The Hit Men

When John Ferguson sets his Alley Oop jaw and says, in low, flat tones, "There are no friends on the ice. I didn't want any friends. I didn't give any favors, I didn't want any favors," he speaks with the somber finality of a judge pronouncing sentence. Tough talk pervades the world of professional hockey; all the pent-up macho instincts of the generally gray and docile Canadian psyche seem to have been concentrated on this simple, grandly violent game. Every man who ever pulled on a pair of the absurd short pants that tradition has cursed on hockey players considers himself tough.

Menacing chatter is part of the act, as it is with football linemen, boxers and roller-derby heroes; but it has a ring of authenticity with hockey players. Physical warfare is endemic to their game. Yet toughness in hockey is measured in degrees. Every player accepts the inevitability of shattered bones, toothless gums and gut-stitched skin. Then there are the genuinely aggressive men--the hard-skating body checkers who seek bruising physical contact with the zeal of middle linebackers. And beyond them are the meanest players of all. Call them fighters, enforcers, policemen, brawlers or whatever, they occupy an exclusive niche in professional sport. Their job is to protect their teammates and carry the threat of serious harm to their opposition.

To this day, the one man who stands above all others as a hockey policeman is John Ferguson. Had he not chosen to wear ice skates and Buster Brown pants, he might have been Canada's first heavyweight boxing champion. After 11 years in professional hockey--three with the American Hockey League's Cleveland Barons, eight with the Montreal Canadiens--John Bowie Ferguson has retired, at the age of 34, to the partnership of a thriving sportswear-manufacturing firm in Montreal. But the shadow of his powerful frame still looms over every arena in the National Hockey League. He is the man who carried the craft of fighting on a hockey rink to its pinnacle. Now he hunches across a wide mahogany desk, his large head bulging like an outsized biceps from a daintily patterned shirt. His eyes are fierce black dots separated by the mashed cartilage of a battered nose. "I understood two things when I went into the league," he says softly. "One, I couldn't skate as well as most of the guys; and, two, I was going to command respect. If I couldn't skate with 'em, I'd bring 'em down to my level--make them play my style of game. When I broke into the N. H. L., there were only about 100 players in the league. I swore that no one was going to take that Canadiens sweater off my back."

Nobody even snagged a stitch in Ferguson's precious sweater. In his first game in the N. H. L.--12 seconds after the opening face-off--Ferguson went after Terrible Teddy Green, one of the worst-tempered defensemen in the game, and drew his first major penalty. He was on his way toward developing the respect he wanted. "I took the stand that I'd never talk to the opposition. Never. Not in the summer. Not in the winter. I figured we were only kidding ourselves to play golf together one day and play hockey against each other the next.

"When I played with the Canadiens, we had superior hockey players--great skaters and scorers like Henri Richard, J. C. Tremblay, Yvan Cournoyer, Jean Beliveau. But they were not good fighters. If they could be intimidated by a more physical team, like the Boston Bruins, they became average hockey players. If you're intimidated, you're dead. A lot of guys will play great against some clubs and terribly against others, depending on their mental attitude. They might be Ok against 12 of the 14 clubs in the league and awful against the other two because some guys shoved 'em around. Against those two clubs, they'd be looking over their shoulders. That was where I'd come in. I'd see a couple of our guys being hit and I'd say, geez, I'd better straighten this out right now or we'll be in big trouble tonight. I'd try to equalize it right off the bat. I'd grab their biggest guy."

Ferguson raises a clenched fist and stabs the air--once, twice--in a pair of fluid movements. "The key is to be fast with your dukes. First you get him with a good shot. The gloves come off right away--that's automatic--then you get in the first punch. You grab his sweater to tie up his arms and keep hitting, but you've got to get the first shot. In the corners and along the boards, you can usually get it over quick; but in center ice, they can move around and hold on. Fighting: I couldn't say it was my job, but I felt it was. If I could bother the other team and score around 20 goals a year, I figured I was giving everything I could to the club.

"I always hated the opposition, no matter who they were. I can remember one night in the dressing room before a Stanley Cup final against Chicago. I stood up and told our guys, 'Look, some guys play 20 years and never get to a Stanley Cup final. You may never be here again. Win it at all costs. If you win it, you're the greatest guy in the world. If you lose it...maybe next year, maybe the year after. Those other guys, they've got one hand in your pocket. They'll fleece you--take everything you've got--your money, your reputation, your respect. There are no friends on the ice.'

