The young Oilers lost in the 1983 playoffs to the Islanders but in a year the team had matured into a powerhouse “run ’n gun’ offensive team. Led by Gretzky, the Oilers won the Cup in 1984 and 1985, suffered a playoff loss to the Calgary Flames in 1986, and then won in 1987 and 1988. Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, who eliminated the Oilers in the 1989 playoffs. However, with Messier taking the leading role, the Edmonton club rebounded to win the 1990 Stanley Cup.
LEAFS DON’T FALL
When World War II ended, the Maple Leafs had a splendid roster of young players with some veterans in key roles. Centers Ted Kennedy and Syl Apps and goalie Turk Broda were cornerstones of the team that won the crown in 1947 and 1948. When Apps retired, owner Conn Smythe landed front-liner Max Bentley as a replacement in a major trade, and the Leafs added wins in 1949 and 1951.
END OF A DYNASTY…ALL OF THEM?
Detroit flirted with a dynasty destiny at the turn of the century, but had started their run with an already-aged lineup and never could secure a goaltender reliable as a Dryden, Smith, or Fuhr. Under the new salary-cap NHL, it seems unlikely any team could fit the talent of the 1980s Oilers or 1970s Canadiens into one payroll, let alone hold onto that talent for a sustained period. Even the Chicago Black Hawks, after winning the 2010 Cup, couldn’t keep all its key players. The New Jersey model, good for three Cups in nine years with one spectacular goalie, a couple top defencemen, and a revolving but consistently solid supporting cast, could be the only route left.
RED
One player you don’t hear much about these days—but should.
Leonard Patrick Kelly was born on July 9, 1927, to a farm family in Simcoe, Ontario, just north of Lake Erie. He grew up listening to the Toronto Maple Leafs on the radio, and playing hockey on ponds.
• His father sent him to St. Michael’s College School, a private school for boys in Toronto that had a legendary hockey program. (It produced such NHL stars as Gerry Cheevers, Tim Horton, and Frank Mahovlich.) Kelly waited tables to help pay his tuition.
• It was at St. Michael’s that Kelly got his nickname: “I scored eight goals or some dang thing in one of the games, and they nicknamed me,” he told the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003. “Because of the red hair, they started calling me ‘Red’.”
• In 1947 his beloved Leafs passed on him, with their agent saying Kelly “wouldn’t last twenty games” in the NHL. Fortunately, the 19-year-old was snatched up by the Detroit Red Wings.
• Kelly won the Stanley Cup with the Wings in 1950…and again in 1952…and again in 1954…and one more time in 1955.
• In 1960 the Red Wings traded Kelly to the New York Rangers. He was devastated: “Twelve-and-a-half years in Detroit and then they trade you. I thought I was out of hockey. I retired,” he said later. He even got a job with a tool company.
• Legendary Leafs coach Punch Imlach asked Kelly to come play for him, but not as a defenceman—as a center. Kelly agreed.
• In 1962, while playing for the Leafs, Kelly was elected to the Canadian House of Commons, representing York West in Ontario. He kept the seat until 1965.
• With the Leafs, Kelly won the Stanley Cup Championship four more times: in 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1967. His eight Stanley Cup wins ties him for fifth all time. (Not even Gordie Howe or Wayne Gretzky has that many.)
MASKED MESSAGES
NHL goalies like to decorate their masks with intricate graphics meant to declare individuality. Here are three notable mask-wearers who established new levels of self-expression…and self-promotion.
SCARFACE
Boston Bruins netminder Gerry Cheevers is considered to be the first NHL goalie to decorate his facemask. It all started during the 1967–68 season when a puck struck Cheevers on the mask during team practice. As a joke, Bruins trainer Frosty Forristall painted stitches across the “wound.” Cheevers liked the menacing, monster-movie look of this equipment modification and continued to paint stitches on his mask whenever he was hit in the face. By 1971 he was using three different masks, all covered with hundreds of “scars.”
