I had never experienced anything like that reaction. Playing for the Maple Leafs, I was used to getting a fair amount of fan mail and public recognition, but I was now bombarded with both. I had to hire a secretary to help me with the mail, and I did countless media interviews and appearances, along with being besieged by autograph seekers wherever I went.
I got a lot of promotional offers to capitalize on this sudden fame, and I took advantage of some of them, but frankly some of them were just crazy. I hired Sports Management Inc., a company run by former Maple Leafs trainer Bob Haggert, to look after all my promotional deals. I did a few commercials and some sponsorships, and made some speeches and appearances that were lucrative. I did some work for companies like CCM, Rivera Sports, Granada TV, and Shoppers Drug Mart, but I didn’t go overboard – I had seen what excessive greed had done to people in the past, so I was quite content to only do the things I was comfortable in doing.
This was when I first started hearing the stories of how much The Goal meant to other people, of course, and where people were when it was scored. It became one of those “where were you when” kind of moments, and it was quite a thrill to realize that something you had done had turned out to be such an important moment in so many people’s lives. And forty years later, it hasn’t stopped.
It was a crazy time for me, of course, but my family helped me stay grounded. Eleanor was very happy with my success and new-found fame, and my daughters were mostly good about it too. Our eldest girl, Heather, who was nine at the time, even revelled in our fame! She would line up her friends to meet me and hand out pictures, saying, “Paul Henderson is my dad” to everyone waiting. Jennifer was seven and she was quieter and didn’t take kindly to our family life being trampled. She even told a reporter, “I wish my dad was a garbage collector.” Jill was just two, so she was oblivious to everything that was going on, except that even she realized her dad was getting a lot of attention suddenly.
Everyone in Canada has a story about where they were when I scored The Goal in Moscow, but the one that is the closest to me involves Heather and Jennifer. Like many children who were in school that day, they watched the final game with their classmates. They both went to the same school, and when the goal was scored, Heather was sitting on a table, watching. Her overexcited classmates charged at her and knocked her to the floor, mobbing her until a friend was able to rescue her. The entire school was dismissed early because the celebration had gotten so out of control.
Heather then went to find Jennifer so that she could take her home, where our third daughter, Jill, was. As I mentioned, Wendy and Darryl Sittler had moved into our house while we were in Moscow to look after the girls, and eventually Heather and Jennifer made it home, trailed by a pack of celebrating classmates.
People started coming to the house to look for autographs and to congratulate the family, and so many of them came that the kids finally had to put up a sign that said, “WE HAVE NO AUTOGRAPHS LEFT” and take the phone off the hook! I can tell you that somebody who was really happy when we got home from Moscow was Wendy Sittler, because she was running our household for us until we returned.
My family was very happy for me, obviously, especially my mother. But her love for me and my siblings didn’t have anything to do with how successful we were. She loved all five of her children equally and was always there for us no matter what we did.
My immediate family was then, and still is today, my rock. Without them I couldn’t have handled all the demands and pressures associated with having scored such a momentous goal in Canadian hockey history.
I really was sitting on top of the world, but there was still a sense that something was missing in my life, and it wasn’t until I examined the spiritual dimension of my life and became a Christian in 1975 that I truly found some peace in my life.
Meanwhile, there was still an NHL career to deal with and to get back to. Somehow I had to put all the distractions that were coming at me behind me and concentrate on returning to the Toronto Maple Leafs for another season, and once again having to play against the great teammates I’d had on Team Canada. The letdown was tremendous.
That next season, 1972–73, was probably the worst of my NHL career for a lot of reasons. First, I played in just forty games because of the groin injury I sustained during the Summit Series, though when I was in the lineup I was productive, scoring eighteen goals and assisting on sixteen more. What made things doubly frustrating was that the Leafs clearly were going nowhere. By 1972, the World Hockey Association had come along, attracting stars and role players alike with some incredible contract offers. Toronto lost Rick Ley, Brad Selwood, Guy Trottier, and Jim Harrison, as well as goaltender Bernie Parent. No coincidence, then, that we went from sixth in the league in goals against to thirteenth. We finished fifth in the East Division that year with just sixty-four points, out of the playoffs and ahead of only the Vancouver Canucks and the New York Islanders, who had only recently come into the league. It wasn’t a very good time for me personally or for the Maple Leafs, especially after such an incredible high.
