As the years went by, agents became very helpful in contract talks. But when I went back in to negotiate my second deal prior to the 1964–65 season, I really didn’t know what to ask for, so I wound up getting what they told me I’d be getting, which was a $1,500 raise. I got the same raise the following season.
By the start of the 1966–67 season, I was looking for more. Sid Abel was the Red Wings’ general manager and coach at the time, and he wasn’t an easy guy to try to hammer a deal out with. He told me he thought I had done a good job and he was prepared to offer me a $2,500 raise. The thing was, he acted like he was doing me some huge favour by offering me any kind of a raise. I figured I’d played three years in the league and was coming off a twenty-two-goal season – a year when only nineteen guys had scored twenty or more – so I should be up for a lot more than that.
“Well, Sid,” I said. “I was thinking of a lot more than that, actually. I was thinking about a $5,000 raise.”
I have no idea where I came up with that figure, but I’ll never forget his reaction.
“Are you out of your mind, Henderson?!” he bellowed. “You can forget that. You’ll take this deal or I’ll bury you so far in the minors they won’t find you with a shovel!”
So much for stress-free negotiating, I guess! But I figured I had some leverage. The team’s owner, Bruce Norris, really wanted to beat Chicago more than any other team, as his brother Jim owned the Hawks. Bruce was an intense competitor, and we were opening up at home against Chicago that season. There was no way he wanted to go into that game without his best lineup, so I thought my best chance to get a better deal was right then and there. I knew our owner would not want to be embarrassed against his brother’s team in the home opener. My strategy was simple: Norris’s desire to win would take precedence over trying to save more money, and eventually the message would get back to Abel to sign me before the season started. It was all a matter of timing, as far as I was concerned.
The negotiating went on and on, and the raise even got up to $4,000. I have to admit, Eleanor was petrified, telling me to sign the deal. It was a lot of money back then. But I had a feeling that my strategy was sound, and I was playing well in the exhibition games. I truly believed Norris would give in.
Well, our talks went on, right up until the morning of that first game. I had no idea if I’d be playing, as I still hadn’t signed, and neither I nor Abel were budging. But finally I was called in by Abel on game day.
He was madder than a you-know-what. But guess what – I got that $5,000! He literally threw a contract at me to sign and said, “Don’t tell anybody what you are making!” Well, I didn’t, and I also played with gusto to make sure I earned every penny of that contract. Looking back on it, I wished that I had asked Sid if I was right in thinking that Bruce Norris would cave in to my demands in order to win. It would have been interesting to know.
It worked out pretty well for me, and I didn’t disappoint. Early that season I scored four goals and made sure they realized they didn’t make a mistake in signing me to that kind of a deal.
Hockey sure has changed since then. Players have a lot more say, and with agents and high-priced contracts, well, let’s just say that nobody argues over a lousy five grand anymore! You still have holdouts, of course, but the dollar figures are a lot higher. And with all the multi-year contracts in today’s game, most players don’t have to constantly haggle about their deals like we had to do just about every season.
But that was the way things were done back then. Abel was no different than a lot of other general managers at that time, including the GM I would play for later on, Punch Imlach. Imlach even had a chair in front of his desk with legs he had shortened by several inches. He would ask you to sit in the chair, which was so low to the ground that you’d be looking up at him, a power-play technique he would use during talks. I remember more than once getting up out of that seat, telling him I didn’t want to look up at him while we talked. It just felt ridiculous.
I would have a lot of difficult contract talks in future years (like just about every year), so this was a sign of things to come. Players just didn’t have the clout back in those days, and you had to look out for yourself because nobody else was going to look after you.
With that negotiation behind me, it was time for the 1966–67 season, which was not a good one for me healthwise, or for the Red Wings, unfortunately. I was hurt for a lot of the season, and it limited me to just forty-six games. I did score twenty-one goals, so I was very productive when I did play, but I had torn chest muscles and groin and knee problems that really held me back, including some breathing problems that required me to go to Arizona for a few weeks.
