-by Old School

Bobby Orr Statue, Some rights reserved by jason_baker84

Like many children who grew up in the Boston sports culture of the 1960’ and 70’s, I am a life long fan of this city’s sports, regardless of where I hang my hat.  Having lived nearly all of my adult life in another state, I have since returned to the 617 area code.  My wife and I recently took a tour through Boston on one of the local tour buses, and, while the tour and tour guide were as entertaining as they were educational, it was the bronze statue of Bobby Orr outside the Boston Garden (It’s always gonna be The Boston Garden!) on Causeway Street that immediately brought me back home!

Bobby Orr grew up in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada.  The precocious little kid dominated pond hockey (shinny) as well as organized squirt leagues.  He was first noticed, and subsequently signed, by the Boston Bruins when he was just 14 years old playing in the Canadian Juniors, a league for 18 to 21 year old future pro hockey players..  (A player cannot play in the NHL until the age of 18; the Bep Guidlan rule.)  At the age of 18, Bobby burst on the National Hockey League scene in the 1966-67 season, winning the Calder Trophy (Rookie of the year) and finishing second in the MVP balloting.  By 1970 the front office had built the team around number 4, and the Bruins brought home their first Stanley Cup Championship trophy since 1941.  The moment has been immortalized via the photo of Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring the Stanley Cup winning goal just 0:40 into the overtime period off a give-and-go from Derek Sanderson, with St. Louis Blues Defenseman Noel Picard helplessly trying to trip Bobby with his stick!

I grew up in Framingham in a neighborhood full of athletic kids.  I think we played every sport that was ever invented, and a few that we made up ourselves, until the street lights came on, every day.  More than fifteen or twenty of us from that neighborhood went off to play college sports of every kind; a few made it to the pros.  But from circa 1967 through 1973, we played hockey; street hockey most of the year, ice hockey when it was cold, floor hockey in gym class, and basement hockey shoot-outs when it was raining or snowing too hard!  We all wanted to wear #4, we all played defenseman, and we ALL PLAYED LEFT HANDED!  To this day I cannot do anything left handed unless I pick up a hockey stick…
(At a time when Red Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski was winning the Triple Crown and Celtic future Hall of Famers Russell and Havlicek were ruling the hardwood, we wanted to be Bobby Orr!)

Bobby Orr redefined the game of hockey much the same way that Pete Sampras (tennis), Tiger Woods (golf), and Alberto Salazar (marathon racing) did in their respective games.  To watch Bobby Orr play hockey is to witness a single player functioning at a different level than everyone else on the ice.  He skated faster; he stick handled more adeptly; he shot the puck quicker; he made all his teammates better.  He would throw the gloves off and battle the toughest hockey fighters in the league.  Bobby Orr was a catalyst for the Bruins and he was in the process of changing the way hockey was played.

When the street lights came on, every kid in the neighborhood knew that meant we had ten minutes to get home; the next goal wins.  Regardless of which team scored next, everyone would drop their gloves, find an opposing player, and brawl; Bobby Orr was the only superstar in the NHL who would actually fight.  While most franchise players had a goon or two on their team for protection, our guy, Bobby Orr, needed no such thing; his rookie season’s first fight earned him the respect of the league when he knocked the stuffing out of Montreal tough guy Ted Harris.  Even fights that we had at school often resembled hockey fights, with the loser generally having his shirt pulled over his head and getting pounded out; just like Bobby Orr would do!

Bobby suffered through many knee surgeries in his injury-shortened career.  He suffered his first noted knee injury during his rookie season, a time that today’s arthroscopic technology and sports medicine were still a decade and a half away.  Yet despite chronic knee issues and playing just nine complete seasons (He did have three seasons at the end of his career that he was able to average just 12 games per year.), Bobby earned The Calder Trophy (rookie of the year), eight consecutive Norris Trophies (best defenseman), eight consecutive All-Star team appearances, three Harts Trophies (League MVP), and a plethora of other awards and accomplishments.
Bobby Orr was a tough body checker, capable fighter, and a skilled shot blocker. Teammates often told Bobby not to sacrifice his body, because his knees couldn’t handle the punishment, and he was good enough to play without all that abuse. “It’s the only way I know how to play,” he was often quoted.

In 1970, we didn’t have cell phones, internet, or cable TV, and there were only four channels on regular TV, and three of them were boring; everybody watched the Bruins.   We didn’t want to ever miss a game, because we never knew what Bobby might do that night that we’ve never seen before.  He might stick handle for two minutes and kill an entire penalty by himself.   He might drop the gloves and kick Stan Mikita’s ass into next Tuesday.  He could fake New York defenseman Brad Park out of his jock strap, and my cousins are from New York!  He might score another hat trick.  (He still holds the league record for hat tricks (3 goals in one game) by a defenseman.)  Bobby was the first defenseman to lead the league in scoring; he did it twice, and no defenseman has done it since.  Little kids, grown men, and little old ladies loved this young warrior on skates, and nobody wanted to miss a chapter.

