Keith Magnuson made his debut as an NHL defenceman in 1969 for a Chicago Black Hawks team that lined up Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull, Pat Stapleton, Pit Martin, and Tony Esposito.

On the domestic side, the 22-year-old Magnuson found an apartment with fellow rookies Jim Wiste (a left winger) and Cliff Koroll (he played the right), both 23. All of them were Saskatchewan-born — Magnuson was from Saskatoon, Koroll from Canora, and Wiste from Moose Jaw — and they’d all played together, too, at the University of Denver.

Domiciling in the NHL, they found a place in Schiller Park, 24 kilometres from downtown Chicago, in what a visiting Saskatoon reporter classified as “a development for single people.”

On the ice, Wiste got into 26 games and notched eight assists. Koroll collected 18 goals and 37 points, while Magnuson had 24 assists (no goals) to go along with his NHL-leading 213 penalty minutes.

Vancouver claimed Wiste in the NHL’s expansion the following summer, so he moved out: as the new season rolled around, Chicago reporters noted that the apartment previously known as Bachelors III was now Bachelors II.

Or — sorry, apartment doesn’t do the place justice. The proper terminology is contained in a Hawks’ profile that Robert H. Bradford wrote for The Chicago Tribune in December of 1970: Magnuson, Wiste, and Koroll were roosting in an “ultramod pad on the outskirts of the city.”

Koroll described the set-up: “We’re six minutes from the airport and there is limousine service right at our door. We have three bedrooms downstairs and three upstairs. We also have a den and a coloured television. It costs us $375 per month.”

The question is, in years ensuing, did Magnuson and Koroll make a move or did they just redecorate? Stay tuned: more to come on this.