Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (35 page)

“That's a better choice than as banged-up, and maybe hurt, pioneers in a provincial third-level men's league,” Fasel said. Wickenheiser allowed such opinions to pass without comment from her. After all, she prefers to do her talking on the ice, helping the Canadian national team to a silver medal in the 2005 Women's World Championship.

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KNUCKLES AND BOOM BOOM?

As in all sports, hockey players have some interesting, descriptive and just plain weird nicknames.

Aubrey Victor “Dit” Clapper

Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion

Chris “Knuckles” Nilan

Curtis “CuJo” Joseph

Dave “The Hammer” Schultz

Dave “Tiger” Williams

Francis “King” Clancy

Frank “Mr. Zero” Brimsek

Fred “Cyclone” Taylor

Freddie “The Fog” Shero

George “Punch” Imlach

Hector “Toe” Blake

Larry “Big Bird” Robinson

Lorne “Gump” Worsley

Louie “The Leaper” Fontinato

Maurice “The Rocket” Richard

“Terrible” Ted Lindsay

Yvon “The Roadrunner” Cournoyer

Despite a short supply of talent in the rapid proliferation of teams during the 1970s, the NHL was slow to add European players.

O
RIGINS OF THE BROAD STREET BULLIES

The climb from “chicken Swede” and “fearful Finn” to NHL team captaincies was a long ascent over three decades. Major league hockey expanded rapidly in the 1970s, the NHL growing from six teams in the 1966–67 season to 18 for 1976–77; and the World Hockey Association starting as a rival for 1972–73 with a dozen teams. The major source of talent, the Canadian junior hockey leagues, simply could not produce players fast enough to stock the NHL and WHA with front-line players. And even while growing rapidly, U.S. hockey supplied a few but not a big group of players. A large pool of players existed in Europe but the good ones in the Iron Curtain countries were not available. NHL thinking was that players in Sweden and Finland had the necessary skill, but would not function effectively in the physical pro style.

RUMBA ON THE TUMBA

European players had been tried by NHL teams. In the early 1960s, the Boston Bruins had invited forward Sven “Tumba” Johansson, high scorer for the Swedish national team, to training camp. The easygoing Johansson—he later changed his name to Sven Tumba—was a target for the Bruin players, some of whom were outspoken in their criticism of this “foreigner” trying to take a job. “In training camp, the Bruins did not attack each other the way they attacked me,” Johansson said years later.

ULF THE FIRST

Swedish star Ulf Sterner spent the 1963–64 season in pro hockey, including four games with the New York Rangers. Although he scored 30 goals in the minor leagues, Sterner did not return for a second North American season but had a long career as a star in his home country. The first player from a Communist country to try the pros was forward Jaroslav Jirik, a strong player in the top
Czechoslovakian league and the national team. Jirik managed to escape from his country and join the St. Louis Blues organization for the 1969–70 season. He played three NHL games, spent the remainder of the season in the minors, but did not return for camp the next season.

JUST IGNORE INSULTS FROM OWNER'S BOX

Swedish defenceman Thommie Bergman was the first European to play a full season in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings in 1972–73. He performed solidly, a plus player on a weak team. Their roster stripped bare by WHA raids, the Toronto Maple Leafs signed winger Inge Hammarstrom and defenceman Borje Salming from the Brynas team in the top Swedish league. While Hammarstrom played solidly, Salming quickly became a front-line star in a 17-season career. A marvelous athlete who absorbed much punishment and “chicken Swede” slurs, Salming was the first European to be an NHL all-star.

SCANDINAVIANS RUN RAMPANT IN WHA

Despite the strong play by the Leafs' Swedes, the NHL was still slow to recruit more Swedish players. The WHA was not. The Winnipeg Jets gave the WHA a big shot of credibility when they signed NHL star Bobby Hull in 1972 as the new league's major star. To build a strong supporting cast for the Golden Jet, the Jets signed Swedish forwards Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson who joined Hull on one of hockey's most exciting and prolific forward lines. When the Jets won their first WHA championship in 1976, their roster contained seven Swedes and two Finns.

