Cindy was starting to notice the difference in him as well. “She came to recognize and accept the moods that infected her husband after any defeat,” Myslenski continued. “But even this didn’t prepare her for the extremes he experienced as coach.”
By the end of January 1982, the Hawks were mired in a devastating 10-game winless streak—their longest since December 1976, the point at which Reay was dismissed. Things came to a head after a 5–2 loss to Toronto at the Stadium on January 31, and Pulford was directed by Bill Wirtz to once again take the position behind the bench for a temporary six-game stint as the interim head coach (recently Pulford, from the press box, had been relaying strategic recommendations during games down to Magnuson and Koroll via walkie-talkie radio).
Three nights later, Mulvey set a Hawks record with five goals in one game against St. Louis. Magnuson returned to the head coaching spot for a 4–1 loss to Vancouver at the Stadium on February 15, after which he resigned from the job for good—a move which was called a “firing” in the press, but which was refuted by Pulford.
“Pully,” Keith once told Pulford, “if you want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to fire me. I’m not going to quit. I’m never going to quit.”
Pulford held no hard feelings, and thought no less of the man. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Pulford asserted after the Vancouver game. “I am extremely proud of this man. He’s not quitting; he’s doing what he thinks he has to do for the good of the team. I hope he will always consider me his friend.”
Magnuson truly was at peace with the decision; he had done all he could do. “It was killing me,” Magnuson would admit years later about that time of his life. “My family was too young. Hockey is worth a lot to me, but it’s not worth my family.”
“Keith always said he loved his wife, Cindy, more than hockey,” Koroll once said, “but knowing how much he loved hockey, he must have really loved Cindy a great deal.”
Indeed, family was the only thing more important to Keith Magnuson than hockey.
Koroll, meanwhile, lasted several more years as an assistant, and then was assigned to coach the Hawks’ minor league team in Milwaukee for part of a season until Orval Tessier (who succeeded Pulford) was fired in 1985. (Tessier, like Johnston, was promoted to the job from New Brunswick.) Early on as head coach, Koroll discovered that coaching was more difficult than playing—the same revelation that Magnuson had encountered.
“The player worries about himself,” Cliff explained. “The coach has 22 headaches [players on the roster]. The player makes sure he gets himself to the airport. The coach has to worry about 22 people getting to the airport. The player has to make sure he’s ready to play. The coach has to make sure 22 players are ready to play. Believe me, I see less of my family now than I did as a player.”
Magnuson was not alone in his departure from the job in 1982; nearly half of the teams in the league during the 1981–82 NHL season (10 out of 21) lost their head coach due to resignation, dismissal, or retirement.
* * *
With hockey now behind him, Magnuson could now focus on his family, his business plans, and his philanthropic pursuits. “Maggie was someone you would trust with anything,” said Paul Schrage, a senior executive vice-president with McDonald’s whom Magnuson helped to get 7-Up served in the restaurant’s chain.
As Keith made a name for himself in the business world, other opportunities came to the fore. In 1984, Magnuson left 7-Up and joined Bill O’Rourke at Coca-Cola’s offices in the north Chicago suburb of Niles, Illinois. “O’Rourke sensed that changes were about to occur at 7-Up,” Kevin Magnuson said. “Because my dad was loyal to a fault, he really struggled with making the move and leaving the company that gave him his start.”
In the same year, Magnuson was elected to the Chicago Sports Hall of Fame, followed six years later by a spot in the City of Saskatoon Hall of Fame. And by 1998, Magnuson would rise to become vice-president of sales for Coca-Cola, looking every bit the part and taking great care in his appearance (“He owns just one pair of jeans,” a Chicago writer was apparently told by Magnuson, “and will never wear them in public”).
His success was little surprise to anyone; his total commitment to his new profession reminiscent of his circular skating sprints around the Chicago Stadium ice that set an example for everyone else. “I’m up by 5:30 every morning and put in an 8-to-10 hour workday,” Maggie said of his job at Coca-Cola. “I believe the principles that apply to being successful in business are the same as they were in my hockey career.” His son, Kevin, agreed with him. “My dad was so good at relating to every customer—from the stock boys in grocery stores to the CEOs. They all loved his down-to-earth mentality and passion for the business. His work ethic from the ice translated very well to the business world, and people really respected him for that.”
