Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (14 page)

A HULL OF A CATCH

Babs aside, Ben had an appreciation for stars, and told the young promoters that their league would only have a chance if it landed some of the NHL's biggest names. Bobby Hull, the biggest available, was having trouble getting a new contract from the rich but penny-pinching Black Hawks. Hatskin put his money where his mouth was, signing Hull to give his Winnipeg franchise and the whole WHA serious credibility. Few athletes have ever worked harder on the marketing and promotional side of their sport than Hull, who never stopped beating the drum for the new league in countless interviews in every city. Such NHL stars as Parent, Gerry Cheevers, Ted Green, Derek Sanderson, Johnny “Pie” McKenzie, and J.C. Tremblay also made the jump. The league played the 1972–73 season with 12 teams: New England, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Ottawa, Quebec, and New York in the Eastern Division; and Winnipeg, Houston, Los Angeles, Alberta, Minnesota, and Chicago in the Western Division.

LEGALITIES, LEGENDS AND LARS-ERIK SJOBERG

The WHA always seemed a rather loosely operated league with an assortment of hockey styles. In its seven seasons, the league had teams in 24 different locations with an assortment of franchise moves, start-ups and failures. A few of the noteworthy characters who passed through, and around, the “other” league:

Judge A. Leon Higginbotham:
When NHL legal challenges kept several stars, including Hull, on the sidelines at the start of the first season, Philadelphia Judge Higginbotham, in a complicated ruling, ruled that adherence to the NHL's reserve system would give it “a monopoly over major league professional hockey,” and therefore could not allow it to destroy the WHA.

Maurice “Rocket” Richard:
The mighty star of the Montreal Canadiens from 1942 to 1960 and a hockey deity in the province of Quebec lasted two games as the first head coach of the Quebec
Nordiques. The Rocket learned quickly that the job would drive him batty.

Derek Sanderson:
The Philadelphia Blazers signed the Boston Bruins' number-three center to a whopping contract but he played only eight games in the WHA before rejoining the Bruins. The Blazers promoted opening night in Philly by giving away pucks to the fans. However, when the “ice” proved to be all water and cracks after the warm-up, the game was cancelled. The Blazers sent Sanderson out to make a speech of apology, and he was pelted with the free pucks.

Anders Hedberg, Ulf Nilsson, Lars-Erik Sjoberg:
The talented Swedes were sought by three NHL teams but joined the Jets because they wanted to make a mark on the style of a new team. Hull joined Hedberg and Nilsson on an extraordinary forward line; Sjoberg was a brilliant attacking defenceman. The Jets' freewheeling formula inspired Glen Sather to build his NHL Edmonton Oilers with a similar approach.

Gordie, Mark and Marty Howe:
The Houston Aeros lured “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe out of retirement but only when they agreed to sign his sons, too. Thus, Howe achieved a dream of playing on the same team as his sons, and achieved two WHA titles while doing so.

Vaclav Nedomansky:
The first hockey star to defect from an Iron Curtain country (Czechoslovakia), Nedomansky bolted to the Toronto Toros after years as a top player in his homeland. He had big seasons for the Toros before taking his game to the NHL Detroit Red Wings.

Ken Dryden:
The excellent goalie of the Canadiens took the 1973–74 season off to finish his law degree in Toronto and did some commentary on Toros' broadcasts. He was close to signing a contract with the Toronto team but decided against it while working a game in Haddonfield, New Jersey, where the New York Golden Blades played part of their schedule. The ice was dreadful—a series of peaks and valleys—and when the point man on
the power play held his stick high for a slapshot and the sliding puck jumped up from a dip in the ice and hit the defenceman in the face, Dryden decided the NHL was the better place to be.

Wayne Gretzky:
Signed as a 17-year-old by the Indianapolis Racers, Gretzky was traded to the Oilers early in the 1978–79 season, the WHA's last, and the rest is history. When the elastic band snapped for good, Gretzky's Oilers, the Jets, the Whalers and the Nordiques joined the NHL.

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BEHIND THE BENCH

“They say you're not a coach in the league till you've been fired. I must be getting pretty good.”

