Minnesota North Stars

phil factor

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Happy 50th To You: A birthday today for the inexorable Phil Esposito, who was born in 1942 on a Friday of today’s date in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario: happy 81st to him. He made a habit, on birthdays past, of scoring milestone goals: on this date in 1971, as he was turning 29, he scored for his Boston Bruins in a 5-4 loss to the Kings in Los Angeles to became the fourth player in NHL history (after Maurice Richard, Bernie Geoffrion, and Bobby Hull) to score 50 goals in a season. (He would finish, that year, with 76.) Three years to the day later, on his 32nd birthday, Esposito became to first NHLer to register four 50-goal seasons in a row as he notched a hattrick (the 21st of his career) in a 5-5 Bruins with the North Stars in Bloomington, Minnesota. That regular season he scored 68 all in. Esposito had one more landmark season left in him: the following year, 1974-75, he scored 61 goals.

au nom du père

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Bless This Crease: That’s Canadiens goaltender Rogatien Vachon staying out of the fray near his goal at the Montreal Forum on the Thursday night of December 10, 1970. The caption is a nice touch, added by La Presse photographer Pierre McCann, or else maybe an editor in the newsroom. Guy Lapointe is the Montreal defenceman helping Minnesota North Stars’ winger Buster Harvey with his sweater. Canadiens won the game 6-1, with the man they called “Coco” scoring a pair for Montreal: centreman Jacques Lemaire. (Image: Pierre McCann, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

green zone

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Ready + Set: After playing with Canada’s storied Summit Series team against the Soviet Union in 1972, right winger Bill Goldsworthy went on to captain the long-gone Minnesota North Stars, from 1974 through ’76. He’s lined up here alongside his left-winging teammate Dennis Hextall in 1975, ish.

flyby

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Lift-Off: Posing here in 1940-41, Sam LoPresti puts Emile Francis to shame, I’d say, when it comes to sailing across his net in search of a puck that may or may not ever show up.

Like Frank Brimsek and Mike Karakas (Bob Dylan, too), Sam LoPresti hailed from Minnesota’s Iron Range. Born on a Tuesday of this date in 1917 in the now-ghostly mining town of Elcor, LoPresti grew up in nearby Eveleth. He played two seasons for the Chicago Black Hawks, and was a stand-out in his team’s (ultimately unsuccessful) playoff series in the 1942 playoffs against the Boston Bruins.

In March of 1941, as a rookie, LoPresti played another famous game against the Bruins. In this one, he faced 83 shots, stopping all but three in a 3-2 Boston win. LoPresti’s teammate Doug Bentley was, for one, disgusted … with Boston. “They must have been lucky because they certainly weren’t good,” the winger told a reporter next day. “Any team which has to take 83 shots at a goalie isn’t good in my book. What a bunch of Deadeye Dicks. Phooey.” (Doug Bentley did not himself score in this game, it might be pointed out, though his brother, Max, did.)

“I couldn’t sleep all night,” offered LoPresti. “I was so exhausted from the game that I kept tossing and turning in bed.” When he did manage, finally, to sleep, his roommate, Chicago’s Eveleth-born defenceman John Mariucci, woke him up to remind LoPresti how wonderfully he’d played. “I’m so tired now I’m going to sleep all the way back to Chicago,” LoPresti said.

Following the 1942 season, he joined the U.S. Coast Guard, then transferred to the Navy. In February of 1943, he was serving as a gunner’s mate on a merchant ship that was torpedoed by a German U-Boat on an Atlantic crossing. Along with 20 or so shipmates, he spent 42 days in a lifeboat before being rescued off the coast of Brazil. He did eventually return to hockey, though never to the NHL: he played senior hockey in Duluth and Eveleth before retiring from the ice in 1951. LoPresti was a charter member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, inducted in 1973. His son, Pete, followed him into the crease, tending NHL goals in the 1970s for the Minnesota North Stars and (briefly) the Edmonton Oilers.

Sam LoPresti died in 1984 at the age of 67.

hale cesare

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Vangroovy Rearguard: A birthday for Cesare Maniago today, his 83rd, so here’s hailing him. Born in Trail, B.C., on a Friday of this date in 1939, Maniago did most of his NHL goaling (nine seasons) for the Minnesota North Stars before spending his last two campaigns, from 1976 through to 1978, with the Vancouver Canucks. (Image: Chris Bickford)

charlie burns, 1936—2021

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Sorry to hear of the death, late last week, of Charlie Burns at the age of 85. Born in Detroit in 1936, he grew up in Toronto and went on to join the OHA Junior A Marlboros in the early 1950s. He was 19 in 1954, starting his third year with the Marlboros, when he suffered a double skull fracture falling into the boards in an accident at practice. He underwent brain surgery, during which a silver plate was installed to stabilize his skill; he wasn’t expected to play hockey ever again. He recovered and did indeed return to the ice — wearing a helmet.

It was in 1958, with the Allan-Cup-champion Whitby Dunlops of the EOHL that Burns starred at centre at the World Championships in Oslo, Norway, when Canada won gold. His teammates included Harry Sinden and tournament-leading-scorer Connie Broden; a 21-year-old Burns distinguished himself an ace penalty-killer, and was named the tournament’s outstanding forward.

Burns launched into his NHL career that same year, with the Detroit Red Wings, and he went on to play 11 seasons, taking turns over time with the Boston Bruins, Oakland Seals, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Minnesota North Stars. Numberswise, his best year was 1968-69, when he notched 13 goals and 51 points for the Penguins.

