Orr Page 4
Take a look at any hockey team, especially in my day, and you’ll see that a skinny little kid like me didn’t exactly fit the mold. It’s generally pretty easy to pick out the defensemen on the team even in the warm-up. They’re probably the tallest in the group, quite possibly the burliest, and very seldom the most elegant skaters. I was just a little guy by defensemen’s standards. When Royce Tennant was my coach, I couldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds, so the chances of me clearing the front of the net were not encouraging. I wasn’t out there to punish guys. I wasn’t an obvious candidate for defense.
The defenseman’s job is to stay back, get between your goalie and any opposing player, and clear them from in front of your own net so your goalie can see the puck. And once you’ve retrieved the puck, your fundamental job description is to get the puck out via the safest, most efficient route. Anything more creative than that is still thought of as asking for trouble. No one really thought that a defenseman could actually control the puck and skate with it instead of just clearing it out of the zone. At the time, the two notable exceptions in the NHL had been Eddie Shore and Doug Harvey, but that was about it for rushing defensemen. In recent years, the smaller, smooth-skating, puck-moving defenseman has become more common. Guys like Paul Coffey, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang, and others have become an important part of the game. Back then, though, there wasn’t much room for defensemen like that.
To his credit, Royce saw that if everything played out the way he envisioned, it would be the opponent who would have to worry about what was going on in front of their net. When you think about it, that’s a pretty good way to play defense. As long as you’ve got the puck, your goalie is safe. Royce put me back there and let me play the game the way I enjoyed it, and that meant I didn’t become afraid of making mistakes.
That freedom from my coach gave me the confidence to try some things I’d never imagined I would be able to do. Coach Tennant was allowing me to go back to that pond-hockey idea that calls on players to become creative, a quality far too often lacking in the modern game for my liking. Many coaches today would never let a defenseman try some of the things I was allowed to try, and that is a pity. I often wonder if any coach would let me play the game the way I wanted to play it if I were playing today.
Something tells me I might be collecting a lot of slivers on the bench if I were playing minor hockey right now. Many current youth hockey coaches don’t want their players to take chances for fear of turnovers. It’s as if their mortgage is dependent on winning at the squirt level. Coach Tennant wasn’t afraid of his players making mistakes, and believe me, I made my fair share. I made them then, and I made plenty more right through my playing career. But fortunately, the coaches I ran into along the way allowed me to play the game in a wide-open style, and for that I am very grateful.
One of my great memories from that year was a visit our team made to Maple Leaf Gardens. Coach had set it up so we could play an exhibition game in Toronto and then watch a Maple Leafs–Black Hawks game that night at the Gardens. What a thrill for a bunch of kids from Parry Sound. You can imagine us all walking through the Gardens for the very first time, jostled by the crowd, eyes wide open as we looked at the hockey photos hanging on every wall along each hallway. Hockey heroes from the past and present everywhere you looked.
To top it off, we even had a chance to meet some of the big-league players, including the great captain of the Leafs, George Armstrong. He seemed so grown up to us then, but looking back I realize the Leafs legend was just twenty-six at the time. Armstrong and everyone else we met that day treated us so well, and that left a lasting impression on me. You can never underestimate the importance of events like that in a young person’s life. Being responsible to the fans is something I have always taken very seriously.
Hopefully, just like George on that day long ago, I have honored that ideal during my time as a professional athlete and even into retirement. You never know how a single interaction with a person might affect their life, so you must constantly try to be at your best. That’s not always easy, but that should be the goal for people in the public eye, and especially professional athletes.
Years later, when I was a young teenager, I attended a summer camp that Royce was running in the Parry Sound area called Camp Wee-Gee-Wa. One of the guests he invited to make an appearance that particular year was none other than Gordie Howe, and that was the first time I actually got to meet the man who was one of my heroes growing up. And by the way, Gordie Howe is still one of my heroes to this day. As an added bonus, Royce set it up so I could go out on a little fishing expedition with Number 9, and it was a dreamlike experience catching fish alongside Mr. Hockey. When the day was done, Coach Tennant asked me, “Well, Bobby, did Mr. Howe give you any advice about your hockey career?” to which I replied, “Yes, Coach, he told me that when I get to the National Hockey League, I should look out for just one thing: his elbows!”
• • •
I had other very influential coaches playing Parry Sound minor hockey, including men like Tom Maxwell, Bucko McDonald, Anthony Gilchrist, and Roy Bloomfield. These men carried on the tradition that Royce Tennant had begun, in that I was allowed to play the game of hockey the way I felt most comfortable playing it, and that was with the puck on my stick. Trust me, our coaches didn’t engage us in any “trap systems” back then. To us, a trap was something outdoorsmen put out to catch beaver and mink and had no place in a hockey game.
