hockey players in hospital beds: pie mckenzie

/ puckstruck
Pieface: Johnny McKenzie of the Chicago Black Hawks was working the right wing that night, November, 28, 1963, alongside linemates Red Hay and Bobby Hull. The Leafs were in town and at some point in the first period two of them converged on 27-year-old McKenzie, the man they called Pie. Carl Brewer and Bob Baun caught him, hit him, hurt him: he limped off the ice and didn’t leave the Chicago bench for the rest of the period. He went to hospital after that, and while X-rays showed that while his ribs weren’t broken, he was bleeding internally. Dr. Myron Tremaine performed the surgery to extract his ruptured spleen. Afterwards, with McKenzie resting comfortably (if not, perhaps, pleased to be facing a photographer), Dr. Tremaine declared that he’d be back on skates in a couple of months. He was, too, in February of 1964, and looking good doing all the things hockey players like to do, scoring goals and bumping into other people, even if he was wearing a protective corset as he did so. “John is one of the gamest guys I know,” his coach, Billy Reay, told Red Burnett of the Toronto Daily Star. “It took a lot of courage for him to come back after losing his spleen as a result of being checked by Brewer and Baun in Chicago. What’s more, he’s skating and hitting as hard as he did when the season opened.”

Piefaced: Johnny McKenzie of the Chicago Black Hawks was working the right wing that night, November, 28, 1963, alongside linemates Red Hay and Bobby Hull. The Leafs were in town and at some point in the first period two of them converged on 27-year-old McKenzie, the man they called Pie. Carl Brewer and Bob Baun caught him, hit him, hurt him: he limped off the ice and didn’t leave the Chicago bench for the rest of the period. He went to hospital after that, and while X-rays showed that while his ribs weren’t broken, he was bleeding internally. Black Hawks team physician Dr. Myron Tremaine ordered the surgery that extracted his ruptured spleen. Afterwards, with McKenzie resting comfortably (if not, perhaps, best-pleased to be facing a photographer), Dr. Tremaine declared that he’d be back on skates in a couple of months. He was, too, in February of 1964, and looking good doing all the things hockey players like to do, scoring goals and bumping into other people, even if he was wearing a protective corset as he did so. “John is one of the gamest guys I know,” his coach, Billy Reay, told Red Burnett of the Toronto Daily Star. “It took a lot of courage for him to come back after losing his spleen as a result of being checked by Brewer and Baun in Chicago. What’s more, he’s skating and hitting as hard as he did when the season opened.”