Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (13 page)

A VOICE FROM THE HEAVENS

There was only one person who could subdue the violence: Richard himself. Richard, who was in attendance at the game, was stunned and appalled by the reaction of the rabid Montreal fans. Richard spoke on radio and television, both in French and English, to appeal to the citizens of Montreal to stop the rioting. Once they heard the pleas of their idol, the fans acquiesced and the violence soon ceased. According to the Rocket's son, Maurice
Richard Jr., “maybe it was the first time my father realized that he was so important.”

HOW COULD YOU BOO “BOOM-BOOM”?

Rocket Richard would end up losing the scoring title to his teammate Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion by the slimmest of margins. Geoffrion, also a Francophone, was hurt and stunned when the Forum fans booed him for passing the suspended Rocket and claiming the title. Also, the Habs and the Red Wings would indeed meet in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Red Wings would win in seven games, and it was widely thought that if the Rocket had suited up, the Red Wings would not have won the series.

ROCKET SPOOLING

The Rocket and the Habs went on to win an unprecedented five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 through 1960. The Rocket retired during training camp of the 1961 season. After his NHL career, the Rocket played on the old-timer's circuit, and then he had a major split with the Montreal Canadiens franchise over what his duties should entail. He attempted to become the head coach of the WHA Quebec Nordiques. He didn't even make it to the first game, and was replaced by Jacques Plante. He then had his own mail-order fishing and spooling business, but that didn't last for too long.

STANDING-O

Then, in the 1990s, the Canadiens got new owners, and they hired Richard as a goodwill ambassador for the team. On March 11, 1996, the final game in the Forum was played and all the great Canadiens were brought back. The fans showed they hadn't forgotten Richard by giving him a ten-minute standing ovation. Legendary broadcaster Dick Irvin said of the fans, “as the ovation went on and on, I looked around and thought to myself 75 to 80 percent of the crowd never saw him play. Never saw him score a goal even on television. He hadn't scored a goal in 37 years. And people were crying.” The Rocket even signaled to the fans to sit down, but that was only to hide his own tears of knowing that he was still appreciated.

Separated by more than 80 years, the Ottawa Silver Seven and New York Islanders sustained longtime excellence. Their eras were a lifetime apart, their only common bond a consistent display of skill and grit.

T
HE OTTAWA SILVER SEVEN
was hockey's first “glamor” team from 1903 to 1906 when the embryonic sport was fighting to get indoors and from the outdoor rinks. The Seven won ten consecutive Stanley Cup challenges, the right to contest hockey's biggest prize granted to teams across the country.

THE NEW YORK ISLANDERS
were part of NHL expansion from six to 21 teams in 13 years in a bid to make hockey a major U.S. team game. Brilliantly constructed from draft choices, shrewd trades and the wise employment of European players, the Islanders won four consecutive Cup crowns from 1979–80 to 1982–83. From the first playoff round in 1980 until a loss in the 1984 final to the Edmonton Oilers, the Islanders won an astounding 19 playoff series in a row.

McGREAT!

From a distinguished Ottawa family, Frank McGee had lost the sight in one eye when struck by a stick in a pickup game. But he became the dominant player of his era, playing the rover position for the Silver Seven. McGee scored 14 goals in a Cup challenge game, eight in a playoff game and had seven five-goal games in his brief four-season career totalling 71 goals in 23 schedule games, 63 in 22 playoff contests. His uncle, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, was a Member of Parliament and Father of Confederation, part of the 1867 meeting in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, when Canada was founded as four provinces. Frank's father, J. J. McGee, was Clerk of the Privy Council, a key position in the Canadian government.

WE'LL LICK YOU IN HOCKEY, FOOTBALL, POLO…

Like most of his Silver Seven mates, McGee was a fine all-round athlete, playing lacrosse in the summer, football in autumn, hockey in the winter. Goalie Bouse Hutton is still the only athlete to play on Canadian championship teams in the three sports in one year. Point (defence) Harvey Pulford was an exceptional football player, a classic stay-at-home defenceman for the Seven, who seldom scored but smothered the opposition. The Gilmour brothers—high-scoring Billy and Suddy—Harry Westwick, Alf Smith, and cover point Art Moore rounded out the lineup. McGee, Pulford, Hutton and Billy Gilmour were among the first players inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and, in 1950, a poll of Canadian newspaper sports editors named the Silver Seven as the Country's Team of the Half-Century.

