by Ron MacLean
As a child in Red Deer, I was thrilled to listen to Calgary broadcaster Eric Bishop finding new superlatives to describe Staniowski as he befuddled the powerful Calgary Centennials. After his Regina days, Staniowski played pro for a decade, winning the Terry Sawchuk Trophy as top goalie in the Central Hockey League in 1978 and playing parts of ten NHL seasons with St. Louis, Winnipeg and Hartford.
When he retired, Staniowski joined the Canadian Forces Primary Reserves. He quickly rose through the ranks and became a lieutenant colonel. Staniowski was the senior military liaison officer for the 2002 G8 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, and was chosen for United Nations peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions in Croatia, Bosnia and the Middle East. In each situation, he served alongside the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.
Once a Pat, always a Pat.
When the winter winds sweep over the prairies, wheat fields give way to hockey rinks, and young men and women pay homage to a game that’s been celebrated here since 1917. The Regina Pats folded in 1934 but returned in 1946 when the Regina Abbotts and Regina Commandos merged to create a stronger team.
So many hockey greats hail from the heart of the prairies—eighty-eight NHLers to date. It’s a tight town. The population doesn’t tend to shift much—Reginans like their regal hockey town. Today, if you ask anyone in the Queen City about the NHL, you’ll get a story about Ryan Getzlaf, Chris Kunitz or Jordan Eberle. Yesterday, it was Bob Turner, Lorne Davis, Paul Masnick and, of course, Red Berenson and Bill Hicke.
The Hicke family lived just half a block away from the rink, in the 1400 block of Royal Street, just east of a tougher area. Bill’s dad, John, was a barber when it was a dollar a haircut. One night, John came home with a hundred bucks for the day. He was pretty proud of that. He owned a pool room at the back of the two-chair shop. It was called Top Hat Billiards and was located next door to the King’s Hotel downtown on Scarth Street.
John was a shark, and he made as much playing pool as he did cutting hair. He was born in Austria in the early 1900s and had a tremendous facility for languages. He could speak Ukrainian, German and Austrian and, thanks to his customers, he picked up Japanese and Chinese along the way. His family settled just south of Moose Jaw. John was old-school and really hard-nosed. His father, also named John, had a temper too. One day while John Sr. was milking the cow, she kicked him. He fetched a sledgehammer and whacked her in the head so hard she fell over and died.
Hockey wasn’t really on Bill’s dad’s radar. He never came to the boys’ games. Instead, he was busy playing his prized pearl accordion with his orchestra at weddings around the area on weekends. Bill’s mother, Catherine (Kay), was a kind, wonderful woman who took care of the books. She used to sneak Bill and his brothers, John, Eddie and Ernie, money for skates and sticks, whatever they needed.
When John died later in life and the boys, now men, were going through his things, they came upon his straight-razor strap. The one he used in the barbershop to sharpen his tools. It got even more use on the boys. You did not talk back to John Hicke.
Bill had a laid-back personality. He could play a little accordion, but he was totally focused on track and field and hockey. In fact, he loved hockey so much he played on two teams simultaneously. He was a silky stickhandler and really good on skates. Like Pavel Bure, he had remarkable acceleration and could skate from blue line to blue line in less than four seconds. This was in the ’50s and ’60s, when skates weighed about two pounds each. Today, skates weigh mere ounces.
Bill grew up watching the Regina Pats at the Exhibition Stadium, where the Brandt Centre is now. He was fifteen years old in Grade 10 when he was called up to join the team on February 2, 1954. Most of his teammates, like Murray Balfour, were older, so the press nicknamed him “Billy the Kid.”
Billy the Kid’s first game was a 5–1 win over the Moose Jaw Canucks in front of 645 fans. He picked up two assists in the next game, an 11–0 win over the Lethbridge Native Sons. When Billy picked up another four assists his third time out with the Pats, Coach Murray Armstrong decided to keep him.