As an example of Magnuson’s combination of persistence and friendliness in the business world, Jim Wiste spoke of a time when they were on the golf course and a sales opportunity presented itself. When Maggie, Wiste, and the rest of the foursome had finished their 18 holes, they walked over to the beverage cart for a drink.
“I’ll have a Coke,” Magnuson told the server.
“We don’t have Coke—we have other products,” the server replied.
“Don’t have Coke, eh? Well, here’s my card. You have your boss call me.”
Schrage was not surprised upon hearing this story. “He was always a gentleman,” Schrage said, “but in business, he was also as aggressive and as forceful as he was on the ice. Keith was very persistent in getting a deal completed.”
Schrage, who also participated in many charity golf outings with Magnuson, was always impressed with how Keith handled himself with control on the links. If someone in a foursome tried to shave a stroke off a hole or not permit Magnuson to take a “gimmee” putt when Keith had permitted the person to do the same on a previous hole, Keith would just shrug it off, as if it did not bother him.
In displaying success off the ice, it seemed that Magnuson’s breadth as a person was finally being fully revealed to the public, and he demonstrated that breadth in many ways. “When I drive to practice in the morning,” he had said back in 1977, while still playing, “if I can let somebody in ahead of me from another lane of traffic, that really makes me feel good. Maybe that person will feel better, and maybe he’ll do it for somebody else up ahead.”
To many who were previously unaware, his work with numerous charities around the Chicago area was coming to light for the first time. These pursuits did not slow down, despite his accelerated workload in the corporate world—pursuits which included visiting hospitals on a regular basis and helping to raise money for Mikita’s hockey camp for deaf children. “People are sometimes surprised how even-tempered and relaxed I am off the ice,” Magnuson revealed.
Those within the Hawks organization, however, had always known it. “I was a rookie broadcaster in 1980 [the same year as Magnuson’s rookie year as a head coach],” Pat Foley said. “The timing of my arrival and Maggie’s arrival to the Hawks was fortunate for me. He was someone I idolized as a kid [growing up in Glenview, Illinois].” Magnuson and Koroll, it turned out, would become personal guides for Foley around the league. “They helped me with travel issues,” Foley continued. “Back in those days, we flew commercial flights. But Maggie and Cliff always made sure they saved a seat for me next to them. We would play gin, and they would win all of my meal money—‘Circle around again,’ they would tell the pilot, so they could take even more of it. But I gladly parted with it. They took care of me.”
Magnuson also found time to spend with good friends. One day, Maggie appeared in the stands at a practice session with Koroll, Mikita, and Dale Tallon to watch a team that John Marks was coaching in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Waiting patiently for the workout to end and for Marks to emerge from his office, the trio then swept upon him and “abducted” their former Hawks teammat
e, pulling him into a car and driving him all the way to Canada to participate in yet another charity golf tournament. “He had no clothes, no golf clubs, or a chance to call home,” Harvey Wittenberg recounted about Marks’ dilemma. “He had fun and didn’t file kidnapping charges.” Added Marks about the story, “I came back home with three bucks in my pocket.”
It was representative of Keith’s inextinguishable sense of humor. On another such road trip a few years earlier, Magnuson had gone on a hunting expedition in Wisconsin with Tallon, Russell, Jim Harrison, and some others. The group’s guide had a bird dog named Maggie, and when one of the men fired on some game, the guide yelled, “Maggie, go get it!”—at which point Magnuson darted off into the field ahead of the dog.
