The boy was startled and looked toward the far corner of the dressing room to see the old timer approaching. He said, "I'm just putting on my skates."
"No yer not!" corrected the old timer. "Not with yer socks on, son. Never with yer socks on."
The young boy, still holding the laces of his left skate challenged the stranger, "Why not?"
"Because Bobby Orr says not, THAT'S why not!"
"Who is Bobby Orr?" the unfortunate kid replied.
Unfortunate because, although there are no shadows in any dressing rooms, kids are now trained NOT to talk to strangers who might lurk there, and usually such strangers, no matter how well-meaning, get forcibly removed from dressing rooms, I, your faithful blogger, am, through the magic of blogging, that stranger. And I am going to keep that legendary boy off the ice by telling him of a game, a time, and, indeed a player that make true hockey fans stop what they are doing and get glossy-eyed in wonder at what could have been, and what could still be in the most exciting sport in the world. If you're a baseball fan, think of Josh Gibson in the negro leagues. If you're a football, (or baseball), fan, think of Bo Jackson. I bet there are hundreds of stories of evanescent athletes the world over who just didn't get a chance to live up to their potential. I count Bobby Orr amongst this group even though we DID get the privilege of watching his greatness for a short, but glorious time.
In my, and the opinions of most hockey knowledgeables, the only thing challenging the certainty that Bobby Orr was the best hockey player ever is the diabolical fact that he played in an era before arthroscopic knee renovations. Otherwise, he would have removed all doubt that he was the best, most revolutionary, most dominant player of hockey, (dare I say ANY sport? (I dare! I dare!)), EVER! Keep this in mind whilst I take us back to the beginning of the glory days of hockey, and so many other things. He was injured in 1967 in a charity-benefit exhibition game when colliding knee-on-knee with a teammate. This is when he was 18, folks. His rookie season in the NHL. Playing in charity benefits already. And every game he played after that, that is, practically every game of his far too limited career, was played in pain. We're talking bone-on-bone, no cartilage pain in the knee! By the end of his career, BOTH knees!
But this is not impressive until you hear what he did on one knee. Darryl Sittler, a guy who once scored 10 points in a game, (a record still untouched), said, "Bobby Orr was better on one leg than anybody else was on two." Consider that before Bobby Orr, most defensemen in hockey everywhere, stayed away from the offensive zone. The records for most goals, (19), and most points, (59), by Red Kelly and Pierre Pilotte respectively, were just sitting there all vulnerable-like. Now, to statisticians out there, okay, Doug Mohns, a defenseman, scored 25 goals and 60 points in a season, but he was playing as a forward on a line with Stan Makita while doing so. This was an era during which stats weren't as important as they are now so Mohns was listed as a defenseman, but wasn't playing as one. But also consider the forward pass in hockey was not allowed until 1930! So offense was a developing idea in pro hockey. If you got 50 points, you were a superstar. In fact POINTS weren't really a stat for many years. Only goals were recorded. So old timers like Joe Malone, Newsy Lalonde and the like, might have been better than we think. Nobody scored 50 goals until there was a war on and a good deal of the good players were overseas fighting. Even Maurice Richard would admit his 50 goals in 1944/45 should have an asterisk, I'm sure. It didn't happen legitimately until 15 years later, and it wasn't Richard, it was Boom Boom Geoffrion, although Gordie Howe got 49 and 47 in there. Not taking away from the Rocket! He DID get 45 legitimately, but, like Orr, we'll never know what would have been if circumstances were different.
And then, when the virtues of skill and offense were found to have dollar values, Bobby Hull and Phil Esposito blew those records away. But we're talking about forwards, whose job it IS to score. They rarely, (especially in Espo's case), strayed into the defensive zone or were any help there. It was largely, VERY largely because of Orr that Espo got his 76 goals in 1970/71 and this was all while Orr was also being defensively responsible and fighting and doing all the unglamorous jobs of a defenseman as well. Just as a teaser, Orr got a plus 124 in that season, the highest ever by any player in any position. Now I have never been a fan of the plus/minus stat. It is inherently misleading, but when it's this massive, there's something to it!