Because his dad wasn’t very involved, Bill would walk to the rink. It would take about half an hour to make it all the way down Dewdney Avenue. In the winter of 1954, Regina got down to minus-34. That meant frostbite in less than ten minutes. So Bill would show up at the rink with his fingertips, toes, nose and earlobes frozen solid. Sometimes he’d stop at Murray Balfour’s on the way to warm up, and the two of them would “bumper tag”—grab the bumper of a passing bus or car and ski part of the way. But you couldn’t do it all the time, because it wore out the bottom of your boots.
The Regina team was good that year. They had an eighteen-game winning streak between November 8 and January 5 in the five-team Western Canada Junior Hockey League. The Pats played the league semifinal against the Medicine Hat Tigers. In the second game, Billy scored two goals for the overtime win. The Pats went all the way through, winning the Abbott Cup over the Winnipeg Monarchs. Their third win of the series was their forty-fifth of the season, the most wins the Pats had ever had. They lost the Memorial Cup that year and the next, 1955 and 1956, to the Toronto Marlboros.
In 1957–58, Bill and his teammate Red Berenson led the Pats to a first-place position in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. They lost in the Memorial Cup final once again, but Billy was the league’s most outstanding player with ninety-seven points, including fifty-four goals in fifty-four games, two points ahead of Red.
Three appearances in four years. In the thirty-seven years prior, the Pats had made it that far only eight times. Billy gave the team an offensive jump. He was on the specialty teams, a key man on their power play, with a goal-scoring knack.
Billy was the property of the Montreal Canadiens. Habs general manager Frank Selke had signed a sponsorship agreement with the Pats in 1948, after the Canadiens missed the playoffs and needed new talent. In 1958, the Habs sent Billy to their farm team, the Rochester Americans.
The Americans had finished the 1957–58 season in fifth place and were out of the playoffs. With Billy on the team, they climbed to third. He had this great jacket the Americans gave him that his younger brother Ernie, who had just made the Pats, really admired. Billy came home to visit, and as Ernie was going out the door, Bill said, “Score three goals tonight and I’ll give you my jacket.” That night, Ernie scored a hat trick, and when he rushed home to deliver the good news, the jacket was already on his bed. Billy had so much faith in Ernie, he’d left it there before the game.
Billy was named the AHL’s outstanding player and top rookie and led the league with ninety-seven points (forty-one goals and fifty-six assists). Frank Selke sent him a letter in 1959. It read, “Your principal job, you will understand, is to take Maurice Richard’s place if and when he retires . . . and that is quite an assignment.” Bill felt honoured to get a letter like that, but he didn’t quite understand it. He knew the expectation wasn’t realistic. Bill had some good qualifications, but he was never going to take over for the Rocket.
Billy signed with the Canadiens for $7,000 plus bonuses. It was a lot of money for a twenty-year-old. You could buy a house in Regina for $13,000. He was called up for Game Three of the 1959 Stanley Cup final against the Maple Leafs. Toe Blake was the coach, Jean Béliveau was in the stands with a spinal injury and the Rocket spent most of the game on the bench with a groin injury. Billy played in front of a sold-out crowd of 13,121 in Toronto. Dickie Duff scored at 10:06 in sudden-death overtime to give the Leafs the win. Montreal went on to win the series. One game was enough for Billy to have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup for the first time.
Ernie was watching the game on TV with their dad, John, who knew very little about hockey. John asked Ernie, “How come he’s not getting on the ice so much?” Ernie said, “Well, Dad, he’s a rookie playing with Dickie Moore and Ralph Backstrom on the third line, behind the Rocket and Jean Béliveau. Hell, he’s lucky to get any ice time at all.”
Bill and his high school s
weetheart, LeeAnne Rickard, had known each other since Grade 7 at Benson Elementary. They began dating in Grade 11 at Scott Collegiate. When the Rocket found out they were to be married in July 1959, before Bill’s first full season with Montreal, he started calling LeeAnne “The Bride.” And that became Billy’s nickname for her forever.
The next season, after Hicke started out with Rochester again, Montreal coach Toe Blake called him up for good. Billy’s jersey hung between the Rocket’s and Dickie Moore’s. The Rocket couldn’t speak English and Dickie Moore grew up in Montreal, so he and the Rocket would speak French and Bill would have no idea what they were saying. Dickie was a jokester, always cutting off ties or skate laces, and if he stood behind you, his lighter would be out and he’d set your pants on fire. He was the team tough guy.