Most of all, Magnuson relished the time he could now spend with Cindy, Kevin, and Molly—time which had been limited in the midst of an NHL career. By 1993, Kevin was well on his way to crafting his own career in hockey, helping to lead Lake Forest High School in the Illinois state playoffs. “He’s a better playmaker than I was at his age,” Kevin’s proud father said. “He has more offensive ability. He’s also defensive-minded, blocks shots, and will stand up for himself and teammates. In high school and college you can only take that so far or you’re out of the game [for fighting]. But defending the net you’ve got to take the body. I stress that with Kevin.”
Kevin went on to become a defenseman for the University of Michigan where, in 1998, he played on a team that took home an NCAA title—just as his dad had done for Denver. “I had told him when he was a youngster that the greatest thing you can do is be on a hockey scholarship and win an NCAA championship,” Keith had said. “As I was hugging him after the game, he said, ‘Dad, we did it.’”
Molly took interest in another sport while in high school. “She can skate very well,” Keith said, “but she’s a good tennis player.” Kevin went further in claiming that his sister was the best athlete in the family.
Tirelessly working on behalf of others, yet another of Magnuson’s post-hockey passions would be to assist the ranks of the NHL’s retired players, helping to secure more stable futures for those who played the game. It was a project that culminated in his founding and presidency of the Blackhawks’ Alumni Association, with help from Koroll and Hawks front office man Jack Fitzsimmons. Tallon also assisted in organizing the luncheons for the Association. “When Maggie was at the microphone at the luncheon,” Tallon said, “he wanted to thank everyone in the room personally. Everyone knew that the luncheon would then go from an hour to three and a half hours. But everyone loved Maggie, so nobody would mind.”
Bill Wirtz was greatly in favor of the idea, and supported Magnuson as he got the association going. There was a closeness between Wirtz and Maggie that was unusual for an executive and a player during the era, a kinship that went beyond the business of hockey. While derisively nicknamed “Dollar Bill” for his alleged penny-pinching ways, there was a generous side to Wirtz that most people never saw.
“Everybody who has ever needed any help, he has always been there,” said Tallon. “He has taken the criticism and passed on the praise.” Denis Savard agreed, and cited a specific personal example. “When I was 19 years, old, I ran out of money,” Savard reflected upon his first year with the Hawks. “I called Mr. Wirtz up and said, ‘I need money. I gave money to my parents and I bought a house and I ran out of money.’ I said, “I need $10,000,’ and I said, ‘You can take it off my check.’ Guess what? He never took it off.”
When the Ralston-Purina Company sold the St. Louis Blues (taking with it the city arena’s name, the Checkerdome), Wirtz went door-to-door to the large businesses in downtown St. Louis, looking for a new benefactor for the club. In later years when Chicago Stadium was to be replaced, Wirtz wanted to make certain that the transition did not occur at taxpayer expense. “Bill Wirtz was much more than a man who paid men with sticks to shoot pucks,” wrote Mike Downey of the Tribune upon Wirtz’s death in 2007. “He was a humanitarian who gave away millions to charity without grabbing credit for it.”
Magnuson lost his father in October 1996; Joe Magnuson passed away back in Saskatoon. With the memories and lessons of his mom and dad still firmly implanted in his mind, Keith returned to Chicago to dedicate himself to his family and work at an even higher level—which many thought for him was not possible, as he already set the standard.
“Winning isn’t everything,” Magnuson had reminded himself and others. “What’s everything is whether or not you give 100 percent.”
9. “I Probably Won More than I Lost”
“Maybe it’s because hockey players were forced to become men quicker in Canada, but they are a breed apart from other professional athletes. They have none of the pretense of the American jock who gets pampered with a four-year scholarship to the University of Alabama. The hockey players talk better, tell a better story, are more fun than the other athletes. The hockey players don’t have the formal education, maybe, but they are more street smart than the others. And, I suppose, more genuine.”
—George Plimpton
On December 14, 2003, Keith Magnuson was preparing to head to the Toronto area for the funeral of former NHL player Keith McCreary—who, like Magnuson, had been a past president of the league’s alumni association. During Magnuson’s tenure in the position, he was instrumental in setting up a trust fund for disabled players, and saw to it that anyone needing assistance got the help he needed. Just before going to O’Hare Airport, Maggie had made a quick stop north of Chicago in Zion, Illinois, to help that community raise money for a new ice rink for its children—just as he had done for other towns during the past several years.