Midway through the following year, 1969-70, Burns was named playing-coach of the North Stars, succeeding Wren Blair, the man who’d coached him with Whitby a decade earlier. After going 10-22-12 in the regular season, Burns saw his regime come to an end after the North Stars were eliminated in six games in the Stanley Cup quarter-finals by the St. Louis Blues. He does maintain the distinction of being the last playing-coach in NHL history.

After hanging up his skates in 1974, Burns served as assistant GM in Minnesota, making a return to the bench that year when he replaced Jack Gordon. His record that time around was 12-28-2 and in the summer of ’75, Burns gave way to a new coach, Ted Harris, returning to his GM duties.

 

 

fred stanfield, 1944—2021

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Saddened to hear the news that former Boston Bruins centreman Fred Stanfield has died at the age of 77. Born in Toronto in 1944, he broke into the NHL with the Chicago Black Hawks in 1964 before he was traded (along with Phil Esposito and Ken Hodge) to the Bruins in 1967 in exchange for Pit Martin, Gilles Marotte, and Jack Norris. In Boston, he often lined up with Johnnys Mackenzie and Bucyk, and in so doing, piled up six successive 20-goal seasons, aiding in a pair of Bruin Stanley Cup championships, in 1970 and ’72. He played two seasons with the Minnesota North Stars and parts of four others with the Sabres in Buffalo before he stowed his skates in 1978.

john muckler, 1934—2021

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A sad advisory from the Edmonton Oilers, confirming the news that former coach John Muckler died on Monday night at the age of 86. A native of Midland, Ontario, Muckler cut his head-coaching teeth in 1968-69 with the Minnesota North Stars. He joined the Oilers as an assistant on Glen Sather’s bench in 1981 and played his part in five Stanley Cup championships in Edmonton, the last one, in 1990, as head coach. Above, he’s pictured in 1984-85; the team group below finds him between Father and goaltender Andy Moog in 1983. He subsequently spent four years coaching and managing the Buffalo Sabres and another three seasons on the New York Rangers’ bench. Muckler was GM of the Ottawa Senators from 2001 through to the summer of 2007.

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following yonder star

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Flyby: The Minnesota North Stars sent out a Christmas card looking like this in December of 1972; open it up, and you’d find a team portrait alongside the sad prospect of this same Santa picking a puck out of his net. Cesare Maniago was the Stars’ regular, non-Yuletide goaler that season, with Gilles Gilbert and Gump Worsley backing him up. And the airborne puck-carrier seen here? He looks a little like North Star winger Dean Prentice … or maybe it’s Dennis Hextall, who led the team in scoring? Not sure of the artists but there’s a good chance it’s George Karn, the man who designed both Mineesota’s starred N when they joined the NHL in 1967 and the team’s uniforms.

bob nevin, 1938—2020

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Shake On It: Bob Nevin, left, lends a hand to Chicago defenceman Dollard St. Laurent in the aftermath of the 1962 Stanley Cup Finals, wherein Toronto overcame the Black Hawks in six games.

Sad to see the news this morning that Bob Nevin has died at the age of 82. Born in 1938 in South Porcupine, Ontario, Nevin made his NHL debut in 1960 with the Toronto Maple Leafs. A right winger, he finished second in voting for the league’s top rookie, trailing teammate Dave Keon when the ballots for the Calder Trophy were tallied. Nevin won a pair of Stanley Cups with Toronto, in 1962 and ’63. In early 1964, a trade took him to New York when the Leafs swapped him (along with Rod Seiling, Arnie Brown, Dick Duff, and Bill Collins) for Andy Bathgate and Don McKenney. He succeeded Camille Henry as captain of the Rangers in 1965, serving six years in the role before another trade sent him to the Minnesota North Stars. Nevin went on to skate for the Los Angeles Kings and spent a final year, 1976-77, with the WHA’s Edmonton Oilers.

forlorne

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“He looked more like our fathers, not a goalie, player, athlete period,” the great John K. Samson wrote in the song that his Weakerthans sang, “Elegy For Gump Worsley.” Did a hockey player look so utterly desolate and puck-wearied on his hockey card? None that I know. The Gumper was 41 going into 1970-71, his 19th NHL season. He endured another three years in the hockey big league with the North Stars. Worsley had happier days and images in his past — this one, for instance, or this — but checking in on him via late-career hockey cards like this one, you can’t help but retrospectively worry for the man.

 

ave, cesare

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Born in Trail, British Columbia, on January 13 of 1939, a Friday, Cesare Maniago turns 81 today. He fended the nets for five NHL teams, making his debut for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1961 with a win over the Detroit Red Wings. After brief stops with the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Ranger, he settled in for a nine-year stint with the Minnesota North Stars. He finished his NHL career in 1978 after two seasons with the Vancouver Canucks.

From Jason Ferris’ 2006 scrapbookish biography Hail Cesare! Trail Through The NHLwe know that Maniago’s boyhood hero was Leafs’ legend Turk Broda and that he first wore a mask when he was with Canadiens in 1962-63 — “but I stopped after Toe Blake gave me heck.” (Detroit trainer Lefty Wilson made him the one, above, he donned in Minnesota). In 568 NHL regular-season games, Maniago won 190, along with 15 of the 36 playoff games he played. Ferris calculated that he defended an NHL net for a total of 34,814 minutes during his career, or almost 25 days. He faced 19,004 NHL shots, 1,873 of which went by him for goals. Phil Esposito solved him more often than any other NHL shooter, beating him 30 times in all. Red Berenson was next with 22, followed by Johnny Bucyk and Frank Mahovlich, each of whom scored 19 career goals on him. The opposing goaltender Maniago beat most in his time? Gary Smith, over whom he was triumphant 13 times. Ed Johnston beat Maniago 20 times. In his first year signed to an NHL contract, 1960, Maniago was paid $4,000 by the Leafs. His final year in Vancouver he made $130,000.