The Game

by Ken Dryden

  Although I must have seen him in two training camps before, I have no memory of him until his first NHL game in Minnesota. It was early January 1973, and with injuries to many of our defensemen, Robinson was called up from the Voyageurs. When I walked into the dressing room before the game, there he was, already half dressed, looking taller, more rawboned, more angular than he does now. With our defense depleted, seeing Robinson didn’t make me feel any better.

  But he played a remarkable game poised, in solid control defensively, moving surprisingly well, with only a hint of lanky awkwardness. And what I recall most vividly, a goalie’s memory, was that he blocked shots. (It wouldn’t last long. After the first burst of rookie’s enthusiasm wore off, he became like the rest.)

  When our injured defensemen returned, Robinson remained with the team, but for the rest of the year and for much of the next three, he was only occasionally as good. Alternating long moments where he did little with shorter frenzied bursts where he tried to do everything to make up for it, he seemed disoriented, as if searching for a game to play. A pet project of Al MacNeil with the Voyageurs, he became one with Ruel, spending long additional time with him on the ice before and after practice. Gradually his choppy, legs—akimbo stride length-ened and grew forceful; the dangerously erratic shots that had sent teammates from the front of the net to the relative safety of the corners now came in low enough often enough to bring them back for rebounds; his puck-handling and passing more confident and certain, he was becoming an immense ragbag of rapidly developing skills. But he needed something around which to organize these new skills: like Lafleur’s quickness, Bobby Hull’s shot, Maurice Richard’s insistent passion, something to focus his game, the stereotype skill to which the others could attach and find meaning, something that was his own.

  The one original part of his game around which it might be done he seemed anxious to deny. He had been a “big stiff” all his hockey life, the promise of muscle and intimidation his major raison d’être. Now he wanted the satisfaction and self-respect he felt in another game. And so he continued to search and experiment. At times copying the all-ice consumption of Bobby Orr, at other times swooping around the defensive zone with the elastic grace of Salming, most often he played with the same non-violent elegance and disinterested cool as Savard.

  But nothing quite worked.

  Then, in 1976, out of two separate events four months apart, Robinson became an original. The first was the Stanley Cup finals with Philadelphia. After they had won two consecutive Stanley Cups, this was the last go-round of the “Broad Street Bullies,” but with Dave Schultz, Jack Mcllhargey, Don Saleski, Bob Kelly, and others, they were still a hugely intimidating team. We knew that to beat them we would need to neutralize their intimidation (in order to free up the rest of our game, which we knew to be superior); so Bowman lined up Bouchard, Chartraw (in Philadelphia), Risebrough, Tremblay, and Robinson against them. We won the first game in Montreal, and were leading midway through the third period of the second, when Gary Dornhoefer, a tall, lean, irritating winger for the Flyers, moved across our blueline. From his left defense position, Robinson angled over to play him. In most arenas, when struck by colliding bodies, the boards whip obligingly out of shape, absorbing much of the force of the blow before whipping back into position again. Not so in the Forum.

  Forum boards arc solid and punishingly unyielding, or always had been. Driving into Dornhoefer, Robinson hit him so hard that the Flyer’s body dented a section of boards, leaving it an inch or so in back of where it had been just moments before.

  The game was halted, amid an awestruck buzz from the crowd, and for several minutes Forum workmen used hammers and crowbars trying to undo what Robinson had done. But when the boards were banged back in place, the impression remained. He had done it with such crushing case: no cross-ice leaping, elbowing, high-sticking charge; just simple “aw shucks” destruction, the kind that leaves behind the shuddering hint of something more to come. He had delivered a message—to the Flyers, to the rest of the league, to himself. A series that had been moving our way found its irrevocable direction, and we won in four straight games. Robinson was named Sport magazine’s MVP of the playoffs.