"Before a game, if I saw one of our guys fooling around in the dressing room, I'd give him some shit. 'Get your mind on the game, you're not on a picnic or something,' I'd tell him. The same way on the ice. If I saw one of our guys talking, I'd really tear into him. They respected me for that."

Playing in six Stanley Cup finals, Ferguson was on the winning side five times--punching, checking, battering his way toward some hazy goal of total subjugation of the opposing players. Skating with chopped, heavy strides, he roamed the ice like an avenging angel, chin high, his stick more a weapon than a tool, seeking combat. Although his business interests lured him out of the game after a comparatively brief career, he holds the N. H. L. record for the highest penalty-minute average--152 minutes per year--and claims to have had the highest number of penalties in Stanley Cup play. "I rank pretty high on the list of all-time penalty minutes. [He is 17th, with 1214 minutes.] But don't forget, I played only eight years in the N. H. L.--most of the fellows ahead of me played twice that long."

The players with reputations as fighters can always be detected in their teams' statistics. They're the ones who spend the most time in the penalty box (although defensemen, simply by the nature of their trade, tend to accumulate penalties even if they're not particularly adept at fighting). Men like Keith Magnuson and Jerry Korab of the Chicago Black Hawks; the three Plager brothers of St. Louis--Barclay, Bill and Bob--who have been known to scrap among themselves while on the same team; Jim Dorey, formerly of the Toronto Maple Leafs and now with the New England Whalers in the World Hockey Association; Bob' Baun of the Maple Leafs; Carol Vadnais of the Bruins; and Vadnais' former teammates Derek Sanderson and John McKenzie, now in the W. H. A., are the men most frequently discussed when the subject of hockey fights comes up. Wandering Bryan Watson (he's played with 12 major- and minor-league teams in ten seasons) is also mentioned. He led N. H. L. penalty statistics in 1972 as a Pittsburgh defenseman with 210 minutes--that's almost three and a half games--primarily because his heart is proportionately larger than his body.

At 5'9", 170 pounds, Watson gives away substantial weight and reach to most of his rivals, but he maintains a reputation as a fighter and policeman. He entered the league as a roommate of Ferguson's and they maintain a strong mutual admiration. "Pound for pound, he's the toughest kid I've ever seen," says Ferguson. "He's a glutton for punishment and he takes a lot of shots, but he never quits."

"Fergy was the best," says Watson. "I can remember one Stanley Cup against the Bruins, when Boston was supposed to run Montreal off the ice. In the first period of the opening game, Fergy squared off against Teddy Green, the Bruins' best fighter, and really shoved him around. It was fantastic. The Canadiens came alive and Boston never recovered. We beat them four games straight. Fergy could do that for a team."

After Watson was traded from the Canadiens, he found himself a frequent sparring partner on the ice with his old friend and teammate. "Fergy and I had some good fights, but we managed to stay friends. Trying to slug it out with him was like farting into a windstorm."

He agrees with Ferguson about the value of a rousing fight and adds, "One thing about a hockey fight: I've never seen anybody get hurt in all the battles I've been around. Another thing: Nobody ever loses a hockey fight. No matter what happens, you always know you'll get another crack at the guy."

When asked to name the men he admires as fighters, Watson becomes vague and elusive. "There are a few guys I respect, but why should I mention their names? If they knew I thought they were any good, it might change their style of play against me. Naw, I wouldn't want anybody to think they could fight worth a damn."

Watson spends the off-season in backwater Bancroft, Ontario, a summer trading post for campers and fishermen 120, miles northeast of Toronto. He was born and raised there and played his amateur hockey in Peterborough, the only city of any size in the area. Like many of his associates, Watson is a reticent, private man. Canadian hockey players are immersed in the game from the time they're children--they're known as "rink rats"--and a thick insulation against the nuances of modern urban life builds up around many of them. While most contemporary professional athletes obtain a certain sophistication before they arrive in the big leagues, hockey players often jump from junior amateur teams like the Moose Jaw Canucks and the Three Rivers Dukes directly into the N. H. L. One day they are adolescents on skates, careening around dank, dimly lit rinks, playing before bawling crowds no larger than a handful of locals and being interviewed by no one more influential than a neighborly journalist; suddenly, they are thrust into the glare and thunder of the Boston Garden or the Montreal Forum.

