Fulll Wool: Born on a Tuesday of today’s date in 1918 in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, Elmer Lach centred Montreal’s famous Punch Line, when he was healthy, skating between Toe Blake and Maurice Richard. He’s pictured here (in glorious woolens) in October of 1945. Lach died in April of 2015 at the age of 97. (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)
At the age of seven, Bryan Trottier told his mother he wanted to be a teacher when he grew up.
A year later, Jean Béliveau changed his mind. Trottier can’t forget the moment that fixed his future: it was 1965, April, when he watched the Canadiens’ captain take hold of the Stanley Cup. “He didn’t pump it up over his head the way players do now,” Trottier recalls. “Instead, he kind of grabbed it and hugged it.” There and then, Trottier told his dad: someday I want to hold the Cup just like that.
Better get practicing, his dad told him.
So Trottier, who’s now 66, did that. The son of a father of Cree-Métis descent and a mother whose roots were Irish, Trottier would launch himself out of Val Marie, Saskatchewan, into an 18-season NHL playing career that would see him get hold of the Stanley Cup plenty as one of the best centremen in league history. Before he finished, he’d win four championships with the storied 1980s New York Islanders and another pair alongside Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Trottier was in on another Cup, too, as an assistant coach with the 2001 Colorado Avalanche. His individual achievements were recognized in his time with a bevy of major trophies, including a Calder Trophy, a Hart, an Art Ross, and a Conn Smythe. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997.
Trottier reviewed his eventful career in a new autobiography, All Roads Home: A Life On and Off the Ice (McClelland & Stewart), which he wrote with an assist from Stephen Brunt, and published this past fall. In October, I reached Trottier via Zoom in Garden City, New York. A version of this exchange first appeared at sihrhockey.org, the website of the Society for International Hockey Research.
What brought you around to writing an autobiography now?
I’ve been asked to write a book for a long, long time, probably 40-some years. But when I was playing and coaching, I just didn’t want to give any secrets away, or strategies. I’m a little more of an open book now, like when I do speaking and going into Native communities and talking to the kids. And they enjoy the stories, and those are the stories I love to tell. I really don’t dwell on negatives all that much, I really kind of look toward the positives. And there have been a heck of a lot more positive than negatives. I think when people are looking at headlines — negative headlines always seem to make stories a lot more interesting. But I’m not like that. I try to move on as fast as I can, and start making good things happen for me and my family. So that’s really what I’m talking about.
All Roads Home is a very positive book, all in all. But you’re also very frank about the challenges you’ve faced, including the deaths of your parents, and being diagnosed with depression. Those can’t have been easy subjects to get down on the page.
No, well, because I’m kind of an open book, I really don’t have a problem talking about a lot of stuff. The things I focus on are obviously the more … fun stuff. I bring the other stuff up to let people know that this is part of me, I’m human, there’s nothing that horrible about it. The really cool thing is that, out of that, you get some introspection, you get an opportunity to feel loved and supported, especially by family and friends, and the hockey world in general. And the stigma about some of that stuff is … you always say to yourself, oh my god, it shows weakness, or whatever. It doesn’t. It just shows that you’re human. And people rally. I rally for my friends when they have troubles or hardships.
This COVID thing really left a lot of people like disconnected. It was really rough on a lot of different folks. And those moments of darkness, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just human. A little bit of struggle: don’t worry about it, you know, just reach out. And you reach out, you’ll be surprised how people rally for you. Mental wellness and mental health is kind of a hot topic right now, thank god. So, yeah, whatever I can do through just stating something in a little book like this, if it helps a few people, great.
You worked with the writer Stephen Brunt on this project, one of the best in the hockey-book business. What was that like?
Stephen was fantastic at jogging my memory and reminiscing and checking up on me every once in a while, my memory, when I stumbled. But what I found was that the chronological order that he provided, and the structure that he provided, was fantastic. We did it all by phone. And the manuscript was thick, then we had to review it and edit it and condense it, throwing some stuff out, while still making it sound like my voice. So that was a little process.
