Keith Magnuson

by Doug Feldmann

  “Hull threw Fleming around like a bale of hay,” wrote Joyce in reference to Hull’s farming roots in Ontario, “twisting him down to the ice until he was on his knees. Hull rained blows down on the back of Fleming’s head, the nape of his neck and unhelmeted temples.”

  Despite the severe punishment, after the game the two combatants acted as if nothing had happened, speaking pleasantly while standing near each other by the seating area and signing autographs for children. “Hull and Fleming reprised the roles of the sheepdog and Wile E. Coyote,” Joyce continued in a humorous reference to a famous cartoon, “the Looney Tunes characters who fought almost to the death and then came to a dead halt, punching the clock at the end of their shift.”

  Even with the amicable ending, the brutal bout had likely hastened the twilight of the career of the former Magnuson family favorite. (Fleming had been the recipient of thousands of blows in his fight-filled professional career and passed away in 2009 at the age of 73. His family later authorized a further examination of his brain, and it was determined that Fleming had experienced prolonged, massive head trauma that contributed to him suffering a neurological deterioration that resembled Alzheimer’s disease.)

  Meanwhile, on NHL ice just a couple of miles to the north of the Amphitheatre, the Hawks continued to roll through the winter at the Stadium. By January 17, after winning 6–4 that night, they were unbeaten in their last 14 games against the Detroit Red Wings.

  Of course, respecting superstitions was paramount during such a winning streak, and Magnuson and Koroll were not taking any chances in this regard. As the roommates left their apartment in Park Ridge and headed down the Kennedy Expressway to the Stadium, they would look for the same electronic billboard to flash each trip, which read, Listen to the Black Hawks—8:15 on wmaq. Magnuson would say that they “simply have to” see the sign if the two were going to have a good game that night. “A few times I’ve had to slow down to a crawl in the emergency lane until this comes on,” he claimed.

  Their driving antics did not stop once they got off the Kennedy, however. Magnuson and Koroll, in pursuit of another serving of good luck, would then attempt to drive all the way to the Stadium along certain local streets without ever applying the brakes—and that meant ever.

  “We’d be creeping along, trying to hit it [the light] when it would turn green,” Magnuson was quoted as saying by writer Andrew Podnieks. “We’d have cars honking at us, but we thought that if we could get through all those lights that we’d definitely win that night.”

  Upon arriving at the Stadium, the other Hawks players made it a point to regularly visit Keith’s vehicle to see the aftermath of what they called “Maggie’s Latest.” Once, he backed into the wall of the Stadium itself when intending to pull forward from his parking space. Magnuson recalled one incident with his vehicle in his second year with the Hawks. “I hit another car on a freeway,” he said. “The guy stopped and jumped out, ready to kill me. Then he saw who I was, shook my hand, and told me if I had any trouble about insurance, he’d testify for me in court. Now that’s a hockey fan for you.”

  Just getting the car started, however, often was a challenge for Magnuson, according to Koroll. “One day, he walked into the apartment about 4:00 in the afternoon,” Cliff said, “and said he left his car running in the lot so he could charge the battery. Well, we have dinner and whatever, and it’s about 11:00 that night when we’re watching TV and a car commercial comes on. Maggie jumps from the couch in his bathrobe and runs outside in the snow. He forgot to turn the car off.”

  Their attempts to acquire good luck were perhaps not as strange, however, as the ritual of goaltender Gary Smith at the Stadium on nights when he played. Although called upon rather infrequently since Esposito was primarily in the nets for Chicago, Smith, when given a starting assignment by Reay, would strip down to the nude between periods. He then put all his equipment back on shortly before the next period began, Dennis Hull remembered.

  Back at Magnuson and Koroll’s apartment, the two bachelors had decorated the place in the most stunning of 1970s motifs, a design which would have made the Brady Bunch’s home look like it was crafted by modernist David Bromstad on HGTV.

  “When they moved in last year, an interior designer offered to furnish and decorate it for them for a cut rate $5,000. They agreed,” reported Paul King for Canadian magazine on the living arrangements. “‘But when we saw all the stuff coming in,’ Keith said, ‘we really flipped. We’re guys from Saskatoon. We’re not what you’d call super mod.’”

