I don’t think I’ll ever go to Chicago and won’t be remembered by the folks there as long as I live. We had a love affair with our fans. I believe they knew that I was playing the game for sole purpose of entertaining those 22,000 people in that beautiful old building called the Chicago Stadium.
They said it was 16,666,but I knew people in the ticket office, and they said there always 22,000 people in there. They’d stand six- and eight-deep in the balconies.
It was the night I was able to break the 50-goal barrier for the first time. Not scoring the goal, but the tremendous ovation that the Chicago fans gave me that was so appreciated.
That was likely the greatest night.
I’d had my problems with Arthur Wirtz, not with Billy at that time.
They didn’t take the WHA serious. I was a little teed off that they didn’t appreciate what I’d done for 15 years and they didn’t go out of their way to sign me to a contract.
I didn’t think any cowboy was worth a million bucks back in 1972. I jokingly said, “If they gave me a million dollars up front, that would cover the shortfall in case they folded, and if they could come up with a million dollars up front, they’ve got themselves a player.”
Had I ever though that they were going to raise a million bucks, I would’ve said $20 million.
Blood being thicker than beer, Billy had to back up his father and tried to tell the people that I was trying to hold the Chicago Blackhawks hostage for a million bucks, which was erroneous. All I wanted was a five-year contract for $250,000 a year, which was never offered.
The Wolves have been after me for some time to be a part of one of their games. It just so happened that I was in Chicago during this period for some other business and they got together and I said I’d come over and drop the puck to open the game and to help them raise some money for a charity that’s very dear to my hearts, and that’s Special Olympics (1).
I don’t own a pair of skates, and my shoulders are so worn out, I can hardly lift a stick, let alone shoot with one.
No one that I’ve seen before, during or since could score goals like Brett Hull. He’s exemplified playing the game the way it should be played within the rules, he is a winner, he’s been a class individual. There’s no kid who has ever played who could make a father prouder than Brett Hull did, as far as I was concerned.
When you think about it, we had better teams that got beat than the one that we won with in `61.
If we’d have won the Stanley Cup in ’71, that would’ve silenced the lambs. Going into the third period ahead two-nothing and getting beat 3-2, she was a hard pill to swallow.
Never really hated anybody to the point where I wanted to do them in, but there were a few out there that I didn’t mind running over every now and then.
We were playing the Boston Bruins and I think we’re up on them 4-2 maybe and we’re on the power play. The puck came back to me on the right point. I shove it ahead and wound up to slap it. One of the penalty killers slid at me and I don’t know why I stopped my swing. I pulled the puck back and he slid by me and I walked in another 10 or 15 feet. Wound up again. One of the defensemen slid, and I did the very same thing. Now, I’m within 15 feet of the net and I wind up to shoot the puck and as I look up, there was no one in the goal. I started chuckling to myself and I could barely shoot the puck into the open net. After I shot the puck in the open net, I look to my left and one of Gerry Cheevers’ defensemen was standing to the right of the goal in a flamingo stance with one foot up in the air, and as I looked further, Gerry Cheevers was standing behind him, peeking over his shoulder.
We have to get back to playing the game of hockey within the rules with people who can entertain royally and we have to allow those people to entertain the fans. We have to protect them from the idiots that they have allowed to become involved in the game as one-dimensional players.
There’s always negative stuff when people are jealous of what you’ve done. I dwell on the positive side of everything.
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1: On Friday night at Allstate Arena.
