Keith Magnuson

by Doug Feldmann

  By now, Magnuson was as seasoned as anyone in the league at all forms of physical tactics, and was not about to let anyone intimidate him, even in the hostile Philly environment. Before a faceoff in the Chicago zone, he and Schultz circled around each other with angry glares, as if they were a couple of stray dogs with a piece of meat sitting between them. Magnuson then took the initiative, readying himself with his patented “shoulder shrug” in loosening his arms before battle, and sprung upon Schultz, striking him with several right hands before the Flyer returned multiple strong blows himself. The Chicago defenseman stood his ground and gave some damage right back to him. In the end, Magnuson generally took a larger share of the beating as people reviewing the fight gave Schultz the edge in the “decision.” Later in the game, heavyweights Phil Russell and Don Saleski exchanged blows as well.

  “My double triumph [this particular fight and the one with Magnuson from the previous season] over so significant a foe as Magnuson was a substantial boost for both my ego and the Flyers’,” Schultz reflected years later. “And within a month, our club’s image had done an about-face. Kelly and Saleski and I had the NHL on the run.”

  It was the most evenly matched of all the Schultz-Magnuson scraps over the years, and also played a major role in Schultz soon acquiring his nickname, “the Hammer.”

  After the Sports Illustrated cover was printed in his rookie season with his tooth-missing grin, as well as the subsequent article in Time magazine about his role as a hockey policeman, it took a while for people following the sport to understand the other side of Magnuson. It was a side far removed from the blood-splattering, tenacious defenseman seen on the ice, and the one of great humanitarianism with empathy, as raised with Dale, Wayne, and Meridel by Joe and Birdie back in Saskatchewan. Only six days after the bloody Schultz fight on December 28, Magnuson had displayed his good nature by helping out the Pittsburgh Penguins’ promotional staff the night before the Hawks were scheduled to play in the city. Magnuson was in attendance as the Penguins played the Blues, and Keith was asked came down to the ice and take part in a between-periods contest. While more arrogant professional athletes might have considered such a request beneath them, Magnuson did so happily, and greeted the fans with his infectious smile and pleasant disposition.

  “He showed me something by going down and helping out,” one Penguins public relations person said afterward. “Too many athletes are too stuck up and think they are too good for something like this.”

  Schultz and the Flyers would return to Chicago in late February 1974, a month after the Stadium had hosted its first NHL All-Star Game since 1961. While another free-for-all was expected from Shero’s men, the Flyers instead displayed a lighter side, and the Hawks won 3–1, their seventh victory in a row.

  Before the game, Clarke and Philadelphia defenseman Ed Van Impe got into a playful punching match in the visitor’s locker room—while both happened to be naked. Clarke let fly with an open-handed slap that was harder than intended, and just as what happens in the schoolyard in such circumstances, the recipient became incensed and a real fight ensued. Van Impe then chased Clarke through the tunnels of the Stadium and out into the seating area—both still naked. As Van Impe scrambled over row after row of seats to get at Clarke (all while both tried not to damage critical body parts), Billy Reay happened to pass by.

  “How in the hell do you sons of bitches ever win a hockey game?” the Chicago coached yelled to them from a distance.

  But by the end of the year, the Hawks could not stop the rampaging Flyers, nor could anyone else. Chicago would actually set a club record during 1973–74 for the fewest losses in a season with 14 (as well as a team-record 23 ties), but Philadelphia ended the Hawks’ string of divisional titles with their own impressive totals of 50 wins and 112 points.

  After getting past coach Bob Pulford’s Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the playoffs in five games, Chicago succumbed to the Bruins in the semifinals in six—yet another hard-fought series. The third game against the Bruins was played on Esposito’s 31st birthday; and with four minutes left in the game, Magnuson once again encountered the new Boston bruiser Terry O’Reilly. Magnuson endured several punches from the eager youngster, but his aggressiveness nonetheless buoyed his mates to rally for a 4–3 overtime win for Chicago, and a 2–1 lead in the series at the time.