So this was the way hockey was before Orr. It was largely played by big, toothless, tough, low-paid grinders. And it was dull. A common score was 1-0 or 2-1. People satisfied themselves with believing that the excitement was in the competitiveness and the close scores. It was Slap Shot hockey. Easily the games that got the most asses out of seats and cheering were the ones with the most fights. It wasn't the low, but close scores. I hate the old close scores argument! I say, if close scores make sport exciting to you, try soccer. They sometimes don't even HAVE a score. And they won't give the fans any overtime if the score is 0-0 at the end of regulation time. Still, the fans of soccer, many from countries where it is the only sport they can afford, satisfy themselves with it. At least there's SOMETHING to cheer for! This is the same attitude hockey fans had in the dark ages of our sport and the dark ages of our countries. Speaking of the U.S. and Canada.
We had just gone through the great depression, the "dirty 30's" and then WWII. The countries and the sport were in a state of rebuild. And in no time things became prosperous. Unfortunately by the time every average man had a good job, a house, a car and a TV, Gordie Howe's glory days were over. We didn't get to see much of Mr. Hockey on TV. If we had, WE'D be as scared of him as every player in the NHL was. He was not the superstar we know today. Not by a long, long shot! He played in the days when I think hockey could best be described as "prison hockey." You had to fight. You couldn't avoid it. And if you wanted to prove you were tough and stay in the lineup, you had to take on the toughest guy. That was Gordie Howe. For a while. But soon people just stopped taking him on and gave him room. That's how he got all his points. Think of Happy Gilmore beating the living crud out of the player saying, "That's MY puck. You don't touch MY puck!" Then driving his head into the boards. That was Gordie Howe. And that was what a superstar was before Bobby Orr. Even if your team won 1-0 because Gordie Howe faked a punch to the head of the goalie causing him to flinch, then shot it past him while he was covering up, you were happy with the win. Skill, grace, and transcendental hockey savvy were not yet appreciated. They were clobbered. Gretzky, who always idolized Howe, played a game against him and lifted his stick and stole the puck. Howe confronted him later in the game and warned him never to embarrass him again like that. I don't think he'd idolize him so much if he'd played many more games against him.
So Orr knew he'd have to be tough. He KNEW he was good! And he had that whole list of things. For the love of Don Cherry, he was turning heads at the age of 12! NHL heads! The Bruins sent a scout named Wren Blair to a game to look at a couple of older players and they saw Orr. He was by far the youngest at the tournament but he played every minute of the game except the 2 minutes he was penalized and made the scouts forget about the other guys. When he was 13, the Orrs agreed to $2800.00 a car and a stucco job on their house to sell the rights to their son Bobby to Boston. When he was 14 years old, (what were YOU doing at 14?), he lived in Parry Sound, so could only play the home games on weekends for the Oshawa Generals, but still, playing against mostly 19 and 20-year-olds, got 21 points and landed on the 2nd all star team of the Metro Jr. A League. While having sleepovers, smoking his first cigarette and maybe even kissing a girl. I mean, his parents probably didn't allow him to play the road games because he would get home after his bedtime! A true prodigy!
The next year he played the full season and got 29 goals and 72 points. Let me refer you back to the NHL records of the era: 19 and 59. And although I've seen no footage of the days when he was playing Jr. hockey, I'm sure it would look the same as his NHL footage: total domination. He probably made the 19 and 20-year-olds look silly. SILLY! I saw footage of Connor McDavid courtesy of Hockey Night in Canada, when he was 14. He was playing with kids much older and making them look silly. But not to the extent I'm sure Orr did. Don Cherry, (blessed be His name), stated that he saw him pass up points against expansion teams and never run up the score! So his stats could have been a lot bulkier if he had the mindset of the modern player, (or businessman). I guess I'll never know. This is the advantage we have today. Nobody saw this domination of Orr but family, friends, opponents and the Bruins' scouts. The Bruins' scouts who represented a team desperate to win a cup! Their last win was 25 years before and fading from the memory of the fans. Their stadium was echoing. Their debtors were calling.
Much, (or EXACTLY), like today, I believe this desperation was the ONLY reason the Bruins took a chance on Bobby. No team wanted to play offensively, especially with their defensemen! Their job was behind the centre line, CERTAINLY not beyond the opponents' blue line! But that just hadn't worked. For 25 years. This kid was too good to waste. So they took a chance. I absolutely HATE that teams have to be so desperate to "take a chance" on offense. I firmly believe a strong offense wins in most sports most of the time. I don't believe, I KNOW, it's a helluva lot more fun to watch, even if you don't win! The Bruins, and the Oshawa Generals, were about to find out how lucrative an exciting offensive team could be.
