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But as deeply as expansion affected the team, there were other developments in Boston that all but eclipsed the changes around the league.
First of all, legendary former Bruins player Milt Schmidt took over as GM from Hap Emms. This was a guy who was already in the Hall of Fame. He had centered Boston’s so-called Kraut Line in the ’40s, had led the league in scoring, had won the Hart Trophy and the Stanley Cup, and as if that wasn’t enough, he had left the Bruins to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force to fight in World War II (winning an Allan Cup for the RCAF while he was at it), then returned after the war to pick up where he had left off. It was impossible to get too full of yourself when “Uncle Miltie” was around. Whatever you hoped to do, he had already done. Under his leadership, the team began a steady climb up the hockey ladder.
That climb began in earnest during the summer of 1967. In addition to being a great hockey player, Milt proved himself to be a pretty shrewd hockey mind. In his first deal, he gave up Gilles Marotte, Jack Norris, and Pit Martin to the Black Hawks in exchange for Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, and Fred Stanfield—three guys who became so important to the Bruins that the deal would forever be known as “The Trade.” Even though the deal took place before he was officially the GM, Schmidt negotiated the trade with Chicago, and Hap Emms told him that if the deal was going to make the team better, he had the green light to make it happen.
I was already familiar with Ken and Fred, because I had played against them in junior when they were in St. Catharines, Ontario. I knew Ken to be a big, strong guy who could handle the puck, and he would soon be the right winger on one of the most feared lines in the league. Fred Stanfield was a great two-way player who could kill a penalty and match up against the top opposing forwards. Freddy would also work the point for us on the power play, and would connect with Johnny “Pie” McKenzie and Johnny Bucyk to form a line that would stay together for years.
And everyone knows what a prolific scorer Phil turned into once he joined us. His accomplishments can never be overstated. He had actually already started to put up some impressive numbers in Chicago over the course of his first three seasons in the league. But when he got into a Bruins uniform, Phil became the dominant goal scorer of our era. He never got any style points for his skating, but he had an uncanny ability to get open near the opponent’s net. And even when he couldn’t get open, he could score with a defenseman on his back.
Of course, I don’t think anyone dreamed these guys would perform the way they did right out of the chute. I’ve often wondered why where you play affects how you play so noticeably. Certain athletes, regardless of the sport, all of a sudden begin to produce like never before after they get traded from one team to another. (While other guys’ performance drops off when they’re traded away from a city where they have been playing great.) Some guys just play better on some teams than on others. How could those three players have been viewed as expendable by Chicago and then gone on to have such great careers in Boston? I can’t explain it, but it happens more often than you might think. Maybe all it takes is a change in scenery—that’s what happened with Phil, Kenny, and Fred, anyway. Without question, The Trade changed the Boston Bruins into a new team.
But Milt wasn’t done. He also brought in Eddie “the Entertainer” Shack. Eddie was productive that year but apparently got into some trouble with the front office. He was a bit of a joker. On one occasion, Milt climbed aboard the team bus a little bit late en route to the airport, something unusual for him, given that he was a very punctual man. As the GM took his seat at the front of the bus, we all heard Eddie yell out in his distinctive high-pitched voice, “Hey, Miltie . . . are we all going to be fined for being early?” Milt stood up, turned back to Shack, and said, “You’ll be gone.” Sure enough, Shack was soon traded away.
I always thought Milt had held a grudge over that little cheap shot on the bus, but it turns out I was wrong. Milt eventually told me that the Entertainer had taken to mocking the hats worn by Weston Adams, the owner of the Bruins. Eventually, Mr. Adams got tired of Shack’s insults, so he instructed his GM to just “get rid of that guy.” Eddie had picked the wrong target for his comedy routine.
There was one more new face on the team that fall—and this was a guy who could steal the spotlight even from Shack. Derek Sanderson swaggered into camp as though he were already a star, courted the press, and even dropped the gloves with Ted Green in practice, which was not for the faint of heart. Not only did Turk (as we called him) make the team; he also became a darling of the fans overnight and won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year.
Derek was a very gifted player who brought many intangible qualities to the team, and he was a huge factor in the success we achieved in Boston. He was absolutely dominant in the face-off circle, he could shut down the other teams’ top centers, and his penalty-killing instincts were like none I’d ever seen. He and Ed Westfall formed probably the finest penalty-kill tandem I ever witnessed in the NHL. I don’t know what our PK percentage was during those years, and I don’t know how many “shorties” we scored during his time in Boston, but whenever Turk was on the ice killing a penalty, the opposition players were always on their heels.
Even when those Bruins teams were shorthanded, we never sat back and retreated into a defensive shell. We were still trying to carry the play and score. Right or wrong, that was how the members of that team thought, and that’s how we all played. I remember during one game against the New York Rangers, we had already scored two shorthanded goals when the ref put up his arm to signal another penalty against us. Once the whistle blew, one of the Rangers on the ice, I think it was Vic Hadfield, shouted, “We decline!”