“He was just marvelous,” organizer of the event and Magnuson’s friend Bob Neal said in describing the scene in Zion that was awash in smiling faces, young and old. “He just loved those kids. I told him he missed his calling, [that] he should have been working with kids every day.”
The next afternoon, Magnuson found himself in Bolton, Ontario, for McCreary’s service. Afterward, a reception for the guests was held nearby at the Glen Eagle Golf Club. Driving Magnuson to the proceedings in a rented Chrysler Intrepid was 44-year-old Rob Ramage, 12 years younger than Magnuson and himself a retired NHL player. Ramage was also an officer with the alumni association, and had been working as a financial advisor in St. Louis, where he had spent six seasons in the mid-1980s with the Blues. Ramage’s first season in the NHL had been Magnuson’s last, the 1979–80 campaign, with the old Colorado Rockies, an organization that had made Ramage the first overall pick in the draft after he had played his rookie professional season in the final season of the WHA.
Like Magnuson, Ramage was a tough, hard-driving defenseman who captained his team, but Ramage also displayed a larger array of offensive skills than most defensemen who had entered the league for some time. After his successful start in the WHA, Ramage became a four-time All-Star in the NHL. In 1988, six weeks after his final All-Star Game, he was traded from the Blues to the Calgary Flames as part of the deal that brought Bobby Hull’s son Brett to St. Louis. The following spring, Ramage would be part of a Stanley Cup winner in Calgary, and he hoisted another Cup, with the Canadiens in 1993, before retiring from the game.
Around 4:30 pm local time, Ramage and Magnuson left the reception in Bolton and headed back to the NHL Alumni Association headquarters near the Toronto airport. At approximately 5:00, Ramage approached a curve on Rutherford Road in the community of Woodbridge and lost control of the vehicle. Attempting to straighten the wheel, he clipped the bumper of a small car that was traveling ahead of them, causing Ramage to lose control once again. The Intrepid veered across the center line and struck an approaching sport-utility vehicle driven by a local woman named Michelle Pacheco.
Rushing to the scene to assist were Brian and Nancy McGran, who had been traveling behind Pacheco. They found Ramage unconscious, with his head at rest on the steering wheel. He would survive hi
s injuries.
Hurrying over to the passenger side, they checked for Magnuson’s pulse but found none. Paramedics soon arrived, and Magnuson was pronounced dead at the scene from head and chest injuries.
* * *
As night fell on the Chicago area on December 15, Bill Wirtz, Bob Pulford, and Dale Tallon made their way through the quiet north suburban towns to the Magnuson home in Lake Forest, arriving at the front step at 10:30 pm. With courage coming from their shared love of Maggie and support from the rest of the Hawks family, they informed Cindy and Molly of the horrible news. Other Magnuson family members, meanwhile, were gathering in Denver to inform Kevin, who was tracing his father’s footsteps at DU in his first year of law school there. Tallon, sadly, had just missed seeing Keith the night before the crash; staying in the Toronto area to scout some games in the Juniors, Tallon had already gone to bed when Magnuson checked into the same hotel. Magnuson phoned Tallon and asked to meet him in the lobby for a chat. “I said I had to get up to catch a flight,” Tallon recalled. “Regrettably, I never went down to see him.”
Stan Mikita, several states away in Florida at the time, was awoken at 3:00 am with a heart-wrenching ring of the telephone. “Peter Marsh phoned in the middle of the morning and told me Keith had been in a car accident in Canada,” Mikita said. “Then Cliff [Koroll] called, bawling. It was terrible. Maggie was such a prince. I was crushed.”
Koroll immediately went to the Magnusons’ home to comfort the family, staying until 3:30 the next morning. He went back to his home at that point, slept for a couple of hours, and then returned with Tallon to help with the funeral arrangements—all of the costs of which would be covered by Bill Wirtz.
Keith Magnuson Page 23