Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Winger Gaye Stewart made a splendid Maple Leaf debut in 1942–43, scoring 24 goals to win the Calder. But Stewart had to wait three years to test out the jinx: He entered the World War II Canadian Army after his rookie season and didn’t return to hockey until 1945–46, when he led the league in goals with 37.

  RINGER OF THE YEAR

  The rules governing the Calder were changed after Sergei Makarov, 31 at the time and a veteran of more than a dozen years with the Russian national team, won the “rookie” award for an outstanding 1989–90 first season with the Calgary Flames. Legislation was passed that offseason to limit the Calder to players 25 years or under by September 15 of their eligible season.

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  “I wouldn’t ever go into a season trying to re-build from scratch. You can’t trade good players for high picks because the world ends at the end of each season. Live with the idea that the world is flat and you’re coming to the edge.”

  —Neil Smith, former Rangers president–GM

  “I don’t want to talk about today’s market anymore because nobody can make sense of what the market is. It’s all over the map. There’s a bunch of lunatics out there throwing money away. I’m sick and tired of it. It’s lunacy. Punch me in the head and tell me I’m stupid, but that’s the way I feel. There’s no sense to it anymore.”

  —Kevin Lowe, GM,

  former defenceman, Edmonton Oilers

  CROSSOVER ARTISTS

  Only two players in sports history have competed in the finals for Canada’s two most coveted trophies: the Grey Cup and the Stanley Cup.

  CANADA’S GREATEST ATHLETE

  Decades before Bo Jackson made his name as a two-sport pro athlete, Lionel “Big Train” Conacher was dominating whatever sport he chose—football, hockey, lacrosse, rugby, and baseball. Born in Toronto in 1900, he played on 14 different teams as a teen and won 11 championships. At the age of 20, he emerged as Canadian Light Heavyweight boxing champion. By 21, he had led the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts to a Grey Cup triumph, scoring 17 points in a 23–0 victory over the Edmonton Eskimos.

  Football was Conacher’s favorite game, and the Globe and Mail called him “one of the most feared ball-carriers in the game.” But at the age of 25, he surprised Canadian sports fans by switching over to hockey. Why? Simple economics. In the 1920s, it was a more lucrative professional sport than football. Conacher was relatively new to hockey—he put skates on for the first time at 16. Nevertheless, he used his tremendous speed and power (the skills that had given him his nickname, “Big Train”) to excel at his newly adopted sport. His NHL career spanned 12 years, and included two Stanley Cup–winning seasons—with the Chicago Black Hawks in 1933–34 and with the Montreal Maroons in 1934–35. At different times, Conacher also captained both teams. In 1950 the Canadian press voted him as the country’s “Athlete of the Half Century.”

  When he retired from hockey in 1937, Conacher set his sights even higher—he ran for and was elected to the Ontario Legislature and then, in 1949 and 1953, the House of Commons. But in the end, it would be his beloved sports that brought him down. At the age of 54, while playing softball in a charity game between politicians and members of the press, Conacher raced to stretch a single for extra bases and collapsed when he got to third. He died soon after of a heart attack.

  KID DYNAMITE

  Gerry James’s claim to fame doesn’t include the same breadth of sports accomplishments that Lionel Conacher had, but he did become the only athlete to appear in both a Stanley Cup final and a Grey Cup game within a year. A native of Saskatchewan, James was a football prodigy. The CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers drafted him in 1952, when he was just 17, making him the league’s youngest player and earning him the nickname “Kid Dynamite.” During his CFL career, he made six trips to the Grey Cup final…and won four times. He was also twice voted the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player (1954 and 1957).

  Meanwhile he also played junior hockey and won a Memorial Cup in 1955 with the Toronto Marlboros. His toughness and skills as a football running back transferred well into hockey. He became a role player for the Toronto Maple Leafs known for checking and killing penalties, and in one busy year, he played in the 1959 Grey Cup (his Bombers beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, 21–7) and as rightwing for the Leafs a few months later in the 1959–60 Stanley Cup (losing to the Montreal Canadiens, four games to none).

