LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
America’s greatest hockey moment came at the 1980 Winter Olympics when underdog Team USA miraculously vanquished the mighty Soviet Union during the semifinals and then went on to defeat Finland for the gold. When Hollywood dramatized the USA vs. USSR game in the 2004 film Miracle, the filmmakers recruited a few real-life hockey players to add realism to the production. This was an opportunity for former Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers goalie and 1990 Conn Smythe Trophy winner Bill Ranford to step back into the limelight.
In the movie, actor Eddie Cahill played Team USA’s star goalie Jim Craig, but Ranford served as Cahill’s body double for all the on-ice action sequences. And like a Method actor, Ranford took the job very seriously: “To add authenticity to the scenes, I tried duplicating some of Jim’s signature moves,” he said. “I’d try to copy the way he played the puck with his glove hand near the bottom of the stick, or the way he’d hold his glove high on the crossbar so he could watch the guys behind the net.” Ranford continues to study the details of netminding technique in his current job as the goaltending coach for the Los Angeles Kings.
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UNICYCLE HOCKEY
The International Unicycle Federation draws up the rules for unicycle hockey—it’s a real thing!—and there are leagues in many places around the world. The rules are very similar to ice hockey, and ice hockey sticks (except goalie sticks) are the only type allowed in the game. A ball, often a tennis ball, is used instead of a puck. Games are usually played on indoor basketball courts, and it’s actually a blast to watch. And yes—contact is allowed!
IRREPRESSIBLE ROGER
Roger Neilson brought many innovations to hockey in his long coaching career with over a dozen big-league and junior teams.
When NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced at the 2002 entry draft in Nashville that Roger Neilson had lost his three-year battle with cancer, just about everyone in the stadium simultaneously thought of a great Roger Neilson story. Few in hockey—players, coaches or executives—achieved the legend status of the small, quick-moving man who devoted his entire life to the sport and never stopped seeking ways to test hockey’s rules or inspire players to improve. In his final NHL season when he was an assistant coach with the Ottawa Senators and cancer was winning the battle, head coach Jacques Martin allowed Neilson to replace him for the concluding two games of the schedule, lifting Neilson’s games total as an NHL head coach to 1,000.
THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR
“Mention Roger to hockey people and they would shake their heads, laugh and tell you a story about him that covered either some out-of-the-ordinary thing he’d tried or some goofy thing he had done, often based on his absent-mindedness,” said Colin Campbell, who played junior and NHL hockey under Neilson, was his assistant coach with the New York Rangers and now is an NHL vice-president. “Many figured he was a genius one day and then talk of his nutty side the next. The one thing I never heard anyone say about Roger Neilson is that they didn’t like him. He never said a bad word about anyone, even those who fired him.”
WELL-TRAVELED
In his 1,000 games as a head coach, Neilson built a 460-381-159 win-loss-tie record in stays behind the bench of varying lengths with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabres, Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, Florida Panthers, and Philadelphia Flyers. He also logged time as an assistant (he also served as an assistant on some of the teams he went on to coach) with the St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks, and Ottawa Senators, and was video analyst for the Edmonton Oilers in one of their 1980s Cup-winning springs.
CAPTAIN VIDEO
The most-used wrinkle that Neilson initiated in hockey is the use of video as a teaching and coaching tool. His devotion to the camera and screen earned the nickname “Captain Video.” In his first coaching job in top-level junior hockey with the Peterborough Petes, Neilson also worked as a high school physical education teacher. He convinced the school board to purchase video equipment as a teaching aid, then “borrowed” the equipment to have a helper shoot full-ice pictures of the Petes’ games. “Those early pictures were pretty grainy but I was able to use them to have an assessment of what my team was doing right and wrong,” Neilson said. “By analyzing them, I could see areas of the game where our team and individual players needed work and what the opposition was doing.”
THE TRUE WAY
In his first NHL job, a two-season stint with the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1977 to 1979, Neilson did an even more complex breakdown of the game tapes. When he used the phrase “scoring chances” to analyze the offence, hockey had a new phrase. “Shots on goal were an oft-used statistic but they did not really tell you much because a soft shot from the blue line that was easy to handle for the goalie counted the same as a 15-foot shot that required a difficult save,” Neilson explained. “It was more useful to list the true scoring chances the teams had from the scoring areas where a good shot would produce a goal.”
