Head Tale

Sad to hear that my absolute favourite NHL player of all-time, Mike Bossy, passed away today after a lengthy battle with lung cancer (almost unbelievably, one of the greatest goal scorers of all-time was also a heavy smoker, especially early in his career.)

How much did I admire Bossy?  To this day, I used “22” as a login code at work in honour of him!

I’ve written about or mentioned Mike Bossy in various contexts over the years on this blog but here’s the quick version of why he meant so much to me:

When I started following hockey as a seven or eight year old kid, the Islanders were winning all the Cups so, while my friends liked the Leafs or the Canadiens or the Blackhawks or the Jets or the Oilers for various reasons (influence of a dad or brother or uncle, they liked a certain player, like the uniforms, etc.), I was (surprisingly?) the only one in my group whose favourite team was the Islanders.

And what a team it was – led by Bossy along with two Saskie boys, Trottier and Gillies on one of the greatest lines of all-time beside him plus an assortment of other amazing skaters and critical role players, they were dominant in a way few teams (yes, including the Oilers!) have ever been.

Passed over by twelve other teams in his draft year, Bossy seemed fated to join the Islanders.

In 1977, just six years from now, you will get the luckiest break of all time. Twelve teams will pass on you in the NHL draft. They’ll want nothing to do with you. They’ll think you’re too timid. They’ll think you’re not tough enough to score in the NHL. Or at least that’s what you’ll be telling yourself when you’re sitting in your lawyer’s office staring at the telephone, waiting for it to ring.

I loved all of the Islanders players of that era so much. There were sixteen players that played on all four Stanley Cup winning teams:

Denis Potvin, Mike Bossy, Bob Bourne, Clark Gillies, Butch Goring, Anders Kallur, Gord Lane, Dave Langevin, Wayne Merrick, Ken Morrow, Bob Nystrom, Stefan Pearson, Billy Smith, Duane Sutter, John Tonelli and Bryan Trottier.

…but even with the best money goalie of all-time, a Bobby Orr-esque stud defense man, a great playmaking centre and a prototypical power forward, Mike Bossy was something beyond any of them.

Very likely the greatest goal scorer in NHL history at a time when slight, skilled players weren’t always guaranteed success (of course, Bossy’s greatest rival, Wayne Gretzky, is another exception that proves the rule though Bossy still has the record for goals per game average (although tragically, part of the reason this is so high is his career was cut short by back injuries so his goal scoring didn’t drop as he got older like it did for other players.  What was Gretzky’s quote?  “I got nine goals in 70 games in my final season.  That used to be a good weekend when I was young!”

Bossy didn’t like to be called a “natural” goal scorer though:

That’s something that will bother you for the rest of your life — whenever people ask you, “Why was scoring so easy for you, Mike?”

It was never easy. Your mother loves to tell people the story about how you scored 21 goals in your first mite hockey game. But even if that story is true, the goals only tell part of the story. Because your mom always leaves out the part about how much time you spent all by yourself out in the backyard rink, shooting at a wooden board. You don’t have a real net, so you practice by aiming for the black puck-marks on the board over and over and over until your feet are frozen. (Remember how mom would make you thaw your feet in cold water because hot water would “make your toes fall off?”)

RIP Boss.