Bobby played the next season and broke the goal record for defenceman in the league with 29 goals. The next year he broke his own record scoring 34 goals. In the next season he scored 38 goals and after a 22 year absence, got the Oshawa Generals to the Memorial Cup! These three more years for the Oshawa Generals compiling mouth-watering stats gave hope to the Bruins' front office. Could he do for the Bruins of the NHL what he had done for the Generals? The only reason he wasn't playing in the NHL as a little boy was because of the minimum age of 18 rule. Yet another thing that makes you wonder what might have been. Orr broke all the records ever recorded for defensemen in the minors in his ensuing 3 years playing for the Generals. He DID have his problems with injury, however. Perhaps a sign of things to come. In the game of hockey, if you play at the speed of light, you will encounter some darkness. This was said by a very knowledgeable hockey man and it has held true for several stars who have injured themselves flying into the boards, the net, the glass, the bench, other players or anywhere you shouldn't be speeding into. The recent spate of concussions and knee-on-knee collisions in the NHL may be one of the main dangers that has lead to the infuriatingly defensive, careful, absolutely dead boring, (and I'd like to add cowardly), hockey that is the norm today. It has become as careful and defensive as yesteryear. They might just as well bring back the no forward pass rule, I sometimes think. Sadly, Orr may be its best argument. Hey, but at least we HAVE hockey to watch, eh?
So finally Bobby Orr turns 18 and is eligible for the NHL. He signs for a whopping $25,000 and there were untold bonuses too. To give you an idea, it was 1966 and there were only 4 other players, all proven vets, getting more than 25 grand at the time. The Bruins were pulling out all the stops and rolling out the red carpet for Orr. He didn't disappoint. He scored 13 goals and 28 assists for 41 points. Now that sounds pretty average but that won him the Calder Cup for rookie of the year. It was pretty impressive, particularly for an 18-year-old! In his second year he had an injury but still managed 31 points in limited action. Again it sounds like nothing but it was considered star worthy. Then in the 68/69 season Bobby Orr got 64 points. Remember, Pierre Pilotte's NHL record of 59? Gone! Even if you are a fan of Mohns, Orr beat him too. At the ripe old age of 21. But this was small potatoes. Orr was just rounding into form. Rounding because of only one good knee, of course. heh heh.
The next season, 1969/1970, I was 3 years old. I only WISH I was old enough to fully appreciate what Bobby Orr did that year! As a 7-year-old I actually went to Buffalo and watched the Sabres play the Bruins in 1974 when Bobby Orr's star was brightly shining and was STILL too young to get it. It remains to this day one of the biggest regrets of my life that I saw Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, Johnny Bucyk, Wayne Cashman, Gilles Gilbert, even Terry O'Reilly and I not only didn't appreciate any of them, I was voting for the Sabres! I like the French Connection. Gilles Gilbert, Rene Robert and Rick Martin. Shows how much I knew! When I was 7! I couldn't even tell you who won that game. Probably the Bruins. All I remember clearly was the taste of sour cream and onion chips which I HATED! Ha ha ha. Now I love sour cream, onion, and sour cream and onion chips. I was SO different as a kid!
The 1969/70 season of Bobby Orr was when the whole world recognized his power. If you want a very good account of it, go here. I'll just share the highlights. It is agreed to be the best season by any hockey player EVER! And I don't even think it's Orr's best! Just try to bring yourself back to the year of 1969. The Beatles made their last public performance on a rooftop. The 747 and Concorde were just out. The Pontiac Trans Am Firebird was the hottest car around. Woodstock! Apollo 11, Charles Manson, Abbey Road, the internet was ARPANET, Elvis "In the Ghetto," The Guess Who, Sweet Caroline, Come Together, groovy, Bewitched, Bonanza, Ironside. This is what I'm talking about.
Orr gets 14 points in the first 7 games! That's 2 points a game! Gretzky would be hard pressed! In the 80's! And he was a centre!
Just a miraculous start! He's gotta slow down. That's what everybody thought. And he DID...