  King himself hardly found the words to describe the place. “It was easy to see why they flipped…a living room filled with plastic see-through chairs and three bare white tree branches stuck in huge white flower pots, a dining room papered in black-and-white stripes like a referee’s shirt, and a burnt-orange bedroom with a fake leopard’s bedspread. There was also one black-and-white and three color TV sets and three stereo sets in the apartment. On Magnuson’s bedroom wall was the mounted bill of a 150-pound marlin he caught last year in Jamaica.”

  But domestic pursuits would not allay Magnuson’s ferocity on the ice. On March 15, he broke the jaw of New York Ranger Gene Carr in a bout at the Stadium. Pappin had just scored the game’s final goal at the 7:37 mark of the third period to make the score 4–2 in favor of the Hawks when the fireworks erupted. “A minute later, in the center of a stadium where many great ones have fought,” Verdi wrote, “Magnuson dropped gloves with Gene Carr, a young Ranger with the prettiest locks this side of [St. Louis’] Garry Unger.” Magnuson finished things with a tremendous right hand that shattered Carr’s chin, as New York’s Brad Park tried to jump in to aid his teammate—for which Park got the newly requisite game misconduct penalty as per the third-man-in rule.

  “It was just a lucky punch,” Maggie said later in the locker room regarding the coup de grace, a statement at which Doug Jarrett snickered in agreement from across the way. Magnuson nodded to concur.

  “I haven’t won that many, have I?” he said back to Jarrett.

  In just a month’s time, however, Park would avenge his teammate’s injury, albeit unintentionally.

  The pistons of Reay’s machine continued to fire through the spring. By season’s end, Magnuson and the Black Hawks were able to get the same result without Bobby Hull as they had the past three years with him: a division title. The MPH line of Martin, Pappin, and Dennis Hull would indeed have its best year in Bobby’s first in absentia, as the trio totaled 272 points—a Black Hawks record for a line at the time, with Pappin netting 41 goals, Hull 39, and Martin 29.

  * * *

  The 1973 postseason began with the famous goalie of the Montreal Canadiens issuing a warning.

  “The Rangers, Bruins, and Black Hawks had better win the Cup this year,” Ken Dryden had said before the start of the playoffs, “because with the talent we have coming up, I’m afraid the Cup will be in Montreal for many years after.”

  The young crop of new talent the Canadiens had cultivated in the past couple of seasons was indeed ready to blossom, as a fresh roster of hopefuls prepared to take the place of Beliveau, Richard, and the other aging superstars who had carried the team for more than a decade.

  In their quest for the elusive title, the first step for Magnuson and the Hawks involved getting past the St. Louis Blues. The series would be the first of many more postseason clashes to come in subsequent years with their neighbors to the south.

  “The rivalry ensured the series would be hotly contested,” said Mark Magnuson, Keith’s nephew, who at the age of nine attended the first game of the 1973 series in the Stadium, a 7–1 blowout for the Hawks on April 4. Mikita posted a team-playoff-record five assists in the victory. Joe and Birdie had flown to Chicago to watch their son play, and brought Mark along as a special treat for the youngster. “What a thrill!” Mark continued. “For a small boy on the prairie, to be flying to Chicago to watch the NHL playoffs! I t
hink I told half of Saskatoon. As a proud nephew, I let everyone know he [Keith] was my uncle.”

  The evening was about to become even more exciting for him, as Mark described:

  Keith left hours early for the Stadium that day. Grandpa and Grandma and I were given a ride from a friend of Keith’s who took us to our seats about 30 minutes before game time, about five rows above the penalty box and directly opposite the home and visitor player boxes. The game became very chippy and penalty-filled. At one point, Phil Roberto of St. Louis was called for a penalty and headed to the box to serve his two minutes. The fans behind the penalty box began to jeer Roberto and, frustrated by the game and the certain outcome, he began to jaw back until, finally, he exploded and turned around and started swinging his stick at the fans behind the glass. One fan managed to grab his stick and pull it away; Roberto then scaled the glass and threatened to jump into the crowd. Some of his teammates had seen the initial verbal confrontation, and the Plager brothers [Barclay and Bob], known as belligerent players, hopped onto the dasher board and held onto the top of the glass with their hands, also threatening to enter the stands. Meanwhile, the well-known Andy Frain security guards were trying to make their way to the fans directly behind the box and locate Roberto’s stick.

