Weird Little Collections: Original Six Favorites #5

I'm not sure there is anything I can say that will adequately describe Bobby Orr. As a Ranger fan I know I was supposed to 'hate' and I'm sure I said I did back in the day. But truth be told I doubt even the staunchest Blueshirt Believer would have hesitated to sell his own mother to slave-traders to have Orr on Broadway.

Orr changed the way the game was played. He did stuff with the puck that no defenseman had ever done with it. Like going end to end on the ice and leave opponents wondering what the hell was going on. Don't believe me? Ask anyone that saw him play. It's a great shame that his knees took so much abuse and took such a toll on him. 

This is the 1969/70 O-Pee-Chee Bobby Orr. I only wish the card looked as good in my hand as it does in the scan. You can see the fuzzy borders. Why do so many O-Pee-Chee cards look like they were cut from sheets using a butter knife? And the corners are not as sharp as they appear but overall I'm glad this card survived. I had completely forgotten I owned it and went out an bought a 72/73 Orr a couple of years ago. I guess you can't have too many Bobby Orr cards.

Pick a video to watch. This one features music by Carly Simon.

Here is one set to a song by Creed. Creed? I haven't thought of Creed in a decade.

This one has his Top Ten highlights. 

Or go find Legends of Hockey Bobby Orr on YouTube. It's a three parter and well worth the time.

I will NEVER get used to this!!

Never, never, never. It goes against nature. Derek Sanderson as a Ranger? Hell Johnny U. on the Chargers didn't shock me as much as this. That 75/76 Topps card won't even have a place in my Rangers binder.

But hockey has always had a lot of cross-pollination. At least during the days of six and then 12 teams. Players were moved around a lot and with that few teams the odds of a guy you disliked landing on your favorite team were not all that long. But saying I 'disliked' Derek Sanderson is like saying Hell is 'warm'. 

Which brings me to the video below. On April 5 of 1970 my parents were house shopping in Houston. I was glued to the radio in Jersey as the Rangers were in a wild battle for a play-off spot. It was the last day of the regular season and the Rangers needed to beat the Red Wings (they had lost to the Wings the night before) and have the Black Hawks beat Montreal. 

But they needed more. Even if the games went their way the Rangers would have been tied with the Canadiens and out of the playoffs on goal differential versus Montreal. The Rangers had to win AND score five more goals than the Canadiens! The Rangers played in the afternoon and went off the rails trying to score. The fired about sixty shots at Roger Crozier and scored a 9-5 win. They had even pulled Eddie Giacomin out of the goal leading 9-3 in an attempt to up their total.

When that game was over WHN in New York announced that they would pick up the Montreal-Chicago broadcast so I sat and prayed next to the radio for another three hours that night. The Habs needed to score five goals, even if they lost. Those five goals would have given them the last playoff berth. Try as they might the Canadiens could not do it. The Hawks had something riding on the game, too. They needed a win to finish in first place. They went ahead 5-2 in the third period and Montreal pulled their goalie trying to add goals. But Chicago hit the empty net five times and won 10-2. I'd never experienced anything quite like that Sunday.

On Monday, the Rangers put playoff tickets on sale and with my folks out of town I didn't have much problem skipping school, taking the train into Manhattan and lining up with my buddy outside the Garden. We got tickets for the third and fourth games. I remember that our seats were about the last available pair and they were high up behind the goal. They were in an area of the Garden that didn't even give you a full view of the ice unless you stood up, or even better, stood on your seat, which is what we did.

And Game Three turned out to be a doozy. The Rangers and Bruins had been mixing it up in Boston during the first two games and the Garden was rocking even during the pre-game. Right from the opening face-off things got crazy and as it turned out the game set records for penalties. Until today I had never seen any video of the game. This clip is four minutes, about a third of which is foolish fluff but the rest is serious hockey bidness. 

Too bad they didn't have any video of Sanderson shooting the bird at the Garden faithful as he exited the ice. From that night forward he was 'evil incarnate' and the thought of him ever actually playing for the Rangers was, well, beyond anything I could comprehend.

The Bruins went on to win the series and eventually the Stanley Cup over the Blues. I skipped school again and tried for Game Six tix with my girlfriend but got the shutout. Rangers lost anyway so it's OK. Derek Sanderson wore out his welcome in Boston (twice), spent time in the WHA, became an alcoholic and got traded to the Rangers.

Funny how things turn out.

We have seen the enemy and it is us

When I left New Jersey in 1970 I did so with the knowledge that the Boston Bruins were the Devil's spawn and that no human could hate a team with the venom I did them. See, when I was growing up as a Rangers' fan there were no New Jersey Devils, or Long Island Islanders or whatever the hell they are and the Flyers were just barely the Flyers, the Broad Street Bullies hadn't been invented yet.

My hockey world was pretty much the Rangers, four teams that had kicked our ass ever since I knew a puck from a ball, six new teams out in the hinterlands that were harmless and then there were the f'ing Boston Bruins. Johnny Bucyk, Wayne Cashman, Derek Sandrerson, Ken Hodge and most of all, worst of all, Phil Esposito*.

But when I moved to Houston for college  it was difficult to keep track of all that. The NHL was on TV one year and then not the next. My Hockey News subscription became too expensive to continue, hockey became the WHA Aeros and following the Rangers through the newspaper standings, which the local papers sometimes printed, if I was lucky.

Fast forward three decades. Somewhere along the way stuff happened, much of it weird:

Like this:

and this:

and this...

...which has led to this:

And maybe worst of all there was this:

And yes, I know that in '79 this happened to keep the Rangers-Bruins rivalry alive:

And I know that there is a general New York versus Boston flame that is fanned by the Yanks and Red Sox history, but I get back to the Garden to watch the Rangers after 35 years and to a lot of folks the Bruins are just another team. Oh, sure they are rivals and all, but nobody seems on the verge of scaling to glass (in either direction) and people behind me are talking about the f'ing Devils, etc, etc.

The world has changed. But that's o.k. It's still hockey. It's still fun, I actually own Phil Esposito cards, and a Bobby Orr card, too. It's all good. But somewhere in the back of my mind I long for Derek Sanderson bending over and firing the bird at the Garden crowd from between his legs. Those were the days!

What inspired this was listening to Esposito this week on Sirius Radio's hockey channel. Espo has an afternoon gig and he's pretty outspoken. He's been discussing the NHL's involvement in the Olympics. And by gawd he was saying the same things I say! He wants amateur teams in the Olympics. See, I'm NOT the only curmudgeon around! You go, Espo!!!

*=there was also Bobby Orr and we hated him too but even us wild eyed Ranger idiots knew he was the greatest hockey player we had ever seen but I doubt any of us would have admitted it.