A Canadian, now a senior advertising executive in New York City, put the situation into focus: "I grew up worshiping hockey players and especially the Toronto Maple Leafs; they were my superheroes. After living in Manhattan for a number of years, I had an opportunity to meet several N. H. L. stars. They were straight, open guys, but all I could think was, 'Good God, these are reincarnations of the men I idolized as a kid, playing in one of the most spectacular sports on earth, and they're all a bunch of farmers--just plain, stolid, Canadian farm boys!' "

• • •

There is a hazy stigma that hangs over hockey fighting. While all players agree that aggressiveness is crucial--and all, of course, presume themselves to be adequately aggressive--no one has figured out the proper rationale for outright combat. No other team sport played in civilized nations accepts fighting as an asset; and in the context of baseball or football, a blatant fighter would be denounced as a threat to the good order of the game. The hockey establishment's public refutation of fighting, coupled with its private acceptance, produces a schizophrenia about "sportsmanship" that doesn't exist in other games.

Orland Kurtenbach, the captain and top center of the Vancouver Canucks, doesn't include brawling among the fundamentals he teaches the young students at his hockey school in the off-season, but it's a valuable part of his personal repertoire. A rangy, heavily muscled man at 6'2" and 195 pounds, and one of the most respected fighters in the game, Kurtenbach went to the N. H. L. from a childhood in remote Cudworth, Saskatchewan, via an apprenticeship with such amateur teams as the Prince Albert Mintos. He will not discuss his reputation as a tough guy. "It isn't that I'm defensive about it," he said during a break from teaching a class at a hockey clinic in Vancouver. "I just make it a rule not to talk about my particular style. Too many writers emphasize one thing at the expense of others--or minimize it, depending on their particular point of view." Alluding to his enforcer's role on the Canucks, he added, matter-of-factly, "My play speaks for itself."

"Kurt is a quality fighter," says Ferguson, whose candor on the subject has probably increased since he retired. "He's one of the few guys in hockey who fight and win. Hell, everybody thinks he's a fighter, but there aren't many guys like Kurtenbach who can finish what they start. If I had to list the five best fighters in hockey, I'd have to name Wayne Cashman and Ken Hodge of the Bruins and Ted Harris, my old teammate--now with the Minnesota North Stars--and Kurt. Let's see, that's four...." Ferguson squints, pausing in faraway thought. "Hell, it's hard to think of five really good fighters in the league."

Wayne Cashman, all-star right-winger of the Bruins, is on everyone's list. A graceful long-limbed man with wispy blond hair, he roams the ice with easy strides, jaw and elbows thrust defiantly outward. His size--6'1", 180 pounds--makes him large enough to have an advantage in reach and strength over most of his rivals, but he has the speed and mobility of a middleweight. "On the Bruins we're lucky," he says, "because most of the guys can take care of themselves, so it isn't a question of having to be a policeman. Nobody needs much protection on our club. But if I was playing with a weaker team and I was told to try to take care of some of the other guys, I would."

Cashman shows no outward pride in his reputation as a fighter. "There's nothing fancy about it. After all, it's hard to throw a solid punch while balancing on a quarter-inch blade of steel. The element of surprise is important. If you can land a couple of good punches, that's about all you need."

Because Cashman believes that fighting (continued on page 198)Hitmen(continued from page 146) is necessary and not dirty, he thinks that penalty minutes for fighting should be compiled separately from time served for other, unsportsmanlike, offenses. "Cheap stuff, like hooking or spearing with the stick or tripping, is no good, but fighting is basic. Still, a lot of guys don't like to talk about it. They're the ones you really have to worry about."