—Terry Simpson, coach, Winnipeg Jets

“Coaches are like ducks. Calm on top, but paddling underneath. Believe me, there's a lot of leg movement.”

—Ken Hitchcock, Philadelphia Flyers coach

“There are three things that are sure. You're going to pay taxes, you're going to die, and I'm going to change the lines.”

—Pat Burns, New Jersey Devils coach

“Our system of forechecking is to shoot the puck and leave it there.”

—Harry Neale, former Vancouver Canucks coach

“Coaching the Bruins is like going bear hunting with a butter knife.”

—Pat Burns, New Jersey Devils coach

“I know my players don't like my practices, but that's okay because I don't like their games.”

—Harry Neale, former Vancouver Canucks coach

The mighty Jean Béliveau forced the Montreal Canadiens to wait two seasons for his services as an NHL player.

T
he man who often is the example for the best hockey can offer—classy, stylish, dignified, and intelligent—surprised everyone by telling the NHL and the Montreal Canadiens that they would have to wait for him to join the league. Jean Béliveau was one of the very few players to stand up to the traditional system during the league's six-team days.

HIGHEST PAID AMATEUR

When he emerged from junior hockey in 1951 as the most outstanding prospect since Gordie Howe, Béliveau became hockey's highest paid player with the senior “amateur” Quebec Aces. When the Canadiens finally appeased their disgruntled fans and signed Béliveau to the biggest NHL contract, consisting of a $10,000 bonus and $20,000 per season, managing director Frank Selke said, “I just opened the vault and told Jean to take what he liked.”

Béliveau's NHL performances made the heavy buildup of his ability seem modest. In his 18 seasons as a Canadien, he played on ten Stanley Cup championship teams. He scored 507 goals, 1219 points in 1125 schedule games, and 79 goals, 176 points in 162 playoff games. Béliveau was First All-Star team center six times, twice winner of the Hart Trophy as most valuable player and once of the Smythe Trophy as MVP in the 1965 playoffs. Huge for his time at 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, Béliveau was a strong, effortless skater who made the game look easy, an excellent scorer and playmaker and a feisty competitor who did not accept fouls against him graciously.

BACKYARD-RINK PIONEER

Béliveau had the classic hockey development background. Growing up in Victoriaville, Quebec, he was an altar boy who spent countless hours on an outdoor rink flooded by his father. The long scrimmages, where controlling the puck was the goal, taught Béliveau his stickhandling skills. He played in a man's
league when he was 15, moving quickly to the top junior level, first with the Victoriaville Tigers, then the Quebec Citadelle.

LA MAISON DE JEAN

The new 10,000 seat Quebec Coliseum opened in the 1949–50 season and Béliveau, already a gate attraction at 17, transformed it to the House That Jean Built. When he had 61 goals and 124 points in 46 games in the 1950–51 season, 45 goals and 85 points in 36 playoff games over two springs and showed well in a two-game hook-up with the Canadiens, Béliveau was hockey's most-discussed player. In his final junior season, Quebec friends and fans even presented him with a new car. While the Canadiens eagerly awaited the great young prospect's arrival in the NHL, Béliveau chose to join the Quebec Aces of the Quebec Senior League, considered an amateur circuit at the time. Béliveau was signed to a “B-form,” which gave the Canadiens control of his professional rights. Had he signed the strongly scorned “C-form,” the Canadiens would have had total control of his hockey career.

ALL A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY

“I had security in Quebec, I had married a Quebec City girl in my first year with the Aces, I had a free car and a salary as good as Montreal offered,” Béliveau said. “I always planned to go to the NHL and it wasn't even a matter of trying to do it on my own terms. Playing senior hockey in Quebec helped me grow up as a man and a player so that I was much better prepared for the NHL than if I had joined the Canadiens directly from junior.” That the Canadiens could not pry Béliveau out of Quebec City until he was ready was also due to financial and political ramifications. Years later, Selke revealed how the Canadiens were told by the Quebec provincial government that if Béliveau left before the Coliseum debt was paid off, the licence for the very lucrative tavern in the Montreal Forum would be cancelled and attendance at Canadien games would be reduced considerably by the enforcement of fire regulations.