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  THE B***ARD SAVED MY LIFE!

  In 2007 Dale Neudorf, 45, was refereeing a recreational hockey game in northern Saskatchewan when a player viciously assaulted him with his stick, knocking him unconscious. Neudorf was rushed to a hospital and given an MRI scan…and doctors discovered a golf ball-sized tumor in his brain. The attack allowed Neudorf to have the tumor treated—and possibly saved his life. (The attacker served a year in prison for the assault.) Neudorf is still a referee today.

  DIRECT LINES

  NHL history is dotted with threesomes that accumulated high point totals and dazzled with their moves.

  There was the Production Line, the Punch Line, and the Krauts plus the A-Line, the Pony Line and more than a few lines with the “Kid” handle. Try Million Dollar Line, the Scooters, the Triple Crown Line, and the French Connection. And there were some good threesomes that simply defied being tagged with a snappy title.

  LINES IN DECLINE

  Through NHL history, when three forwards played strongly as a unit and had stayed together for a couple seasons, they were handed a nickname that became part of hockey folklore. The majority of the fabled lines played in the earlier NHL eras. Small rosters employed as few as a dozen skaters plus a goaltender, which usually meant two complete forward combinations that all but eliminated the coaches’ opportunities to juggle lines. As the number of players used in games increased, up to the 18 skaters and two goalies in the new-millennium NHL, coaches could deploy the troops in differing combos on every change, lines tailored specifically to work against the trio the opposition tried.

  “By the 1980s, the amount of line juggling had increased to the point where you never could predict the combination that would be used by the other team and a coach had to make quick changes—sometimes just one player—to try and nullify what the other team was trying,” said Glen Sather, general manager and head coach of the Edmonton Oilers when they won five Stanley Cup championships from 1984 to 1990. “Since then, a pattern has been for two players to be linemates over the long haul with a variety of mates in the third slot, depending on the situation.”

  IN LINES OF TWO

  The NHL’s two great offensive stars in the 1980s and 1990s, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, were not the wheel-horses of long-term lines. During his record-smashing days with the Oilers, Gretzky was partnered with right-winger Jari Kurri and while big Dave Semenko often played left side in a protector role, a variety of Oilers worked that slot. Lemieux and left-winger Kevin Stevens were a powerful combo for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the early 1990s, including two Cup crowns, but no player staked a permanent claim on the their right flank.

  LINES ON THE ICE

  Punch Line: Goal-scoring genius Maurice “Rocket” Richard was right-winger on a line with slick center Elmer Lach and gritty Toe Blake. Richard specialized in placing the puck in the net on chances created by Lach, an underrated player who twice won scoring titles, and Blake, an efficient two-way winger. Richard later played on a splendid line with his younger brother Henri “Pocket Rocket” Richard and Dickie Moore when the Canadiens wore the crown in five consecutive seasons from 1956 to 1960.

  Production Line: When Gordie Howe joined the Detroit Red Wings in 1946 at 18, he quickly took a spot on the right wing with center Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay. All three were all-star candidates with complete skills and toughness and because they could do it all, the line is rated among the most difficult ever to check.

  Kraut Line: Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer, and Woody Dumart all came from Kitchener, Ontario, an area with a heavy German ancestry (it used to be calle
d Berlin), thus the Kraut nickname when they joined the Boston Bruins. When World War II started, the line was called the Kitchener Kids but that never took. Had Canadian military service not chopped four seasons out of their careers’ prime, the Krauts likely would have registered more than the 1939 and 1941 Cup triumphs.

  The Pony Line: Three brilliant little western Canadians, Max and Doug Bentley and Bill Mosienko, excelled for the Chicago Black Hawks for a half-dozen seasons in the 1940s. Ultra-quick and splendid at passing, they always looked like boys among men but their goal totals were strictly adult.

  The A-Line: Named for the A-train subway that ran under the old Madison Square Garden in New York, the line of Frank Boucher with Bill and Bun Cook is rated as the best ever by many old-timers, especially because of its passing. Owners of complete skills, they produced an average of more than two points per game from 1926 to 1937 and two New York Rangers Cup titles.