And Joe Lee was a great editor, and you need that, I needed that, because I was a rookie writer. It was really kind of fun how it formed. And my daughter, who’s a journalism major, she was of great help. And then my other daughter was my sounding board. So I had a good team, it’s kind of like hockey, you know, we all rely on each other. Looking back, I call it my labour of joy.
The book starts, as you did, in Saskatchewan. Talk about a hockey hotbed: Max and Doug Bentley, Gordie Howe, Glenn Hall, Elmer Lach, and you are just of the players who’ve skated out of the province and on into the Hall of Fame. What’s that all about?
[Laughs] Go figure how that happened. But yeah, I’m so proud of Saskatchewan. When I found out Gordie Howe was from Saskatchewan, that really gave me a boost. When you’re little province producing really great hockey players, it gives us all a sense of pride, about where we come from, our roots, our communities. I think every little town in Saskatchewan is like my little town. We’ve got grain elevators, a hotel, we’ve got a beer parlor, a couple of restaurants. We definitely have a skating rink and curling rink, right? I think a lot of little towns in Canada can relate to this little town of Val Marie, because it really is a vibrant little community.
He had the audacity to be from Quebec, but on and off the ice, Jean Béliveau was such an icon, for his grace and style as much as his supreme skill. What did he mean to you?
He was the captain, he was the leader. He played with confidence and, like you said, he had this style and grace. He just looked so smooth out there. He was just a wonderful reflection of the game. Everything that I thought a hockey player should be, Jean Béliveau was. And Gordie Howe, too, Stan Mikita. These guys were my early idols. George Armstrong, Dave Keon. I’d go practice, I’d try to be them. But Béliveau was above them all. And my first memory of the Stanley Cup was Jean Béliveau grabbing it.
You talk in the book about the Indigenous players you looked up to, growing up. How did they inspire you? Did they flash a different kind of light?
Well, they were just larger than life. Freddy Sasakamoose … I never saw him play, I just heard so many stories about him from my dad, who watched him play in Moose Jaw. He was the fastest player he’d ever seen skate.
When I saw players like Freddy Sasakamoose and George Armstrong and Jimmy Neilson, I said, maybe I can make it, too, maybe there’s a chance. Because those are the kind of guys who inspire you, give hope. So, absolutely, we revered these guys. They were pioneers.
There’s a lot in the book highlighting the skills of teammates of yours, Mike Bossy and Denis Potvin, Clark Gillies, Mario Lemieux. Can you give me a bit of a scouting report on yourself? What did you bring to the ice as a player?
I didn’t have a lot of dynamic in my game. I wasn’t an end-to-end rusher like Gilbert Perreault. My hair wasn’t flying like Guy Lafleur’s. I didn’t have that hoppy step like Pat Lafontaine. Or the quick hands of Patrick Kane or Stan Mikita. I was kind of a give-and-go guy, I just kind of found the open man. And I made myself available to my teammates for an open pass. Tried to bear down on my passes and gobble up any kind of pass that was thrown at me.
I think when you work hard, you have the respect of your teammates. I wanted to be the hardest worker on the team, no one’s going to outwork me. It’s a 60-minute game, everything is going to be a battle, both ends of the ice, I would come out of a game just exhausted.
And I really prided myself on my passing, on my accuracy, and I really prided myself on making sure I hit the net — whether puck went in was kind of the goalies fault. And I prided myself on making the game as easy as possible for my teammates, at the same time. If they threw a hand grenade at me, I gobbled it up, and we all tapped each other shinpads afterwards and said, hey, thanks for bearing down. That’s what teams do, and what teammates do, and I just wanted to be one of those, one of those guys that can be relied on all the time.
You mention that you scored a lot of your NHL goals by hitting “the Trottier hole.”
Yep. Between the [goalie’s] arm and the body. There’s always a little hole there and I found that more often than I did when I was shooting right at the goal. We always said, hit the net and the puck will find a hole. Mike Bossy was uncanny at finding the five-hole. He said, I just shoot it at his pads and I know there’s always going to be a hole around there. So I did the same thing: I just fired it at the net. If the goalie makes a save, there’s going to be a rebound. If I fire it wide of the net, I’m backchecking. It’s going around the boards and I’m going to be chasing the puck.
