The Legendary Bobby Orr

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  Now 75 years old, Bobby Orr secured legendary status for his dominance in the National Hockey League.  However, his achievements remain a fact.  Orr’s aura shone like a supernova that burned brighter than any star.  His ‘Achilles’ knees ended his hockey career much too soon.

Young Bobby.

Robert Gordon Orr was born on March 20, 1948 in Parry Sound, Ontario, located on a backwater inlet of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay.  Bobby grew up in a time when nearly all NHL players hailed from Canada, where most honed their skills skating on the naturally frozen ponds, lakes and bays of the Great White North.

Parry Sound possessed only one indoor rink in those days, so kids there skated far more often on the wide frozen bay where games sometimes played 10 aside, meaning 20 skaters vying for one puck.  There, boy Bobby learned to lug the puck in traffic carving his way through a throng of bigger players.   

As stated in his autobiography:  “Changing speed, transitioning from backward to forward skating, making tight turns, these were all things I learned on the bay.”   As a professional, the boy turned man employed that same skill set when he ragged the puck on penalty kills where he was chased around the rink by frustrated NHL pros.

When playing in youth leagues, his mentor “Bucko” McDonald first doubled up his protégé’s ice time playing him both as a forward and a defenseman.   The coach liked how his kid exploited the open ice coming late from the backend kicking in his internal sixth gear that left fore-checkers in his ice chips.   His kid’s forays into the offensive zone created havoc for opponents.  

Henceforth, the coach employed his best skater solely as a defenseman—back when superior skaters always played forward leaving defense for slower heavyweights —which proved both counterintuitive and prescient.   

A designated NHL draft did not exist in the early 1960’s, so hockey scouts scoured the hinterland to sign prospects at an ever-younger age. Playing against older boys, the pint-sized ice skating eel soon attracted scouts’ attention.  The 14 year-old was perhaps the first one recognized as a ‘generational’ talent long before scribes hung that moniker on emerging stars.    

Scout Wren Blair convinced the Boston Bruins to purchase 51% of a junior league franchise—the Oshawa Generals—so that his prospect could play on their Junior club.  Blair then persuaded the teen’s parents to sign a “C form” contract committing Bobby to the Bruins at age eighteen, but only after Blair satisfied the mother that her son could stay in Parry Sound for his eighth grade schooling.  The terms of that contract sound laughable today:  $1,000 signing bonus; a new ‘used’ car, and the deal maker—the Bruins paid to stucco the Orr family home.

That first season, the freshly minted Oshawa General lived at home so he missed weekday practices.  His father drove his son south to play games on weekends, a three-hour each-way trip.   The first year in Juniors proved the toughest as the youngster lined up against players several years older—young men really—leaving Bobby weaving to avoid big hits, not always successfully.  As he conceded in his biography, it hurt being hit by players 60 pounds heavier. 

The following year, the 15 year-old billeted in Oshawa living with a ‘host’ family.  He soon grew to dominate Junior Hockey.  At age 18, the man-child made the parent Boston club at a time when the National Hockey League consisted of just six teams.  More amazingly, Orr played defense—a position that takes longer to master. 

The professionals oft challenged the new kid on the ice block, and the rookie answered the bell, amassing  102 penalty minutes that season, many of which took the form of fighting majors.  The teenager proved more than tough enough.  Orr awed even the most grizzled hockey observers who awarded him with the Calder Trophy as the league’s best rookie.

Number 4, Bobby Orr.

The phenom’s arrival in Boston breathed life into a moribund franchise that laid doormat for decades.  The City fell in love with their bandy-legged Bruin whose manifold talents electrified the locals. Bobby Orr proved the league’s fastest skater, and like a dragster accelerated from a standing stop to top speed in a three skate chop explosion. 

More than a mere north-south gazelle, the Bruin cub proved the league’s best lateral skater as well, shifting gears like a Ferrari racer, his quick feet cross-cutting either left or right as he accelerated on his mad dashes up the ice making defenders leery of challenging him too aggressively lest they be left ghost grabbing.  The wunderkind put defenders on their heels.

In his second year, the team gave Bobby a new number that became available when a long-forgotten player who wore that digit left the club.  Number Four, Bobby Orr—especially when spoken with a New England accent—resonated when announced at the Boston Garden after a Bruin goal.  The coupled rhythmic number and name fit like a hockey glove in a way that a high double-digit number that mark a new star’s pedigree cannot.

Orr missed 28 games after he underwent invasive surgery that removed two-thirds of the knee’s medial meniscus or inner knee cartilage, one of many knee injuries and surgeries that would ultimately prove his undoing.  Even so limited, he sufficiently impressed league pundits who awarded the 20 year-old with the Norris Trophy emblematic of the league’s best defenseman, the first of eight straight such awards for the Bruins’ Number Four.   With the addition of Ken Hodge, Fred Stanfield, and especially prolific goal-scorer Phil Esposito via a blockbuster trade along a rookie named Derek Sanderson, Boston emerged as a viable playoff team for the first time in years.