FAST EDDIE
Hall of Famer Eddie Giacomin spent most of his 20 years in pro hockey as goaltender for the New York Rangers. When he was traded to the Detroit Red Wings in the mid-1970s, near the end of his career, Giacomin capitalized on his move to the Motor City by entering a sponsorship deal with Champion Spark Plugs. The original plan was for Giacomin to sport a “Spark with Eddie” promotional logo on his facemask. The NHL intervened, though, and told the goalie he couldn’t use his face protector as a billboard. (These were the days when the boards along the ice were still free of corporate advertising.) So Giacomin used some of the subtler graphic elements of the ad campaign and donned a mask with stylized lightning bolts over the eyeholes that gave the impression of fierce, frowning eyebrows. The end result: Giacomin looked like less like a goalie (or an automotive-supplies ad man) and more like a comic book super villain.
NOW YOU “C” IT, NOW YOU DON’T
In 2008 the Vancouver Canucks made an unusual personnel appointment: they named Roberto Luongo—the team’s star goalie—team captain. He became the first netminding captain since the Montreal Canadiens’ Bill Durnan in 1948. In the years since, the NHL had created a rule stating that goalkeepers could not be team captains because the league didn’t want a goalie leaving his crease during games to discuss referees’ decisions. The Canucks bypassed this rule by designating three “alternate captains,” one forward and two defencemen, who would handle the meetings with refs. One more problem: league rules forbade goalies from wearing the “C” on their jerseys (the traditional identifying mark of a team captain). So Luongo painted a “C” onto his facemask instead. In 2010, though, Luongo (and the team’s management) realized that the responsibilities of being captain presented too many distractions—particularly, bearing the brunt of post-game media interrogations—for a man whose position requires such focus and concentration. So the Canucks named high-scoring star forward Henrik Sedin team captain, and Luongo stepped down and had the “C” removed from his mask.
* * * * *
HEAD OVER HEELS
Record: Fastest Cup-winning overtime goal
Bobby Orr’s 1970 Stanley Cup–winning overtime goal is legendary because it produced one of the most famous sports photographs in history: The image captures Boston’s Orr—just seconds after scoring and tripping over the stick of St. Louis goaltender Glenn Hall—flying horizontally above the ice with arms raised in triumph. The goal was also one for the record books: scored at 40 seconds into extra time, it is the fastest-ever Cup–winning overtime goal.
A NOVEL GAME
Nothing on TV in the offseason? Then try cracking these—and remember, wise fans keeps their bookshelves stocked for the next NHL labor dispute.
AMAZONS by Cleo Birdwell
The subtitle “An Intimate Memoir by the First Women to Play in the National Hockey League” explains most of the plot, though it’s in fact a novel by acclaimed American writer Don DeLillo. As a New York Ranger, Cleo Birdwell is bashed and bruised, and scores lots of goals over the course of her rookie season, but she also finds time to nursemaid her neurotic roommate, play strip Monopoly, and sword-fight.
THE DIVINE RYANS by Wayne Johnston
Draper Doyle Ryan grows up in a Newfoundland family whose members inevitably take the cloth, but he’s more interested in unravelling the mystery of his father’s death and following the ever-changing fortunes of the Montreal Canadiens. A priest, meanwhile, shows him how to throw a punch, while his tomboyish sister Mary teaches him a thing or two about stickhandling.
FINNIE WALSH by Steven Galloway
Working-class Paul Woodward spends his childhood taking shots on wealthy Finnie Walsh, leading, strangely enough, to near-fatal injuries to both Paul’s father and kid sister. After carrying the hometown Portsmouth Jaguars to the provincial championship, both boys are drafted into the NHL, where Finnie’s overdeveloped sense of loyalty determines that
only Paul will skate into the Stanley Cup finals.
HOCKEY NIGHT IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA
by Eric Zweig
A work of fiction cast with real-life players, following each from backyard pond to the big leagues. In the end the Renfrew Millionaires lose the 1910 Stanley Cup finals to the Ottawa Senators, but, on a lighter note, manage to thwart an assassination attempt on Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier.
THE GOOD BODY by Bill Gaston
Bobby “Loose” Bonaduce retires from minor hockey in the U.S. and lies his way into graduate school at the University of New Brunswick, just so that he can play on a collegiate squad with the son he hasn’t seen in 10 years and possibly reconnect with the boy’s mother. Along with English classes, Bobby must also come to grips with the multiple sclerosis slowly betraying his once-reliable body.