  Whenever a melee of any sort breaks out in hockey, the fans rise in unison to watch the event unfold. As a nine year old, I quickly lost my view of Roberto and the Blues’ reaction to the fans in front of me. Then, suddenly, I felt myself lifted up high into the air and gently placed onto my grandfather’s shoulders. I now had the best view in the Stadium, not two rows from the fans exchanging pleasantries with Roberto and the Blues hanging on the glass. I was in the old Chicago Stadium, watching my one hero, Uncle Keith, fight while his team dominated their opponent, while my other hero, Grandpa Joe, had ensured I wouldn’t miss an event I have remembered my entire life.

  It was a wild start to a wild week of hockey, as Chicago won the series in five games while posting a team-record 22 goals, the most ever by the Hawks in a five-game postseason round. Meanwhile, Magnuson and the rest of the defensive crew helped Esposito keep St. Louis to only nine goals of their own.

  A short time after being eliminated by Chicago, the Blues head coaching position would be taken over by one of the Hawks players from the series in Lou Angotti. Angotti left for St. Louis in June 1973 for what was known as the “intraleague draft,” which was designed to make the former expansion more competitive in a quicker amount of time. (During the 1973–74 schedule, Angotti, who in 1967 had become the first captain of the Philadelphia Flyers, spent the final 23 games of that season as player-coach of the Blues.)

  Fortunes were flying high for the Hawks after their easy opening-round triumph; however, they would soon turn quickly for Magnuson in the other direction.

  In the semifinals against New York, the Hawks regrouped after losing Game 1 at the Stadium and took a 5–4 win in Game 2. It was the first of four straight they would grab from the Rangers, sending themselves to the Stanley Cup Finals against the Canadiens for the second time in three years. Reay had the club rolling once again, and the multitalented youngster Marks was moved from the defensive line and placed on left wing with Mikita and Koroll.

  But in the second game of the series, on April 15, Magnuson’s jaw was shattered on a slap shot by Park in the second period—the result of Magnuson selflessly falling in front of the shot in an attempt to block it during a Rangers power play.

  Esposito had always told Magnuson (as well as the rest of the Chicago defensemen) that if they try to block a shot, they had better get a piece of it—otherwise he would not be able to see the puck. Get a piece Magnuson did, and he dropped to the ice as a stunned audience sat in silence. Mikita later vividly remembered the impact of the vulcanized rubber striking Magnuson’s face. “You could hear it reverberate throughout the old stadium,” he said.

  A stretcher was summoned, but Magnuson waved it off and willed himself up to his knees. He then pushed upward onto his skates and finally insisted on skating off the ice, with slight assistance from Marks and Maki, receiving a thunderous ovation from the crowd that snapped itself from its frightened silence in an instant. Skip Thayer was of course on the scene immediately to aid Magnuson, but Magnuson would dismiss Thayer as well, only permitting the trainer to give him a towel, nothing more. When Thayer later thought about that scene, he just shook his head in disbelief; Thayer could not conceive Magnuson’s high threshold of pain. “You couldn’t hurt that kid’s head with an axe,” the trainer marveled.

  In addition to having his jaw set and secured, Magnuson also received 75 stitches for the wide cut that resulted from the blow. Even so, he simply wanted to know from Thayer if he would be able to return for the next period of play that same evening. “It was a five-on-three [shorthanded situation] and it saved a goal,” Magnuson remembered proudly in 2000 in replaying the crucial moment in the game. He also recalled how, during the healing period for the broken jaw, he had to carry around a pair of scissors every place he went, just in case the myriad rubber bands that held his top and lower plates together started to gag him.

  Despite Magnuson’s bravery, he was in no condition to play in the Stanley Cup rematch with the Canadiens, and the Black Hawks were forced to go without their leader on the blue line. Wearing a protective mask while he skated in practice, Magnuson was withheld from game situations by Reay. “I thought I could be playing a week and a half ago, but no soap,” a disappointed Keith would tell a writer by the middle of the final series. “The coach keeps saying no. He’s thinking about my health, and about my future. But how many Stanley Cup games does a guy get to play in?”