So everybody is assuming he'll slow down. I don't remember this spectacular year by Orr, but I DO remember Gretzky's 50 goals in 39 games. He, like Orr, just got BETTER as he went along! By his 54th game Orr had 84 points. Do you know how many players scored more than that this year, (2016/17)? SIX! In the whole year! Bobby had over 20 games to go! And this is in an era BEFORE the 80's when NObody had ever even come close to this! This is a spectacular season for a forward and Orr was NOT a forward! AND he still had 20 some games left! Can you imagine the GOD this guy was to hockey fans, never mind Boston Bruin fans!?!? The mind boggles! At the half way point of the season he broke the assist record for defencemen. Three nights later he breaks the record for points. HIS record. Remember he's 21 years old!
By March he has 100 points, 74 assists, and 27 goals, ALL records for an NHL defenseman. But he's not finished yet. He ends up with 33 and 87 for 120 points. THEN come the playoffs! He demolishes the playoff goals and assists marks for defencemen and scores THE GOAL. Everybody has seen this picture.
Orr won the Art Ross for scoring in the NHL, a feat no other defenseman has ever accomplished, (except himself), he got the first of 8 Norris trophies for best defenseman, (again nobody else ever did this even though most have longer careers), he got the Hart for MVP, and he won the Conn Smythe for playoff MVP. Nobody has won 4 except Lafleur and Gretzky who won the Art Ross, Hart, Conn Smythe and the Stanley Cups, but Bobby Orr, in his 4 personal trophy year ALSO won the Stanley Cup making him the only 5 trophy winning hockey player ever. It will be nigh onto impossible for anyone to do that again since it would have to be a defenceman leading the league in scoring on a team that wins the cup and he dominates the playoffs. In a hundred years that is probably not going to happen! That's why Bobby Orr is considered to be the best. But that's just one season. Let's continue.
The next year he becomes the first player ever to record 100 assists. In 1970/71 he gets 37 goals, 102 assists and 139 points. The point total has never yet been eclipsed by a defenseman although Paul Coffey scored 138 in his brilliant 1985/86 season. As mentioned, his plus 124 is so crazily better than anybody ever it almost proves the stat as meaningless as it is. And he won the Hart for MVP and the Norris for best defenceman again. I hope you don't mind my interchanging defenceman and defenseman. I don't know which is right.
The next year he won four trophies again. He got the Norris as a matter of purer course than any award ever given to any player. He also got 24 playoff points and the Conn Smythe for doing so. He got the league MVP, the Hart, of course. And since the Bruins beat the NY Rangers in the final, he got the Stanley Cup again. That's 4 pieces of hardware again. Remember how rare that is! Let alone FIVE! I think I love him WAY more knowing he beat the Rangers!
In my opinion, knowing how hard it is, and how rare an opportunity arises for a defenceman to score a goal, his best season may have been his last full season. Which begs the question, "Where could he have gone from there?" He scored 46 goals and 89 assists in 1974/75. 46 goals wass just an astronomic number never before mentioned concerning a defenceman. He GOT that in the 70's! This is BEFORE the 80's when skill and creativity were most appreciated in the wonderful game of hockey. And even in THOSE days there was only one defenceman who approached the status of Orr. I would say more than approached too! Paul Coffey was a phenom the likes of which hockey would be lucky to find ever again! But STILL not the gift sent down from Olympus that Bobby Orr was!
Just to fire them off at you, I'll list a few more impressive facts: He remains, and probably will always be, despite his short career, the only defenceman with 9 career hat tricks. When was the last time you saw a defenceman getting a hat trick? Rare as an honest ESL boss! His career 1.39 points per game is a crazy goal for a forward to consider, never mind a defenseman. It's important to note that in his big, breakout year he also had 125 penalty minutes. He had to play tough AND offensive, unlike the majority of high scorers in the NHL. There are forwards who are considered superstars in the NHL who have never approached his statistics. In 1979, (coincidentally or not? Gretzky's rookie year), he became the youngest player ever inducted into the hockey hall of fame.
The next year he was pretty much bankrupt. Without cash. Even being so highly paid! How did this happen? Well this is an all too familiar side story to every story we hear nowadays. We are just now beginning to notice these screwjobs and get angry about them. Soon, hopefully we will DO something about them.