I still have trouble imagining the coach of a group of eight- or nine-year-old players actually wasting time teaching systems. The greatest system any coach can pass along is allowing kids to create and refine skills. Systems need to come into play only much later, if ever. My minor hockey coaches never drilled the fun out of the game, but I wonder how many children get out of minor sport for that reason. Of course, we wanted to get better. And those men helped us get better. But whether they were careful not to over-coach, or just sensed when the kids were having fun, they never robbed us of our creativity. I can’t remember any of those coaches ever telling me to chip the puck off the boards when things got tough in our own end. We were allowed to try things, creative moves that could get us out of jams on the ice (or into them). That kind of coaching would show itself in the way I played as a professional years later. Without that background of guidance from my minor hockey coaches, I doubt I could ever have become the player I did.
It’s worth mentioning a bit more about the legendary Wilfred Kennedy “Bucko” McDonald, because he was a particularly intriguing person.
Maybe he was a great coach because he had come to the game very late in life, having tried out for the Leafs as a walk-on during the Depression at the personal invitation of Conn Smythe before going on to become a league all-star and three-time winner of the Stanley Cup. Maybe his skill as a great communicator was the result of all he had learned in twelve years in Ottawa as a member of Parliament for Parry Sound–Muskoka. (I wonder how many kids ever played under a coach who had been both an NHL player and an MP.) He was also still deep in the hockey world, having coached Rochester in the American Hockey League. And at the time I played for him, he was scouting for the Detroit Red Wings.
Bucko McDonald was a giant of a man and quite a character, someone who always seemed to do things on his own terms. He was our head coach over a couple of seasons when I was in bantam, and he would often act as both coach and chauffeur for players if they couldn’t get a ride to the rink for a practice or game. On several occasions, I was the recipient of some of those rides in Bucko’s old half-ton truck, but he would rarely go straight to the rink. Many times, if we were playing somewhere other than Parry Sound, I’d hear Bucko’s truck pull up to the house, where I would be waiting patiently on the porch, and off we would head to a favorite little truck stop. The restaurant was just outside of town, on Highway 69, and we’d land there before the game in order to have a nice pre-game meal. We would both chow down on all types of
delicacies: hamburgers, french fries, ice cream sundaes, and other essential food groups as well. That’s hardly what you might call a wise pre-game meal by today’s standards, but Bucko never thought anything of it. He always said it didn’t matter what you had in your stomach when you played as much as it mattered what you had in your heart. I always had a pretty good appetite as a young fellow, so he never heard any complaints from me regarding our menu selections.
Once his team was put together, he was the kind of person who could see all the pieces of the big hockey puzzle, and he had that skill that all successful coaches have of putting everyone into their own special place within the bigger picture. In my case, Bucko allowed me to go with my first instinct on the ice: never get rid of the puck when you can control it. Hold on to it, and let the play open up in front of you. And again, it keeps coming back to those days on outdoor rinks or rivers or bays, where we simply skated and handled the puck for hours on end. That training allowed me to do the things I did as a player, and my coaches in turn allowed those skills to develop.
If you hold on to the puck and keep your head up, more often than not your opportunity will present itself. At the time I didn’t understand, but eventually I came to realize that the first two or three strides were key for me. If I got my feet moving quickly, I would often find myself in open ice. With open ice came a sense of calm for me, and at that point the game always seemed to slow down.
It was just a lot easier to make plays when you were in motion, and Bucko helped to reinforce that concept with me. After all, the best play in hockey is still the give and go, and you can’t run that play unless at least one player is in motion. Without speed, you are giving away your most decisive advantage, and your opponent is going to tie you up pretty quickly if he knows how to defend. Keeping your speed up also makes it easier to cover any mistakes.
When my feet were moving and the puck was on my stick, most of the choices became mine, and I always liked being in that position. I can’t speak for others, but for me those decisions seemed much easier at high speed. It’s funny, but for many players I think the rink seems quite small, particularly when the pace picks up. Yet every time I walk into an NHL-sized rink, I am amazed at how big the ice surface appears to be. There’s lots of room out there to navigate, regardless of how big the opponents might be. I believe that Bucko and all of my other coaches helped my career by simply allowing me to go with my gut and skate with the puck.
They all helped make me a more confident player, and with more confidence comes the desire to try different and more creative things on the ice. That lesson in building a player’s confidence is something all coaches need to learn. It worked back then, and it still works for today’s players.
It is important that I say something else here about my minor hockey coaches, completely unrelated to their coaching abilities. In a far broader sense, they were all people who acted like gentlemen as they were leading their teams, and they encouraged players to act appropriately, both on and off the ice. With people like Royce and Tom and Bucko, you had men who came from different walks of life, yet all of them shared one most important philosophy when it came to coaching youth hockey. They wanted it to be fun. What a revolutionary idea that is! There was no barking at us from behind the bench, no ranting at the officials. There was no humiliation piled on the players when things didn’t go well on the scoreboard. There was just a whole lot of fun, and I believe that as a result my coaches helped to develop some pretty good citizens in the process.