  Montreal, meanwhile, certainly looked as if it was heading into another dynasty, just as Dryden had predicted. Under second-year coach Scotty Bowman, they had rolled off a league-leading 120 points during the regular season, which included only 10 losses—an NHL record they would break again in 1976–77 with only eight that season. Their roster boasted an amazing total of 11 future Hall of Famers, including Cournoyer, a diminutive winger who, along with Lemaire, had taken over as one of the team’s top scoring threats. Cournoyer, nicknamed “the Roadrunner” for his incredible acceleration with the puck when attacking in the opponent’s zone, had been playing half the season with a lingering stomach issue after being speared in the abdomen by Minnesota’s Ted Harris back on January 8.

  The absence of Magnuson from the Chicago defense was obvious, and Montreal assailed Esposito with eight goals in Game 1 at the Forum. After dropping the second contest by a 4–1 score, the Hawks were able to manage a split of two games at the Stadium and then another shootout in Game 5 at Montreal, prolonging the series by surviving an 8–7 squeaker. Stapleton finished the game with a plus-minus rating of +1—he was on the ice for all 15 goals—and he kept the Hawks alive for another night as Game 6 shifted back to Madison Street.

  Esposito, despite all the pucks flying past him in the previous week and missing Magnuson in front of him, was nonetheless his usual calm self before another decisive game. “He reminded me a lot of Glenn Hall,” Mikita would say of his longtime goaltender, “except that Tony didn’t throw up before games. Tony got prepared by just sitting in front of his locker without saying a word, staring off into space. You didn’t dare talk to Tony before a game…He would just look through you like you were invisible.”

  Just as in the infamous Game 7 of two seasons ago in the same building, the Hawks jumped out to a quick 2–0 lead in this sixth game of the 1973 series. And just as in that 1971 classic, Lemaire would play a major part in a Canadiens comeback.

  With Montreal engaging the Hawks in a 4–4 tie near the halfway point of the final period, Lemaire fired a puck into the Chicago zone from center ice that eerily resembled his disastrous dump-in from two years prior. But unlike his shot that helped doom the Hawks in 1971, this long attempt sailed well wide of an unconcerned Esposito, who briefly glanced at the passin
g missile. Unfortunately, it took an unusual hop off the boards behind him. Waiting in front of the goal was the Roadrunner, and Cournoyer instantly knocked it into the net with one flash of his stick for his 15th goal of the 1973 postseason, a new league mark that topped Frank Mahovlich’s total from the 1971 playoffs. It would ultimately be a 6–4 final for Montreal, giving Bowman his first Stanley Cup. (Almost 20 years later, Bowman defeated the Hawks in the Finals yet again as the coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins.)

  It was also the first title for three young Canadiens named Guy Lafleur, Steve Shutt, and Larry Robinson—three of those 11 future Hall of Famers on the 1973 roster, who would lead the Montreal franchise into an unmatched stretch of dominance during the latter part of the decade. The most heralded among them was Lafleur, an even bigger star in the juniors than Rejean Houle. Lafleur had amassed an unfathomable 233 goals in his 118 games for two years’ work in the Quebec Major Junior League before coming to the Canadiens.

  Dryden, who was stellar once again between the pipes, would actually sit out the 1973–74 season in a contract dispute with the team before returning.

  Heading into the off-season, Chicago desperately needed Magnuson’s leadership more than ever—it was clear the roster was evolving, with several of the team’s longtime workhorses going by the wayside.

  Among the outgoing was Pat Stapleton. No one would realize that Game 6 of the 1973 Stanley Cup Finals would be his last played in a Black Hawks uniform.

  6. New Bullies

  “In the NHL jungle, an enforcer learns that winning a battle does not necessarily mean winning the war, if only because the loser of one fight—if he has any gumption at all—is likely to come back the next time with all guns blazing. So it was with Magnuson on another night at Chicago Stadium.”

  —Dave Schultz

  A week after the Hawks fell to the Canadiens in the 1973 Stanley Cup Finals, Chicago drafted talented left wing Darcy Rota in the first round. Rota had posted remarkable scoring numbers with the Edmonton Oil Kings in the Juniors, and as a 20-year-old rookie he jumped right into NHL play in the following autumn. Keith Magnuson allowed Rota to stay with him at his condominium, since Maggie and Cliff Koroll had gone their separate ways after Cliff’s wedding.