“For God’s sake, Henderson, can’t you stay on the ice?” Abel hollered at me. I didn’t see the ice again, so my big weekend NHL debut saw me play maybe twenty seconds and take nine minutes in penalties in two games. How is that for making an impact?
I wanted to play in the NHL very badly, but after that experience and the following year during my first NHL camp, I realized I had a lot of things to work on before I would be ready for full-time duty. There was a huge difference between junior A and the NHL, but at least I had gotten a taste of what it was like.
During my first NHL training camp with the Detroit Red Wings in September 1963, it was clear to me I still didn’t have enough experience to play in the NHL. It was only in my last two seasons of junior A that I had really gotten the chance to play a lot. To make the leap to the NHL was really more than I could handle at that time. Detroit had a lot of young and upcoming players at that camp – guys like Pit Martin, Larry Jeffrey, Lowell MacDonald, and Bob Wall. Even though I had a good camp and was probably the fastest skater there, I was sent down to Pittsburgh. I actually asked them if I could go to the American Hockey League, if you can believe that. They also felt it would be beneficial for me, as I had a lot of things I needed to work on and I was still very young. I needed to get some real playing time with the pros, and it was where I felt – and the Red Wings felt – I should be. I had to get stronger and play smarter to earn my way onto a full-time roster in the NHL.
The American Hockey League was a terrific place to learn and play the game. I can’t say enough about my time there. The AHL was a very competitive league. In a six-team NHL, there were only jobs for about sixty-five forwards, so you know there were a lot of really good players in the AHL. Some of them were career minor leaguers, some of them were just a step away from the NHL, and the competition for jobs and high quality of play really helped me develop into a better player.
We had a good team in Pittsburgh, and a mostly older one – Pit Martin and I were the only young guys. Vic Stasiuk, who had played with Chicago, Boston, and Detroit for many years and been a member of the Bruins’ famous Uke Line with Jerry Toppazini and Bronco Horvath, was the playing coach, and he played me a lot, in all situations, which really helped me to improve. My linemates certainly helped me also. Winger Yves Locas led the AHL that year with forty goals and my centre, Art Stratton, had a league-best sixty-five assists.
The players were great, and they were a tight-knit group. Many of them knew they would never play in the NHL, so they just enjoyed their time in a league with long bus drives and long hours socializing after the game.
Veteran players like Hank Ciesla, Pete Geogan, Lou Marcon, Adam Keller, Claude Laforge, Yves Locas, and Art Stratton were such a great help to a young aspiring – but very green – kid like myself. We’d kill time on the road-trip bus listening to players like our wily defenceman, Warren Godfrey, who always had a great story to tell.
The league was full of characters like Godfrey and also full of hard-nosed guys like Don Cherry and Fred Glover. Really solid players like Bep Guidolin, Al Arbour, Willie Marshall, and Bill Sweeney also played in the league. And our general manager in Pittsburgh, Baz Bastien, was always in for a practical joke or two.
Once while we were having a bite to eat and a few beers after the game, I looked over at Baz’s plate and saw an eye staring up at me, giving me quite a shock. Bastien had a glass eye, which I hadn’t known – but of course every player around me was aware of the GM’S fake eye. You have to pull one over on the rookie, I guess, and they sure caught me that time!
The time in the AHL made me much more prepared for the NHL than I would have been without it, so I am grateful to all the veteran players and coaches who helped a young kid adjust to the huge jump from junior to professional hockey.
Life was pretty good in Pittsburgh, and I really enjoyed playing there. The city was a nice place, it was clean, and the people were good, hard-working folks. Eleanor and I rented an apartment and met an older couple named the Dabneys, who were really friendly and helped us adjust to life in a new city. The players in the AHL were older and accepting of us, and the league had some great hockey cities, like Hershey and Rochester. The Civic Arena, also known as the Igloo because of its shape, had just been built, so we had a brand-new place to play in. That arena was better than several of the NHL rinks at the time, and we had all the amenities that a big-league team would have.