Ken Hodge, Cashman's powerful associate on the Bruins, agrees. "The really good fighters are the quiet men," he says. But he himself is an exception. At 6'2" and 215 pounds, he can draw blood with the best of them, but he likes to talk about his sport. "The game has changed in the last few years; the emphasis is now on goal production and assists. The really big money goes to the guys who put the puck in the net, and that, in a sense, has tended to de-emphasize fighting. Not that it isn't still a part of the game--a very important part--but the best players can do both. For example, Ferguson became a double asset to the Canadiens when he began to score 20 or 30 goals in his later years. The same with Kurtenbach, who's scoring more goals now than in the past. In the old days, everybody fought everybody. Even the refs got beat up.

"When I came up with Chicago, I got a reputation as a fighter. In fact, because I didn't really fit into the Black Hawks' style of play, I became a policeman. I had a lot of fights. Now that's changed, and I try to concentrate on scoring and other aspects of my game. I still won't back down--not from anybody--but I don't show off anymore. Oh, you get mad, like the night the whole Bruins team went into the crowd in Philadelphia before we realized that 20 against 20,000 was terrible odds. And you still make reflex movements. If you get hit hard enough, you might swing your stick and knock some guy's teeth out or break his nose, but chances are he'll be helping you off the ice in a couple of games. That wouldn't have happened in the old days.

"Fighting on skates is damn difficult. I've seen lots of guys swing so hard they've spun themselves right off their feet. But not too much damage is done. I've been cut when somebody has stepped on my hand, and when I was with Chicago, Teddy Green went after Eric Nesterenko and tried to pick him up and fling him onto the ice. Teddy strained his knee doing that and it's bothered him ever since. But that's minor stuff compared with what some people visualize.

"The secret of the game is forcing the opposition to make mistakes, making them adopt your style of play. Naturally, the most aggressive team has the best chance, and certainly its ability to fight has to be one of its weapons. That's why the Bruins have been so successful. The idea is to keep a succession of aggressors on the ice for 60 minutes. If one of your teammates is getting the shit kicked out of him, nobody had better stand around and watch."

• • •

Since ice hockey began--probably as an amalgam of field hockey, hurling and a particularly bloody British game called bandy that was played on frozen lakes and rivers, using curved sticks and a ball rather than a puck--critics have argued that men like Hodge, Green, Cashman and their peers have made the game a violent parody of sport. Until recently, the national press in the United States largely ignored hockey, except to run Wirephotos of a major brawl or a post game portrait of a toothless goalie with a complexion resembling a crocheted antimacassar. Now the game is in the midst of wild expansion and more attention is being focused on its allegedly cruel and bloody traditions. Despite general agreement that fighting is declining in importance, there remains the clear truth that the toughest team, talent being equal, wins. That's why the Bruins are Stanley Cup champions. After beating the Rangers for the cup last spring, Derek Sanderson, Boston's long-haired, easy-living center, said, "We beat them because we had 18 or 19 guys on our club who would fight. They only had six or seven." Ferguson agrees that the Bruins' bellicosity made the difference. "The Rangers lack toughness. They have all the physical skills--maybe more than Boston--but they don't get mad first. They don't control the game: instead, they react to the other team. The Rangers would probably be the best if they commanded that little extra bit of respect."

While a hockey player scrambles up and down his 200-foot patch of ice, attacking, being repelled, fleeing back to his own end to form a defense, members of the opposition thud against him like insects against a light bulb. Checking, as this battering is euphemistically called, is the difference between winning and losing hockey. No team checks as effectively as the Bruins, one of the most physical teams in the history of the sport.

Boston coach Harry Sinden is candid about the benefits of brawling: "A lot of people think the key to the game is control of center ice, where power plays on goal can be formed. On the contrary. I believe the secret is the control of the corners and the boards, where strength and contact make the difference. If your men can maintain physical and mental control of the other team in these areas, you will win. The constant hitting in the corners and along the boards will (continued on page 202)Hitmen(continued from page 199) wear down and mentally exhaust a less aggressive team. Remember, there is no out-of-bounds in hockey. There is no place to go to escape that kind of punishment."

Some theorists believe that the Bruins' rink in the Boston Garden, being nine feet shorter and two feet narrower than the regulation 200'x85' N. H. L. playing surface, adds a bonus to the team's aggressive brand of play. Hodge doesn't think so. "It's the shape of the rink and the configuration of its boards that are important. Knowing how to play the puck off the boards in the league is a factor, but the Bruins would be just as tough if their home ice was larger than anybody else's."