WE LIKED HIM SO MUCH WE BOUGHT THE COMPANY

When Béliveau had a three-game whirl with the Canadiens in 1952–53 and scored five goals, three in one game, their supporters
were sneering at management for failing to get such a big talent in Montreal. In his four Quebec City junior and senior seasons, Béliveau helped attract more than a million customers to the Coliseum, which wiped out the construction debt. He had decided to move to the NHL but to save face after not being able to outbid a senior team for a player, the Canadiens took the expensive step of “purchasing” all clubs in the Quebec League and the pro rights to all players in it, elevating the league to the professional level.

WORTH THE WAIT

Béliveau was an instant fit on one of the greatest rosters ever assembled with goalie Jacques Plante, defencemen Doug Harvey and Tom Johnson, forwards Maurice and Henri Richard, Dickie Moore, and Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion. The club won five Cup titles from 1956 to 1960, then rebuilt the team around Béliveau and Henri Richard to win four more crowns in the 1960s. Béliveau, at 39, had a wonderful farewell as a player in the 1970–71 season, counting 76 points in 70 schedule games, then 22 points in 20 playoff games to lead the way to his tenth Cup title. When he retired, Béliveau moved into the team's front office as vice-president of corporate affairs, a post he held for 23 years.

* * * * *

“I'm going to look for opportunities to grab the puck by the hair and try to do something with it. I mean, it's not like I have to save the whole country with it, I just have to put it in the net.”

—Sergei Fedorov, former Detroit Red Wing forward

“Some days, the sun even shines on a dog's butt.”

—Wade Redden, Ottawa Senators defenceman, on Ottawa's
come-from-behind 6-2 win over Toronto

“One road trip we were stuck on the runway for seven hours. The plane kept driving and driving until we arrived at the rink and then I realized we were on a bus.”

—Glenn Healy, former New York Rangers
goaltender, on his time in the minors

The Dawson City Nuggets' road trip may not have been a victorious one but it does take the prize for longest and most arduous.

I
n its early history when the Stanley Cup was a challenge trophy, hockey teams from unexpected locales played for the big prize against the champs at the time. Clubs from Rat Portage, Ontario (later Kenora); Brandon, Manitoba; Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario; and New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, challenged for the Cup. But the most unusual challenge came in 1904–05 when the Dawson City Nuggets met the hockey powerhouse of the time, the Ottawa Silver Seven.

BOATS, TRAINS AND BICYCLES (AND DOGSLEDS)

The Nuggets were based 4,400 miles from Ottawa in the Yukon's Klondike where the legendary gold rush of 1897 had produced millionaires (a few) and paupers (many). Financed by Colonel Joe Boyle, a rich prospector, four Nuggets “mushed” on dogsleds from Dawson to Whitehorse. Four rode bicycles and the stagecoach because of a December thaw. They continued onto Skagway, walking 40 miles some days, and hit a –54°F cold snap that reduced practice time to one brief session on a small outdoor ice surface and delayed their trip for five days. They took the
S.S. Dolphin
from Skagway to Seattle, then the train to Vancouver to catch the trans-Canada train to Ottawa. A telegram from Winnipeg requesting a series delay was turned down by Ottawa officials. The bedraggled Nuggets arrived in Ottawa on January 12, 1905, 23 days after they left Dawson City, and played the first game of the best-of-three series the next night.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Led by the big stars of the era, the great Frank McGee, Harry Westwick and Harvey Pulford, the Ottawa team won the first game 9–2 before a packed house. Before the second game,
the Nuggets said they were not impressed with McGee, who scored only one goal in the opener against 17-year-old goalie, Albert Forrest. In the second game, McGee impressed the Nuggets and everyone else by scoring a playoff record 14 goals in a 23–2 victory. However, series reports note that the Nuggets were not shattered by their wipeout. Most players, especially those from eastern Canada, agreed to make the trip to have their fare paid home because prospecting for gold had not been any more fruitful than their hunt for Stanley's silver.