In his fourth season, the incomparable 22 year-old took the league by storm, astonishing the hockey world when he led the NHL in scoring, an unheard of accomplishment by a defenseman.   Along with his preternatural skating, the league’s scoring leader possessed the hands and eyes of a play-making center iceman, a deft backhand, and an accurate slap shot that he could tee and release as quickly as any high-flying winger.   

Orr defended his zone zealously, playing a physical brand of hockey.  His superior skating skills ensured that no one-on-one attacker in Boston’s defensive zone could outflank or maneuver around him.

Legendary Russian Coach and Hockey Guru Anatoli Tarasov called him the perfect hockey player.  Bobby Clarke once remarked that there should have been a higher league for Bobby Orr. 

The Bruins began the 1970 Stanley Cup playoffs  with a stuttering start as they split the first four games of their series with the New York Rangers.  From there, the Boston club exploded, sweeping the next 10 games as they dispatched the Rangers, and then swept the Chicago Blackhawks, and the St. Louis Blues. 

The Stanley Cup winning goal created Bobby Orr’s signature moment captured by the most iconic photograph in sports history.   Game Four of the Finals went into overtime with the Bruins in bear-hungry mode for the Cup.  Pinning the Blues in their own zone, they applied pressure from the opening overtime faceoff.  It was all over in a mere 40 seconds.

The endplay—overshadowed by the climactic finishing photograph—saw Orr aggressively dashing in deep into the offensive zone from his point position and intercepting the Blues attempted clearing pass along the far boards.  He immediately dispatched the puck to Sanderson stationed behind the goal.  With his nimbly quick and explosive two-step crossover, Orr burst from the boards into the danger zone and received Sanderson’s give and go pass.  In a blink of an eye, the roving Bruin was in on goal delivering a quick shot past Blues’ goaltender Glenn Hall.   The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup!    

Reacting late, Blues defender Noel Picard pitchforked the dashing, celebratory goal scorer sending him flying parallel above the ice.  That defining moment perfectly captured in a photograph for time immemorial seemed to prove that Bobby Orr could even fly.   

Robert Gordon Orr completed a sweep of league trophies: Lord Stanley’s Cup; Conn Smythe (Playoff MVP); Norris (best defenseman); Art Ross (leading scorer) and Hart (league MVP).  No one had ever seen a hockey player like Robert Gordon Orr.

Dominance.

Along with the physical tools, Orr possessed the intangibles that separate all-time greats from ‘mere’ superstars, which included his burning passion for the game.  He first demonstrated his physical and mental toughness early on as a boy against men in Junior Hockey, which he employed through the cross-checking, cheap shots, and tripping that he endured in the NHL.   The ice demon played the game with abandon that made him the best hockey player the world, which conversely  destined him to injuries to his knees that tragically shortened his career.  As Orr himself said: “I liked to carry the puck, and in this league, when you carry the puck you are going to get hit.”

Oft-stated, Orr revolutionized the game as he freed defensemen from their moorings.    Two-way forwards who carry the game on offense and dutifully back-check play what the pros call a 200-foot game.   Orr transformed the game, becoming the first defenseman to play a 200-foot game.  He was fast enough to penetrate deep into the offensive zone, yet capable of  bursting back to his defensive position if his team turned the puck over.

In his book The Game, Goaltender Ken Dryden observed that Orr’s emergence as an offensive defenseman provided a unique advantage.  Dryden noted that most players defer to their superior teammate altering their focus to feed the team’s star forward, and in the process surrendering a piece of their individual essence.  However, Bobby Orr started the attack from the rear so as the ice opened up before him he could then distribute the puck to the forwards on the move.   In other words, the Bruin defenseman’s rush into the offensive zone opened space for the forwards who in turn found Orr deferring to them by sending passes their way. 

Boston rode their workhorse to the best record in the league in 1971 as Bobby broke his own records for goals, assists and points by a defenseman that he set the prior year while establishing a still standing record for the highest plus/minus rating in league history at 124.  However, that same Goaltender named Dryden stonewalled the Bruin attack in the playoffs leading the Montreal Canadiens to an improbable seven game upset.  

The Bruins made amends in 1972, winning their second Stanley Cup with Orr again winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. Their megastar fueled the club’s run of excellence as he registered over 100 points for six consecutive years, while leading the league in plus/minus in six of seven seasons.

A third Stanley Cup eluded the Boston Bruins, though the club came close in 1974, losing in the Finals to the Philadelphia Flyers. The following year, Orr won the scoring title for a second time. No other defenseman before or since has even come close to leading the league in scoring.

Borrowed Time on Thin Ice.

The only thing Orr lacked was modern medical science, which might have proved less invasive and likely would have extended his career rather than shortening it.    He endured at least 17 surgeries on his knees, the left one being the most abused.  His knees worsened as the years wore on, though he tried his best to play through it.  As he explained:  “The feeling in the (knee) joint wasn’t so much a sharp pain as dull, constant grind, like a toothache.  The soreness and stiffness were never far from my mind.   What bothered me (more than pain) was the stiffness affected my play….I couldn’t generate the same power, it took away the sharpness of my turning, stopping, accelerating.”  