When we returned from Moscow, my agent, Alan Eagleson, thought it would be a good time to negotiate a new contract with owner Harold Ballard. I had scored thirty-eight goals in 1971–72, was coming off the Summit Series performance, and still had a lot of good years left in me as a player. Meanwhile, the WHA was still aggressively chasing NHL players. The league’s Toronto franchise, the Toros, had obtained my WHA rights, and owner John F. Bassett called me one day and asked me what I was making, in hopes of luring me to the WHA fold. So I told him: I was making $75,000 a season, which was a decent salary, but there were players in the WHA who couldn’t even make it in the NHL who were making more than that.
“I’ll double it and give you a five-year, no-trade contract,” he told me. “I’ll throw in a signing bonus too.” He even guaranteed I would be paid no matter what happened to the team or the league.
This was an offer that, at the time, was a very good one.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m serious,” he replied.
I so desperately wanted my name on the Stanley Cup that I hadn’t really been interested in going to the WHA. But when Bassett extended this offer, well, I had to look at it. I sought advice from several people, and one person gave me plenty to think about. His name was Frank Mahovlich.
Mahovlich had been a Team Canada teammate, and, more importantly, he had played for the Maple Leafs – remember, he’d been involved in the trade that brought me to Toronto – so he knew the organization very well. When I asked him what he thought about me signing with the Toros, I also told him I was hesitant on account of my desire to one day win a Stanley Cup. He told me in no uncertain terms what he thought about that.
“You’ll never win a Stanley Cup in Toronto as long as Harold Ballard is the owner,” Mahovlich said. “The Leafs will never win with him, so you better get out of Toronto if you want to win a Stanley Cup one day, because it won’t happen there.”
He was adamant about that. And his words turned out to be prophetic. His advice strongly influenced my decision to sign with the Toros. I put Bassett in touch with Eagleson, and we came to an agreement that I would play with the Toros in 1974–75.
While this was going on, I was still playing with the Leafs, and as you can imagine, the news didn’t go over very well with owner Harold Ballard – especially after Bassett let it slip at a party that they were both attending.
Like many people in hockey over the years, I’d had my share of run-ins with Ballard. Today’s younger hockey fans may not remember him, but anyone who was around Maple Leaf Gardens in Ballard’s heyday will tell you he could be impossible to deal with at times. He was one of a kind, to be sure.
Anyway, Ballard asked for a meeting with Eagleson and me, so we met him at the Hot Stove Lounge in Maple Leaf Gardens. With his typical arrogance, he tossed a contract at me for the same length and same money as the Toros were offering but with no si
gning bonus.
“Sign here!” he growled, probably thinking he was making a supreme sacrifice on my behalf. He had vowed he wasn’t going to lose any more players to “the @&$@ WHA,” and so he grudgingly offered the contract. But he was in for a surprise. I was tired of the way he had treated me and other players on our team, so I looked him right in the eye and gave it back to him.
“Harold, you take that contract and shove it!”
I’ll never forget the look of rage in his face. He tossed over his chair and stormed out of the Hot Stove Lounge, and that signalled the end of my relationship – such as it was – with Harold Ballard, as well as my playing career as a Maple Leaf.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done the deal while still under contract to the Leafs; it showed a lack of character and integrity on my part. And the Toros contract contained bonus clauses that were tied to my upcoming season with the Leafs. That wasn’t right either, and in retrospect it should have never happened.