Sinden and John Ferguson are kindred souls. "If you control the corners, you control the game," says Ferguson. "When I went into the corner after the puck, I made sure I was the meanest bastard who ever went in there. I'd use everything--my weight, my arms, my stick, my elbows, everything I had--until the corner was mine."

Sinden speaks admiringly of Ferguson. "When I became coach of the Bruins, I would have taken Ferguson over anybody in the league. Anybody. His size--six feet, 190 pounds--is ideal in terms of strength and mobility; but, more important, he had the kind of aggressiveness that could lift an entire team and keep it hitting and fighting long after it had passed the point of exhaustion."

Although hard-core hockey fans are familiar with Ferguson and his style of play, his is hardly a name that people with a casual interest in the sport could identify. Does this mean that the great scorers get an inordinate share of attention while the Fergusons--hockey's counterparts to football guards and tackles--are the keys to the game? Not entirely. While some might argue that Ferguson deserved more publicity, few will say that the more gifted players deserve less. In fact, the complete players--Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe--can fight, too. They have merely refined the shooting, skating and checking aspects of their game. "Orr is a good fighter," says Ferguson, "but he does everything well. He is so fast, so elusive, that he's hard to check. You can't get a clean shot at him. You just try to bother him, get in his way and keep him off stride. Otherwise, he alone can control the game. Hull is a big, strong, aggressive hockey player, but, unlike Orr, he can be checked."

Watson, who shadowed Hull manically during the 1966--1967 Detroit-Chicago Stanley Cup play-off, tends to agree, but adds, "You've got to be careful not to get him mad. Then he'll go crazy and score goals all over the place." Watson did, however, goad Hull into a string of stupid penalties in that series--a major factor in Chicago's loss to Detroit.

Gordie Howe, the retired Red Wing who many contend is the greatest player in history, brought the kind of respect Ferguson understands onto the ice along with his many other skills. "If Gordie hit me, I'd hit him back," Ferguson says, in an implied concession that Howe was one of the few competitors who carried the fight to him.

At six feet, 205 pounds, Howe had brutal strength and great speed. He was a master with his stick and, if provoked, could use it to neutralize any tormentor. He worried people and when he was in his prime, the Red Wings ruled hockey.

Perhaps Howe's greatest moment as a fighter came before a packed Madison Square Garden crowd on the first day of February 1959. His slumping Red Wings had come to town to play the Rangers, who were struggling with Chicago for second place in the N. H. L. New York took immediate command and, except for a goal by Howe, dominated the first period. At left wing for the Rangers was rookie Eddie Shack, a youth distinguished by a large nose and a healthy appetite for physical contact. Early in the game, the Red Wings' Pete Geogan bounced Shack into the boards so hard that his flying body broke a sheet of the protective glass bordering the rink, causing a five-minute delay. With slightly over three minutes remaining in the first period, Shack tangled with Howe's always-lethal stick and wobbled away with a head cut that later required three stitches. The Rangers immediately retaliated by running the score to 4--1.

During the lull leading to the next face-off, Lou Fontinato, a burly defense-man for the Rangers, skated over to Howe and snarled, "Keep your stick to yourself. And lay off Shack." Fontinato at that time was considered the best fighter in the league. He was the Rangers' policeman, the self-appointed protector of youngsters like Shack. (Added to his ire was the memory of 12 Howe-inflicted stitches in his right ear from a brawl two seasons before.)

Thirteen seconds later, Howe and Shack collided heavily behind the Detroit net. Surprisingly, Howe lost his footing while Shack legged away in pursuit of the puck. Howe scrambled to his feet, doubtlessly refixing his aim on the rookie, when Fontinato bustled against him, ready to fight. Sticks and gloves hit the ice and one of the most memorable brawls in hockey history took place. (Veteran fans compared it to the night 20 years earlier when the Rangers' Muzz Patrick flattened Boston's Eddie Shore.) Everyone was spellbound as the two big men rolled and scuffled in the ten-foot corridor between the goal and the end boards. They watched Howe snatch Fontinato by the shirt, throat-high, and tag him with a series of uppercuts. Press reports of the event varied wildly. No one was sure whether it was Howe's right hand or left that did the damage. According to the World-Telegram and Sun, the confrontation lasted 30 seconds. The Herald Tribune estimated a full minute. The Daily News breathlessly reported four minutes. Such dramas always seem to last longer than they actually do and it's probable that the entire matter ran less than a minute before referees split the pair. Fontinato was clearly the loser. His nose, already broken four times, was mashed and bloody. Howe dislocated a finger--doubtlessly in a collision with Fontinato's face--and sustained a gash over his eye.