SEVEN NUGGETS…McGREAT!

The team name was conceived after the 1902–03 season when the “Ottawas,” as they were known, won two-game, total-goals challenges from the Montreal Victorias and the Rat Portage (later named Kenora) Thistles. To commemorate the Cup victories, the club directors gave each player a silver nugget, inspiring the Silver Seven nickname. In the 1903–04 season, the Seven withstood three challenges (Winnipeg Rowing Club, Toronto Marlboroughs, Brandon) and a shortened series with the Montreal Wanderers. In 1905, the Dawson City Nuggets made an arduous 6,000 km, 23-day trip from the Klondike to lose 9–2 and 23–2, McGee scoring 14 times in the second game.

AND NOW “TUBE SKATES”?

The second Rat Portage challenge in March, 1905, was the toughest the Seven would face. With a top star in Tom Phillips and using the new tube skates, the visitors won the first game 9–3, a big shock for the Ottawa club, which was without the injured McGee. When the teams played the second game of a best-of-three series, the ice mysteriously was soft—rumors claim salt was applied the surface—making the tube skates ineffective. Ottawa won 4–2, with McGee scoring the winner in 5–4 third-game victory.

In 1906, the Seven won challenges from Queen's University
and Smith's Falls, before their streak ended with a 12–10 two-game loss to the Montreal Wanderers. McGee retired after that season but continued to play football. A lieutenant in the Canadian Army in World War I, he was killed action in France at age 37.

OVERSEAS EXPANSION

Having joined the NHL in a 1972 expansion, the Islanders were based on Long Island, a huge bedroom community for New York. Bill Torrey was named general manager and while half the players claimed in the NHL expansion draft signed with the rival World Hockey Association, Torrey did land goalie Billy Smith and forward Ed Westfall. In the team's first entry draft, Torrey claimed Billy Harris, Lorne Henning, Bob Nystrom, and Garry Howatt, all of whom served roles in the team's success.

A BRILLIANT DRAFTSMAN

While the Isles won only 31 games in their first two seasons, Torrey made maximum use of the entry draft, selecting defencemen Denis Potvin and Dave Lewis in 1973, forwards Clark Gillies and Bryan Trottier and defenceman Stefan Persson (plus landing the NHL rights to winger Bob Bourne) in 1974, wingers Mike Bossy and John Tonelli in 1977, and Duane and Brent Sutter in 1979 and 1980.

Coach Al Arbour masterfully turned the young talent into solid NHL players and the team improved steadily through the decade. When it appeared the Isles were ready for serious Stanley Cup contention, they suffered two shattering losses to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1978 and the New York Rangers in 1979. But management did not panic, assessing the losses as indicators of addressable team flaws, not of any lack of talent.

GORING TO THE ISLAND

During the 1979–80 season, the Islanders made the necessary changes, adding muscle in defencemen Dave Langevin and Gord Lane plus tough young draft pick Duane Sutter. Steady defenceman Ken Morrow joined after the 1980 Olympic victory by the U.S. team at Lake Placid. At the trading deadline, Torrey added the sparkplug the Isles needed in center Butch Goring, acquired from the Los Angeles Kings at a high price in Harris and Lewis.

OIL SLICK

With goalie Smith, defenceman Potvin and the line of Trottier, Gillies and 50-goal perennial Bossy leading the way, the Islanders were ready to start their run. They lost only six games in ousting the Kings, Boston, Buffalo and Philadelphia on their way to their first Stanley Cup. And they rolled on through the next three springs, taken to the seven-game limit only once in 12 series to capture three more Cups. After winning the first three rounds in the 1984 playoffs, they faced the Oilers, a team as smartly constructed as the Islanders had been, and led of course by the Great One, Wayne Gretzky. The Oilers ended the Islanders' remarkable run at 19 consecutive series wins, claiming the final four games to one.