We missed the playoffs that year, and we had one issue after another, it seemed. Doug Barkley’s career came to an end when he took a stick to the eye, and that was devastating to him and the team, as he had a chance to be one of the best defencemen in hockey. Marcel Pronovost was dealt to Toronto and Bill Gadsby retired, so that really hurt our defence. We seemed to be on the downside in a hurry, after making it to the finals just the year prior.
I was healthier at the start of the 1967–68 season, but our defence was in shambles in the first year of the expanded, twelve-team NHL. We allowed a league-high 257 goals, more even than the six expansion teams.
So I guess that something had to give. And something did, and it was big – and it involved me.
CHAPTER FOUR
I LOVED PLAYING IN DETROIT. I WAS PLAYING WELL, I felt we had a pretty good hockey team, and all in all, life was going fine for me. My career was really just starting, and I was able to produce.
How could I not love playing in Detroit? I was only a kid – I was more awestruck than anything else. The city itself really didn’t do anything special for me, and we spent most of our time in Windsor after we moved there anyway. But the atmosphere in the arena was tremendous, and the rink was filled every night.
They had great hockey fans in Detroit, with a real passion for the game. It was the six-team era of the National Hockey League (up until expansion in 1967, of course), and tickets were a scarce commodity. It was very lucrative for me too; the Red Wings had a tremendous bonus structure, and in my first few years there, we went to the finals and semifinals, so the extra money certainly helped. But even though the money was good – and I needed it with a young family to look after – primarily I was just so thrilled at being able to play in the National Hockey League. Every day, I had to pinch myself because I had made it to the best league in the world. “Holy moly!” I would say to myself, looking around that dressing room. “There’s Gordie Howe. There’s Bill Gadsby. I’m actually playing with these guys.” I thought I was in heaven.
We really had nothing in Lucknow, and now I had everything in Detroit. I’d be sitting in the dressing room and we’d be talking back and forth during intermissions, and Gordie Howe might say to me, “Nice play there, Henny. Way to go!” Just imagine how good that would make a kid like me feel. Whenever somebody said that to me, I’d always think, “Where’s my dad? He should be hearing this,” and wished I had a tape recorder so I could have him listen to it! It was such a fantastic time for me.
Detroit was a great sports town, and a winning sports town. Since the 1930s, it has been known as the City of Champions. The baseball Tigers were doing well, and would win the World Series in 1968. The Lions had won three National Football League championships in the 1950s and had a fiercely loyal following. The University of Michigan, in nearby Ann Arbor, won the Rose Bowl one year. It could also be a tough city, and it was going through a difficult time with all the violence and the riots in the summer of 1967, but inside the Olympia the fans were great. It really was a great environment.
Outside the arena was something else, though! After practice, we would always stop by a convenience store on the corner where the Olympia was. We’d get a pop or whatever, and one day, Gary Bergman left his brand-new Chevy running while he went inside. Sure enough, while he was in th
e store, some kid just came along and drove off with that new car!
But for a kid coming into the NHL from a place like Lucknow, stuff like that didn’t matter. I was just happy to be in the NHL, and I was very happy being a Detroit Red Wing.
Then, on March 3, 1968, the unthinkable happened. The Red Wings dealt me to the Toronto Maple Leafs, along with centre Norm Ullman and right-winger Floyd Smith. In exchange, the Wings got left-winger Frank Mahovlich, centre Peter Stemkowski, rookie Garry Unger, and the NHL rights to former Leafs defenceman Carl Brewer, who had joined the Canadian National Team and by now was playing in the International Hockey League with Muskegon. It was, at the time – and probably still is when you think about it – one of the biggest trades in hockey history.
