Keith Magnuson

by Doug Feldmann

  * * *

  Just a week after their victory over the Soviets, the Flyers would face an opponent which would prove to be even tougher—the resurgent Chicago Black Hawks, and the return of their passionate director of the blue line, Keith Magnuson.

  By the time the two-time defending Stanley Cup–champion Philadelphia team took the ice at the Stadium on January 18, the Hawks had lost only once in their last 11 games. Reay’s club met the Flyers with a vengeance. “The Black Hawks not only took the usual punishment meted out by the Philadelphia Flyers,” decided a newly impressed Verdi about the team’s aggressiveness that evening, “but kept their team on the ice for 60 minutes to down the Stanley Cup champions 2–0 in a brilliant Stadium checkoff.”

  Magnuson had led the charge in the shutout for Esposito, once again throwing fists with Dave Schultz to the delight of the Chicago crowd. Magnuson emerged the bloodier combatant once again after yet another beating from the Philadelphia enforcer, but he got such a roar from the crowd that Verdi claimed “he could have bumped Dick Daley in a mayoral election if a vote had been taken on the scene.” Despite Schultz’s reputation growing with each season, Magnuson showed no signs of backing down—from him nor anyone else. “One thing you’ve got to have to be a success in this league can’t be taught,” Keith would say. “The ingredient is guts—and this means not being afraid of anyone.”

  As Verdi continued with his column, he illustrated how Magnuson, as usual, also deflected any laurels. “But Magnuson, Chicago’s spiritual leader, accepted no praises afterward,” he wrote. “Instead, he pointed his swollen hand to the cubicle of Tony Esposito… ‘Don’t talk about the fight,’ said Maggie. ‘There’s a guy who’s more important to talk about… He is the big reason we are where we are.’”

  As he had been in previous seasons of overuse, Esposito was noticeably fatigued, having started his 19th straight game that night in posting the 56th shutout of his career, as well as his fourth of the season. And while the approaching All-Star break would be a welcome rest for him, Hawks players Marks and Russell wondered why Esposito was not invited to the All-Star Game as they had been. After the win against Philly in the Stadium, the Hawks won three of their next four as well to lift their record to 21–11–16.

  Schultz was amazed that Magnuson kept coming after him season after season—a factor which can even wear on the aggressor, as pointed out by Jim Wiste. “If I was a tough guy on another team,” Wiste offered, “I wouldn’t want to fight Maggie. You could beat him five times, and he’d get you on the sixth.” But to Keith, it was simply a job that needed to be done.

  “He once said to me that I was nuts to keep coming back,” Magnuson said of Schultz. “But I look at it like if you go down to block a shot and you catch it in the face. The next day in practice you work on doing it so the next time it doesn’t hurt. It’s the same way with an altercation.”

  It was the final time that the two seasoned fighters would square off.

  After their playing days were over, Schultz and Magnuson became good friends, as the respect was mutual. “He wasn’t dirty,” Schultz said in admiration of Chicago defenseman in reflecting upon the countless times they collided on the ice. Magnuson, his longtime nemesis claimed, was different from many other players around the league; the red-haired kid from Saskatchewan invariably performed his duties with honor. “He could have hit me [many times] from the side,” Schultz would remember, “but there was no way.”

  Upon his return to the lineup, the cheers Magnuson heard once again from the Stadium crowd were not just the result of his scrapping. He was getting recognized around Chicago and beyond as a gentleman and a philanthropist off the ice, performing charitable functions above and beyond what was typically done by athletes. As an example, he had recently received a call from a man he did not know, named Robert DeAngeles, whose 12-year-old son was undergoing surgery for a malignant tumor at Gottlieb Hospital in Maywood, a nearby suburb. Magnuson drove through an intense Chicago snowstorm to reach the hospital, and then gladly spent an hour with the boy. “We’ll never forget what a good guy [Magnuson] was,” the boy’s brother, Steven DeAngeles, would say years later.