KING LEARY by Paul Quarrington
Percival Leary once executed a perfect “St. Louis Whirlygig” to score the winning goal in the 1919 Stanley Cup finals. Now living in a nursing home with Blue Hermann, the alcoholic reporter who chronicled his exploits, Leary looks back on his career, from hockey-playing monks teaching him the game to his glory days with the Canadiens, but his attention returns to the present when he’s invited to star in a ginger ale commercial.
THE LAST SEASON by Roy MacGregor
Felix Batterinski grows up playing hockey in the backwoods Ontario town of Pomerania and comes to prominence as a “Broad Street Bully” on the mid-1970s Philadelphia Flyers. After his NHL career crumbles he becomes a player-coach in Finland, where he shakily attempts to put his own personal stamp on the European game.
LOGAN IN OVERTIME by Paul Quarrington
The eponymous Logan is an alcoholic, semi-professional goalie, playing in a league where overtime is not broken into periods but just goes on and on and on. In the last game of the playoffs, broken and exhausted, his problems are compounded by his conviction that aliens are out to get him.
SALVAGE KING, YA! by Mark Anthony Jarman
Drinkwater is a tough-talking junkyard owner and semi-professional hockey player. Realizing that at 33 he’ll never make the NHL, he looks for his life’s true direction while attempting to salvage his relationships with his ex-wife, fiancée, and mistress.
BOBBY ORR OF HOCKEY LORE
Bobby Orr, rated by many as the finest pure talent in hockey history, is also a classic on-the-pond development yarn.
The Seguin River is a wide, slow-moving stream through the town of Parry Sound in what is considered the southern portion of northern Ontario. In the cold winters, it freezes over early and becomes a large hockey and skating rink, the perfect ice surface for developing hockey skills.
IT ALSO MEANS IT WAS DAMN LOUD!
Bobby Orr’s home, a simple white stucco house, had the railroad tracks on one side, the river on the other. That meant little distance for him to travel to learn the game at which some feel he was the best ever, the finest pure talent ever seen. Gordie Howe certainly was more durable, Wayne Gretzky perhaps had stronger instinct, Yvan Cournoyer might have been faster and John Ferguson was probably tougher…But no player had all those qualities in higher quantities than Orr.
How that skill was developed in a very young lad is not a story unique to “Number Four,” as Orr was simply known through his majestic career with the Boston Bruins. The Seguin River was to Orr as Walter Gretzky’s backyard rink was to Wayne, the Bay of Quinte to Bobby Hull and the farm sloughs and empty hay mows to the six Sutter brothers. But Orr’s total devotion to hockey from an early age—his father figures his son decided at nine or ten the game would be his life—was the key to his brilliance.
“If it got really cold when we were on the river and my face was a little numb, I could sneak home, walking across the road on the toes of my skates, and thaw out some by the stove,” Orr said. “But I never stayed there too long. I might miss something in the game. The only thing that got me home was the dark and then only because it got colder.”
LEARN HOW TO BE A PUCK HOG
The big game on the river was what Bobby’s father Doug called “Parry Sound Keep-away.” Others called it simply “hog.” A player got the puck on his stick and kept it until another player checked it away from him. From an early age, it seemed the little blond-haired kid had the puck most of the time through a combination of his quick hands and even quicker feet.
AND LOUDER STILL…
Because the Orr family sometimes did not own a car, the garage was often empty. Bobby turned it into his shooting gallery in all seasons, winding up his day there with at least a half-hour of shots. They had cut a piece of plywood the size of a net, six feet by four, and nailed it to the back wall of the garage. “The garage was only 20 feet long,” Doug Orr said. “He would open the garage doors and shoot from the drive and even from the street. I made special pucks by hollowing out pucks a little and putting some lead filament in them. They were about twice as heavy as a regular puck and helped him develop his shot and strength. Every night, even in the heat of summer, in the house, we would hear the thud of the shots, one sound if he was hitting his plywood net, another if he was missing. If the misses were a higher number, he would be grumpy when he finally stopped.”