Turk tells a story about something he and the other guys on the team referred to as the “look.” I was never a real rah-rah kind of player, and didn’t feel that a big speech was the way to get players going. My belief was that we were professional athletes who were paid very handsomely for our services, so I expected a certain level of performance out of myself and my teammates. I always broke the season into ten-game segments and tried to determine how consistently I’d played over the course of any given segment. I thought that each player should have the same kind of results for eight out of every ten games. You would have to cut a little slack for two of the ten games, because we’re all human, and sometimes players are battling illness or injury and just can’t clear the bar they have set. When I felt that a teammate was not achieving that level, Derek claims I would sit in my stall and just look at the underachieving player. I suppose it was my way, without singling anybody out, to send a little message that it was time to pick it up.
Derek recalls that one time he wasn’t having a particularly productive game. He was living life at a fairly fast clip back then, so perhaps he’d had another late night. As the second period ended, and we all filed into the dressing room and sat down, the Turk could feel me looking at him. He knew he wasn’t playing well, and he didn’t want to look back in my direction to see me staring at him, so instead he leaned over to the player sitting right beside him, Phil Esposito, and asked, “Is Bobby looking over here?” Espo apparently glanced over in my direction and said, “Yes, he’s lookin’ here alright.” Derek asked, “Is he staring at you or at me?” to which Phil responded, “Well, Derek, I have two goals already tonight, so I don’t think he’s looking at me!” Derek picked up his play in the third period.
Derek Sanderson was a funny guy and a talented teammate, someone I always enjoyed being on the ice with. But he ended up in a pretty dark place. One day, he was the coolest guy in Boston. The next, he was playing in the World Hockey Association as the highest-paid athlete on the planet. Then he lost it all. Maybe he was too young to handle the money and adoration. Derek had a long way to fall, and he landed hard. But rather than focus on what went wrong in Derek’s life after he left Boston, I’d rather focus on what went right. He represents a classic story of redemption, someone who managed to pick hims
elf back up and make a life for himself against some pretty serious odds. At the depths of his fall, he was a real mess and in a whole lot of pain. But with support, and by surrounding himself with people who cared, Derek managed to turn his life around. Today, his wife, Nancy, and sons, Michael and Ryan, give him the stability that allows him to be the man I always thought he would end up being. His life is on track, and I am proud of what he has been able to accomplish.
In any case, that was the team that Milt put on the ice that fall. I have had the pleasure of meeting many gentlemen in the game, but none better than Milt Schmidt. He was always there for advice and guidance, and his influence on my career was enormous. He is one of those people who deserves a big “thank you” for all of the good things he brought to my life.
• • •
While the 1967–68 season started on a very positive note for the Bruins, things didn’t begin nearly as promisingly for me. I was injured before the season even began. I was dying to get back on the ice after the previous season’s disappointment, and when I was invited to play in a benefit game in Winnipeg that August, I didn’t hesitate. Maybe it was because everyone on the ice was a little bit rusty, but in the first period I got tangled up on a broken play and awkwardly twisted my right knee. I had to pull myself out of the game, and soon the knee was swollen and very painful. I had it examined at Toronto General, where the opinion was it would recover just fine. But still, I had to keep my leg immobilized. I was furious, of course, and very frustrated. After looking forward to getting back to work after the disappointment of the previous season, I had to miss training camp.
Once I was back on the ice, I felt great. Physically, I was fine, and you could tell that the Bruins were coming together. We didn’t feel like a last-place team, and we weren’t playing like one, either. At the All-Star break in December, we were playing well. In those days, the All-Star team played the Stanley Cup champions, in that year the Leafs. Frank Mahovlich stepped into me, injuring my collarbone. That kept me out for a few more weeks.
We never really paid much attention to injuries back then. We were pros—all of us were expected to play with some bumps and bruises, and players never made much of their injuries. But still, I knew my knee wasn’t right. I can’t say that a specific play was to blame, but I knew there was a problem. There was a bit of pain, of course, but it was the increasing stiffness that made it hard to be effective on the ice. There were things I just couldn’t do. Finally, in February, it simply wouldn’t work anymore. I remember heading out to play at the old Olympia Stadium in Detroit, and as I went to put my skate down on the ice, the knee just locked up. There was nothing I could do but head back to the dressing room.
I flew back to Boston, where the Bruins team physician, Dr. Ronald Adams, opened up the knee and removed two-thirds of the medial meniscus—that’s the inner-knee cartilage. He cleared out the joint to restore the range of movement, but that was it for my regular season. I had played only forty-six games.
But it was the playoffs I’d been dreaming of the summer before. The Bruins hadn’t made the postseason since 1959, and there wasn’t a person in that whole organization who wasn’t absolutely desperate to bring that drought to an end. And that year we did. We had some real firepower in that lineup, and more importantly we had depth: seven guys scored twenty or more goals that season. After finishing the year before with the worst record in the league, we were third in the Eastern Conference that spring (the Eastern Conference comprised the original six teams, while the expansion teams made up the west).
We had earned our playoff berth, though our run lasted only four games. We faced a great Montreal Canadiens team, which would go on to win the Cup that year. But it was a beginning for us, a taste of playoff experience. We learned quickly that winning in the regular season was one thing, and winning in the playoffs was something else entirely. We thought we had what it took to compete with the best in the league, but getting swept by the Habs taught us pretty quickly that we had a long way to go.