But Mike had a powerful shot. And Clark Gillies, he had a bomb. When I shot, I’m sure the goalies were waiting for that slow-motion curveball. They often got the knuckleball instead.
The last thing I wanted to ask you about is finding the fun in hockey. You talk about almost quitting as a teenager. With all the pressures for players at every level, I wonder about your time as a coach and whether that — bringing the fun — was one of the things you tried to keep at the forefront?
Coaching was fun for me on assistant-coaching side because you’re dealing with the players every day, working on skill, working on development, working on their game. As a head coach, you’re working with the media, you’re talking to the general manager, you’re doing a whole bunch of other things, other than just working with the players. But you know, the fun of coaching for me it was really that that one-on-one aspect. There’s so many so much enjoyment that I got from coaching. And I hope the players felt that. When the coach is having fun, they’re probably having fun.
Signal Close Action: Bryan Trottier buzzes Ken Dryden’s net at the Montreal Forum on the Sunday night of December 10, 1978, while Canadiens defenceman Guy Lapointe attends to Mike Bossy. Montreal prevailed 4-3 on this occasion; Trottier scored a third-period goal and assisted on one of Bossy’s in the second. (Image: Armand Trottier, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Stars And Stripes: Cliff Koroll and Keith Magnuson at home in 1971, enjoying coffee (as the original caption divulged) “at the dining end of their black, white, and silver living-dining room. The table is smoked glass on a chrome pedestal, with matching chairs.” The hockey art on the wall, I fear, is unattributed.
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.
Slapper: Born in 1941 on a Friday of this date in Big River, Saskatchewan, Jim Neilson made the switch from left wing to defence as a junior in Prince Albert. Loosing a shot here in 1971, when he was a veteran of 30, Neilson made his debut with the Rangers in 1962, and manned the blue line in New York for 12 years before joining the California Golden Seals for the 1974-75 season. He was captain in California and for the Cleveland Barons, too, after the Seals moved north. He finished his career with a season in the WHA with the Edmonton Oilers. “I’m an easygoing guy,” he said in the ’80s, looking back on his career. “I never look far ahead and I’ve used that philosophy all my life. I just play the game. It’s over, and there’ll probably be one again tomorrow.” Jim Neilson died on November 6, 2020, at the age of 78.
Brothers Act: The New York Rangers heralded the rise of new brotherly duo in the fall of 1943 when 18-year-old left winger Billy Warwick (on the right) joined his brother Grant, a right winger, three years older, on the roster. For a team that had had multiple Cooks, Patricks, and Colvilles star for them, the prospect was an exciting one. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, on a Monday of today’s date in 1924, Billy Warwick only lasted 14 games in the NHL, going on to a long and distinguished minor-league and international career. All three of his NHL goals were scored this month in ’43, with the first coming on November 7 in New York when he beat Benny Grant in the Toronto goal during a 7-4 Leaf win.
A day for remembering today, for truth and reflection and commemoration. On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we honour the survivors of Canada’s residential schools as well as those who never returned home.
From the collection of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, this photograph shows students from the St. Philip’s Residential School in Saskatchewan in 1940. Run by the Catholic Missionary Oblate Sisters, St. Philip’s history dates back to 1902 and the construction of a boarding school on the Keeseekoose First Nation, a Saulteaux reserve near Kamsack. The NCTR page for St. Philip’s (here) tells this story:
Poor conditions in the school led to its closure in 1914. It reopened in 1927 as the St. Philip’s school. In 1957 the school farm ceased operation and the boarding school was increasingly used as a residence for students attending local day schools. During the 1960s, a period when sexual and physical abuse was a widespread problem at the school, a school supervisor was dismissed for mistreatment of students. The school closed in 1969.
As the NCTR also notes, a National Residential School Crisis Line has been established to provide support to former students. This 24-hour Crisis Line can be accessed at: 1-866-925-4419.