• • •
When I think of the way hockey can bring together a community and teach kids not just how to compete but how to hold themselves to the very highest standards, I think proudly and very fondly of the bantam team I played on in 1962. That team changed my life.
For one thing, I was with guys I had played with for years. It means a lot to play, and to win, with guys who have been there for you. And win we did. That Macklaim Construction team went undefeated through the regular season. As we headed into the playoffs, the whole town was behind us. Home games at the Memorial Arena were packed. And as we went deeper into the playoffs, we could count on crowds of supporters in the stands, both at home and on the road. We completely overwhelmed Midland in our first series, then dispatched Huntsville to win the district. Then we swept Uxbridge. Then Napanee. We beat Milton on the road in the next round, and the Memorial was boisterous when we hosted Milton the next weekend with a chance to win the provincial title.
I mention expectation here, because even when our whole town was being swept up in excitement and pride, that team had its own set of expectations. I’m not talking about the expectation that we would always be victorious or bring home trophies. Sure, we competed, and we competed hard, because we wanted to be winners. No, the main expectations for that ’62 team revolved around concepts such as saying “please” and “thank you,” reacting with dignity in the face of difficulties, respecting officials, and so on. They were expectations that everyone was supposed to meet, including players, coaches, managers, and parents as well. The further that team went, the more powerfully we stuck to the expectations that had got us there.
I’m sure we had our moments when those expectations weren’t reached, be it from our play or conduct on the ice, or from the occasional parental meltdown in the stands. We’re all human, and we might not have been a perfect group, but our approach to the game was that there were more important things than just winning and losing. I believe a big part of that team’s success, indeed the biggest part, can be traced to those expectations. This may sound a bit old-fashioned or even corny to some, but a lot of those boys turned into men who did great things for our community. The lessons of 1962 came from expectations based not on a playing perspective but on a life skills perspective. I’m very proud to have been a part of that group.
We didn’t disappoint the town that afternoon. We beat Milton and won the provincial title with a perfect record. Ahead of us was still the district Little NHL tournament in Gravenhurst, where we faced Huntsville again in the final and won, our perfect record still intact. That set up the season-ending climax of the provincial Little NHL tournament—a three-day event in Cobourg, where we were billeted with local families.
We beat Winona in the first game, dispatched Milton in the second, and faced off against the host team in the final, the championship and our perfect record on the line.
We skated to a decisive 6–0 victory, and when we got back to Parry Sound the next day, we were hailed as heroes. Even the police and fire departments came up to greet us, sirens wailing, as we rolled into town. But I think I speak for all of my teammates when I say we were as proud of the way we won as we were of the fact that we won.
In 2012, the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame in Parry Sound honored the members of that team with induction into the Hall. Our coaches and managers that year—Roy Bloomfield, Anthony Gilchrist, and Bucko McDonald—as well as my brother Ron, who served as a trainer, will always be remembered for what they did to bring a community together like that, and for the example they set for a bunch of kids who really just wanted to play hockey.
As I met with some of my old teammates at the induction, what struck me was that while some of the hairlines had receded and we had all put on a few pounds, what hadn’t changed were the great memories and stories we shared from one of the best times of our lives. And that, it seems to me, is what minor hockey is really about.
• • •
It wouldn’t be fair to finish up my remembrances of those early days in Parry Sound without spending some time discussing my sisters and brothers. I’m not sure if my siblings ever really knew how much I appreciated the sacrifices they all had to make in order for me to achieve my goals in hockey.
The way my career unfolded meant that many weekends my dad would be driving me somewhere in the car. That meant that the other four Orr children didn’t have their dad at home. It’s difficult to gauge how my develop
ment as an athlete affected our family as a whole and my siblings individually. I know there were occasions when my brothers were playing in hockey games and someone in the stands shouted out something like, “You’ll never be as good as your brother.” That wasn’t fair to them, especially when they were just kids. But it was all part of the deal, I guess, even if it wasn’t very appropriate. As time went on, ours was not your average family environment, so I’ve no doubt they all paid a price for my benefit, one way or another.
For anyone today who may be taking a path similar to the one I took, I would give this advice. Always remember that those who are closest to you will be affected by your dreams. Somewhere along the way, they will undoubtedly have to sacrifice something in order to help you realize your goals. You may be the “next one,” but in the meantime you have family that will have to assist in paying the freight for your success. You should never forget that and always thank your lucky stars you have people in your corner who are prepared to back you.
In my experience, I’ve come to realize there are very few “self-made men” in this world. While you have to work hard to become successful, the truth is that most who have gone far received a whole lot of backing from friends and family at key moments.
I would love to be able to thank all the people who helped me back then, but that is all but impossible. But there are two people who gave me everything they possibly could, a couple of people who modeled for me the kind of life I would learn to appreciate more and more as I grew up. The person I am today, warts and all, is a direct result of the example provided by my parents, Arva and Doug Orr.