1968–1969
Whenever you lose that last game of the season, the summer seems a little longer. But our quick exit from the playoffs wasn’t the only thing bothering me back in Parry Sound. My left knee had never really recovered from the surgery in February. It was still swollen, stiff, and painful. Soon, I was back under the knife, this time in Toronto. Dr. John Palmer went in to remove damaged articular cartilage—the smooth white lining of the end of the bone. This improved the immediate problem, but when cartilage is gone it is gone.
We were looking to start off 1968–69 with some of the momentum we had from our strong season the year before. We had basically the same cast of characters, and they were all getting better. The year before, we had improved by adding from the outside—now, we were improving from within. We had become a team that could count on scoring from many sources within the room. The team had a hundred-point year, and again we had seven guys who scored twenty goals or more that season. Add all that up, and the Bruins scored 303 goals, the most in the league.
Trust within the group had taken a big leap forward, and the end result was that a solid regular season carried over into a good playoff performance against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Game one was April 2, 1969, though I’m afraid there are things about it I don’t remember. Anyone who has followed my career will know that on that particular night, Pat Quinn put a pretty good lick on me. Pat was a big boy, probably six feet three and 215 pounds, and he seemed even bigger, because he knew how to throw that weight around.
We were up 6–0 with only a couple of minutes left in the second period, so the outcome really wasn’t in much doubt. I mention that because sometimes, when you have a big lead, you become a bit relaxed. Perhaps you’re not as watchful or prepared for sudden surprises. Maybe I was too off-guard as I picked up the puck behind our net and began a rush. I was being angled toward the boards and momentarily lost the puck in my skates. I looked down for a split second to locate the puck, and I really wasn’t expecting anyone to be pinching inside our blue line.
But Pat had other ideas. No one likes being on the wrong side of a lopsided score. Maybe he wanted to let the Bruins know that the Leafs weren’t going to bow out quietly. Whatever the reason, he stepped into me, and I took the full force of that hit right on the chin. What happened next is a blur, because all I remember is being taken to the hospital for examination. The doctors figured I had suffered a concussion. You have to remember, back then very few players wore helmets, so from the neck up we were quite susceptible. In spite of that fact, it is interesting that more concussions are reported today than back then. Perhaps it’s simply better diagnostic procedures, or increased sensitivity to the symptoms themselves. Or maybe that lack of head protection in the old days made players think long and hard before doing something that might ring a guy’s bell. If you did that to someone, retribution was sure to follow.
In any event, we all know that in the modern game, concussions are increasingly causing concern. But I can’t recall any other time in my career when I suffered one, and I was hit a lot. While I certainly remember the headache I had the next morning, it didn’t stop me from suiting up the following night for our next tilt with the Leafs. I never suffered any lingering effects or showed any of the symptoms we normally associate with a concussion, so I guess I must have been lucky.
Still, the Pat Quinn episode didn’t quite end there. I stayed in the hospital overnight for observation. Early the next morning, after I was discharged from the hospital, I had an encounter I have never disclosed, but it is one I’ll not soon forget. Once the doctors had determined I was well enough to leave the hospital, I headed back to the hotel where the entire team was staying for the playoff run. The team was staying in a hotel together so we would have as few distractions as possible, even when we were playing in Boston.
As I entered the lobby, a rather tough looking “gentleman,” for lack of a better word, walked up
to me. I have no idea how he found out where we were staying. To this day, I don’t know who he was or what his affiliations were. However, as he came up beside me, he asked, in a very low voice, “Do you want me to take care of Pat Quinn?” It was kind of a scary moment, because the look in his eyes and his general demeanor made me think that the guy meant to do some serious damage. I looked back at him and said, “No thanks . . . I’ll take care of him myself.” He walked away, and that was the end of it. I never saw him again after that night, but it is an episode I will never forget.
• • •
We started out by sweeping the Leafs in the quarters, but then the Montreal Canadiens got in our way yet again. They were a great team, a group built on speed and skill, and even though they took us out in six games, in a lot of ways we were right there with them. We lost the first two games in Montreal, though both were one-goal games. Then we evened up the series back in Boston. Even when we lost game five in Montreal, we knew we always had a chance to win at the Garden. And we almost did, losing the sixth game in double overtime.
As much as every guy in the room hated to lose, it wasn’t hard to see how far the team had come. It was the Bruins’ first trip into the semifinals in the new age of NHL expansion. And in spite of not getting to the finals, Espo still finished up with the most points of any player that year in the playoffs, a good omen for things to come. We had been only a few bounces away from beating the team that would go on to win the Cup. In a way, that made it tougher to accept the loss, but it also made it easier to see what we had to do to win.
At that moment, in the spring of 1969, we simply weren’t yet ready to be winners. To win a Stanley Cup, or any championship in any major sport, for that matter, you have to be ready. By that I mean you have to have the right players in the right spots, the right coaching, as well as a little bit of luck. Without all those pieces in place, you can’t become a champion. But it goes beyond mere skill and some good luck. You also have to be willing to pay the price to be a champion, and in our game that price can be pretty steep.