Johnny Bower with
the Maple Leafs. Glenn Hall in Chicago. Terry Sawchuk of the Red
Wings. Eddie Johnston in Boston. Gump Worsley in New York. And
Jacques Plante with les Habitants in Montreal.
Six names, six teams, and a rush of memories. It was a simpler
time. When I read that Johnny Bower had died aged 93, I almost
immediately recited those six names, like some shamanistic
incantation. I can't say for sure when all six of those guys played
on those teams, but I am assuming they were all together in that
alignment for a least a few of my youthful years.
Beyond that, I
remember Sawchuk wound up in Toronto splitting time with Bower, an
innovation which went against conventional wisdom that one goalie had
to play every game to stay sharp. After all, goalies were supposed to wear number 1, and two guys couldn't do that. It was, of course, a move both goalies hated, though it likely helped both immensely. Of
course every team was quickly using two goalies, if only to rest
their better one occasionally.
I recall too the
shock trade when the Canadiens sent Plante to the Rangers for Worsley
(there were other players involved—Dave Balon and Phil Goyette
among others) Plante who had come up with the goalie's mask, which
was originally seen as a sign of weakness, if not fear, was perceived
as the sport's mercurial genius, but at odds variously with coach Toe
Blake and GM Frank Selke, who would soon be gone himself. Worsley, a
native Montrealer, was seen as a steady plugger (despite being one of
North American sport's most prodigious drinking men).
But Johnny Bower's
was probably the most interesting career of them all. He was born
John Kiszkan, and at 15 enlisted in the Army, serving in England
during the war until he was discharged because of arthritis in his
hands. When his parents divorced he took his mother's name, though
later he claimed it was easier for sportswriters to spell.He was
already 20 when he played a year of junior hockey in Prince Albert in
1944, then turned pro in the minor league AHL. He played eight
seasons for the Cleveland Barons, and was generally considered the
league's best goalie, before he got a shot in 1953 with the New York
Rangers, where he replaced Worsley, who'd been the NHL Rookie of the
Year in 1952. For the next three
years he was in effect Worsley's backup, playing most of the time in
Vancouver of the WHL or Providence of the AHL. When the Rangers let
him go he returned to Cleveland for a year, before Punch Imlach
talked him into giving the NHL one more chance.
Bower was 34 when he
finally settled into the nets for the Maple Leafs, where he would
play for 11 more seasons, his career no doubt extended by sharing
time with his fellow Ukranian Sawchuk. He backstopped the Leafs to
four Stanley Cups, the first three in a row in 1962-4. After playing
just one game in the 1969-70 season, he retired, and at age 45 he was
at the time the oldest player to have played in an NHL game.
Nobody looked less
like an athlete than Gump Worsley (well, maybe baseball's Smokey
Burgess) but Bower was another guy who you would pass in the street
never thinking you'd seen a great. Six decades later, most of those
six names still appear regularly in arguments about the best
goaltenders ever.
Ssx decades on,
thinking of Johnny Bower made me nostalgic for those days when you
knew the names, and the faces (no masks, no helmets) of all the
goalies (if not all the players) in the six-team NHL. Even though you
didn't see them much on TV (though I was lucky, being able to pick up
Rangers' games out of New York—and falling in love with Montreal as
a result). My dad played hockey, so we followed it a bit. I saw the Providence Reds (post-Bower) play in New Haven when the city finally got an AHL team--I had seen the AHL's Baltimore Clippers play the EHL Blades in the old New Haven Arena). Hockey was what first drew me to Montreal; Evelyne, whom I met on the beach in Woodmont, may have been another factor). In many ways my life has balanced itself on the fulcrum of
Montreal; had I not wanted to live there I would not have gone to
McGill; had I not gone to McGill I would not have met Theresa; had I not met her I would never have moved to Britain.
Perhaps it was the Christmas season, or the snow that fell this
morning, that helped me spin a hockey player's death into un petit coup de
nostalgie, but these were very pleasant memories. RIP Johnny Bower.
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