  The charge the Hawks mustered in the middle of the season ultimately enabled them to finish in first place in the Smythe Division— by the narrowest of margins—in 1976, edging out the Canucks by a single point by virtue of a 7–2 dismantling of the St. Louis Blues on the final day of the season. Along the way, Tallon set a Chicago record for a defenseman during the season with 62 points on 15 goals and 47 assists.

  The Hawks were paired up in the first round of the playoffs against their old postseason adversary the Canadiens, who were on the brink of beginning a stretch of complete league domination. Magnuson still maintained his tradition of being the first one charging out the door to hit the ice after the goaltender as the Hawks came out of the locker room, now with Russell and Grant Mulvey usually right behind him. “Going a hundred miles an hour,” Montreal center Doug Risebrough had noticed of Maggie doing his ritual in the previous season, Risebrough’s first in the NHL. “I remember my rookie year I thought he was going to come right at me and hit me [during warm-ups].”

  The Hawks, completely overwhelmed by the mass of talent that the Canadiens had assembled, wound up scoring only three total goals in a four-game sweep by Montreal. And in the fourth game on April 18, White would suffer an eventual career-ending neck injury.

  The Hawks still appeared to be in a holding pattern, stuck between relishing past glories with their veterans and the incorporation of talented new youngsters. Thus, looking to bolster the team’s star power after the departure of Bobby Hull, the Wirtz family saw an opportunity to claim a damaged luminary from another team—one of the game’s greats with, hopefully, some of his magic still remaining.

  For all intents and purposes, the Boston hockey club had been prepared to make Bobby Orr a Bruin for life. In the fall of 1975, terms were announced that set forth a new 10-year contract extension for Orr that would pay him more than $4 million. However, after the extraordinary player made his delayed season debut on November 8 (the day after Phil Esposito had been traded to the Rangers), Orr learned he would need to have another surgery on his shattered knee just three weeks later. At that point, the club wished to renegotiate the previous offer, exchanging a large chunk of his player’s salary with nearly 19 percent ownership of the team coming to Orr by 1980. He was talked out of the deal by his agent, Alan Eagleson, who claimed it was in Orr’s best interest to stay out of the management side of the game.

  Orr was ultimately granted free agency; and thus Bill Wirtz saw an opportunity for what he viewed as a surefire boost for the sagging attendance at Hawks games at the Stadium. He moved in on Orr and offered a five-year contract worth $3 million; it was accepted and finalized on June 8, 1976. The once-indivisible marriage between Orr and Boston was now over, and the Bruins would receive no form of compensation from the Hawks in signing him. With their two top stars now playing elsewhere, the irate Boston fans threatened to boycott games at the Garden.

  While perhaps a better long-term strategy for lengthening his NHL career would have been to use the summer and early fall of 1976 to heal his knee, Orr felt compelled to follow a greater short-term purpose. Like Magnuson, he had missed the entire Summit Series in 1972 and 1974 because of earlier problems with the knee, and Orr knew that time was running out to represent his home country in international play. Thus, after signing the contract, he sought and received permission from Wirtz to participate in the 1976 Canada Cup, which offered NHL stars another high-profile shot at the Soviets.

  The tournament would be much broader than the Summit Series, involving teams from multiple nations—including an American contingent. Team Canada and the Soviets were naturally considered the favorites, and the two met in the last round-robin contest on September 11 to see which would proceed to the finals against Czechoslovakia. In front of a packed house at Map
le Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Orr—who could barely walk into the arena from the parking lot because of the soreness in his knee—powered the Canadians to a 3–1 win over the Russians, as well a two-game sweep of the Czechs in the best-of-three final round. The wounded Orr put forth a heroic effort and was named the tournament MVP, tying for the overall lead with nine points on two goals and seven assists. As his Canadian teammate Sittler concluded about the games, “Bobby Orr was better on one leg than anyone else was on two.”

  The gutsy display furthered Magnuson’s respect for Orr’s toughness; despite their several run-ins over the years in the great rivalry between the Bruins and the Hawks, the two men, now teammates, admired one another’s gritty play.