  “I didn’t do that to get things going necessarily,” Magnuson would say later in front of his locker at the Stadium. “I lost it [the fight], for sure. My record is good—three wins and a hundred losses. But if it helped, it helped.”

  Ultimately, the Bruins—while still putting up video-game-type scoring numbers behind Orr and Phil Esposito—were the final victim of the Flyers, as Philadelphia became the first expansion team to win the Stanley Cup. Orr continued his personal mastery of a certain piece of hardware among his other league awards.

  “A lot of people ask me if I’m bothered that Orr wins the Norris Trophy every year,” Bill White had said in a gracious tone, one also echoed by Magnuson. “But I’m not. He’s the best and he deserves it. I get my recognition in other ways.”

  As expected, Schultz and O’Reilly ultimately converged in an epic bout in the second game of the championship round, a game in which Schultz would set up Clarke’s winning goal in overtime as well, rebounding the Flyers from a loss in the series opener. “The fight and the goal not only gave us a win,” Schultz pointed out, “but also a psychological lift in the series. No longer were we afraid of the Bruins, as we proved by winning the next two games and taking a 3–1 lead in the Finals.”

  Among postseason laurels, Tony Esposito once again had a share in the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top goalie, this time splitting it with Flyers netminder Bernie Parent. The two men had been the unwavering workhorses between the pipes for their teams, playing in an astounding 70 and 73 games, respectively, while posting 10 and 12 shutouts as well. Behind Magnuson and his blue-line cohorts, the Hawks continued their grinding, defensive style that permitted scant scoring chances—a fact noticed by Angotti, who now had an opponent’s perspective in St. Louis.

  “You just can’t get behind that team,” Lou said of his former teammates. “They don’t make any mistakes on their own, so you don’t get any chances to catch up. If you try to open up, their defensemen handle the puck so well that they’ll trap you and pretty soon you’re even farther behind. But that’s the benefit of having some defensemen who’ve played together for two or three years. They know what they’re doing.”

  One of those defensemen who had been a Black Hawk for so long, however, was now over in the WHA. Pat Stapleton’s stellar play continued, and he was named the top defenseman in his first year in the new league.

  Schultz, meanwhile, proceeded to obliterate Magnuson’s three-year-old regular season NHL record for penalty minutes of 291 with 348 of his own. The Flyers showed no fear of placing themselves in shorthanded situations, even during the playoffs; if anything, Schultz and his teammates had actually upped their aggression during the 1974 postseason. Schultz, including his fight in the Finals with O’Reilly, added a playoff-record 139 penalty minutes throughout Philadelphia’s 17 postseason games in ’74, while the imposing defenseman Dupont logged 67 of his own. (By comparison, Magnuson’s 63 penalty minutes in the 1971 playoffs was a Hawks team record at the time.)

  With the exceptions of Eric Nesterenko and third-pair defenseman Darryl Maggs, Stapleton would not be able to raid the Hawks roster of any more significant players. Bill Wirtz re-signed Magnuson and Koroll, both established pillars of the team, to multiyear contracts in the off-season of 1974 while drafting Alain Daigle, a forward who posted remarkable scoring figures in the Juniors and who would become one of the team’s first French Canadian players in the modern era.

  Still, the aging of other veterans necessitated the further development of other younger players such as Marks (moved permanently to left wing), other first-round draft pi
cks Rota and Grant Mulvey at forward, as well as Russell and Dick Redmond on defense. It remained to be seen if the evolving roster would produce the same high-caliber teams as in past years, but Billy Reay, for one, was confident.

  “Overall, this is the most solid team we’ve had here in the last eight seasons,” he would say in September 1974. “I don’t believe we’ve ever been this deep in good defensemen.”

  Going into the 1974–75 season, Reay needed only 37 wins to catch Toe Blake (at 500) for second place on the all-time coaching list behind Dick Irvin’s 692.

  The O’Reilly fight in the 1974 playoffs was yet another in which Magnuson stood his ground bravely, took on the other team’s toughest opponent, and absorbed tremendous punishment. The cumulative effect of Magnuson’s bouts were admittedly starting to wear on him, as such blows, as well as lingering knee problems and new injuries, had limited him to only 57 games in 1973–74. Even so, he took the aches and pains in stride—and always with a sense of humor.