  The Kid Line: The name has been carried by many young lines but the definitive “Kids” were the Toronto Maple Leafs trio of Joe Primeau, Charlie Conacher, and Busher Jackson. They all came out of Toronto junior hockey to be key players in building a strong team to move into the new Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931, winning the Cup that season. All-star selections and scoring titles followed and all three became heroes across Canada because of Foster Hewitt’s Hockey Night in Canada radio broadcasts.

  The Espo Line: The Bruins’ extraordinary line of Phil Esposito, Wayne Cashman, and Ken Hodge produced more than 2,000 points in almost 700 games from 1967 to 1976 and earned two Stanley Cup wins. Esposito broke goal-scoring records galore, many on passes from his big linemates. Having the mighty Bobby Orr on defence didn’t hurt their offensive cause.

  The French Connection: Gil Perreault, Richard Martin, and Rene Robert led the expansion Buffalo Sabres to quick prominence in the 1970s.

  The Million Dollar and Scooter Lines: Big for the Black Hawks, the Million Dollar line of Bobby Hull, Bill Hay, and Murray Balfour were a big part of the 1961 Stanley Cup. The swift Scooters, Stan Mikita, Kenny Wharram and Doug Mohns, stood out for six seasons later that decade.

  The Triple Crown and Trio Grande Lines: Allow the fans to name things and these silly tags are what happens. Marcel Dionne, Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer were an exceptional trio for the Los Angeles Kings while Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, and Clark Gillies, also known as the Long Island Lighting Company, led the New York Islanders to four consecutive Stanley Cup wins in the early 1980s.

  HOCKEY IN THE TRENCHES

  During the two world wars, not all of hockey’s battles were fought off the continent with tanks and guns.

  YOU’VE BEEN DRAFTED! (NOT TO THE NHL…)

  The German tanks that twice rumbled across Europe, plunging the planet into World Wars I and II, shook the National Hockey League hard. But the NHL was founded in 1917 even as World War I raged on. And while World War II created an enormous challenge for the NHL to continue play, government officials felt that the games would provide some relief from the depressing headlines for the folks at home. Despite the loss of many players to the armed forces during the two conflicts, the competitive factor of hockey did not weaken during the much more serious battles. Team owners and management and even the military competed vigorously to recruit players from a diminished pool of talent.

  Some old-timers claim that some of the finest hockey ever played was in the war years. In fact, various areas of the military tried all sorts of deals to land the best NHL players in their units, in order to build the strongest hockey rosters for competition in the service leagues. During the basic training periods, most bases iced teams. But during both wars, disputes often arose over which team had first call on players’ services: the service club or the team back home. Training schedules and mobilization calls forced major lineup changes or even pullouts from competition.

  DODGING BULLETS

  World War I broke out in late 1914, and by the 1915–16 season, as many as 17 service teams were in competition, most of them at the senior amateur level. With several military training bases in the area, Winnipeg was a hockey stronghold. The Winnipeg 61st Battalion team, led by future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee “Bullet” Joe Simpson, won the 1916 Allan Cup as Canadian senior champions. All players of age on the superlative Winnipeg Falcons senior club, including Hall of Famer Frank Fredrickson, enlisted as a group—training with the 233rd Battalion in Portage La Prairie and traveling to Winnipeg for games in the aptly named Manitoba Patriotic League. At the end of the 1916–17 season the entire battalion was shipped overseas.

  DUKE DISPUTE

  A wartime dispute over star player Duke Keats led to the formation of the NHL. A member of the Toronto Blueshirts in the National Hockey Association, Keats and other players enlisted in the 228th Battalion, which entered a team in the NHA for the 1916–17 season. Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone, who fought a never-ending battle with rival owners, won an appeal that forced Keats to play for the Blueshirts until the battalion went overseas in February 1917. Fed up with Livingstone’s antics, the other owners then formed the NHL as a way to shed the troublesome Toronto owner.

