locker room at the Amphitheatre, Hull, still donning the same old shoulder pads he had worn when he broke into the NHL 15 years earlier, was greeted with a mixed reception. Even by the time he was finished in the WHA, he would still be wearing them, as he found the pair to be comfortable and lightweight, even though they offered almost no protection. “I have no doubt that Bobby Hull took more physical punishment on the ice than anyone who has ever played the game,” Pappin once said. The Golden Jet did not want anything to slow him down, and like a fighter plane being stripped of unnecessary encumbrance for maximum speed, he went with the bare minimum.

  There was no doubt that a fire raged in Hull’s eyes in returning to Chicago. The hometown Cougars carried a 3–2 win out of the Amphitheatre, but Bobby had skated with a fury, which included viciously beating on former Hawks teammate Reggie Fleming in a fight.