I would have been happy to stay there all year. I was getting a lot of ice time and it was a positive situation for me. I was called up briefly in November due to some injuries in Detroit, but I really wanted to spend Christmastime in Pittsburgh, since Eleanor and our first daughter, Heather, were there. I didn’t want to be apart from them at that time of year. They agreed, but shortly afterwards I was called up to the NHL for good. After thirty-eight games, ten goals, and twenty-four points, my American Hockey League days were over.
CHAPTER THREE
I WISH I COULD SAY THAT IT WAS A SEAMLESS transition to the NHL for me. But it wasn’t. In the American Hockey League, if you asked for help, you’d get it. It was a good place for a young player to ask questions and learn all about the game. In the NHL, there was no one really helping you. For a kid playing in the league at that time, it was a little intimidating. It was very frustrating in a lot of ways, actually.
Being on the buses for week-long road trips in the minors allowed you to bond with your teammates – and the coaching staff, for that matter. In Detroit, both Eleanor and I weren’t really treated that well by many of the other players or their wives. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but it’s true. Sure, it was exciting to be playing in the bigs, but they really made you feel like an outcast until you proved you belonged. It was a real insiders’ club, and I wasn’t an insider yet. It was not easy to make the NHL in those days, and it was just as tough – if not tougher – to stay there. With only six teams, you were always looking over your shoulder, especially when you first started out. You were always a few bad games away from a demotion to the minors and somebody else taking your job away from you.
NHL general managers would take advantage of that competition too, to keep you on your toes and to keep salaries down. When the league expanded to twelve teams, things started to change big-time on that front, but until then management had players just where they wanted them, and the players knew that.
Bruce MacGregor was a good friend to both of us, though. He and his wife, Audrey, were great to Eleanor and me when we were first coming into the league. We became fast friends and by our second year in Detroit even decided to live across the river in Windsor, where the MacGregors resided.
You had to watch out when you were on the ice too, as nobody on the other teams was going to make it easy for you. I had only been in the National Hockey League for a couple of weeks when we headed to Boston for a game against the Bruins. I had been working on a breakaway play with Doug Barkley in practice, and it had worked pretty well, so I was anxious to try it in a game.
The play was pretty simple and it took advantage of my speed. He’d fire a pass up through centre ice to me and I’d streak off the wing and quickly get behind the defence, then go right in on goal on a breakaway. I hadn’t scored a goal up until that point, so Barkley told me he’d look for me when we were on the ice together to try the play.
Well, we were in Boston and I felt the time was right to give the play a try. I noticed that the Bruins had called up some old guy from the minors and teamed him with Leo Boivin, a solid NHL defenceman who was also getting up there in years by that point.
“Look at those two old farts out there,” I said to Barkley. “Have an eye out for me out there coming up the centre. I’m sure it’ll work against them.”
Nothing special happened in the first period, and in the second period, Barkley saw me on the ice with Boivin and this other guy. He threw a perfect pass right up the centre to me and I took off, head down, to quickly get behind them for the breakaway.
Bang! I
had no time to react as Boivin crunched me – and knocked me as cold as a mackerel! I mean, he really clocked me. They brought out the stretcher and wheeled me off, the whole deal.
They used to call Leo Boivin the fire hydrant, as he was just a stocky, hard-hitting defenceman with a solid but short build. But I’d thought he might be too old by now, and maybe too slow, to be able to catch me. I’d thought wrong.
I came to in the dressing room and our trainer, Lefty Wilson, had some ammonia packs under my nose, trying to revive me. He looked at me and asked me if I knew what day it was.
“I could care less what day it is,” I replied (or at least that’s what I was told I said – I can’t really remember). “Just tell me, am I still alive?”
It must have taken me four days to get over that hit. I felt it with every fibre of my body. He just caught me with my head down and hit me the way only Leo Boivin could in his prime.