  HORRIBLE LOSSES

  Winnipeg senior hockey was hit hard by the war as several players lost their lives in Europe. Frank McGee, the great star of the Ottawa Silver Seven, died in France in 1918 and Scotty Davidson, leading scorer with the 1914 Stanley Cup champion Blueshirts, was killed in Belgium in 1915. Hobey Baker, the top U.S. amateur player at Princeton University, where he was captain of both the hockey and football teams, became a fighter pilot. A member of the fabled Lafayette Escadrille fighter unit, Baker survived the war missions but shortly after the armistice was signed in 1918, he took a plane up for a “farewell flight” and died in a crash.

  SMYTHE HEROICS

  Among the first hockey men involved in World War II, which started in 1939, was Conn Smythe, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. As a player, Smythe captained the University of Toronto team that won the Ontario junior title in 1915, just before he and many teammates enlisted in the service for World War I. A strong NHL owner from 1926 on and builder of Maple Leaf Gardens, Smythe, who earned a Major ranking, formed the Sportsmen’s Battery of the Royal Canadian Artillery with many sports stars in its ranks and took it overseas, seeing heavy combat himself in the anti-aircraft battery. He was badly wounded in 1944.

  KRAUTS IN THE RCAF

  Many players were drafted or enlisted in World War II, and the two top teams in the prewar years—the Boston Bruins and New York Rangers—had their rosters depleted. As in World War I, service hockey teams were strong. The Bruins’ brilliant Kraut Line of Milt Schmidt, Woody Dumart, and Bobby Bauer played for the RCAF team based in Ottawa, winning the Allan Cup in 1942. A year later, the Ottawa Commandos army team, assembled by Frank Boucher of the Rangers, won the senior crown.

  ON THE HOME FRONT

  In the early years of the war, a draft for home defence with a 30-day training period gave players a chance to remain in the game. That changed as the war progressed, when training was lengthened and the athletes shipped overseas. Because Canadian military health standards were so high, many players with hockey injuries were rejected. Some scorn was heaped on players not healthy enough to serve but still able to play pro hockey. Because the Quebec government fought the compulsory draft, the Canadiens retained a powerful roster through the war years. Although many Maple Leafs enlisted or were drafted, the club stayed strong; the hockey hotbed of Toronto had many junior and senior players the Leafs could use to stay in contention.

  COMING HOME TO A DIFFERENT NHL

  The New York Americans folded after a 1941–42 season and other U.S. teams, especially the New York Rangers, Chicago, and Boston, struggled to fill their lineups. The Rangers used Saskatchewan senior goalie Steve Buzinski for nine games in the 1942–43 season, in which he surrendered 55 goals. He became known as Steve “The Puck Goes Inski” Buzinski. Overtime in schedule games was ended to allow teams to catch trains on time and the introduction
of the center red line allowed the use of long clearing passes. When the war ended, the veterans returned and combined with a big crop of young players who had had a chance to play in their absence. The NHL entered a period of prosperity.

  DRAFT DAY DRAMA

  The NHL Entry Draft is an exciting annual event for young players entering the Bigs and for teams looking to the future. But sometimes things don’t go as planned.

  FROM RUSSIA, WITH DELAYS

  In 1989, to get Russian phenom Pavel Bure, the Vancouver Canucks had to do a lot more than simply call his name from the draft podium. Most NHL clubs knew about the potential of the dazzling 18-year-old scoring sensation from Moscow, but they considered him ineligible since, by most accounts, he had not played enough elite-level games in Russia to qualify. Also, in 1989, before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, most teams thought it risky to draft a player from Russia because there were no guarantees he would be able to defect. The Canucks took a chance, though, and selected Bure in the sixth round. Representatives from other NHL franchises immediately cried foul, questioning Bure’s eligibility. The Washington Capitals and the Hartford Whalers officially filed complaints with the league and the NHL president John Ziegler ruled in their favor, disqualifying Bure. But the Canucks felt they could prove Bure’s eligibility based on the 11 major games he’d played in as a member of the Russian military team, the Central Red Army. The only question was how.