Rejected: No, not Jean Béliveau — he wouldn’t start wearing Montreal’s number 4 for another nine years after this photograph was taken at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, February 11, 1945. Trying his luck on net here is Canadiens’ defenceman Leo Lamoureux. Turning him away is 20-year-old Ranger netminder Doug Stevenson, from Regina, Saskatchewan, on a night off for New York’s regular 1944-45 goaler, Ken McAuley. Canadiens eventually prevailed on this night, leaving town with a 4-3 victory sealed Elmer Lach, another Saskatchewanist, whose winning goal was his second of the game.
It’s A Wrap: Born on a Thursday of this same date in 1913, Peggy O’Neil played the right wing for the Boston Bruins in the 1930s. He was named James at the start, Jim, originating in Semans, Saskatchewan, which you’ll find on the map between Punnichy and Elmer Lach’s hometown of Nokomis. (O’Neil played parts of couple of seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, too.) Here, in a scene from February of 1937, O’Neil undergoes a restorative wrapping by Bruins’ trainer Win Green at Boston Garden. (Image: ©Richard Merrill, Boston Public Library)
Houston, We Have A Dynasty: Born in Floral, Saskatchewan, on a Saturday of this date in 1928, Gordie Howe was 45 in 1973 when he decided to become a Houston Aeros legend. He’d played a bit over the years with the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, retiring in 1971 to take a job in the Red Wings’ front office. When that didn’t take, he went to the WHA to play win sons Marty (who was 20) and Mark (18). Howe Sr. finished the year with 31 goals and 100 points, good enough for third in league scoring. He led the Aeros to an Avco World Trophy championship that year, as well, and the Aeros repeated as champions in 1975. For good measure, Howe also collected the Gary L. Davidson Award as regular-season MVP in his first WHA season. Two years later, the WHA saw fit to re-name that same prize: in 1975-76, it became the Gordie Howe Trophy.
Starting Siblings: The brothers Bentley line up during the 1938-39 season, when five of them skated for the Drumheller Miners of the Alberta Senior Hockey League. From left they are (eldest to youngest) Roy, Scoop, Reg, Doug, and Max. Born in Delisle, Saskatchewan, on a Monday of today’s date in 1920, Max, who was a 19-year-old centreman here, went on to a 12-year NHL career with the Chicago Black Hawks, Toronto Maple Leafs, and New York Rangers. Like brother Doug (Black Hawks and Rangers), he’d end up in the Hall of Fame. (Reg played briefly in Chicago, too. joining his brothers on a line.) Missing from the photo is another brother, Jack, as well as seven Bentley sisters: Ruth, Jane, Grace, Pearl, Tannis, Florence, and Mary — hockey players all, in their day.
Fancy This: Terry Harper aims a fist at Bruins’ centre Forbes Kennedy at Montreal’s Forum this week in 1964. The Bruins prevailed on the night 6-0. Looking on is Bruins’ #4, defenceman Bob McCord. (Image: La Presse)
“Do you want to look fancy,” Terry Harper was saying in 1978, “or do you want to get the job done?” Harper, who’s turning 82 today, was talking generally about hockey at the time, but he might have been professing his own personal creed, the one that saw him through a 19-year career as highly effective and hard-to-daunt NHL defenceman. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, on a Saturday of this date in 1940, Harper won five Stanley Cup championships with the Montreal Canadiens between 1962 and 1972. He went on to play for — and captain — the Los Angeles Kings and the Detroit Red Wings in the ’70s. He skated for the St. Louis Blues, too. He was an assistant coach for the Colorado Rockies in 1981 when, as a 41-year-old, injuries saw him drafted into the line-up for a 15-game run. “The game is 95 per cent mental,” Harper opined back in ’78. “A lot of people say it’s less than that, that it takes a lot of ability. It doesn’t. It’s 95 per cent or more here,” he said, tapping a finger to his head.
So sorry to see the news tonight of the death of Clark Gillies at the age of 67. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in 1954, Gillies played a dozen unrelenting years on the left wing for the New York Islanders in the 1970s and early ’80s, captaining the team for three seasons and winning four Stanley Cup championships. He played his final season-and-a-half in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres before his retirement in 1988. The Islanders retired his number, 9, in 1996, and in 2002 he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The Islanders paid their respects tonight: they’re here.
puckstruck 