THEY JUST NEEDED MORE SCORING CHANCES…
The main criticism of Neilson through his long coaching career was that his clubs played dull, defensive hockey. His devotion to prevention, more than the production, of goals allowed several of his teams to achieve much more than their talent appeared capable of achieving. That he was trained as a teacher allowed him to turn hockey into a classroom, especially at the junior level. “I always thought it was a bad rap that I was totally a defensive coach,” Neilson said. “Sure, I stressed that side of the game because knowing how to play without the puck was something every good player had to know. Besides, finding players with a high level of offensive skills always was difficult at every level of the game. But guys who were willing to work and learn, even if they didn’t have great slickness or speed, could always find a job in hockey.”
LES PAPER BOYS
Thus, it’s no surprise that two of Neilson’s top Petes graduates, Bob Gainey and Doug Jarvis, were the defensive anchors of the Montreal Canadiens when they won four consecutive Stanley Cup crowns in the late 1970s. Much Neilson mythology was inspired by antics during his ten seasons in junior hockey. He had coached minor hockey and baseball teams in Toronto for years and was hired by the Canadiens as a part-time scout for junior talent, then landed the Peterborough post. At one time, Neilson delivered close to 1,000 copies of a morning newspaper in Toronto, often hiring his young hockey players to help.
LOOPY LOOPHOLES
A Neilson specialty was finding small loopholes in hockey rules he could use to his advantage, his twists inspiring the rewriting of several pieces of hockey legislation. When he pulled his goaltender for an extra attacker, Neilson instructed the goalie to leave his stick across the crease to stop any sliding shots. If leading by a goal in the final minute of the game, Neilson would send out an extra skater, the too-many-men penalty eating up precious seconds. He continued to use an extra skater until the penalty box was full of Petes but the final minute was finished. The rule was changed to award a penalty shot to the opposition if a team was charged with over-use of players in the last two minutes of a game.
RON LED THE LEAGUE IN GAA
Neilson gained wide publicity when he employed a defenceman, not a goalie, to face the shooter on penalty shots. The Petes had a large backliner, Ron Stackhouse, and in a preseason game when the Toronto Marlboros were awarded a penalty shot, Neilson took his goalie out of the net and inserted Stackhouse. When the opponent skated from center with the puck, Stackhouse met him at the blue line and checked the puck away from him. The befuddled officials decreed that the rules stated the “goalie” could not leave the crease until the opponent had crossed the blue line and ordered the penalty shot repeated. Stackhouse stopped the second try plus six others that season before the rules were changed to limit the defence to the goalie.
DID MIKE EVER CRACK THE LINEUP?
Another oft-told Neilson story concerns his use of his dog Mike as a teaching aid. Because his Pete forwards were going deep too often on forechecking mi
ssions and being trapped by the opposition’s breakouts, Neilson stationed Mike in front of the net while he went behind it, puck on stick. No matter what moves or fakes Neilson tried, Mike held his spot until the “puck carrier” crossed the goal-line. “I don’t think the players liked the inference from me using Mike but they got the message,” Neilson said.
SO LONG AND THANKS FOR THE TRAP
Perhaps Neilson’s top coaching accomplishment came with the expansion Florida team from 1993 to 1995. Playing the much scorned neutral zone trap, which made the action very dull, the Panthers missed the playoff by a single point in each of their first two seasons. In their third season after Neilson was replaced as head coach, the Panthers—with the basic roster Neilson had trained—advanced to the Stanley Cup final.
JUST DON’T ASK ME DIRECTIONS TO THE RINK
A devout Christian who never married and did not use profanity or drink alcohol, Neilson was renowned for his ties, always in loud colors and weird designs. When not called Captain Video, Neilson was mentioned as “the absent-minded professor.” In most of his coaching jobs, he lived close enough to the arena to take his bicycle to work. But he often forgot the route, made wrong turns and admitted that he often had to knock on strangers’ doors to ask for directions. That’s something his well-drilled teams never had to do on the ice.
