defencemen

fab four

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On Point: Born in Parry Sound, Ontario, on a Saturday of this very date in 1948, Bobby Orr is 76 today. In late August of 1976, when he was 28, hockey’s greatest defenceman suited up for his country in an intra-squad as Team Canada prepped for the Canada Cup in early September. He was no longer a Boston Bruin: once the tournament ended, his surgically repaired left knee willing, Orr would be on the job for the first time with the Chicago Black Hawks. On this day, in front of 18,002 fans, Orr’s team won, 7-3, with Marcel Dionne leading the way with a pair of goals. Orr contributed an assist. “The knee’s fine,” he said after the game. “It’s the conditioning that needs some work. Practices are all right, but what you need to get into shape are games like tonight.” The tournament went as well as it could have, with Canada sweeping Czechoslovakia in the best-of three final. Orr was named to the All-Star team and selected as tournament MVP. (Image: René Picard, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

no more mr. nice guy

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Guy Lapointe is 76 today, so here’s to him. Born in Montreal on March 18, 1948, he stoutened the Montreal Canadiens’ defence in the 1970s, playing his part (with teammates Larry  Robinson and Serge Savard) in no fewer than six Stanley Cup championships. He played briefly towards the end of his career for the St. Louis Blues and the Boston Bruins before retiring in 1984. Today he works as coordinator of Amateur Scouting for the Minnesota Wild. Lapointe is seen here at the Forum in January of 1976 trying to contain Philadelphia Flyers’ captain Bobby Clarke and allow goaltender Ken Dryden do his job. Montreal’s Pete Mahovlich looks on from the blueline. Montreal prevailed on this night by a score of 5-3, with Clarke notching a goal and an assist. Lapointe assisted on Doug Risebrough’s empty-net goal in the latter stages of the third period. (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

jean-guy talbot, 1932—2024

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Sad to hear news that the former defenceman Jean-Guy Talbot died yesterday at the age of 91. (Dave Stubbs has a fine appreciation here.) Born in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, in 1932, he made his debut with the Montreal Canadiens in 1955. Seen here at practice in 1962 (alongside Henri Richard and Dickie Moore), Talbot played 13 seasons with the Habs back when they were mightiest, helping them win seven Stanley Cup championships. After NHL expansion in 1967, Talbot went on to play for the Minnesota North Stars, Detroit Red Wings, and Buffalo Sabres, and spent four seasons with the St. Louis Blues. After retiring in 1971, Talbot coached the Blues as well as the New York Rangers.

It was an unfortunate encounter with Talbot in 1952 ended Scotty Bowman’s career as a player. Talbot was a Trois-Rivieres junior when he high-sticked Bowman, a Junior Canadien, and fractured his skull during a game at the Forum. Talbot was suspended; Bowman never played another game. The latter understood it to have been an accident and the two later became good friends. It was Bowman who brought Talbot to St. Louis when he was coaching there. “He was one of the best buys I ever made in St. Louis,” Bowman would recall. “I got a couple of good years out of him. He played defence or up front and also was a good penalty killer.”

 

(Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

defence department

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You’ve Got Us, Babe: Born in 1904 on a Thursday of today’s date in Plattsville, Ontario, Hall-of-Famer Babe Siebert was a star winger with the Montreal Maroons through the latter 1920s, combining with Hooley Smith and Nels Stewart on the dangerous S Line and winning a Stanley Cup championship in 1926. He eventually dropped back to play defence, and took his talents to New York to play for the Rangers. In December of 1933, Siebert was traded to the Boston Bruins. That’s him in the middle here, in March of 1936, with a couple of Bruin teammates, goaltender Tiny Thompson on the right and an old nemesis going back to the Maroon years (they did make their peace), Eddie Shore on the left. Siebert ended up back in Montreal, with the Canadiens, in the late 1930s, and was named Habs coach before his life was cut tragically short in the summer of 1939. (Image: Leslie Jones Collection, Boston Public Library)

hemstitched helge

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A birthday yesterday for Helge Bostrom, who was born in Winnipeg in 1894. Pictured here in 1933, second from the left, Bostrom got to the NHL late in his career as a bulksome defenceman. He was 35 when he joined the Chicago Blackhawks in 1929, playing subsequently in parts of four seasons, ’32-33 being the last. Named Chicago’s captain that year, he was the oldest player in the NHL. He was slowed that year by his recovery from a cut suffered in an accidental meeting with a skate belonging to Earl Seibert of the New York Rangers and played only half of Chicago’s schedule, and just two games (his last in the NHL) in the latter part of the season. He later served as an assistant coach in Chicago, a deputy to Clem Loughlin.

Throughout his career, Bostrom was known for the repairs he’d undergone: in ’32 the Chicago Tribune called him “hockey’s most hemstitched player,” crediting him with 242 career sutures. (N.B.: There remains some question of where a number like that might rate in the realm of all-time hockey stitch-statistics.)

Bostrom’s teammates here are (from left) Teddy Graham, Art Coulter, and Taffy Abel. On this day in 1924, it so happens, a younger Abel was on his way to the Winter Olympics with the U.S. team that had set sail the previous day from New York aboard the President Garfield headed for the tournament in Chamonix, France.