Both men were banished to the penalty box for five minutes. While Fontinato grumbled about a "lucky punch" and made dark threats of a rematch, Howe was being heralded as the toughest man in the league. The fight seemed to pump new life into the Red Wings and they scored three goals before losing, 5--4. Shack gained a measure of retribution by elbowing Detroit defenseman Warren Godfrey sufficiently to hospitalize him with a severe concussion. Fontinato played the remainder of the game with his nose looking like a rudder swung hard to starboard, then entered St. Clare's Hospital for surgery on his clogged nasal passages.

Howe's triumph had little permanent effect on the Red Wings. Four days later, the two teams met again in Detroit. Fontinato's nose job had been so complicated that he stayed in New York, giving what one would presume even more impetus to the Red Wings. In fact, the Rangers humiliated them, 5--0, so infuriating Detroit coach Sid Abel that he fined 14 of his players, including Howe, $100 apiece. As a footnote to buttress Watson's contention that nobody ever loses a hockey fight, Fontinato returned to the ice a few days later and carried on as if nothing had happened. Later traded to Montreal, he continued to flail away at the opposition until one night when he caromed off New York's rugged Vic Hadfield and broke his neck against the boards. After that injury, which would have killed a lesser man, he retired to his farm in Canada, surely to ponder what difference it might have made if he had landed the first blow on that night in 1959.

Fontinato's effort in that clash of more than a decade ago was a classic example of one of hockey's best policemen at work. Other players like him, probably led in spirit by Ferguson, have been operating for years in the N. H. L., but new rules have blunted their impact. Fights on the ice have always had a contagious quality. If two men squared off, others would quickly join in, and it was not unusual for both benches to empty until the rink became littered with clots of men grappling like helpless, inert sumo wrestlers. The secret of hockey fighting is to land quick blows, as any prolonged struggle will degenerate into clumsy groping and clinching. With only three officials on the ice, it sometimes takes as long as a half hour to uncouple everyone and get the play resumed. "It's an awful spectacle," admits Sinden.

"Everybody got bored with them, including the guys in the fights," adds Hodge.

With hockey gaining appeal through increasing television coverage, N. H. L. president Clarence Campbell decided that the mass fighting only made the game and its players look juvenile. (It also threatened the split-second broadcast schedules.) While emphasizing that he considered fisticuffs a legitimate part of the game, he instituted two measures designed to curb the small, slow riots. Generally referred to as the "third-man rule," Campbell's regulation imposes a major five-minute penalty and a fine for a third player who enters a two-man battle. A man who comes off the bench to fight faces banishment for the remainder of the game.

The rule severely limits the role of the policemen by preventing them from skating to the immediate aid of a threatened teammate--although it hardly deters direct assaults. "I guess it's a good rule," says Ferguson, who might be expected to think otherwise, "but I think it takes some of the excitement out of the game. Hell, I can't think of three good fights I saw at the Canadiens' games all year. But it's curbed a lot of unnecessary scraps. It takes the phonies out of the fights--guys who would start something because they knew somebody would come in to help them."

A case can be made for a slightly civilized trend coming to major-league hockey. The old days seem to have been bloodier, even if the natural urge to romanticize is discounted. "Guys like Orr--great skaters--have speeded up the game," says Watson. "I don't think the checking is as hard as in the past, simply because the players are quicker and more elusive. And the new rules have cut back on the unnecessary fights. But they'll never stop entirely."

Will hockey become a game of skaters gliding gracefully over the ice, brushing each other with listless caresses? Not likely, as long as the rinks are lined with boards, and wooden sticks are held by men like Watson, Hodge, Kurtenbach and, of course, their inspirational leader--Ferguson.

"Fighting has been a part of hockey for 50 years," he says. "It'll be with us another 50. Count on it."