Hockey Blueline

m major

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Let’s Be Frank: Born in Timmins, Ontario, on a Monday of this very date in 1938, Frank Mahovlich is 85 today, so here’s a flourish of a well-taped, left-shooting CCM stick to him. He was just 20 by the end of the 1957-58 season when he edged out Chicago’s Bobby Hull and Phil Goyette of Montreal to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie and the $1,000 cheque that went with it, whereupon the great Tex Coulter promptly painted his portrait to adorn the cover of Hockey Blueline. It wasn’t until the following October that NHL president Clarence Campbell handed Mahovlich the actual trophy, in an on-ice ceremony before the Leafs’ home game against Detroit. Toronto prevailed, once the puck dropped, by a score of 3-0, with Johnny Bower in the net and Mahovlich playing a key role that showed up on the scoresheet as assists on goals by Bob Pulford and Brian Cullen. The large lad from mining country, Globe and Mail sports editor Jim Vipond called him in his dispatch from the rink.

gordie howe, 1964: you want a punch in the mouth?

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Cover Story: Tex Coulter’s handsome portrait of a happy Gordie Howe adorned the cover of a 1957 edition of Hockey Blueline. The accompanying story was bylined (if not, maybe, entirely written by) Ted Lindsay. No buried ledes here: “Gordie Howe — The Greatest!” laid out the author’s premise in the first two lines: “Gordie Howe is the greatest player in hockey! Gordie, in fact, may be the greatest hockey player ever.”

March of 1964 was a busy month for Gordie Howe. To finish up his 18th season with the Detroit Red Wings, he scored four goals in 10 games, giving him 26 on the season and 566 for his career. He ended up, again, as Detroit’s leading scorer, fifth overall in the NHL. Both The Hockey News and the Associated Press voted him to their Second All-Star teams, which is where he’d end up when the official NHL version was named in April. What else? As his 36th birthday loomed, on March 31, and Howe was signing a 10-year promotion deal with Eaton’s department store, he mentioned that he planned to play two more years of pro hockey before he retired and went looking for a coaching job.

Also: on this very date in ’64, another Sunday, deep in Chicago Stadium, Gordie Howe asked a young fan a question that — just guessing here — he thought of as rhetorical. Did the fan, Howe inquired, want a punch in the mouth?

Having just helped his team even its first-round playoff series with the Chicago Black Hawks at a game apiece, Mr. Hockey might or might not have gotten the answer he was or wasn’t looking for: we just don’t know.

What’s clear is that Howe put down the bags he was carrying to deliver the aforementioned punch — “a good one,” as he described it, later, to reporters.

Robert Rosenthal, 20, was the fan. He and his friend George Berg had gone down after the game to wait outside the Red Wings’ dressing room. This we know because the next day, Monday, Rosenthal presented himself at Chicago’s Monroe Street municipal court with an idea of obtaining a warrant for Gordie Howe’s arrest on a charge of assault.

“When the player came out,” Rosenthal recounted, “I said, ‘Why don’t you learn to play a little cleaner?’” Howe’s reply: “You want a punch in the mouth?”

To that, Rosenthal told the court, he said this: “You’re good at fighting guys smaller than you.”

Howe hit him.

Rosenthal testified that he’d retreated south, to nearby Cook County Hospital, where he’d taken on eight stitches to close the cut to his mouth.

Judge John Sullivan wasn’t impressed. “I will not,” he told Rosenthal, “perform a useless act.”

“On the basis of the evidence you’ve given me, any judge in my opinion would find Mr. Howe not guilty, since you admitted that you provoked him.”

Boston Globe headline, March 30, 1964

Back in Detroit, Howe told reporters what he knew — and added several new punches to the mix-up.

“This guy got in the way and said to me, ‘The ref called ’em right for you?’ I said, ‘Sure, all right.’ Then he said, ‘Oh, he didn’t call them right, huh?’” He wasn’t making much sense.”

“I asked him if he was looking for trouble. Then he stepped into me and I let him have a light punch on the nose.”

“I took another step toward the bus and he hit me on the back of the head, so I put down both travelling bags and let him have a good one.”

“I don’t think they have the right to swear at you,” Howe said, summing up, “and I’m not going to stand for it when they use my mother’s and father’s name in vain.”

Rock Island Argus (Illinois) headline, March 30, 1964

In the aftermath of Rosenthal’s dismissal at court, his mother, whose name may have been Veronica but is given in at least one account as Veronia, mentioned that lawyers would be consulted. Sure enough, before the week was out, just in time for Howe’s birthday, Rosenthal filed a lawsuit seeking US$25,000 for damages from number 9 and the Red Wings, claiming “Howe’s unprovoked attack humiliated, embarrassed, and held him up to public ridicule.” He noted, too, that his wound had become infected and swollen to three times its regular size.

Howe and/or Wings may have settled the suit — whatever happened, the incident vanished from the press. They had largely, true to Rosenthal’s claim, sided with the hockey player over the man who accosted him. A scrapbook of not exactly sympathetic headlines from that week, 56 years ago, might include:

Detroit Hockey Player Socks Annoying Fan

Fan Learns What NHL Players Know — Don’t Mess Around With Gordie Howe

Gordie Howe Decks Abusive Fan

Fist in Face Worth $25,000, Figures Fan

As for the NHL, president Clarence Campbell said he’d investigate, though he didn’t expect anything to come of it. “I’m not too excited about it,” he said, “and I doubt there’ll be any league action against Howe. After the game is over and he’s out of the rink, it’s not really an NHL affair, although these incidents can’t do anything for our public image.”

Calgary Herald, March 30, 1964

embrace the lace

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Backliner: “One of the greatest thrills in hockey,” Bruins defenceman Doug Mohns told Bill Shechman in the profile that accompanied this cover portrait of Tex Coulter’s, “is to stop a player from scoring a goal. It feels just as good stopping a player as it does scoring a goal.” Mohns, who died at the age of 80 on a Friday of this date in 2014, was 23 in 1957, playing in his fourth NHL season, his first on the blueline. It was Bruins’ GM Lynn Patrick’s idea, to drop him back from left wing. “I never thought I’d like it,” Mohns said, “but I’ve changed my mind.” After 11 seasons with Boston, he would go on to play for Chicago, the Minnesota North Stars, Atlanta Flames, and Washington, retiring in 1975.

ivan irwin: think twice + avoid

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It took defenceman Ivan Irwin a couple of tries before he stuck in the NHL. Boston and Montreal both took a look in the early 1950s, but he was deemed too awkward, not strong enough a skater. He finally caught on in New York at the age of 26, playing four seasons with the Rangers. Born in Chicago to Canadian parents on a Sunday of this date in 1927, Irwin died last month in Toronto, on February 11, at the age of 91. Contemporary articles recounting his exploits on the Ranger defence feature words like thump and bash and bop. “There’s a crudeness to his form when he’s in action,” Stan Saplin wrote in a 1955 profile for Hockey Blueline magazine, “and yet, if this makes any sense, there is a polish to Irwin’s crudeness. As he says, he’s far from an accomplished skater and often he looks like a first-timer on blades as he hurries to respond to a distress signal. There’s nothing amateurish about his defensive work.” His coach, Frank Boucher, thought that even as a newcomer to the NHL, he played like a veteran. “He gives you that little opening and then closes it,” Boucher said. “And when he hits you, you know it. I’ve noticed time and again that forwards bringing the puck in don’t drive against us as they did before Irwin joined us. They think twice and look to avoid him.”