  “Long ago I gave up counting the stitches above my own neck when I reached 250,” he had noted a year earlier.

  As with many hockey players, Keith also had the misfortune of losing some of his teeth—particularly before the advent of modern protective and corrective devices. As a result, Magnuson wore a plate in his mouth and occasionally asked equipment manager Lou Varga for a pair of pliers so that he could straighten them himself. When the plate would crack, Magnuson would attempt a temporary repair with household cement—a solution, he said, that would last only a month or two, and which of course came with a nasty taste.

  “Almost all hockey players have missing teeth and wear plates off the ice,” Magnuson explained. “Occasionally the teeth will loosen and start to flop around. Dentists can handle this, of course, but they cost money. Besides, just getting to a dentist in the middle of a season is a task all its own.”

  Once, Magnuson recalled being the featured guest at a dinner banquet in Chicago, where he was to give a short speech. At the meal before his talk, Keith had bitten into a dinner roll and suddenly, one of his loose teeth popped out and started bouncing across the floor. Scrambling with his hands for a moment under the table, he was able to retrieve it without anyone noticing and placed it in his pocket. Later, at the microphone, he revealed to the audience and restaurant staff what had happened, saying good-naturedly to the servers that he remembered having “tangled with a lot of noted pugilists, but never having been really nailed until meeting one of their buns.”

  Varga, like most everyone, had become very fond of Magnuson and was happy to indulge whatever he needed—be it pliers for his dentures or some other requirement. As another example of Magnuson’s unique equipment needs, he asked Varga to acquire specially made skates for him in order to ensure a proper feel on the ice. Keith wore a size 11 shoe, but his left foot was larger than his right. Magnuson also admitted that he was the only Hawks player not to wear socks while playing, as he preferred the natural feel of the boot against his bare feet. Keith was also very particular about the hour-by-hour condition of his skates, asking Varga to sharpen them multiple times a day and usually in between periods of games as well. It was certainly a long way from Magnuson’s boyhood days in Wadena and Saskatoon when, because of the expense, his father would permit him to have his skates sharpened only once a year.

  Hockey gloves were yet another example of Magnuson carefully crafting the gear to his liking. Varga would cringe whenever Magnuson would take a knife or scissors and cut out the palms of a brand-new pair that the manager had just taken out of the box. Just as with his sockless skates, he believed it gave him a more natural feel for the stick—and it also did not hurt in helping him to grab the jersey of an opponent.

  * * *

  Such obsessions with fine-tuning his hockey gear and his game drove Magnuson’s life, as looking for advantages on the ice was his single-minded objective each day. He had not seriously considered any long-term personal relationships to this point. Jarrett, his partner on defense, had gotten married at age 18 and already had five kids when he came to play for the Hawks. Thus, Magnuson would turn to Jarrett for “life advice,” such as knowing the right time to win over the right gal. “Don’t worry—you’ll find her,” Jarrett would always tell him. “You’ll know when the time comes.”

  When Magnuson first started with the Black Hawks, he was immediately proactive and organized about whom he permitted into his personal life. “If you’re a pro athlete,” he said in a magazine interview in 1971, “you’ve got to find a really great girl if you’re going to get married. She’s got to understand that you’re always away from home. It isn’t easy.”

  Keith would indeed find one.

  Magnuson, like Koroll, Mikita, and many other players, spent a good deal of his free time in the summer playing golf. One of his favorite courses was the Park Ridge Country Club in suburban Chicago. Part of his preference for the location was the lovely lady working in the course’s pro shop, Cynthia White. For her daily reliability, she simply became known around the club as “Pro Shop Cindy,” and even answered the phone as such.

  It was at a celebrity tournament at Park Ridge in 1974 where Keith first saw Cindy. He was stunned by her beauty, and asked her out on a date, right there on the spot. While flattered, Cindy—at the time unaware of Magnuson’s celebrity—politely mentioned that she already had a boyfriend but was appreciative of the gesture. Later that day, Cindy mentioned to her twin brother, John, what had transpired earlier in the afternoon, and he in turn gave Cindy a little more background on her red-headed suitor. Cindy was still relatively unimpressed, however, and finished her summer at the pro shop before heading back to her studies at the University of Missouri that autumn.