That deal is still talked about to this day, as it involved a lot of prime-time players. Imlach was always fond of veteran players, but when you fell out of favour with him, you were quite often on the way out of town. Mahovlich clearly needed a change of scenery, and the Wings wanted to shake things up as well, so both teams were willing to make a blockbuster deal.
I found out when Audrey MacGregor, Bruce’s wife, heard it on the radio and then told all of us! What a way to find out that you’ve been uprooted and you are on your way to play in another city. Sid Abel contacted me eventually and apologized, saying they meant to tell us directly, but I was hurt so bad I don’t think I even heard a word he said.
I was so let down. I had never felt rejection before, and I hated the feeling I had in my gut. I was disappointed and angry; I couldn’t believe that this had happened. I’ll never forget playing Detroit for the first time after the deal, at Maple Leaf Gardens, and winning 5–3. I had a goal and an assist and was the second star of the game that night. That certainly made me feel a lot better about the trade, especially after the way I felt at first.
But as is often the case in life, things that happen to you that you think are not good for you turn out to be very beneficial for you in the long run. I went on to have some good years in Toronto – good enough, of course, to earn me a spot on what turned out to be the Team of the Century just a few years after that.
The trade hurt me deeply, as I said, and I wasn’t the least bit happy about going to the Maple Leafs at first. I had nothing against them, I just didn’t want to be traded anywhere; I was naive enough to think that I’d be playing in Detroit my entire playing career.
But after the shock wore off, I came to enjoy playing at Maple Leaf Gardens. There was something really special about playing in that building, and maybe it had to do with the crowd. Back in the 1960s and 1970s when I was playing, people came to the games in a shirt and tie. And I mean most everybody dressed up. There was a real sense of class about the place on a game night. I guess the fans dressing up like that showed a respect for the game, gave it a certain dignity. It made it feel like something important was going on inside that arena on game night.
It’s funny, though. I’d never thought too much about playing in Maple Leaf Gardens until I got there. I’d grown up in southern Ontario, and just like everybody else, I always knew what Maple Leaf Gardens represented, but the full impact of playing there on a regular basis didn’t hit me until I became a Toronto Maple Leaf.
On top of everything else, you knew that half of Canada would be watching you on a Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada. Now that was pressure, but it was also the brightest spotlight you could play under. It’s one of the reasons I think that so many players on the visiting teams had their best games in the Gardens: because they knew everybody would be watching, including all their family and friends. And when you combine that with the crowd dressed to the nines, the bright lights – well, how could you not love playing in that building?
The place suited my personality too. I liked the spotlight, and the pressure, of playing in that place. Maybe when I got older and had lost a step, it was good to be away from such scrutiny, but nothing beat playing in Maple Leaf Gardens, one of the great arenas of all time.
The Leafs had won the Stanley Cup the year before my arrival, but now the team was going through a remake, as they were an older group. Montreal and Chicago were as strong as ever, while Boston and New York, who had fought over last place for most of the 1960s, were evolving into powerful teams. Meanwhile, we had a strong nucleus in players like Dave Keon, Ron Ellis, Norm Ullman, and Mike Walton, and a group of rising young defenceman like Jim Dorey, Pat Quinn, and Mike Pelyk. Later on, the team added Rick Ley, Brad Selwood, Jim McKenny, and Brian Glennie, so if management did its job, this was a team with a lot of promise for the future.
I played on a line with Ullman and Smith, two of my former teammates in Detroit, and had eleven points in the thirteen games left in the regular season schedule, but we still missed the playoffs.
In 1968–69, we bounced back to grab a playoff spot with eighty-five points, ending up fourth in the East Division. But the playoffs were a disaster, as we were swept by the Bruins with Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito in four straight games, losing the first two games in Boston 10–0 and 7–0. We were no match for the Bruins in that series, which featured the monstrous hit on Orr by Pat Quinn in Boston Garden. Right after the final game, Punch Imlach, who had been with the team since 1958, was fired as general manager and coach.