(Image: SDN-073827, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum)

o captain my captain

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Mr. Maroon: Dunc Munro died on a Friday of this date in 1958. He was 56. A small but solid defenceman, he had his hockey heyday was in the 1920s when he had the unique distinction of captaining four championship teams in seven years. He won a Memorial Cup with the University of Toronto Schools in 1919, then an Allan Cup with the Toronto Granites, with whom he also represented Canada at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix. Munro went pro (lucratively) after that, joining the expansion Montreal Maroons and leading them to Stanley Cup glory in 1926. He played football, too, for good measure, starring for the Toronto Argonauts in the early ’20s.

outstanding in his field

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Jolting Joe: “They say, as a puck-carrying defenceman, there never was another hockey player who came close to Joe Simpson in his prime.” That was Jim Coleman writing in 1973, on the occasion of Simpson’s death on Christmas day that year at the age of 80. Here he is in 1921 when he was starring for the WCHL Edmonton Eskimos. He was 28 by then, a decorated veteran of the First World War. Coleman suggested that his best years came before he went to war, and that may have been so, but the fact is, too, that in 1923 Newsy Lalonde told NHL President Frank Calder that Simpson was the greatest hockey player on the planet, bar none. Simpson eventually made it to the NHL, playing with and coaching the New York Americans in the later ’20s. (Image: McDermid Studio, courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary)

slip of the tongue

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For The Defence: Born in Montreal on a Tuesday of today’s date in 1953, Ian Turnbull is 70 today. He was a high-scoring defenceman for the Montreal Junior Canadiens (as pictured here), winning a Memorial Cup with them in 1970. In a draft class that saw Denis Potvin, Lanny McDonald, Bob Gainey, and Rick Middleton selected ahead of him, the Toronto Maple Leafs picked Turnbull 15th overall in 1973. He went on to star on the Leafly blueline for nine seasons before finishing his NHL career with stints with the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins. (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

starred & striped

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Sen, Amerk, Eagle, Bruin: Of the four NHL teams for which the Jeff Kalbfleisch worked the defence in the 1930s, only Boston’s Bruins remain. Born in New Hamburg, Ontario, on a Monday of this date in 1911, Kalbfleisch’s NHL exploits are hardly ever sung, but he did do brief duty as well for the (original) Ottawa Senators as well as the New York Americans and St. Louis Eagles. He played in 41 NHL games in all, regular-season and playoff, without breaking through for a goal, though he did earn four assists. Kalbfleisch died in 1960 at the age of 48.

toronto’s new king

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Let’s Be Frank: This week in 1930, the Toronto Maple Leafs were taking care of pre-season business, re-electing Hap Day as their captain and beating the IHL London Tecumsehs 6-2 in a tune-up game that featured a Charlie Conacher hattrick. The Leafs had a new superstar defenceman in the line-up that week as they prepared to open a new NHL campaign. King Clancy, 28, was the incumbent captain of the (formerly mighty) Ottawa Senators when Conn Smythe brought him to Toronto early that October in a blockbuster trade that sent two players and $35,000 the other way. Clancy would help the Leafs win a Stanley Cup championship in 1932. By the time he retired as a player in 1936, he was the highest-scoring defenceman in NHL history. King Clancy died on a Saturday of this date in 1986. He was 84.

the way we were

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“In his heyday,” the Montreal Star enthused in 1940, “he received plaudits from many NHL forwards as the hardest man to pass in the league.” That’s what defenceman Walt Buswell did, steadily, over the course of his career: he didn’t score much, or set up his teammates, he got in the way, stymied, impeded his rivals. He started his career as a major-league obstacle with the Detroit Red Wings in 1932 before joining the Montreal Canadiens in 1935 for a run of five seasons culminating with his appointment as Habs captain on November 5, 1939, on the eve of his 32nd birthday.

Born in Montreal on a Wednesday of this date in 1907, Buswell did his best that ’39-40 season to lead Montreal through the difficult time that followed the drowning death, in August of ’39, of his predecessor as captain, Babe Siebert. The team struggled on the ice that year, languishing to a last-place finish in the seven-team league in the spring of 1940. Buswell was released at the end of the season and though he was invited back to Montreal’s training camp later that same fall, he ended up refusing GM Tommy Gorman’s offer to stay with the team but take a pay cut of $250.

“I told him that after ten years in the National League, I preferred to pick up a shovel rather than accept a reduction in salary. I left and made a living with my ten fingers.” That was a 59-year-old Buswell reminiscing in the fall of 1967, when (as seen above) he got together with a couple of old Montreal teammates, wingers Armand Mondou (left) and Aurèle Joliat (middle). That’s Buswell on the right, and in the photo in the photo.

Buswell went on to coach junior hockey after his playing days ended; later, he ran into some health challenges. He died in 1991 at the age of 83 in the off-island Montreal suburb of Saint-Eustache, where today a local arena bears his name.

“In our time, we played hockey because we loved hockey,” Buswell said in 1967, visiting with Mondou and Joliat. “I particularly remember a match against Toronto. Two days before, I had fallen headfirst against the boards. I was sent to the hospital. I suffered from a concussion. In a morning newspaper, I read that Babe Siebert and another defenceman were injured. Canadiens were playing a game against Toronto in the evening. I left the hospital at five in the afternoon and played. It was a very tough game, but we won, 2 to 1.”

(Image: Réal St. Jean, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

e.g. (four example)

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End Run: Bobby Orr takes on Montreal defenceman Jacques Laperriere (#2) at the Forum on the Wednesday night of March 31, 1971. That’s Canadiens winger Marc Tardif (#11) lending a defensive hand; background Bruins are, I think, Derek Sanderson on the left and Wayne Carleton to the right. Boston prevailed on the night, by a score of 6-3, with Boston’s Gerry Cheevers getting the better of Rogie Vachon in goal. Orr contributed an assist — his 97th that season — as Phil Esposito scored his 70th goal. (Image: René Picard, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)