It wasn’t just Bostonians and New Englanders who loved the kid from Parry Sound; the entire continent of North America was captivated by Bobby Orr.  When Bobby was signed by the Bruins at the age of fourteen, the league had four years to prepare for him.  Early on during his rookie year he exceeded the hype with his speed, style, and charisma.   That year he scored 13 goals and 28 assists, numbers that were unprecedented by rookies as well as defensemen.

Everyone wanted a piece of this kid.  During the 1930’s and into the 1941-42 season, the NHL tried to expand from the original six teams to seven, but things didn’t work out. (They even tried to move to eight teams in the 1930’s.)  From 1942 through the 1967 season there were the original six teams in the NHL, a number that remained stable for those two and a half decades.  So popular and dynamic was Bobby that by the start of his second season in the NHL (1967-68) the league expanded from the original six teams to12 teams.  (It seemed as though every major city across the United States and Canada now wanted an NHL franchise!)  Soon that number would be 18.  When Bobby finally retired from the game for good there were 21 teams in the NHL.  When the American Amateur hockey players beat the Russian Pros in the 1980 Olympics (Miracle on Ice), many of the players on that American team, including Captain Mike Eruzioni, reflected back on how strongly Bobby Orr influenced their start in hockey.  I think it is safe to say that Bobby Orr is one of the most influential players in the history of the NHL.

When I was a young kid growing up in the suburbs of Boston, there was only one ice rink available in our five or six town area in the late 1960’s.  By 1975, the demand for hockey had grown so much that there were more than a dozen rinks with in a short drive.  (Somebody once told me that the number of hockey rinks in New England grew from less than 50 in 1966 to more than 1000 in 1975.)  I remember when Bobby came to Long Motors in Framingham to sign autographs; the line was across the showroom floor, out the door, across the parking lot, and down the sidewalk a few hundred more yards.  I heard that Bobby signed autographs for many hours into the night, and every kid in town talked about that for weeks; heck, I still talk about that.

Bobby Orr’s accomplishments are too numerous to even try to capture here, but it is safe to say that he changed hockey for ever; the game has never been the same since he first laced on a pair of skates in the NHL.  He is the only Defenseman to lead the league in scoring, something he did twice; he also finished second to his teammate Phil Esposito a time or two.  (Did I mention that he tends to make his teammates play better?)  He signed the league’s first million dollar contract.  He led Boston to two Stanley Cup winning seasons, scoring the winning goal in the final game each time.  He was selected by the Boston Globe as the greatest athlete in Boston’s history.  He is the youngest player ever selected to the NHL Hall of Fame; the league actually waived the three year retirement rule just for Bobby.  The NHL grew from six teams to 21 teams during Bobby Orr’s tenure in the league; currently there are 30 NHL teams…

I remember winning a pair of Bruins tickets in a fund raiser drawing when I was 12 years old.  Tickets to a Boston Bruins game were as scarce as lips on a chicken back then, because the Bobby Orr effect had the Boston Garden sold out for three years in advance.  I was the envy of the neighborhood.  My dad and I went to that Bruins game, to this day the only one that I have attended live!

The word around the league on Bobby Orr was simple; he is hard to stop (legally), and he has bad knees.  Bobby’s knees, legs, and skates became a common target for opposing players willing to suffer the two minute penalty if whistled.  This is never more evident than in that most-famous picture of Bobby flying through the air after that Stanley Cup winning goal in 1970; it is very clear that Blues defenseman Noel Picard has his stick in Bobby’s skates.  Bobby’s career was cut in half due to his bad knees and the rigors of the game, but his influence will never be forgotten.

When the old Boston Garden was torn down and the new Fleet Center was opened in 1995, Bobby Orr was the first one allowed to skate on the brand new ice.  It was the first time Bobby donned skates in public in more than fifteen years.  I had heard that his knees wouldn’t allow him to skate any more, but a sold out Fleet Center watched number 4 circle the virgin ice as the rest of New England watched at home on television.  I remember my sisters cried…

There is a bronze statue outside the Boston Garden on Causeway Street that is visible for a minute or so when one takes the trolley tour of Boston.  It is Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring that Stanley Cup game winning goal on May 10th in 1970.  From a distance, if you look quickly, you might think that it’s Superman.  But if you take a closer look, for a long period of time, you will agree that it is Superman…

-Visit Old School at www.NorthEastMMA.net.

Old School is the Senior Writer and Editor of NorthEastMMA.net, the one web site dedicated solely to Mixed Martial Arts in the NorthEast (New England and New York).  He is also the host of NorthEast MMA Radio, a weekly Mixed Martial Arts talk show.  A long time Martial Artist, his nick name (now a pen name) was given to him by the MMA fighters in New England after he debuted in sanctioned cage fighting at the age of 47.  Currently, he is retired from the Martial Arts and lives with his lovely wife on Cape Cod.