Holmstrom Proves It: Hockey Players Are Nuts

When is someone going to officially declare that hockey players are certifiably nuts?

I mean off-their-rocker nuts, totally and completely out of their minds?

It’s a sport played by Kamikazes, who zoom around an ice rink surrounded by non-giving hardwood boards, with sharp objects all around them: skates, sticks, corners of elbows and teeth—those that haven’t been spit out on the bench, that is.

You think football players are tough? Maybe so, but they also have all their marbles, because the NFL hasn’t seen a leather helmet since World War II. The face mask started to come into vogue in the 1950s.

Jacques Plante, the legendary Hall of Fame goalie, tried to put a thin, flimsy mask on his face in the mid-‘50s and was all but mocked out of the league. It wasn’t until Plante took one too many vulcanized rubber discs between the eyes and refused to play without facial protection that Montreal coach Toe Blake consented to the wearing of the mask—with conditions.

If Plante had trouble seeing the puck, Blake said, then the mask was history and so was Plante if he had a problem with Toe’s disclaimer.

Plante could see the puck—or, he told his coach that he could see the puck.



Not that any of Jacques’ brethren followed his lead right away.

Goalies continued to mostly go maskless until, unbelievably, the 1970s. Only then did the last few bare-faced netminders vanish.

I always thought a goalie not wearing a mask, facing pucks being fired around his head at upwards of 75 MPH, was akin to a race car driver refusing to wear a seat belt.

While all this insanity in hockey was going on, the NFL did away with leather helmets and as the years went on, the quality of the headgear got increasingly better.

Meanwhile, the NHL eschewed helmets like a dieting woman waving off a slice of cheesecake.

A few wore them, and they too were derided, as Plante had been. Again, not until 1979 did the NHL mandate helmets for its players. But there was a grandfather clause that said players who signed contracts before ’79 had the option to wear helmets or not.

That’s why Red Wings fans were treated to the balding head of Harold Snepsts from 1985-88.

The hockey players' shoulder pads until the Reagan administration were a rumor.



Don’t get me started on visors.

Willie O’Ree, the NHL’s Jackie Robinson—the league’s first black player—was in Detroit several years ago, sponsoring an initiative to get more African-American kids playing hockey in the inner city.

I knew of O’Ree, of course, but I didn’t know that he hid the fact that he was blind in one eye.

Come again?

“Oh yeah,” O’Ree told me as we chatted in a RenCen lounge. “I was afraid if they found out I couldn’t see in one eye, they wouldn’t let me play anymore.”

The irony is that because we’re talking hockey, not only would they have let O’Ree play, the powers that be might have sent their scouts looking for more one-eyed prospects.

Hockey players lose teeth, have their faces gashed open and break their legs—sometimes all before the first intermission. They might miss a shift or two—or however long it takes a doctor to pull, stitch or set whatever needs to be pulled, stitched or set.

Toronto defenseman Bob Baun beat the Red Wings in the 1964 Stanley Cup Finals with an overtime goal—playing on a snapped ankle.

O’Ree played with one eye.



Amazingly, there has been only one fatality in a game—that of Minnesota’s Bill Masterton, in 1968, whose head hit the ice after a check. And we’re talking about 100 years of this ice hockey stuff.

Masterton’s death, by the way, had no effect on players wearing helmets. They continued to not don them.

I remember watching video of Buffalo goalie Clint Malarchuk bleeding from his neck like a wide-open faucet after his carotid artery was slashed by a wayward skate. I can still see the white ice below his neck turn deep red within seconds.

Malarchuk almost died, but he kept playing after his neck healed.

If you need more convincing that hockey players are coo coo, look no further than the Red Wings’ Tomas Holmstrom.

Holmstrom played in his 1,000th career NHL game Friday night. Good for him. That’s not an insignificant milestone.

But that also means that Holmstrom has subjected himself to 1,000 games of being hacked, whacked, face-washed and throttled—not to mention putting himself in the crosshairs of powerful slap shots from the point.

Holmstrom is that guy you’ve seen camping out in front of opponents’ nets since 1996 with utter disregard for his own well-being. Nothing good can come from stationing yourself where Holmstrom does during a hockey game, but a whole lot of bad can happen.



Well, there is one good thing that comes from it: scoring goals.

Holmstrom, before Friday’s game, had scored 240 goals in the NHL. I’ll bet 200 of them have come with a very expensive physical price to pay.

Holmstrom isn’t the flashy goal scorer who uses sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors to deposit pucks past goalies while nary being touched.

Oh no.

Holmstrom is the crazy guy in the war movies who tosses himself onto a grenade in a fox hole. Only the fox hole, in this case, is the goal crease. The grenade is the puck. And Holmstrom has allowed his body to be battered and bruised all in the name of moving said puck across the red line—for 1,000 games.

You figure that if Holmstrom plays about 15 minutes a night, then his 1,000 games represents 250 hours of punishment in front of the net. Can you imagine being slashed and cross-checked and making yourself a target for shooting pucks for over 10 days straight?

Holmstrom is the typical hockey player—which means he’s as crazy as a box of yo-yos. What does he think of all the abuse he’s endured for 1,000 games?

"It's fun, for sure,” he told the Free Press the other day. “People just are like, 'Congratulations, 998, 999. One to go.' Frequent reminders. It's fun."