Toward the end of his career, when his knees were shot, Boston offered Orr a contract to stay with the team. They could not imagine him elsewhere. They went so far as to offer 18.5% of the Boston Bruin franchise. WHICH HE DESERVED. His agent, the criminally convicted liar and fraudster, Alan Eagleson, (who served time in prison and was removed from the NHL Hall of Fame), had an arrangement more profitable for himself with the Chicago Blackhawks and hid this offer of Bruin ownership from Orr. He signed with the Hawks. He then had another operation and this one finally rendered his career a no go. So, YEAH, he DID have a lot of money as a player and we wonder where that might have gone, BUT, he could be the 18.5% owner of the Bruins by now! A million or maybe billionaire. There is nobody in the Bruins organization who would begrudge him this share in the franchise. Except, of course, the greedy scumbags who actually control it.
Gordie Howe was another example of a commodity being exploited. He was happy that the Detroit bigwigs gave him team jackets whenever he wanted. And while he was giving and taking beatings night in and night out, those jacket gifters made untold MILLIONS!
Here I am torn.
I'm torn again at the decision of whether I respect Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr more for just playing the game they love and not considering the financial details, or wish the two of them had held their owners' feet to the fire knowing, what they OBVIOUSLY knew: the money THE OWNERS made was exponentially humungous compared to the money they were offering the players. Now, I think, in the cases of several athletes I've seen, financial details were not within their personal realms of understanding. Fine, if Gordie or Bobby want to plead ignorance or lack of intelligence, I'm okay with that. But, I think Bobby was smarter. Possibly, and I'd go so far as PROBABLY not Gordie. But I think one of the greatest rip jobs in professional sports history was the trade of Bobby Orr to the Chicago Blackhawks.
Alan Eagleson was disbarred, criminally convicted and found guilty of fraud in the arena of trying to STOP things like he perpetrated on Bobby Orr from happening to NHL players. Jerk! He was involved with several NHL players including Darryl Sittler, who gave that previous quote. Gordie Howe was screwed by the Red Wings management for being nice and not shrewd. The very fact that the players NEED an association to fight for their rights is witness to the corporatization of the most exciting game in the world and it makes me want to blow a toilet full of puke every time I hear it.
I'm not on either side of the lockouts, strikes and bickering over money, by the way. I'm on the side of getting back to the good old days of hockey, and of Canada, and I assume the U.S. when people had good jobs and pay that everybody knows is fair. When there was a pretty good chance you'd own your home someday soon. When you had a job, social life and a partner that was steady. When hockey players, (musicians? artists?), were exhibiting the freedom and creativity that people exhibit when their primary needs are satisfied. When people were taking chances in sports and life. When things were not nervous, pedantic and uninspired. When sports weren't either.
You see, I believe sports is the best analogy for life, and at the same time it might be the best reflection of life. While life was hard and there was an epic struggle to rise above the poverty and hopelessness of society, people had to scratch and claw and fight. So did hockey players. But in the glory days of the 70's and moreso the 80's when things had loosened up enough to allow people more freedom than ever before, we had our best hockey ever! Skills! Excitement! Goals! And still the fights! Now since the greedy less than 1% have made us scratch and claw again like the days of the depression, hockey has become a frustratingly boring game of soccer on ice. Frustrating because those of us who remember the 80's know what could be. And this poor excuse for our favourite game just makes us as depressed as the people in soup lines during the depression.
"What I'm sayin' kid, is today is an environment in which Bobby Orr could not have existed. He would be told to clutch and grab, clog the neutral zone and block shots. Do you want to play like that? Do you want to stain his memory by stopping at the centre line during a power play? I hope you don't. The future of hockey is depending on you."
Then the man from the shadows left the dressing room. He didn't say another word.
...to the young Connor McDavid! Hah! I'd like to include that but after the game 7 Edmonton played this year, I still think freedom in hockey is being suppressed. Freedom. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Ovechkin can't play like Ovechkin because the stupid management thinks he should play fewer minutes and block shots and backcheck rather than shoot or set up plays. Which he has perfected all his life. No, do the opposite of your nature and we will give you lots and lots of money!
This is what has ruined sports and our whole world.
At least that's what I reckon.
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