  Late that summer, the first Canada Cup was played, and Robinson, on the strength of his performance in the playoffs, was chosen a member of Team Canada. It was a team of highly skilled offensive players, and competing against the quicker, more wide-open European teams, Robinson had felt a need to prove his right to be there. But, pressed to raise the pace of his game, forced to handle the puck more often, to move it quickly and join in the offensive build-up, by the time the series was over he had discovered he could. All the pieces had finally fallen into place. He had found a game, his game. Not Orr’s, not Salming’s or Savard’s. A game of strength and agility, a commanding mix of offense and defense, his size a lingering reminder of violence. If you closed your eyes and imagined Robinson, that is what you saw: vivid, sharply defined and original, a Larry Robinson game. It had been there for some time; it needed only the Dornhoefer check and the Canada Cup to bring it together and make it work. The next season, more than doubling his offensive totals, he was voted the league’s best defenseman.

  In the next few years, more than just an outstanding player, Robinson became a presence. It had to do with being so big, so strong, so tough, so agile, that no one knew how good he was, and no one wanted to find out. A burst of speed, a quick pass, triumphantly in the clear, then looking up and seeing him, and feeling everything inside you slowly sucked out. It had to do with knowing that anything you can do, he can do better, so throw up your hands, shrug your shoulders, put on the brakes—what’s the use? He had a numbing reputation, an imperial manner, and the goods to back them up, a game rooted in defense, opportunistic on offense, limited, economic, and dominant. It had to do with what he did and what he didn’t have to do because of how he did it.

  He was the rare player whose effect on a game was far greater than any statistical or concrete contribution he might make. When he came onto the ice, the attitude of the play seemed to change. Standing in back of him, I could feel it, I could see it, change, growing more restrained, more respectful, as if it was waiting for him, to see what he would do. Nowhere was this more clear, or more important, than against the Flyers or the Bruins. They held him in such awe, treating him with an embarrassing, almost fawning, respect, that they seemed even to abandon their style of play when he was around, and with it any hope of winning. Each time we played them, I knew that an outraged Fred Shero or Don Cherry would send out players to hunt him down, to hammer him into the boards with elbows and sticks, to fight with him if he would let them, until, bruised and sweating, his mystique could only come crashing down. But they never did.

  For a time, Robinson had it both ways. With the Dornhoefer check, with an impressive portfolio of fights, he had shown the flag and shown it in such a way that he could bring it down and it would still be seen vividly and unforgettably. He could put away the “big man’s” game he never wanted to play, and, moving up ice, excitingly involved in all parts of the game, he could play the one he did. All he would have to do is bring out the flag and shake it occasionally as a reminder.

  But he never really has. Convinced he can’t body-check regularly through the season without injury, bothered by fights he feels have no part in the game, Robinson cruises the ice as a belligerent peacemak-er, going nose to nose and stare to stare with anyone who threatens a teammate, stabbing at the air with a menacing right index finger. It is enormously important to the team, preventing as it does the fights we have no use for, but over time, appearing less threatening and more comic, it hasn’t been good for Robinson. Each time he does it, he puts too much at stake—an immense reputation, unchallenged, building with memory, his size a constant reminder; a fight he can only lose, Schultz, who fought several times a week, could sometimes lose and fight again, his effect undiminished. But to keep from fighting, to keep us from having to fight, to be a
n entirely effective deterrent, Robinson can’t lose. He has to be unchallengeable; the consequences of fighting with him must be so sure that no one will take the chance. The only way it can happen is if he doesn’t fight at all. If he doesn’t fight at all, he gets out of practice.

  Once Bowman said about Robinson, “I was always fearful that some guy would deflate him with a lucky punch. He has so much to live up to.” In our final pre-season game in Toronto last fall, with only a few minutes to play, Dave Hutchison, a big goon-defenseman for the Leafs, began shoving with one of our players. Predictably, Robinson rushed over to confront him. As everyone watched, the two of them wrapped their hands in each other’s sweaters and glared stiff-eyed, their faces inches apart; stalemated. Then, as things were cooling, Robinson began shoving Hutchison. Watching from the other end, I could see that Hutchison wanted to go no further, yet inexplicably Robinson persisted. Having already thought out the consequences a year or two earlier, I began to panic, muttering to myself for him to stop, telling him it wasn’t worth it. Finally the fight started. It was over in a few seconds; the result, while not clear-cut, seemed decisive. Robinson, looking awkward and entirely mortal, emerged with a black eye.

