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  I knew better, though. I had been playing through discomfort for a few years, and it only seemed to get worse. To be honest, I did not think about pain. When I played, I focused on what I needed to do. I didn’t worry about what rink I was in, or who was in net for the other team, or whether we’d had a long flight. And I didn’t worry about how my left knee felt. But there were more and more things I simply could not do. The question wasn’t whether my leg hurt. Increasingly, it was whether I could skate.

  At its worst, the knee would just lock up on me. I might do nothing more than go to stand up and the knee would give out or lock. One moment I’d be fine, and the next I’d have difficulty even walking. Doctor Carter Rowe opened up my knee to remove a loose body in September, and I did manage to take my place in the lineup, but I knew something was wrong.

  I remember being in a restaurant in Boston, grabbing a meal before heading to the airport to catch our team flight to Chicago. When I got up from the table and put weight on my leg, the knee was completely locked. The Chicago Tribune was planning to run a feature on me when the Bruins were in town, and I had to call Bob Verdi, the great Chicago sportswriter, and ask him not to run the piece, because I wouldn’t be there for the game. Even if I could have made it to the plane, there was no way I was going to be able to play.

  I never played another game as a Bruin.

  Not that I didn’t try. I went in for another knee surgery in November to remove a torn lateral meniscus. The team and I were given some hope that I would be back in a matter of weeks. But the weeks added up. The Bruins continued to thrive, and were gearing up for another playoff run, and still I was in no condition to skate.

  Meanwhile, the team was changing. In a move every bit as monumental as the trade that brought Phil Esposito to Boston, he was traded away to the Rangers in a deal that brought Jean Ratelle and Brad Park to the Bruins—two guys who would turn out to be cornerstones of the team for years to come. The new Bruins made it to the semifinals, where they ran into the Flyers again. The whole season had come and gone, and I had done little more than watch. I’ve said that losing is a wrenching disappointment, but watching, and wishing you could contribute, is a special kind of agony.

  • • •

  What happened next was something I had never prepared for. I thought of myself as a Boston Bruin. I had done so for years. I had been part of the organization since I was in grade school. I loved the city and the fans. I had been surrounded with great people on and off the ice. I can’t begin to explain what that city meant to me, and still does. I wanted to stay in Boston.

  That’s not the way it worked out, though. For reasons I will come to later, I ended up a member of the Chicago Black Hawks.

  • • •

  Before I pulled on a Chicago sweater, though, I would have one more chance to play for Canada. My knee was not great, and to be honest I considered declining the invitation to play in the Canada Cup—if the tournament was really going to be the world’s best against the world’s best, I didn’t want to be playing at half speed. That would not have been fair to the rest of the team. But after a couple of workouts, I knew that the chance to play for my country was something I could never pass up. I bitterly regretted not playing in 1972, and had missed an opportunity again in January 1976, when the Soviet Red Army team beat the Bruins 5–2. If there was any way I could play, I was going to play.

  My roommate for that series was none other than Guy Lafleur, the great Canadiens player and a wonderful person as well. It was nice to be in the same uniform as him for a change, and not have to worry about how to stop him. If you look at that team roster, you’ll know it was a pretty good group of players. Some argue that the ’76 team was among the best teams, if not the best team, ever to represent Canada in international competition. Of course, you’ll get arguments about that, but no knowledgeable hockey fan would disagree that it was a strong team, to say the least. Sixteen guys from that team are now in the Hall of Fame.

  If you look at the kind of talent we had on that blue line—Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, Guy Lapointe, Jimmy Watson, Denis Potvin, and Carol Vadnais, my teammate on that ’72 Stanley Cup–winning team—it’s obvious no one was expecting me to carry them. I wouldn’t have to log as many minutes as I had in the NHL, and I could simply make a contribution to the team. All things considered, I couldn’t say no to an invitation like that. To this day, I am thankful I had that one opportunity to play for my country, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

  Anyone who thinks that was a good hockey team would have to concede that Czechoslovakia sent a pretty good team, too. The Soviets played some good hockey, as did the Swedes. But the Czechs were the only team to beat us in the round-robin. And they played us tough in the best-of-three final as well. Their goalie, Vladimír Dzurilla, managed to shut out the likes of Guy Lafleur, Marcel Dionne, Bobby Hull, and Darryl Sittler in the round-robin, and though we managed to get a few by him in the first game of the final, in the second he was standing on his head again and the Czechs were actually leading as the third period was winding down. But Bill Barber sent it to overtime, which set up one of Don Cherry’s great coaching moments.

  Don, who was an assistant coach on the team, had been watching the game from the stands. Before the start of overtime, he came down to give us some advice on Dzurilla. He was coming way out of his net to cut down his angles, Don said. If you get the chance, he told us, fake the shot and go by him. Barely two minutes later, Darryl Sittler came down the left wing, wound up for a shot, and when Dzurilla came out to challenge him, took a step to the left and had the whole empty net in front of him.