After my career ended, I tried to make up with Ballard several times, but he always refused to see me or communicate with me. I wrote him a letter apologizing for what I had said and done and asked him if we could make a fresh start. My spiritual mentor had told me I should not be offside with anyone, and I was farther offside with Ballard than with anyone, so I tried to reach out to him. He never replied.
Once, after I retired, I went into the Gardens to see a practice, but he wanted me out of the building. He even told Gord Stellick, the general manager at the time, to ask me to leave the building when I went to the Leafs dressing room to visit with coach John Brophy. Poor Gord felt really bad about that. He was apologetic and embarassed over the whole incident.
To top it all off, in 1981, Ballard sabotaged a job offer I’d received from Telemedia to do colour commentary on their radio broadcasts of Leafs games. After I retired, I had considered several different avenues, with broadcasting always at the back of mind, and this offer sounded like a good start. But Ballard would have no part of it, telling the radio people I wasn’t allowed inside the building and that there was no way I was going to be a part of any broadcast from Maple Leaf Gardens involving the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I couldn’t stand Harold Ballard back then, but I’m not proud of the way I acted during the contract hassles either. I certainly would have done things differently if I had the opportunity now – I didn’t become a Christian until 1975 and didn’t understand the concept of forgiveness. But that parting of the ways probably resulted, indirectly, in my going on to start my ministry later on because the broadcasting option was no longer open to me. Ballard blocking my progress turned out for the best. Though it really disappointed me at the time, I’ve learned a lot since then. Life is a journey – you learn as you go. I’ve learned far more in my life from failure and setbacks than I ever have from being successful – it’s through adversity that you learn whether your faith is real. I now feel that God’s hand played a part in everything that happened to me over the years. I also know that I have grown and matured over the years, and understand things from a different perspective today.
Knowing that – and knowing how it all worked out – well, how could I still be bitter about what Harold Ballard did? Or what anyone else has done, either?
In fairness to Ballard, who acted in truly bizarre ways at times, he was never the same after his wife died in 1969. Without her stabilizing effect and wisdom, he lost his way and became a buffoon. It was really sad the way things turned out for him and I actually felt sorry for him.
I stayed healthier in 1973–74, appearing in sixty-nine games, and I had twenty-four goals and thirty-one assists for fifty-five points. The team bounced back too, finishing fourth in the East Division with eighty-six points under our new head coach, Red Kelly.
The last part of that season saw my ice time get reduced to much less than my usual time. It was quite frustrating as I had some good bonuses in my contract that I wouldn’t be able to get as a result, and I always wondered why Kelly wasn’t using me more.
I believe that Ballard was really forcing Kelly’s hand when it came to decisions like this. One time, Kelly told me my problem was that my wrists weren’t strong enough and that I should work on that instead of playing that night. My wrists weren’t strong enough? That’s how ridiculous the entire situation was at that point.
It was a truly frustrating time in a lot of ways. We made the playoffs that year but were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in four games, ending another season quite early. We were a decent team, but we lacked depth, so we were finished … and I was finished with the Leafs, and with the NHL, for that matter, until much later in my career.
It was time for a change, and that change came the next season.
RON ELLIS ON HENDERSON’S LEAVING FOR THE WHA
I have to say that I was very unhappy when Paul left for the World Hockey Association. We had already lost so many players to that league and now he was leaving, one of our best players. We were the best of friends back then; our wives were very close and so were our families. It was tough on me personally. It’s at times like that where you find out how much the game is a business.
But I couldn’t blame Paul for doing what he did, and it was perfectly understandable. He had his problems with Harold Ballard, and that was the big factor, but it was tough for him in Toronto right from the time he came back from Russia. When he was back in a Leafs uniform, expectations were sky high for him. But really, the Canada–Russia series was a once-in-a-lifetime scenario. Leaving for the WHA might have been the best thing for Paul, giving him a fresh start away from the intense media scrutiny he was getting in Toronto. I don’t know if all the pressure on him and expectations for him were real – maybe Paul put a lot of that on himself. When he went [to the Toros,] it was a completely different environment for him and he could just relax and play the game again. There was no way he was going to do what he did in that series every night, and maybe some people in Toronto thought he was supposed to.