  Yet nothing happened. I was certain that word would spread through a league desperate for new ways to beat us, and we would find ourselves under attack for much of the season. But I was wrong. As usual, the team has been involved in very few fights; Robinson still intrudes on those that threaten and breaks them up, and with fighting gradually diminishing as a tactic, nothing seems different. But in another, and related, way, something has changed.

  Close your eyes and think of Robinson again: his size, his occasional body-checks and fights—these images still come quickly, but they are no longer features of his game. Try again. What do you see now? What is the instant image you get? What is the focus around which everything finds its order and purpose? What is the quintessential Robinson? I see an imposing, erect figure, the puck on his stick, moving slowly to center, others bent double at the waist skittering around him. Then, as if jerked into fast-forward, the image speeds up: defensive corners, offensive corners, their net, our net, faster and faster, no pattern, like a swarming, sprawling force; everything blurred and out of focus. It happens every time I try it. I can see Lapointe; I can see Brad Park and Savard; I can see Denis Potvin’s crisp pass, his unseen move to the slot, his quick, hard wrist-shot. But I can’t see Robinson.

  When you are a presence, there are many things you need not do, for it is simply understood you can do them. So you don’t do them.

  You don’t risk what you need not risk, you let others’ imaginations do them for you, for they do them better than you can. Like the man who opens his mouth to prove he’s a fool, often the more you do, the more you look like everyone else.

  Someone once said after hearing George McGovern speak, “I always get the feeling he thinks that if he speaks long enough, he will say something worthwhile.” The comparison to Robinson’s game is too harsh, indeed Robinson remains one of the league’s best defensemen; but, born of the same uncertain self-image, as he tries to do more and more, that same thought occurs to me.

  What set him apart from other players was his size and strength, his implicit toughness and chilling manner; what set him apart from other big men was his agility and puck-handling skill; what made him unique was the mix. What made it all work was a game rooted in defense—strong, limited, and commanding. A big man’s game. His offensive game was the exciting appendage, but it needed his defensive game to work, emerging out of it as it did timely and unseen from behind the play. In 1976, Robinson discovered that big man’s game, but mistaking its visible, dramatic symbols—the fights and the bodychecks—for its essence, and not liking the symbols, later finding them too confining and unrewarding and giving them up, he has denied and given up the rest. By rejecting a big man’s game for one of which he’s less certain, and one of which he knows others are less certain as well, he feels driven to do more and more to accomplish the same; and therein lies the problem.

  More skillful with each year, doing more things, stretching himself wider, he has stretched himself thinner. Working hard, he is making more good plays; but, overextending himself, his stride now chopping, his invincibility in question, he is making more bad plays as well. The numbers are still hugely in his favor, but now it is a game of numbers, concrete and measurable, as for everyone else. By exchanging a game he dominated for a larger, more demanding one he cannot dominate, Robinson is no longer a presence.

  Crossing the lobby, before I can say anything Robinson looks up from his paper and tells me that the Islanders won last night. We both shake our heads, and say nothing.

  It is a beautiful late winter day: clear, the sun so crisp it etches everything in shadow; cold, but not so cold that you can feel it right away.

  Outside the front door of the hotel, taxis in a line, businessmen in a line, move up, meet, and speed away. Across the street, joggers in shorts and sweatshirts amble past, mothers with other mothers stroll with their children, talking as they go. I cross the street and fall into step behind. I look at what they look at, smile when I hear them laugh, walking to feel the air and the sun, to feel alone and not alone. A few hundred feet ahead, our street winds gently into shadow, then opens to a field of red-brown brick dominated from one corner by the Capitol-like dome of the Christian Science Church. On its enormous plaza, there are many more joggers, more mothers and strollers, families posing each other in front of a reflecting pool many football fields long and wide. But the plaza was built for fields of people, and soon we are far apart. I find a concrete bench and sit down. For more than an hour, I read the paper, gradually piling its sections under me against the cold, here and there glancing at what’s around me, closing my eyes and looking up at the sun.