  There is nothing like winning for your country. I have said a lot about wanting to win for your teammates, and for the people in your life and in your community. Sports bring people together, and the bigger the game, the bigger the community. It didn’t matter to the guys on the bench what team they played for, or even what league they played in. And on a day like that, for fans and players alike, it didn’t matter what province you were from, or what political party you voted for. We were all Canadians, and it was an honor to have been part of something that brought people together like that.

  The next day, everyone returned to their NHL teams, which meant that for the first time in my career, I was heading somewhere other than Boston.

  • • •

  Being a professional athlete is a great way to make a living, but it can be tough when you are not physically 100 percent and ready to play. Injuries will eventually catch up to you. The weak parts of your game get exposed pretty quickly, and your opponents will attempt to exploit those weaknesses. And at that point in my career, my lack of mobility was my weakness. And an injury is a weakness. If the other team figures out you’ve got a cast on your right hand, you can expect them to start slashing your right hand. If you’ve got a sore shoulder, they’re going to hit you every chance they get. If your leg is hurting and you’re sluggish turning right, they’re going to go to your right every time. You can’t fake it at that level. The opposition is just too good, and all the skill in the world can’t overcome a major injury or health issue.

  One of the problems when you are suffering through an injury is that it restricts your ability to work out. You just can’t stay in top shape, which means you can’t keep your game sharp. That inability to keep your body conditioned will inevitably lead to a decline in your play. When I headed to training camp in the fall of 1976 after signing with the Chicago Black Hawks, those were the problems I was facing. I was not able to play up to my own expectations. The knees simply would not allow me to perform in the way I’d become accustomed to.

  By the time I arrived at the old Chicago Stadium, the clock was ticking faster as my knees continued to deteriorate. It is difficult to describe the frustration I felt as I arrived in the Windy City, because I really did want to help that proud franchise, and I believed I could. Otherwise, I would never have sign
ed a contract.

  Looking back, it’s easy to say I should never have gone to Chicago, that I was done before I ever got there. I had missed most of the previous season, had gone through several surgeries on that left knee, and was hobbling around in pain. But really, that had been the way things were for me for years. For the better part of my entire professional career, dating back to the first time I was injured during my rookie season, I had dealt with knee problems.

  The reality, though, was that it wasn’t this or that game that had caught up with me. It was the style of game I played. I liked to carry the puck, and if you do that, you’re going to get hit. That’s the way it goes. When you play, you play all out. I didn’t want to sit back. I wanted to be involved. I knew the trade-off. I knew that if you invite contact and challenge other guys, you’re going to get hurt. I didn’t know any other way to play. I didn’t even really think about what I was doing on the ice. When I was rushing, I didn’t pick a route and then follow it. I just did what came naturally. If I was pinching, or going down to block a shot, none of that was based on some deliberate calculation. Maybe some guys play the game that way, but I let the game unfold the way I had since I was a kid. Now those instincts couldn’t help me anymore. They were telling me to do something I just couldn’t do.

  What I didn’t foresee—what maybe no young man can foresee—was the way those injuries would accumulate and chip away at me. Throughout my career, I had assumed I was indestructible. I was only twenty-eight. I certainly didn’t think of myself as old. Even with all of the surgeries as the years went by, I felt I could simply put in the rehab work once the doctors were finished fixing me up, and I would go on playing. It wasn’t easy to accept that I was wrong.

  It’s tough as an athlete when you know what you have to do but also know that your body can no longer accommodate it. In that moment, you start to doubt yourself. And if you’re not confident as an athlete, you have nothing. Believe me, it’s no fun. It torments you.

  I feared not playing well every night, and those were the expectations that I lived under from day one. I understood that the key to success in anything is to show up to work every day, whether you are 100 percent or not, and I was determined to do that for my team. There’s a problem when you are missing players from your lineup, especially key players, and I always felt that even if I wasn’t at my absolute best I should still be taking my shifts. I owed it to my team, I owed it to my teammates, and I owed it to myself.

  I never felt pressure when I was healthy. I think of pressure as the fear of letting others down, and that’s not something you can control. I believed that if I played the way I could, and took care of the things I could control, pressure was irrelevant. But once I could no longer do what I expected myself to do, I felt enormous pressure, mostly from myself. But by then, things that used to be second nature were out of my control.

  As my first season in Chicago began, it became obvious to everyone that I would not be able to follow a full practice schedule along with the rest of my teammates. The knees, primarily my left one, simply never felt right. It was an odd mix of dull pain and a lot of stiffness, sometimes to the point where I couldn’t even bend the knee without forcing the joint. I could hardly walk, let alone skate. I wanted to play, but I just couldn’t.

  In total, that first year, I dressed for only twenty games. Things started out fine in the pre-season, but my knee flared up in October. I tried riding a bike just to keep it flexible, and I had a weighted boot I could use to keep the muscles strong without putting pressure on the joint, but it didn’t help. I had a small surgery that month to flush out the particles that were floating around in the joint. But by December it was as stiff and painful as ever. That meant another surgery, and more time recovering.