DISPLACED BY WHA DOWNFALL

Other WHA teams recruited strongly in Scandinavia while the NHL added only a few players from the Sweden and Finland. The Toronto Toros of the new league scored a major coup in 1974 when they convinced center Vaclav Nedomansky, long the top player in Czechoslovakia, and countryman winger Richard Farda to defect from their country. “I had accomplished everything I could in hockey at home,” Big Ned said. “I asked to be allowed to move to North America to play but I was turned down. I wanted to test myself in pro hockey and was able to find a way out of the country.”

The WHA folded in 1979, four of its teams joining the NHL as expansion clubs. Nedomansky moved to the Red Wings where he had some productive seasons; his success inspired others to seek ways to lure excellent Czechoslovakian players out of their country.

NORDIQUES ENGAGE IN ESPIONAGE

One of the WHA “refugees,” the Quebec Nordiques turned their team into a contender by aiding in the defection of the three Stastny brothers, Peter and Anton in 1980, Marian in 1981, from Czechoslovakia. Center Peter was the NHL's second highest scorer in the 1980s behind only Wayne Gretzky and was voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

RUSSIANS NYET (NOT YET)

When the teams from the old USSR dominated world “amateur” hockey through the 1960s into the 1980s, NHL clubs longed for a shot at recruiting “the damned Russians,” as they were called. Rumors surfaced occasionally of NHL teams close to luring Russian stars, especially after the first USSR-Canada hockey confrontation, the fabled 1972 Summit Series. Harold Ballard, the loudmouthed owner of the Maple Leafs, offered the Russians one million dollars for winger Valeri Kharlamov after the first game of the series.

TRETIAK TRIGGERS NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

While Soviet artists such as ballet stars Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Barishnykov had defected to North America, Soviet hockey players were reluctant to bolt, fearing the punishment that could be inflicted on their families. A coveted Soviet was goalie Vladislav Tretiak, an international star for a dozen years and four-time Olympic gold medallist. Years later he admitted wanting to try the NHL, but because he was an army officer in addition to being a star athlete, his defection would have had Cold War ramifications he didn't want to risk. One comrade did make it: Forward Viktor Nechayev, from Siberia, appeared with the Los Angeles Kings for three games in 1982–83, scoring a goal. Details of his escape were never revealed; regardless, he lacked the ability to stick in the NHL.

THE REDS ARE COMING

Through the 1980s, signs that the Iron Curtain was disintegrating grew each year with the labor uprisings in Poland, the fall of the Berlin wall and the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev to the top of the USSR government. In 1987, Soviet stars were permitted to talk to western journalists for the first time at international events and predicted they would be permitted to join NHL teams in “a short time.” The first Soviet player to be allowed officially to move was winger Sergei Priakin, who played three games with the Calgary Flames in 1988–89. After the 1989 World Championship in Stockholm, brilliant young Soviet forward Alexander Mogilny did not return home with the Soviet team, defecting to the NHL's Buffalo Sabres.

THE GREENS ARE COMING

Through the 1980s, the Soviet domination of world hockey was led by the brilliant “Green Unit,” forwards Sergei Makarov, Igor Larionov, and Vladimir Krutov, and defencemen Slava Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov. They were allowed to move to the NHL—Makarov with Calgary, Larionov and Krutov with the Vancouver Canucks, and Kasatonov and Fetisov with the New Jersey Devils. All but Krutov played strongly in the NHL.

IT'S GLOBALIZATION, BABY

The Iron Curtain's fall opened up the world hockey market completely. From the early 1990s on, European players have flocked to North America, at both the pro and Canadian junior level. The NHL entry draft quickly became dotted with European names and, by 2000, 42 percent of 293 players selected were in the “international” category and in 2004, nine of the 30 first-round picks were in that classification.