  I have been coming to Boston for more than twelve years, the last eight years with the Canadiens, and in sports parlance, Boston is my town, the Boston Garden my rink, the Bruins (Boston University, Boston College, Harvard) my team. In the endless panorama of any season, it is my own personal landmark—a city, a team, a rink, a game I always look forward to; a base where, when things go badly, I find solid ground; a launch pad where, when things must go well, they always do. Twice it is where I got my start, twice it is where I made my breakthrough; twice each year it is where I get renewed. Each new game is a random event, except that something always happens, unimportant in other places, but because this is Boston I notice it, and the remarkable connection seems more remarkable. In twelve years, playing on two non-Boston teams, Cornell and the Canadiens, we have won three Eastern College championships, one Christmas tournament and shared another, one NHL quarter-final series, and two Stanley Cups, all in Boston, all but one in Boston Garden, never losing more than a few scattered games.

  In 1971, I was in goal when we played the Bruins in a Stanley Cup quarter-final series. Though we would need to go on and beat Minnesota and Chicago to win the Cup, though I’ve played more than four hundred games in more than six seasons since, in those seven games, games seven through thirteen of my NHL career, I did the only thing I’ve ever done that will last more than twenty years of a sports fan’s memory.

  Those were the Orr and Esposito years, but first and foremost they were the Orr years. Bobby Orr had turned twenty-three just seventeen days before the playoffs began, a Bruin since he was eighteen.

  In his almost five full seasons, he had won all the awards a defenseman could win, in some cases several times, and in 1970 he added one that until then had been thought so unlikely as not to be taken seriously, the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading scorer. In a career that matched peaks with Esposito and Clarke, that overlapped those of the aging Howe, Hull, and Mahovlich and the emerging Lafleur and Trottier, Orr was the outstanding player of his generation.

  In 1966, Bobby Orr joined a Bruins team that had missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons, finishing sixth and last in five of those years. It was a
team of journeymen, fourth-line forwards or spare defensemen on other teams, players who had bounced to the bottom, where they would stay a season or two before being turned over for other, younger journeymen. Most were old and unpromising, a few—(g)oalie Gerry Cheevers, defensemen Dallas Smith and Don Awrey, forwards Ed Westfall and Derek Sanderson—were young, but quickly losing whatever promise they had in the mire of failure. Later, as several went on to various levels of stardom, it would seem a better team than it was. But in 1966, beaten into emotional and physical resigna-tion, the Bruins were merely a directionless supporting cast, badly in need of someone to support.

  Orr, of course, would be the man, but it didn’t happen right away.

  In his rookie season, also coach Harry Sinden’s first season, the Bruins earned four fewer points than they had the year before and went from fifth to last in the six-team NHL. But by the time the following season had begun, they would complete the core of players that brought them two Stanley Cups in the next five years.

  On May 15, 1967, Boston traded Gilles Marotte, Pit Martin, and goalie Jack Norris to Chicago for Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, and Fred Stanfield. With the Hawks, Norris would play briefly, then move on to Los Angeles, where, after a career total of fifty-eight games, he would leave the NHL and soon retire. Martin would do better. A smooth-skating, all-purpose center, in Chicago he fulfilled the abundant promise he had shown as a junior and gave the Hawks ten useful seasons. For Chicago, however, the key player was Marotte. Short, squat, a thunderous body-checker—“Captain Crunch” as he was later called in Los Angeles—unlike Potvin and Robinson, who came later and used the body-check sparingly and selectively, Marotte’s defensive game was based on it. It was a style made gradually anachronistic since the forward pass speeded up the game more than fifty years ago. But Marotte would continue to deliver checks that others still recall with a shudder and a laugh; he missed too often, however, and less than two years later, he too was gone from the Hawks.