Nobody would say boo to Toe Blake, not even the Rocket. Before a game, the dressing room would be wild with excitement, everybody yapping and yelling and screaming, but as soon as Toe Blake walked in, you could hear a pin drop.
But the Rocket would do some things behind his back. When the team travelled, he’d go to the train steward and slip him a few bucks to pick up a couple cases of beer at the first stop. When Toe went to his cabin on the other side of the train, initiations would start. Back then, if you weren’t initiated, you weren’t part of the team. When Richard was on the train, rookies would find a top bunk and hide. One of the things Richard and the boys would do is take beer caps and squeeze them until they were as sharp as razor blades, and then someone would hold the rookie down and Richard would flay him, running the caps up and down his legs and back and arms. Every NHL team had a “sheriff,” someone who made sure things didn’t go too far. For the Canadiens, that was Jean Béliveau. He was the guy who’d step in and say, “That’s enough.”
Guys would get bored on the trains, so there were some fun things the veterans would think up. They’d make the rookies dress up like women—skirt, wig, lipstick, the whole bit. It was embarrassing as hell, but really funny watching them totter on high heels all the way from the train to the hotel.
You had to be the best of the best to play in the league. This was before the expansion era, so there were only six teams—the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens—and they were loaded with talent. With Jean Béliveau, Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion, Doug Harvey and Jacques Plante, the Habs roster was a tough one to crack, but the 1950s dynasty was coming to an end. Billy played on the third line, behind Geoffrion and Claude Provost. Montreal swept the Chicago Blackhawks in the semifinals that year. Billy scored the first goal of the third game. He won his second Stanley Cup when the Habs beat the Maple Leafs 4–0 in the final on April 14, 1960.
In 1957, Senator Hartland de Montarville Molson and his brother, Thomas Henry Pentland Molson, bought the Canadiens. The players were loyal to the Molson beer brand, especially because it was free. After the Cup win, fans were lined up downtown to greet the team, but the boys had had so many celebratory pops that Blake arranged for the wives to meet them at an earlier stop.
When the Rocket retired in 1960, Bill’s playing time increased, but he was still on the third line, playing with Phil Goyette and Gilles Tremblay. His best season with the Canadiens was 1961–62, when he scored twenty goals to go with thirty-one assists.
But with just six teams in the league, there was always a player standing right behind you, ready to take your job. In 1960–61, right winger Bobby Rousseau was called up. He had played with the 1958 Memorial Cup champions, the Hull-Ottawa Canadiens. A Calder Cup winner in the AHL, Rousseau could play on all units. And then there was the Roadrunner, Yvan Cournoyer, who joined the Habs in 1963. He was used as a power-play specialist, so the team’s depth at right wing was growing and Bill found himself riding the pine. He finally had enough, so just before Christmas 1964 he went to general manager Sam Pollock. He said what he later called “the five worst words” he ever uttered, “Play me or trade me.”
A day later, he was on a train—sent down to Cleveland for a short stint before being traded to New York to join the Rangers. He, LeeAnne and their two-year-old daughter, Lisa, had only a couple of days to pack up to leave. The building super at their place in Cleveland lived in the basement. He had kids but not enough money to buy a Christmas tree, so Bill lugged his big cut spruce, with all the lights and bulbs, down the stairs and gave it to the guy.
Moving from Montreal to New York was like going from heaven to hell. The city was big and it was hard to get around. They lived out in Long Beach because that’s where everybody else on the team lived. It was an hour’s drive to practice in the morning, and if they had a game, it’d be another hour there and back in the evening.
Bill liked his teammates—Rod Gilbert, Vic Hadfield, Phil Goyette, Jacques Plante, Billy Taylor, Lou Angotti—and the general manager, Emile Francis, who was from North Battleford, Saskatchewan. But Bill joked that instead of the Rangers’ victory song, their theme song should be “Born to Lose.”
New York was not for Billy, and the Bride didn’t like it either.