  For his part, Magnuson—displaying the same dogged persistence that constituted his play on the ice—was undaunted.

  “I remember Maggie phoned me,” Koroll said of their very next conversation after Keith had encountered Cindy, “and told me he met this beautiful lady and he was going to marry her. The second sentence he said: ‘But she won’t go out with me.’”

  With Cindy in Columbia, Missouri, Magnuson took it upon himself to get to know her mother, Marjorie, back in Chicago, by phone. By the time Cindy had come home for Christmas break, Magnuson had made such an impression on Mrs. White that she convinced her daughter to give him a one-date tryout.

  “That shows you the character and perseverance Maggie had,” Koroll said. “He was bound and determined to marry Cindy, and he did.”

  The wedding took place less than seven months later, and a year later, they welcomed their son, Kevin, to the world, followed by their daughter, Molly, in 1979.

  “I’ve been lucky,” Keith would say often. “Cindy is a great girl.”

  * * *

  Just as 1974–75 looked to be a rebuilding year for the Hawks, the season would have a new look for the league as well, as it split itself into two new conferences of two divisions each. Chicago was placed in the Smythe Division of the Clarence Campbell Conference (which also included the Patrick Division with Philadelphia, Atlanta, and the New York teams), and just as with their move to the old Western Division in 1970, many felt it would be one which the Hawks would easily dominate. Joining the Hawks in the Smythe would be St. Louis, Minnesota, and Vancouver—all mediocre teams, at best, at the time—as well as another expansion team, the Kansas City Scouts. Another first-year team, the Washington Capitals, would compete in the Norris Division of the Prince of Wales Conference, which also included the Adams Division.

  Magnuson began the year with his usual determination, starting in the exhibition season. In a game against Toronto on September 29 at the Stadium, he followed Esposito in leading the team out onto the ice as usual, sprinting laps around the Hawks’ half of the rink before all of his teammates had even joined him. Shortly after the first drop of the puck, he was challenged by a 20-year-old Toronto rookie named Dave Williams, who had
acquired the nickname of “Tiger” back in his boyhood home of Saskatchewan, when he was five years old. Williams—in his very first week of NHL action—had gone after Larry Carriere of the Sabres in Buffalo the night before and had gained a reputation as a fighter in Juniors before coming into the league.

  But there were lessons to be learned about the top level of play, and Magnuson rang the school bell quickly. As the two squared off, Keith knocked Williams’ helmet off, clutched his jersey with his palm-less gloves, and slammed him down to the ice. The blitzkrieg strike of bombs that followed was “by far the best start of Magnuson’s six-year fistic career,” Verdi said. While Williams later complained to have been caught off guard. “I was still talking when they started punching,” Williams said, in making it sound as if Magnuson was receiving help from other Hawks players. He then referred to himself in the third person, as if his status was already legendary. “The Tiger is bruised but untamed,” Williams happily continued. “There will be other nights and other fights. Tonight, I talked when I should have socked.” Later that evening, Russell also picked apart Toronto’s main scoring threat, Darryl Sittler, in another fight that also lasted only mere seconds.

  Indeed, there would be other nights and other fights for Williams. He would go on to an NHL career that would last nearly 15 years, through 1988, during which he would amass 3,966 minutes in penalties —the most in league history.

  Unfortunately, any early momentum for the Hawks would not last. After a solid start to the season in which Chicago won six of its first nine games, the team fell into a pattern of lethargy and losing streaks, having to battle with other less-established teams in the new Smythe Division simply to attain a playoff berth. As part of their early-season inconsistency, the Hawks also had the ignominious distinction of being the first team to ever lose to the expansion Capitals, on October 17. The Washington team was on its way to completing the single-worst season in league history, finishing the 1974–75 schedule by managing only eight wins and five ties against 67 losses.