THE DUKE AND THE TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING
How Phil Esposito used royal connections to get an NHL expansion team.
WELCOME, NEW GUY!
Once the NHL grants permission for a city to start a club and join its elite organization, it’s customary for there to be a press conference. Preferably, amid much hullabaloo, an oversized cardboard cheque with a multi-million dollar figure is flapped around and presented by the owners of the new team to the NHL commissioner. Thus, another franchise is added to the NHL. The story of the symbolic cheque which was presented to then-NHL President John Ziegler by representatives of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1991 turned disastrous two weeks later, and hilarious with two years hindsight.
LESSON 1: DON’T TRUST YOUR BROTHER TONY
Let’s go back to May 1991, when Phil Esposito and associates are scrambling to find millions of dollars for his proposed Tampa Bay expansion club’s entry NHL fee. Through his brother Tony, Phil met a man named Carroll Tessier who was purported to be a close friend of the Duke of Manchester—a wealthy royal interested in U.S. investment opportunities. Phil did his research, confirming the existence of a very well-heeled Duke of Manchester living in Britain. Unfortunately, he didn’t also uncover the background of Mr. Tessier, a professional confidence man who was as phony as a three-dollar bill and had no authority to spend the Duke’s money. It turned out the promised expenditure was a scam to get “the Duke” a hefty bank loan.
AS PHONY AS A THREE-MILLION-DOLLAR CHEQUE?
Through a series of mishaps, Esposito needed to use a dubious three-million-dollar cheque from the Duke of Manchester as the down payment for bringing hockey to Florida. The cheque was signed Lord Montague, the Duke of Manchester. This cheque was, of course, worthless. This was confirmed by an alarmed phone call from NHL head office some time after the presentation. Espo later found another cheque that was—luckily for the Lightning’s chance at the 2004 Stanley Cup—legitimate. An FBI manhunt ensued and—unluckily—Tessier the con man was caught, tried and later died in prison in July 2002.
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YOU GOTTA HAVE FRIENDS
“I remember what Ron Greschner said when he retired. ‘The thing I’m going to miss most is showering with 23 guys.’ And that’s what it’s all about: camaraderie.”
—New York Rangers goaltender Mike Richter
“We believe in camaraderie but that’s taking it too far.
—Rick Bowness, when Ziggy Palffy kissed teammate
Travis Green on the lips after a goal
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I SPY
“When I look at the net I don’t see a goalie.”
—Pavel Bure, Vancouver Canucks
“When I look at the net I see 2 or 3 goalies.”
—Radek Dvorak, right wing, Edmonton Oilers
HYPE AND PUCKS IN NEW YORK
How a bootlegger and a promoter brought hockey to the Big Apple.
Although William Dwyer and Tex Rickard earned fortunes in very different businesses, the fabled characters of Roarin’ Twenties Manhattan combined to bring hockey to the “big town,” New York, anchoring the game’s U.S. success. An associate of crime giants Legs Diamond and Dutch Schultz, Dwyer was “the king of the bootleggers” during U.S. Prohibition. In 1925, Dwyer purchased the troubled Hamilton Tigers for $75,000 and moved the team to New York as the Americans. The Hamilton players had been suspended after hockey’s first strike in the 1925 Stanley Cup playoffs when they were refused a $200 bonus for the postseason. Rickard was the legendary promoter and mastermind of the career of heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey, who generated record sports gate receipts, notably for his bouts with Gene Tunney. Rickard was president of the new Madison Square Garden in New York, where the Americans played in their first season. In 1926, Rickard was prominent in the creation of the New York Rangers, the team name produced by a Rickard pun—Tex’s Rangers.
NEW YORK DRYER IF NOT FOR DWYER
When the NHL admitted the Boston Bruins for the 1924–25 season, several other U.S. cities wanted franchises—but a team in New York was necessary to give the project a truly big-league look. The challenge was locating a potential owner. Dwyer “owned” ships, trucks, warehouses, nightclubs, a Miami casino and pieces of several racetracks, including one in Montreal. Backed by the mob, he controlled the gigantic illegal liquor business in New York, a town turned “dry” by prohibition. A Canadian friend, Bill MacBeth, who worked for a New York newspaper, convinced a skeptical Dwyer that hockey would be a success in the big town. But plans for a new Madison Square Garden did not include an ice surface because the man in charge, Rickard, saw it as a big boxing and concert location.