I’m telling you, these guys are looney.

Congratulations, Tomas—you crazy SOB.

The Secret’s Out: O’Ree Broke Color Barrier Half Blind

The first black hockey player in NHL history was crushing my hand. He didn’t know his own strength.

Now THAT’S a hockey player’s grip, I thought. Strong. Firm. Bone-crunching, if you didn’t get your hand in there just right.

Willie O’Ree is 72, fit as a fiddle, and prancing around the country, playing pied piper for North America’s disadvantaged youth, hoping they’ll follow him into the world of ice hockey.

And he’s doing it all with one good eye. In fact, he did EVERYTHING in his hockey career with one good eye.

“I had an accident in my late teens, when a slap shot hit me in the right eye. I ended up losing about 95% of the vision in that eye,” O’Ree tells me. We’re sitting in a hotel in Detroit, he and I, in between one of O’Ree’s many appearances in town a few weeks back. It’s another leg of his pied piper tour. And there, in the quiet before the hotel lounge’s evening storm, he regales me with a story that he kept secret from his teammates, his coaches, everyone.

“I was a left winger and a left-handed shot, so because I couldn’t see out of my right eye, I had to completely turn my head to the right. But I decided to concentrate on what I COULD see instead of what I couldn’t see, and I only told two people about my eye: my youngest sister, and my best friend. I swore them to secrecy, because I was afraid if anyone found out they wouldn’t let me play again... the truth was that I was blind in my right eye.”

So there you have it. The “Jackie Robinson of Hockey” played with one good eye. And no one ever knew about it – except his sister and best friend. How could he have kept such a thing hidden?

“I never took an eye exam for any of the eleven professional teams I played for.”

Oh.

Willie O’Ree might be the Jackie Robinson of Hockey – he says the media dubbed him that – but his NHL debut was about as heralded as that of a little-known rookie called up from the Quebec Aces playing in just another regular season game in January. Which is what O’Ree was, and that’s exactly how it went down.

O'Ree, as a Bruin

“On January 18, 1958, the (Boston) Bruins contacted the Aces and said they wanted me to join the team in Montreal for their next game against the Canadiens,” O’Ree recalls. “Prior to that, to the Montreal fans I was just Willie O’Ree of the Quebec Aces. The big write up was that we beat the Canadiens, 3-0 – not that I broke any sort of color barrier or anything. I traveled with the team to Boston and Montreal beat us, 6-2. Then I was returned to Quebec to finish the season.”

O’Ree came back up during the 1960-61 season, when he played 43 games. It was his only NHL season. After that, he played minor league hockey – until 1979, at age 43.

The notion that O’Ree’s entry into the NHL was treated so subtly fascinates me. And he was the only black player until 1974, when Mike Marson suited up for the expansion Washington Capitals. Just because the other NHL teams were slow on the uptake shouldn’t be held against O’Ree, of course. He’s still a trailblazer, even if that trail was overgrown with weeds when Marson joined the fray.

Yet O’Ree didn’t see himself that way – as a trailblazer. Still doesn’t.

“Well, that was my goal, to be a professional hockey player and hopefully one day play in the National Hockey League,” he says with not so much as a tiny shrug.

Surely, I asked him, beyond the racial remarks, there must have been those “Jackie Robinson moments” that come with being a minority of one.

There were. But one stands out in O’Ree’s mind, and I can see why.

“There was a big right winger for the Blackhawks – about 6-foot-4, 230 pounds – named Eric Nesterenko. We got into an altercation (in Chicago); I was behind the net, and was coming out front, and Nesterenko came from my blind side and butt-ended me in the mouth (with his stick). Split my lip, split my nose, knocked my two front teeth out. He made a couple of racial remarks, but what really got me mad was that he was kind of laughing at me, waiting to see what I would do.

“So I hit him over the head with my stick, and we got into a fight. Both benches emptied. I had to remain in the locker room, for my own safety. That was probably the worst fight.

“But I told myself, if I’m going to leave the league, it’s because I don’t have the skill – not because someone’s trying to run me out.”

That, and concentrating on what he COULD see, instead of what he couldn’t, through that blind eye.

It’s easy to understand, when you spend some time with O’Ree, why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, in a rare fit of foresight, tabbed O’Ree to be the director of the league’s Diversity Program. That was ten years ago.

“We have approximately 39 programs throughout North America,” O’Ree says. “What I do are on and off-ice clinics with these programs, personal appearances, autograph sessions, fundraisers. I speak to about 40 schools a year. I go into the inner cities and try to encourage boys and girls to play hockey. Basically, I’ve had good success trying to let these kids know that there’s another sport out there that they can play. The tough part is getting them on the ice. But once we get them on the ice and they start maneuvering the puck with the stick, we find out that a lot of these boys and girls have a lot of natural talent.”

O'Ree today, instructing

O’Ree was in Detroit last month as part of the NHL’s “Hockey in the Hood” tour. The city was hosting a tournament, featuring youth teams from all over North America. All teams were made up of kids of color and who would never have had the opportunity to lace up a pair of skates if it wasn’t for the Diversity Program’s equipment bank – donated gear that gets recycled.

O’Ree is still wacking away those weeds, 50 years later.

(note: you can read the entire Q&A I had with O'Ree -- a five-part series that will continue throughout the month, at SET-Magazine.com)