All I know is that I missed him personally and as a linemate and a teammate.
CHAPTER TEN
SO MUCH HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT THE WORLD HOCKEY Association and the kind of league it was, and a lot of the stories about the league are pretty colourful. And there is no doubt about it, the WHA was a very colourful place.
I enjoyed playing in the WHA. It allowed me to get away from the stress of playing with the Leafs and, perhaps just as importantly, to get away from Harold Ballard.
Those last two seasons I spent with the Leafs after the Summit Series were tough on me, to the point that I developed an ulcer. I had more attention paid to me and was under as bright a spotlight as you can imagine during and after that series, so it was great to get away from that glare and get a chance to enjoy hockey again.
By 1974–75, the league was in its third season and had garnered a lot more credibility, having attracted such bigname NHL talent as Bobby Hull, J.C. Tremblay, Rejean Houle, Gerry Cheevers, Marc Tardif, Frank Mahovlich, and Gordie Howe. It was beginning to develop stars of its own too, like Ulf Nilsson, Anders Hedberg, and Gordie’s sons, Mark and Marty Howe. The Toros played their home games at Maple Leaf Gardens, which obviously made me very comfortable. It really was an ideal situation for me at this time.
My first assignment in the new league was to play the Russians again, as the WHA had scheduled its own eight-game series for September 1974. I felt it was important to help the WHA showcase its talents, and I was really going to enjoy it this time around because I’d been through the experience before, and there wasn’t nearly as much pressure on us this time. I even got to play tourist this time and visit some of the great historical museums in Moscow in between games.
The WHA was not on a par with the NHL by any stretch, but we showed it was a pretty solid league by the way we performed in that series. We battled the Russians very hard, and although the emotions and the stakes weren’t as high as in 1972, it was a pretty good series and a watershed moment as far as the WHA�
�S credibility was concerned.
I thought I played as well as I did in 1972, but this time I just couldn’t seem to generate the goals like I did two years prior. Tretiak definitely had the upper hand this time around and was more familiar with my moves. I only managed to beat him twice. We opened the series with a 3–3 tie in Montreal, and followed with a 4–1 win in Toronto, but as it turned out, that would be the only victory we’d get in the series.
Our coach, Billy Harris, decided that everybody would play during the series, and I knew that cost us in game three in Winnipeg. He inserted eight new guys into the lineup for that game, and quite frankly that was a disaster. Everyone wound up playing in the series as promised, but it really took the edge off our game and we never did seem to hit our stride after that. Once again, we had likely invited too many players, and the guys who didn’t play or were in and out of the lineup weren’t very happy about it. It’s so hard to get into a flow when you don’t play all the time.
I played on a line with my old friend from the Detroit days, Bruce MacGregor, and Mike Walton, another good friend and former Leafs teammate. We had a lot of fun and scored a few goals, and MacGregor and I were killing penalties, something we had done for years.
We tied game four 5–5 in Vancouver, but the best we could do in the four games in Moscow was a 4–4 tie in game seven. We lost the other three games there, as the Soviets won the series 4–1–3.
The 1974–75 Toronto Toros were a pretty solid team. We finished in second place in the Canadian Division with eighty-eight points, trailing only the Quebec Nordiques. I played on a line with Wayne Dillon and “Shotgun” Tom Simpson, and I scored thirty goals and had thirty-three assists for sixty-three points in fifty-eight games. Frank Mahovlich was a star, of course, and the big Czech, Vaclav Nedomansky, was a forty-goal scorer with enormous talent. Our goalie was Gilles Gratton, one of the great all-time characters in hockey. Gilles believed that he was reincarnated, and his antics kept the mood nice and light all season long. The atmosphere was so laidback compared to the NHL, and there was really a great bunch of guys on that team and throughout the league.
The Goal of My Life Page 11