COACH BUCKO, MP
In a small town, the kid with talent gets to play a great deal on the local teams, often moving up a notch with the older boys. Bobby started in organized hockey at five and often played on two all-star teams, the “traveling” clubs that went into the Ontario play-downs. The Parry Sound all-star teams were coached by Bucko McDonald, the barrel-chested old belter who had an NHL career with the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs, played for and coached the fabled Sundridge Beavers intermediate team, and served several terms as a Member of Parliament.
MITE ON THE DEFENCE
Defencemen usually were the bigger, rougher kids while the smaller lads were forwards. Orr always was smaller than the other kids; at 12 years of age, he was 5-foot-2 and 110 pounds. He was a winger for part of a season, then McDonald shifted him to defence. “Bobby tried the wing for a time, then I moved him back to defence,” Bucko said. “Doug Orr once asked me if I didn’t think he should be a forward and I told him that Bobby was born to play defence. I’d never thought much about it but he just had all the equipment to be a defenceman, except size at the time. He was the best young player in town and that’s why I asked him to play for the bantams.”
ALL HE HAS TO DO IS GROW INTO THAT SWEATER
Playing with boys two years older led to Orr’s “discovery.” The Parry Sound team met the team from Gananoque on the St. Lawrence River in eastern Ontario in the provincial final. Gananoque is just east of Kingston, where the Bruins’ farm team in the short-lived Eastern Pro League was located. An executive from the Bruins, a team struggling in the NHL, was in town and attended the bantam game to check on two highly regarded 14-year-olds on the Gananoque team. The rest is history, a fine part of hockey folklore. The kid who grabbed the attention was the little squirt in baggy pants and too-big sweater on the Parry Sound defence. Orr played 58 of the 60 minutes in that game, his only rest coming during a penalty.
“It was incredible that this little kid, who looked like he shouldn’t be playing with the big guys, ran the show for the entire game,” said Lynn Patrick, the Bruins’ general manager at the time, years later when he held the same job with the St. Louis Blues. “There were few players in the NHL who could feather a pass the way he could at 12.”
SHOOTING LOW
Orr became the most scouted player in hockey because, at that time, NHL teams could tie up young players at 14. Representatives of all six NHL clubs were regular visitors to Parry Sound games and the Orr home. The most persistent was Wren Blair, a Bruin scout who would be GM of the Oshawa Generals when that team returned to top level junior hockey. Years later, Doug Orr revealed that it was Bobby himself who decided the Bruins were his club. “He saw that they were well down in the NHL standings and one day he said that he could probably g
et to the NHL quicker than with one of the teams at the top of the league with a lot of talent,” he said.
SERVING IN THE ’SHWA
At 14, Orr joined the Generals in the Toronto Metro Junior A League, playing against boys as old as 20. But his skill, smarts and anticipation allowed him to survive. His ability to read and react to the opposition’s plays stood out at that age. He would start heading for a spot on the ice long before there was an indication to anyone else that the puck would end up there and, sure enough, most times the puck would end up on his stick. He scored 29 goals in his second junior season and dominated the Ontario Hockey League. In his third season, a Toronto columnist had this lead on a yarn on the prodigy: “If Bobby Orr turns out to be merely human, strong men in Boston will weep.”
A BOY AGAINST MEN
A game in Orr’s pre-NHL days that sealed the deal on his surefire stardom came in his final junior season when he neared his 18th birthday. The Toronto Marlboros juniors were scheduled to meet the great national team of the old Soviet Union and added several other top junior players including Orr, Serge Savard, and Derek Sanderson. Orr was exceptional in a 4–3 loss, the first time he had been on display against men.
BUT ALAN, HE’S NOT EVEN OF AGE
Orr was represented by lawyer Alan Eagleson in negotiations on the prodigy’s first contract with the Bruins, whose business was handled by the stern Hap Emms, a longtime coach of Bruins junior development teams in Barrie and Niagara Falls. The contract was signed on Emms’ yacht in Ontario’s Lake Simcoe, the biggest deal ever for an NHL player. When the signatures were on the paper, Eagleson suggested that it was an occasion that demanded a cork out of champagne bottle. A noted tightwad who ran his junior teams on a strict low budget, Emms opened the boat’s fridge, took out a can and the signing of “Number Four,” maybe the greatest ever, was celebrated with a sip of Fresca.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores Page 21