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DOGGIE CUP

“Bow Wow” is the only non-human name written on the Stanley Cup. Hockey historians think that Bow Wow was the mascot of the Quebec Bulldogs, Cup champions in 1912 and 1913.

Jack Adams, who guided the Detroit Red Wings to great success for 35 years, was a tough tyrant both admired and detested.

T
o some, most of them away from the rink, he was viewed as “Jolly Jawn,” the pink-cheeked, cherubic, chortling man who enthusiastically promoted hockey nonstop. But many who knew Jack Adams, hockey man, general manager and/or coach of the Detroit Red Wings for 35 years, viewed him as the antithesis of the public figure. Adams was a tough, bad-tempered, referee-baiting martinet who ruled his teams with an iron fist. Players who ventured outside of his strict rules were viewed as “traitors to the family.”

RAPID RISE UP THE RANKS

That Adams was in the front ranks both as a player and GM-coach isn't debated. He played on two teams (the Toronto Arenas and Ottawa Senators) that won the Stanley Cup and was Red Wings coach for three Stanley Cups and GM for four. He took over the reins of the Detroit Cougars in 1927, who were called the Falcons for two seasons before becoming the Red Wings in 1932. By careful constructing a solid farm system and making shrewd deals, he filled houses at the Detroit Olympia and moved the team to the top of the NHL. The team won back-to-back Cups in 1936 and 1937, establishing Adams as strong both in the front office and behind the bench. The owners of the team, the Norris family, were impressed enough to give him full control of team operations.

CALLING DR. JEKYLL…

While Adams was regarded as a genial glad-hander in many areas, his hockey style was confrontational. He carried on an endless war with on-ice officials, berating referees as if they were deliberately sabotaging his team. He was twice suspended for physical contact with officials and fined several times by the league for statements undermining their credibility. Adams also frequently argued with newspapermen in other cities if they wrote with even mild criticism of his demeanor. He fought a never-ending war with other
teams' owners, GMs and coaches, often knocking them in print or engaging in loud arguments in arena hallways. Some NHL folks, both with teams and in the media, felt that Adams was the ultimate “Jekyll and Hyde,” the warm charmer away from the arena who turned into a madman when near an ice surface.

THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE IN HOCKEY

As a player, Adams took advantage of the loosely structured contract situation in hockey and moved freely to five different teams for higher salaries. But in control of the Detroit organization, Adams led the NHL's tightening of the leash on players. He often said that the most important feature in hockey was the reserve clause in players' contracts that bound the player to the team from signature of the first contract until he was sold or traded. While purists argued that such control of players, even young, unsigned amateurs on reserve lists was unfair, Adams loudly claimed the system was simply a way for an owner to control his team's assets. Through the 1930s and 1940s, players simply went along with the rules, happy to have careers playing hockey that paid well.

GETTING GORDIE

Through much of his time at the helm of the Wings, the Norris family gave Adams a set figure to operate the team and what he didn't spend was his salary, the perfect situation to inspire a penny-pinching approach. After a Stanley Cup win, three regulars on the team received pay cuts the next season to allow Adams to give top stars a small raise and keep his own salary intact. When the Wings pulled a scouting coup in 1944 by signing a 15-year-old winger from Saskatchewan named Gordie Howe, the team's future—and Adams' job—was secured. Howe played 32 seasons of major league hockey.

MINI MOGULS OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY

But when the 1950s arrived and the players slowly became more sophisticated, the potential for a serious clash was established. The auto industry was booming in Detroit and some Red Wings players, notably star winger Ted Lindsay and Marty Pavelich, developed businesses in supplying the car makers with products. Adams often ranted about the players paying too much attention to non-hockey matters, but the Red Wings' success (four Cup wins in six
years from 1950 to 1955, seven consecutive first-place finishes from 1949 to 1955) made his claims ludicrous.

PENSION? WHAT PENSION?