But you know, I learned a lesson from that hit. I never wound up getting hit that hard again because I learned to keep my head up and be cognizant of who was on the ice at all times. I learned a valuable lesson and applied it – and I also realized that I had better not underestimate an older player ever again, especially a hard hitter like Boivin. Hockey players get hit – it’s just a part of the game, and I took a lot of them over the years – but that Boivin hit just about killed me!
It was a good clean hit, though – players back then had respect for each other.
Another thing about Boston: I had the opportunity to play in a lot of great arenas that held a lot of great memories. But some of those great old arenas didn’t exactly have the best amenities. The worst place to play for an opposing player? That’s an easy question to answer: Boston Garden.
That place was just a joke. You’d walk into the dressing room and there’d be a wooden bench that had to have been an original piece of furniture from when they had opened the place. There was a nail hammered into the wall – that was where you were supposed to hang your clothes.
The floor was solid cement, rock hard. And it wasn’t a very clean floor either, for that matter. The conditions really were atrocious. Then you’d get out to the ice and to the players’ benches and you’d see more benches that must have been there since the place had opened. There would be jackknife marks in the benches too, with “So and so was here” carved right into them! It was unbelievable.
Chicago wasn’t much better, and the old Stadium had those stairs you had to climb up and down, as if you were going into a dungeon. Yes, those old buildings had lots of charm and were great for the fans and atmosphere, but they were hardly great places for visiting teams to play in. When I see some of the beautiful new arenas in the NHL these days and their luxurious dressing rooms, I wonder what today’s players would think about the dressing room the visitors “enjoyed” in the old Boston Garden.
I was used primarily as a penalty killer in that first season, getting the odd shift here and there. I had three goals and three assists in thirty-two games and got to appear in fourteen playoff games, adding another two goals and three assists.
After a fourth-place finish in the regular season, we advanced to the playoffs and stunned Chicago in seven games to go on to the Stanley Cup finals against the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was a great thing to happen to me in my first NHL season. I was excited as I had great bonuses in my contract for making the playoffs and for winning each series, so it was great on a couple of fronts.
We led that final series 3–2, with game six at the Detroit Olympia, with us having a chance to close it out at home. We trailed 1–0 before I scored on a breakaway against Johnny Bower early in the second period to tie it 1–1, by far the biggest goal in my brief NHL career.
Bobby Baun would eventually score the game-winning goal in overtime – one of hockey’s great goals since he scored it playing on a broken leg – to tie the series. Toronto then blanked us 4–0 at Maple Leaf Gardens to win the Cup, leaving me in tears. We were just one win away from being able to win a Cup in my rookie year, and we had two chances to get that win!
We had great players on that team, including the great Terry Sawchuk. He was the best goalie of his era, in my mind, and boy was he tough to beat in big games. Bill Gadsby was also terrific, standing up at the blue line and delivering crushing hits to anybody who tried to get in his way. Baun’s overtime winner in game six deflected off his stick, however, and it cost him his best chance to win a Stanley Cup. He played for twenty seasons, with Chicago, Detroit, and New York, and he never won a Cup.
Despite the frustrations, it was an exciting period in my life, there is no disputing that. I was playing in the NHL and making some good money. In the playoffs that first year, I drove into the Olympia parking lot in a 1954 Dodge that cost me all of $200! I’ll never forget someone yelling at me, “Hey, Henderson! Why don’t you just get a horse and buggy?” So of course, I had to get a new car. I bought a 1964 Pontiac Parisienne two-door hardtop, a beautiful car back then, for $3,267. I still have the receipt from that car as a keepsake!
In my second year, 1964–65, I was playing on the fourth line, behind the great Gordie Howe as well as Bruce MacGregor and Floyd Smith. I was still not getting a lot of ice time, but at least I was starting to be accepted as a member of the team because it was clear I was there to stay. I got into all seventy games, picking up eight goals and thirteen assists for twenty-one points and killing penalties, and I’d learned to contribute defensively when called upon.