  Recovery had never been easy for me. No athlete wants to sit around, waiting for his body to heal. You want to get back to doing what you are supposed to be doing. But it is one thing going through your rehab when you believe you are on the way back to being as healthy as you ever were, and something totally different when you are forced to confront the realization that things have changed forever. As I rehabbed that winter, I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never play the way I used to, and I started to wonder whether I would ever even play again.

  I missed the rest of the season and still wasn’t making any progress. Eventually, I was forced to decide what would be best in the long term both for me and for the organization. I would sit out the 1977–78 season in its entirety and hope I’d be ready to go the following year.

  I believed that if I took an entire year to rest and do rehab, there was a chance my knees would finally receive enough time to heal properly. Often, time and rest are the best healers. It was a tough decision to take, because, more than anything, I wanted to be on the ice. I hadn’t come to Chicago for a rest. In hindsight, I’d probably rushed back a little too quickly from surgery a few times because I always wanted to play as soon as possible. I was a professional hockey player. That’s who I was, and that’s what I did for a living, so sitting on the sidelines was never comfortable for me. But over all those procedures, all the damage, eventually I decided I simply could not rush back again. Refusing to rest hadn’t helped me. Maybe resting would.

  That was a particularly tough time in my life. I was never one who felt a lot of pressure as a player, but for the first time in my professional career I began to understand what pressure was all about. And the pressure came about because of the worrying. I worried that I couldn’t live up to the expectations of the Chicago fans. I worried that my teammates would be let down. I worried that the management group who had brought me in would decide that they had made a mistake. That was a kind of pressure that I had never experienced previously. I had to give myself one more good chance to play again, so I made the decision to sit out the year. I didn’t accept any salary either. I was paid to play hockey, and I believed that if I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain, I shouldn’t be cashing checks I hadn’t earned.

  • • •

  I started the 1978–79 season with high expectations. I prepared for that last season like any other. I really thought I was going to go on playing. I had to believe that.

  But I played only six games.

  I still couldn’t practice much with the team, and my ice time wasn’t what it used to be. My knee was too sore to allow me to play more, but sitting on the bench just made it worse, as it would begin to stiffen up on me as it cooled down.

  I would walk favoring my leg, and going up and down stairs was difficult. I had undergone multiple surgeries on my left knee by that time. Cartilage does not grow back. It just keeps chipping off, leaving more and more of the bone surface exposed. Both menisci were gone, bone was rubbing against bone, and chips were breaking off. Bone spurs and arthritis left the joint swollen and immobile. I couldn’t cut, I couldn’t accelerate, I couldn’t play at the level that I expected of myself anymore. I had always said I would play until I couldn’t skate anymore. Finally, I knew that day had come.

  I scored my last goal in the NHL on October 28, 1978, against Detroit. Barely a week later, I retired. I just couldn’t go anymore.

  If I could have played at the pace and with the skill I was accustomed to, I would have been more than willing to put up with all kinds of physical aggravation and discomfort. Was I sore? Yes. Was there pain? Yes. But I would happily have carried on in Chicago in spite of all that if I could have. But I couldn’t. I talked about it with Peggy. I told Coach Bob Pulford. And that was it.

  Eventually, the day comes when you know you will have to give your skates back. In my case, I had grown up believing I could do whatever I wanted on the ice, and I had convinced myself I could somehow conjure up the will to play through the injuries in order to continue as a pro hockey player as long as I wanted. There was the vision of being a Gordie Howe, someone who could hold up to the punishment year after year. But there is only one G
ordie, and no amount of willpower or wishful thinking could prevent the inevitable. Still, I am glad I played those last few games. It was at least a relief not to have to go through life wondering if there might have been a chance I could have kept playing, could have raised the Stanley Cup one more time. I knew, without a doubt, I was no longer able to play.

  On November 8, I had to do what I knew had been coming for some time. We held a press conference and I gave them back my skates. What I had started on the bay back in Parry Sound had come to an end in a conference room at the Chicago Stadium.

  Though I have never found it easy to be open among strangers, I cried that day. I was surrounded by cameras and microphones, but there was no point trying to hide the fact that I was devastated. Hockey had been my life. I was only thirty years old—an age when many defensemen are in their prime. Anyone who has dedicated their entire life to something only to have it taken away knows it isn’t as simple as just saying goodbye.

  The tears expressed something more than sadness, though. As I faced the end of my career, I came to appreciate more than ever the people around me. People had stuck by me even when I was less than I had once been. There were my parents, who had supported me from the beginning. There was Peggy, who was there when I needed her most. My teammates, and other people around the game. The journalists. The fans. I received hundreds and hundreds of letters in the weeks that followed, and I’ll never forget those acts of kindness.

  I had always taken my role in the game as an important responsibility. Just then, facing those microphones, I felt more than ever that it was an honor.

  At the same time, despite the warmth and respect I received, retirement was lonely. I had lost something I didn’t think those around me would understand. My health, my career, my place in the game—it had all slipped through my fingers.