  As training camp for the 1976–77 season opened for the Black Hawks and exhibition games began soon after, Orr would need to inform Reay—rumored to be retiring after the conclusion of the season—shortly before each game if his knee was ready for action on the particular night. It therefore became a mystery to Black Hawks fans heading to the Stadium each evening as to whether or not they would get to view the living legend in action—which, while no fault of Orr’s, somewhat defeated the purpose Wirtz had in signing him in the first place.

  Attendance had recently been down all around hockey, and the presence of Orr on the Hawks’ roster, to the surprise of many, did not help much in Chicago either. In the first two Sunday night home games for the season, less than two-thirds of the Stadium was full. More than 13,000 had seen the Hawks play an exhibition game in Denver with Orr in uniform (against the new Colorado Rockies, formerly the Scouts, which had played just two seasons in Kansas City), but only 7,000 attendees returned just two weeks later for a regular season rematch between the two teams (the high attendance for the exhibition contest was perhaps due to the “2-for-1” ticket giveaway night that evening).

  Denver, while long a bastion of collegiate hockey, was looking to reestablish itself at the professional level in opening a sparkling new rink, McNichols Arena. Magnuson was happy to return to the scene of his undergraduate glory. “The record for pro hockey in Denver is not good,” Keith admitted, “but once the people who followed college hockey come out, they should get caught up in the excitement of the NHL.”

  By the following spring of 1977, few teams around the NHL would see improvement at the gate. At that time, Hawks publicity director Don Murphy even had to expel a film crew from the Stadium when it compiled footage of the many empty seats at the games; an independent filmmaker was trying to use the images to contrast the scene with pictures of the building being filled during seasons past. In mid-October 1976, Elvis Presley had returned to the Stadium to gave two of his last live performances—two of the few times over the coming months when the building would be full.

  Scoring also became less and less frequent, which did not help in attendance matters. Tommy Ivan and Reay decided that until the young forwards came further along, it was best for the team to continue emphasizing a defensive strategy. But a horrific injury would derail Magnuson’s season once again, in an attack many would term as “cowardly” on the part of an opponent.

  On October 30, 1976, in a game at the Olympia in Detroit, Magnuson was harassing the Red Wings’ Mike Bloom near the boards midway through the final period. In doing so, Magnuson got his stick up on Bloom by accident, an anomaly for him, and something which he later admitted doing in this particular case. Watching from across the ice was Bryan Watson, the policeman of the Red Wings, who charged the width of the rink to come to Bloom’s aid. With Magnuson mostly facing the opposite direction, Watson cross-checked the Chicago defenseman to the side of the face, and Keith’s jaw was broken once again. With Magnuson sprawled on the ice, the other Hawks players angrily surrounded Watson with their sticks pointed in his direction. The Code had been breached.

  “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in hockey,” Reay said simply after the game.

  Before making that statement to the press, the coach had chased referee John McAuley down the corridor of the arena to give him another earful and telephoned Campbell at the NHL’s head office as well.

  “And for however long Keith is out, that’s how long Watson should be out,” Reay claimed, citing Magnuson’s incident with Oddleifson from a couple years back after which the Vancouver club made the same appeal. “There’s no place for what Watson did, and no place for Watson in this league.”

  Added Tallon, “It’s the cheapest shot I’ve ever seen.” Marks warned, “Watson better keep his head up the next time we play.” Mulvey, sitting on the Chicago bench at the time of the incident, filed it away, ready to confront Watson at the right time.

  While sitting on an examination table at a Detroit hospital and spitting out words sporadically with a jaw that would have to be wired shut, Magnuson tried to reconstruct the event and, despite repeated deliberations, could not comprehend Watson’s action.

  “If I’d been going around the league doing things like that myself, I could understand it. But I’ve never taken any cheap shots at anybody. I always try to drop my stick and I never get a guy from behind. I’ve never even had any real run-ins with Watson.”

  After having the jaw set, Keith was able to immediately return to the team’s hotel and join them on the flight home.