In addition to the wingers who were ahead of me on the depth chart, we had terrific players and seven future Hall of Famers, like Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio, Norm Ullman, Gordie Howe, Bill Gadsby, Terry Sawchuk, and Marcel Pronovost. There were a lot of great players on that team, but none greater than Howe, of course. There was nobody tougher to play against than Gordie, who could really dish out the punishment, as everybody in hockey knows. I played with him and against him and saw what a fierce competitor he could be.
Lindsay was another all-time great, to be sure. He had been retired for four years after leaving the Chicago Blackhawks when he rejoined us that season. He was forty years old by then and was 170 pounds at the most, but he was still as hard-nosed as ever, picking up 173 minutes in penalties and playing the same rugged style he did in helping Detroit win four Stanley Cups in the 1950s.
Ullman and Delvecchio were top-notch stars, of course, and our acrobatic goalie Roger Crozier was rookie of the year and first-team all-star. Crozier was terrific that first season and became known for his spectacular saves while having some good years in Detroit. We finished first that year with eighty-seven points, but we were upset in the first round of the playoffs by Bobby Hull and Chicago in seven tough games.
The 1965–66 season was a breakthrough year for me, really. After an injury to Ron Murphy, I was moved to left wing for the first time and would wind up playing that position for the next fifteen seasons. Playing on a line with Ullman, I scored twenty-two goals and added twenty-four assists for what was a pretty darn good season in the NHL back then, as there were only nineteen players who scored twenty or more goals in the NHL that season. Ullman, who made it to the Hockey Hall of Fame, was such a pro – what a treat it was to play on a line with him. I started with him that season and stayed with him on a line for basically the rest of my NHL career.
There was no first-place repeat that season, however. We slipped into fourth place with seventy-four points as Montreal claimed first. But we had a great playoff and almost came up with what would have been a huge Stanley Cup upset.
It started in the first round when we knocked out Chicago in six games, the same team that had upset us the year before. Then in the Cup finals against Montreal, we won the first two games at the Montreal Forum and had them on the ropes heading back to Detroit.
We blew that series, however, losing the next four games. Make no mistake about it: Montreal had a great hockey team, but we didn’t help our cause by our behaviour in that series. Instead of practising hard and being
disciplined, we spent more time in bars and at the racetrack than we should have. The Canadiens were far more focused than we were, and our coach, Sid Abel, couldn’t control the team. Abel was a decent guy, but he had a lot on his plate being both GM and coach and he had difficulty relating to a lot of our players.
Henri Richard scored the Cup-winning goal in game six of the series on a controversial goal that looked like it might have gone in off his hand (it sure did to me because I was on the ice at the time!). But the goal stood and we lost the Cup right on Olympia ice, a moment in my career that still bothers me to this day. We were so close, and a little more discipline might have made the difference.
It was a great lifestyle, the life of an NHL player, but it took a bit of getting used to, especially for a kid from Lucknow. I didn’t drink until I turned pro, for instance, but, boy, you had to learn to drink if you were going to hang out with NHL players. The biggest surprise of my life was seeing first-hand how much these guys could drink! We’d go out for a team lunch after practice when we were on the road and have a few beers. Then we’d be out for dinner later on and we’d have a few more beers. Some guys knew when to stop, but many didn’t and developed problems later on, unfortunately.
NHL salaries back then weren’t nearly what they are today – to say the least! – but you could make a very good living playing hockey compared to most other sports, and that certainly made it easy to enjoy life on the road, if that’s what you really wanted to do. I was just interested in carving out a good career for myself and my family for as long as I could.
And it was a decent living back then, when you considered the prices of things. There was little negotiating; you just took what they offered you. My first-year contract was for $7,000, which was the NHL minimum, plus a $1,500 signing bonus. When we made the Stanley Cup finals I picked up another $6,500 in bonuses, so that made for a great year financially – $15,000 total. That is a pittance compared to what players are getting today, obviously. But remember what I paid for my car, and I bought my first house for $10,300, so it certainly was a different world economically.
The Goal of My Life Page 4