* * * * *

HEAD GAME

“Hockey's a funny game. You have to prove yourself every shift, every game. It's not up to anybody else. You have to take pride in yourself.”

—Paul Coffey,
former Edmonton Oilers defenceman

“Half the game is mental; the other half is being mental.”

—Jim McKenny,
sportscaster, former Leafs defenceman

“Hockey is like a disease, you can't really shake it.”

—Ken Wregget,
former Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender

“I don't like hockey. I'm just good at it.”

—Brett Hull,
former St. Louis Blues forward

The World Hockey Association lasted only seven seasons but changed the financial structure of the game forever.

I
n reality, the World Hockey Association became a living, breathing entity with a million-dollar cheque and these words from a golden-haired lad: “You rotten so-and-so!” In a ritzy private club in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 27, 1972, Bobby Hull—the National Hockey League's biggest star of the previous decade—received a cheque for $1 million from the fledgling league and signed a contract with the Winnipeg Jets that would pay him $1.75 million in salary over ten years—more than double what the Golden Jet had earned in any of his seasons with the Chicago Black Hawks. Surrounded on the small stage by his wife Joanne and two of the couple's four boys—Brett, who would score more NHL goals than his famous father, was left at home—Hull was signing the biggest deal in hockey history when one of the boys snapped a large elastic band and zapped his brother on the ear, drawing the loudly stage-whispered retort.

THE AMAZING RUBBER HOCKEY LEAGUE

Perhaps the elastic snap was symbolic for what would happen to the NHL's only serious rival over the next seven years. The WHA stretched every part of hockey, often to the breaking point—the player supply, the bankrolls of the team owners in both leagues and, especially, the wallets of all hockey players. It extended the careers of some veterans with the biggest paydays of their lives, gave minor leaguers and young junior players a chance to show their talent that would not have arisen otherwise, and paved the way for the influx of players from Europe.

A LITTLE BITTER, HAROLD?

“What the WHA did mainly with its crappy challenges in the courts to many of the NHL rules was to place a large number of lawyers and agents in expensive sports cars,” said Toronto Maple
Leafs owner Harold Ballard, whose team was stripped bare of young talent when he refused to compete with the new league. Ballard and the Leafs had lucked into goalie Bernie Parent, among the best in the game, and could have retained him for a raise of $40,000 over two seasons. Ballard refused and Parent signed with the Miami Screaming Eagles (who transformed into the Philadelphia Blazers before their first season).

ENOUGH LOOT TO GO AROUND

The NHL had grown from its longtime six-team configuration with six new teams in 1967 and four more by 1972 while keeping costs in line with its monopoly status. Even signing precocious defenceman Bobby Orr to the biggest NHL contract ever by the Boston Bruins in 1966 had not changed the league's salary limits a great deal. But hockey growth in the U.S. and indicators that network television had interest in paying highly for game-packages gave promoters an idea that a second league might share in the wealth. By then, the American Football League had forged a merger with the established NFL, expanding and sharing the loot with the older circuit.

Young California visionaries Gary Davidson and Dennis Murphy had founded the American Basketball Association in 1968 to wage a serious war against the NBA. Their hunt for franchise sites for that league gave them a strong knowledge of North American sports markets: the cities where a new hockey league might flourish. Fortunately for Davidson and Murphy, they met three western Canadians with a long background in hockey, mostly at the junior level—Bill Hunter of Edmonton, Scotty Munro in Calgary, and Ben Hatskin of Winnipeg. Hunter and Munro had hockey expertise while Hatskin had experience in the entertainment business, especially nightclubs.

BY “BAZOO” YOU MEAN “NOSE,” RIGHT, BEN?

A booster of the star system, Hatskin loved to tell a self-deprecating “star” story. A New York agent booked promising young singers for Hatskin's Winnipeg club, and after the opening night of one young Manhattan thrush, Ben was on the phone the next morning. “I called the agent and said, ‘What are you doing to me, sending me this young chick with the big chest and the big bazoo?
She emptied the place last night. Get her outta here!' He did and I guess I'm in the history books as the only guy who ever fired Barbra Streisand.”