Imlach’s firing was so sudden. It was a bit of a shock the way they did it. However, I have to say we weren’t terribly surprised that Punch lost his job. He had a tough situation going on with the Leafs at that time. The team was rebuilding, and the roster was in transition, so it wasn’t the best place to be for any general manager and coach right about then. In the dressing room, we all knew there was no way we could compete against the better teams in the league, as we had shown in that series against Boston.
I didn’t wind up playing very long for Imlach, but he was certainly a very different coach than Abel was in Detroit. You just couldn’t challenge Imlach; he couldn’t stand anyone challenging him at any time. He was in total control of his teams, and you had better listen to him – or else. Abel was the opposite in that respect; he didn’t have an ego problem and was easier to talk to.
However, there was no doubt that Imlach had his strengths. He understood hockey, and he was a very good strategist. He was sharp at matching lines during a game, and was a very good tactician. He got more out of that 1967 Stanley Cup Leafs team than anyone else could have, as that team probably shouldn’t have won a Stanley Cup. The Leafs really shouldn’t have beaten us (the Red Wings) back in 1963 either, but he did another good job with that team. But he got the most out of many of his players.
I remember that when I came to the team, he gave me Norman Vincent Peale’s famous book The Power of Positive Thinking – he really believed in it. I did too – some people kidded me that I could have written that book. That was Imlach’s upside: the positive thinking really came through when some of his teams won despite not being as talented as the opponents they beat.
His downside was his arrogance and his superstition. He had one flavour for everybody – he just couldn’t deal with players who were more idiosyncratic. He couldn’t understand them. Players like Frank Mahovlich, Carl Brewer, and Mike “Shaky” Walton, for instance – they just weren’t Imlach’s kind of players. If he had been a little wiser and a little more of a communicator, he would have been an even better coach.
And he was superstitious – very superstitious. That really drove me crazy, and a lot of other players wondered what he was up to as well. He’d wear the same hat because it was lucky, send players down to Rochester on a gut feeling, and make some hockey decisions based on superstition. When you operate like that, you lose a lot of respect in some quarters, and I think that really hurt Punch.
By the end of that 1969 playoff series, the writing was on the wall, and most of us knew it. He didn’t deserve to be fired in such a quick and heartless way, but as I said, he was in a very tough spot and we really weren’t shocked that they made a coaching change.
The 1969–7
0 season was very disappointing for us. Johnny McLellan took over as coach of the Leafs, and was as nice a man as you’d ever meet, but was probably too nice to be a coach in the NHL. People often took advantage of his kind nature, and that made a tough job even tougher. He was in a difficult spot, as he didn’t inherit a very good team, especially after we dealt Tim Horton – who had turned forty, but had been a first-team all-star in 1968–69 – to the New York Rangers. New general manager Jim Gregory put his mark on the team right away, but it wasn’t enough to salvage the season. We finished last in the East Division with seventy-one points, and I managed twenty goals and twenty-two assists for forty-two points. I was severely hampered by a groin problem that season. It was so bad that by the end of the year my right thigh was an inch and a half bigger than my left because I was essentially skating on one leg all year. I shouldn’t have been in the lineup, but I wanted to play so badly that I didn’t take the time off to heal properly, and the Leafs really wanted me to stay in the lineup. That would never happen today – NHL trainers and players now realize how damaging it can be to any player to play through an injury that needs time to heal, but at that time there was a lot of pressure to keep on playing.
That off-season meant time for a new contract, which certainly wasn’t the best timing for me, and the Leafs management knew it. They sent me a contract offer in the mail that had a raise of just $1,500.
Jim Gregory and King Clancy called me after they sent it and basically said they didn’t think I should get much of a raise since my offensive numbers were down. That got me steaming! I reminded them that I had played hurt all year with the groin injury and shouldn’t even have been playing. I really couldn’t believe that they would overlook such an obvious reason for my decline in production and offer me such a small raise.
The Goal of My Life Page 5