HOCKEY’S BABE RUTH
Two Montreal men, promoter Tom Duggan and Montreal Canadiens star Howie Morenz, placed a hockey core in the Big Apple. When Duggan figured hockey had big U.S. potential, he convinced the owners of the four financially struggling Canadian teams (Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton) to sell him three expansion franchises for $7,000 each. Duggan moved teams to Boston and Pittsburgh interests and pitched Rickard hard to place a team in New York. Box office success in Boston caught Rickard’s interest, but the promoter always insisted that he made a trip to Montreal with a group of friends, including fabled writer Damon Runyon, to see the Canadiens and their young star Morenz only “to get that pest Duggan off my back about hockey.” One game with the electrifying Morenz in it was enough to sell Rickard on the game’s potential as an attraction. He immediately tagged Morenz as “hockey’s Babe Ruth” and an ice plant was included in suddenly revised Madison Square construction plans. On his new ice, Rickard insisted on a strong team that he did not finance.
THREATS FOR CHARITY
The NHL happened to have its first-place team from the previous season, the suspended Hamilton club, available because the players remained under suspension for their “strike.” Duggan sold his third franchise to Dwyer—they were co-owners of a racetrack in Cincinnati—and talked him into buying the entire Tiger roster for $75,000. That gave the Americans such top talent as forwards Billy Burch, Red and Shorty Green, defenceman Mickey Roach and goalie Jumpin’ Jake Forbes. Proceeds from the opening MSG game—against, of course, the Canadiens—went to a New York hospital. Dwyer used strong-arm tactics on potential ticket-buyers, threatening to cut the liquor supply to his booze customers if they did not purchase hockey tickets.
BIG BILL WHO?
Two weeks before the opener, Dwyer was arrested, charged as the head of a multi-million dollar illegal liquor business and wide-ranging bribery of public officials. Madison Square Garden immediately said “Big Bill who?” when Dwyer’s name was mentioned. He retained ownership
of the Americans but Rickard was listed as president. Although the Americans missed the playoffs in their first season, the franchise was a box office success. The players shared a Dwyer-owned hotel with various mobsters and were high-living celebrities in Manhattan. Top stars Burch and Forbes earned $10,000 for the season, a fortune compared to Morenz’s $3,000 with the Canadiens.
TEX’S RANGERS
The NHL granted Rickard and MSG a franchise, the Rangers, for the 1926–27 season. The new team into its first season under team president Colonel John Hammond hired a young Toronto man named Conn Smythe, who had coached the University of Toronto team, to recruit the first roster. Smythe built an instant contender, acquiring 31 players for $32,000, including stars in goalie Lorne Chabot, defencemen Taffy Abel and Ching Johnson, and forwards Bill and Bun Cook, Frank Boucher, and Murray Murdoch. But before the season opened, Hammond fired Smythe, claiming he lacked the experience to run a big-league team, and hired Lester Patrick for a job he held until 1946. That inspired a vengeful Smythe to purchase the NHL Toronto St. Patricks, change the name to Maple Leafs, build Maple Leaf Gardens and create one of the most successful teams ever in pro sport.
BIG BILL HITS THE WALL
Dwyer avoided trial for two years while controlling the Americans, then in 1927 was sentenced to two years in an Atlanta penitentiary. He served a year, then was paroled to return to an NHL Board of Governors who wished he would disappear. Dwyer also continued his other “business” until the 1931 raid on a large Manhattan brewery co-owned by Dwyer and former public enemy number one Owney Madden. In a long prosecution, the government nailed Dwyer for $3.7 million in fines and back taxes.
The Americans qualified for the playoffs five times in their 17 seasons, once in the last ten years. The team, called the Brooklyn Americans for its last season, folded in 1942. The Rangers thrived under Rickard’s promotional genius and Patrick’s leadership as general manager and coach, winning the Stanley Cup in 1928 and 1933.
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