  Watson ultimately received a 10-game suspension for the hit—after which he would be traded to the Washington Capitals—while Magnuson would only miss four games; he was able to play with a football-like face mask to protect the jaw, like ones previously donned by Bobby Hull and Kenny Wharram when sustaining similar injuries.

  Interestingly, Watson would later claim that he was being unfairly targeted by Campbell, whom Watson insisted was being pressured by Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry. McMurtry was currently pursuing assault charges against Dave “Tiger” Williams, and, along with his brother, Bill, was still on a personal crusade to stamp out unnecessary violence in hockey. As for Watson’s theory, Campbell replied, “Bryan Watson isn’t the most reliable guy I know. I wouldn’t take his word for anything.”

  During Magnuson’s brief absence, Orr had gotten off to a strong start in posting 23 points in 20 games, and the Hawks stood with an even 9–9–2 record by mid-November. But both men were two wounded grizzlies, fending off surrounding hunters in the NHL’s black forest as their bodies creaked with pain. Orr’s knee finally gave out for good in the late fall (even though Reay stated in early November that Orr “will be back with us in less than two weeks”); he would miss the rest of the season, all of the 1977–78 campaign, and would play in only six contests early in the autumn of 1978 before calling it quits for good.

  The person upon whom both Orr and Magnuson had come to regularly rely—Hawks trainer Skip Thayer—had been nicknamed “Superman” by the players for his resemblance to Clark Kent. But even the caped superhero could not have gotten the team through a rash of key injuries that would impact the 1976–77 season—injuries which would help bring about a monumental change in the organization.

  * * *

  Christmastime in Chicago, 1976. The air becomes more biting as the shoppers finish their searching and scrambling along Michigan Avenue and State Street, pausing only to gaze at the marvelous seasonal displays in the windows of Marshall Field & Co.

  But amidst the holiday rush, the city was rocked by startling news on December 20. While in to see his physician for a routine checkup, Mayor Richard J. Daley suffered a heart attack. The medical staff on the scene was unable to revive him, and Chicago’s leader of 21 years was dead at the age of 74.

  The Black Hawks had been in Minnesota at the time for a one-game road trip. The team scratched out a 3–3 tie with the North Stars on the night of December 21, which nonetheless kept them winless in their last 11 games; their overall record stood at a dismal 10–19–5 after being at the .500 mark before Orr went down.

  The team arrived late back in Chicago after the game to find the somber city stre
ets respectfully quiet after a soft snowfall. Heading into his office at the Stadium the next morning, Reay noticed that the flags around the city had been lowered to half-staff. Reay wanted to get an early start on his work, looking for some angle that would snap his team out of its doldrums.

  Unbeknownst to him, a meeting had taken place among several of the franchise’s power brokers while the team was in Minnesota. Bill Wirtz and Ivan had instructed Mikita, Orr, and White (all injured and not in uniform) to meet them at the Bismarck Hotel before the rest of the team got back to town.

  “I looked at Bobby [Orr] and asked him, in pantomime, what was going on,” Mikita recounted of the odd scene. “He pointed to White. He was the new coach. Bobby and I were going to be his assistants.”

  Reay, the Hawks coach for 14 seasons, had been fired.

  “It was all very strange, and it got even weirder when we were in the meeting and heard that Mayor Richard Daley had just died,” Mikita continued.

  Verdi would write in his column a couple of days later that the Hawks informed the media of the move “in a 10-paragraph press release which not once mentioned Reay’s name.”

  The Tribune writer also noted that, only a month earlier, Wirtz had publicly labeled Reay as “the best coach in the business” and that there had been plans for Reay to soon take over for Ivan as general manager. This, too, was now out of the question. Reportedly, Reay declined the offer of the general manager’s position when told by Wirtz that he would not be allowed to name his own head coach. (According to Dennis Hull, Wirtz had wanted Bobby Kromm installed—who had been coaching the Winnipeg Jets in the WHA after Bobby Hull had completed his stint in that role as coach in Reay’s place. Kromm would not take the job, but would surface as the head man of the Detroit Red Wings the following season.)