His left knee locked up ten games into the 1975-76 season, which required still another knee surgery that finished him for the season.  For all intents and purposes, the 27-year old was finished as an NHL juggernaut.

The Bruins knew the medical verdict, but to their credit tried to make things right when they offered a partial ownership stake in the team to their marquee player.  But in a story of betrayal, the disgraced Alan Eagleson violated an agent’s cardinal rule when he failed to relay that offer to his client.   So Orr—unmindful of an offer that would have financially secured him long-term—left his beloved Boston and signed a contract with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Meanwhile, Orr spent nearly a year recovering from that knee surgery when the 1976 Canada Cup premiered as the first international tournament, which included the six best countries of the professional hockey world.   Bobby long regretted that an earlier knee surgery kept him out of action for the classic 1972 Summit Series against the Russians.  The hobbled member of Team Canada refused to miss out this time, and willed himself to play.  

The Canadians advanced out of the round robin tournament and faced the Czechs in a best of three series in the Finals.  In Game One, Number Four scored on one of his patented rushes.  Receiving a pass in the neutral zone, Orr carried the puck near the right wing boards, his feet gliding with a fluid, yet powerful cross-over strides accelerating as he crossed the blue line while penetrating into a void in the Czech defense.  He was in on goal with the suddenness of a catamount, and lifted a backhand over the Czech goaltender’s shoulder up into the goal’s top shelf. 

Bobby’s second goal of the game came late, a quick release of a slap shot from the point through a screen, again into the goal’s top shelf.  Team Canada won that game, and the clinching game that followed to win the first Canada Cup.

Orr tied for the team’s lead on the scoring sheet, and was awarded the tournament MVP, an amazing accomplishment given that he oft missed practices because his knee was in deep freeze.  His efforts garnered homage from his teammates.  Bobby Clarke said that Orr “would hardly be able to walk on the morning of the game…, and then, at night, he would be the best player on one of the greatest teams ever assembled.  He was the best player in every game; he was the best player in the tournament. He couldn’t skate like he used to, but he could still go.”  Teammate Darryl Sittler marveled: “Bobby Orr was better on one leg, than anybody else was on two.”

It was a last hurrah.  Many considered Orr’s decision to play in the 1976 Canada Cup as ill-advised, and that his play in the tournament hastened his demise.  Orr would have none of it:  “I knew I didn’t have much longer. That series didn’t do it. I thought I could get the next season in, but not much after that….I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”

The Legend.

Over the course of the next three years, Bobby would suit up for a grand total of 26 games.  At least seventeen surgeries that left his knees ‘bone on bone’ finally finished him.  In those handful of games, Orr still averaged over a point a game and positive/plus minus even though his skating maneuverability was significantly compromised. Bobby Orr announced his retirement in 1978 at the age of 30, although in truth his star power dimmed by age 27. 

His agent’s malfeasance in handling his client’s affairs and contracts left the now retired hockey player financially insecure.   But someone of Orr’s stature and character who even in his heyday remained humble and never forgot his roots could not be laid low for long.   He ultimately became a successful player’s agent himself, known for his honesty and fair dealing with his clients, something denied to him by the felonious Eagleson.

Today, many fans opine about various sports’ GOAT, or Greatest Of All Time, an oxymoronic appellation applied to the likes of Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, et. al., who earned their stripes by performing in the clutch.   Yet, it remains problematic to affix such an amorphous crown on anyone given that eras and chance circumstances influence the ‘answer’ desired.  The ‘latest’ usually stand as the perceived ‘greatest’. 

Orr’s greatness cannot be limited to statistics, though as a defenseman his numbers attain a stratosphere that rank with Wayne Gretzky’s stand alone season and career numbers. Suffice to say that Bobby Orr left an indelible mark on the game where he stands among the Game’s pantheons from Maurice Richard and Gordie Howe to Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.  

Perhaps more than numbers and revolutionizing the way the game was played, the kid from Parry Sound possessed an on-ice charisma.  When Orr carried the puck on a rush out of his own zone, he lit up an arena like a Vegas neon sign with all eyes drawn upon him as the fans rose from their seats.  On the road, the crowd futilely murmured ‘get him; hit him’ as Orr gained the offensive zone creating havoc.   In Boston, the fans roared in anticipation of what might result in their hero’s next dramatic feat. 

Two tributes said it best.   When the Boston Celtics retired Larry Bird’s number at the old Boston Garden, the basketball legend explained to the audience that when he habitually looked up at the rafters during the national anthem before the game that he was gazing at the banner of Number Four, Bobby Orr.

The late Milt Schmidt, a hall of fame hockey player, coach and general manager whose involvement in the NHL spanned over seven decades declared that Bobby Orr was the best player he ever saw and said: “…if a player comes along who is better then Bobby Orr, may the Good Lord let me be alive to see him because he’s going to be one hell of a player.”