While at his first training camp with the Rangers in 1965, Bill played a round of golf at Westchester on a chilly, drizzly, foggy day. When he came home, he wasn’t feeling well. He went to lie down and didn’t get up for three weeks. After day three, LeeAnne borrowed a neighbour’s phone because theirs wasn’t hooked up yet and called Emile Francis. A few hours later, a helicopter picked Bill up and flew him to St. Clare’s Hospital in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen area. It was built in the 1930s to serve poor Catholic immigrants. It was still a sketchy neighbourhood at the time, but it was where the team doctor had privileges. LeeAnne rushed to meet him there. She was sitting near the triage desk when she heard the nurses talking. “You know the hockey player who was just brought in? He’s in really bad shape. I don’t know if he’s going to make it through the night. I should be sponging him down, but I just don’t have the time.”
LeeAnne sat there stunned, and then she jumped up and said, “I’m the wife of that sick hockey player. Tell me what to do!”
Together they gathered ice, alcohol and cotton pads and hustled into Bill’s room. His temperature was 106 degrees Fahrenheit—he had developed pneumonia and was barely coherent. LeeAnne worked fast, cooling his wrists, underarms, head and groin. She had to get his fever down. She stayed with him through the night, but by morning he had slipped into a coma.
He opened his eyes a few days later and looked up at her. “I think I’ve been out of it for a while,” he said.
Bill stayed in the hospital for two weeks. Recovery was slow and he was bored. He looked forward to early mornings, when he could look out the window and watch the rats run around the garbage.
He finally came home but was as weak as a kitten. His chest was constricted and he’d have terrible coughing bouts. The doctors told him he had bronchial asthma, and along with that he was itchy everywhere because he’d developed severe allergies.
He eventually started skating and got himself back onto the ice. In 1967, Bill was one of the veterans claimed by the Oakland Seals in the expansion draft. Alan Eagleson was just getting into player representation, and he negotiated Bill’s contract.
Bert Olmstead was his coach in Oakland. “Dirty Bertie” was a tough guy and really hard-nosed. In his book The Glory Years, Toronto Maple Leaf right winger Billy Harris tells a story about how, one summer, Bert entered a rifle competition back home in Sceptre, Saskatchewan. He had the lead but lost on the final day. A buddy who had been drinking saw Bert in the men’s room and accused him of not trying hard enough, so Bert tried to drown him in the toilet bowl.
As a coach, Bert was uncompromising. One practice, while Olmstead was bag-skating his players, Bill felt so sick he took the bench. This was uncharacteristic of him, but Bert followed him over and told him to get back on the ice. A few minutes later, Bill collapsed on the ice and was rushed to the hospital. The asthma was back.
He sco
red twenty-one goals despite missing twenty-two games that first season, and by December 1968 he had thirty-four points, tying Dennis Hull as the tenth-highest scorer in the league. Bill thought most Oakland fans didn’t know a stick from a broom, but he appreciated the ice time he was getting. He became friends with Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, who was an Oakland season-ticket holder and came to all of the games. Bill was his favourite player. They had a hockey school together up in Santa Rosa. Once, Charlie showed Bill a cartoon of Snoopy playing hockey. “Look what number he’s wearing,” Schulz said. It was number 9, Bill’s number with the Seals.
The 1968–69 season was one of Bill’s best in the NHL, with twenty-five goals in sixty-seven games. But during one game, when the Los Angeles Kings’ goalie came out of his crease, Bill checked him and got into a stick-swinging incident with six-foot, four-inch, 210-pound defenceman Dale Rolfe. When LeeAnne saw Bill in the middle of a scrum, with the whole team on his back, she didn’t want to see him with a broken leg on top of all his other problems with allergies and asthma, so for the first time in ten years as an NHL wife, she suddenly jumped up and yelled, “Bill, you asshole, get out of there!”
The Hickes loved Oakland. Their son, Danny, was born shortly after they moved there. The city is located just across the bridge from San Francisco. There are 260 days of sunshine every year, and it’s close to Carmel and Monterey Bay.
Bill’s daughter, Lisa, was under school age and would run around the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena with all the other kids while their dads practised. Afterwards, the players would go to the bar and the kids would hang out at their own table in the back, with non-stop pop and colouring books.