BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – For Rick Ley, his second appearance at the Hartford Whaler Alumni weekend, is something he relishes and enjoys. Ley, now 70, can reflect on a hockey career where he played with many of the game’s best and was a major part of the development of Hartford hockey at its inception.
“Hartford is always about a new beginning for me. When I left Toronto and we’re in Boston and we got to Hartford, everything was new. The building, the fans, and the community. It was hard to explain. Trying to find a new house, get your life settled, and we really took the place by storm. It’s still is a very special place for me,” Ley, who resides in the greater Springfield area in the summer and Florida in the winter, said.
He loves to come back to Hartford for the yearly weekend in July.
“The Yard Goats do a first-class job in remembering the Whalers, and it’s so fun to see all these fans again.”
Ley’s junior career with the Niagara Falls Flyers (OHA now OHL), where he won two Memorial Cup titles in 1965 and 1968 and where he played four full years, he got to see some of the game’s greats in their early years of development. His goalie for his first two seasons was none of there than, Bernie Parent.
For two seasons he played with Derek “Turk” Sanderson who eventually won a Calder Trophy and two Stanley Cups, Don Marcotte (Boston), Jean Pronovost (Pittsburgh), Phil Roberto (Montreal, St. Louis), and Phil Myre (Atlanta). Some played in the NHL and many like him took the plunge with the WHA.
The wild, wacky World Hockey Association began with that first championship, The Memorial Cup, which was then a seven-game series. They beat the Edmonton Oil Kings in five games with a 4-1 win in Game 5. It was Game 3, on May 10, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
A big hit by Edmonton’s Bob Falkenberg in the first period on the late Bill Goldsworthy got the passion going.
Sanderson jumped Falkenberg in the second period off a faceoff and beat him unconscious and he was taken off on a stretcher. That ignited the fuse.
Early in the third period, Ley and Ron Anderson were each given match penalties for stick swinging. The referees called the game with 3:30 left in the third period after an initial fight between Rosaire Paiement and Al Hamilton ignited a brawl that got so bad that the police had to come out on the ice to stop it.
Ironically, the teams were given three days off prior to the brawl-filled game because the building was being used for an evangelical revival meeting.
“That was a wild night to be charitable about it. I earned the game misconduct. Anderson hit me in the head. I never wore a helmet then in those days, it wasn’t mandatory and was frowned upon among the players then. I speared him in return and earned the game misconduct feelings were running high. So myself, and Jean Pronovost, who didn’t play the game because of a bad back, when all hell broke loose with the players and the fans coming on the ice, grabbed our sticks to put them in the locker room so the fans wouldn’t attack us with our own sticks. It was chaos until the police came on the ice. That finally ended it.”
Ley and Niagara Falls went to the Memorial Cup tournament again in 1968 in his last junior season. He was the team captain. The series had its own uniqueness.
The Estevan Bruins and Niagara Falls both wore the same Bruins styled jersey (before merch was big) for Game 1 in Niagara Falls. In Game 2, they played in the fabled Montreal Forum. His Niagara Falls team opted to wear the Montreal Jr. Canadiens uniforms, and in Game 3, which was back in Niagara Falls, they wore the uniforms of the St. Catharines Teepees and did so for the remainder of the series.
With five minutes to go in their 8-1 championship-winning game, the head coach had the team put on their regular black and gold jerseys.
Ley then started out his pro career with the Toronto Maple Leafs, fresh off the wake of what was their last Stanley Cup championship. Again, he skated with some of the biggest names in the history of the game.
The late Pat Quinn, who would be his assistant coach in his last NHL coaching job in Vancouver, Jim Dorey, and the great, Dave Keon, would play with both of them with the WHA Whalers. The others included, at the time, the future Canadian hero of the 1972 Soviet-Canada Summit series, Paul Henderson, who scored the game-winning goal that allowed Canada to win the tourney. Tim Horton, whose name is now emblazoned across Canada with its national coffee and donut chain, Mike “Shaky” Walton, a top-flight scoring center, and Bob Pulford, a long time serving NHL executive, and a great goalie named, Jacques Plante.
In the summer of 1972, after four years in the NHL, got a phone call and an offer he never expected.
“There was some uncertainty at the beginning, for sure, it was all brand new, a lot of promises were being thrown around. Once they signed Bobby Hull in Winnipeg, we knew it was real. That was a clincher for lots of players then, to give it try.”
He would count as his junior teammates, four players who would be joining him on the first New England Whalers team that originally called Boston it’s home for the first two years of the franchise before moving to their new building in Hartford.
The players included Tom Webster, the all-time New England Whaler leading goal scorer, and defenseman, Brad Selwood, who both played all seven WHA Whaler years together. Then several players who spent a few seasons with him like Paiement and Garry Swain.
“The thing that made a difference for us, Hartford had one of the most solid backings of any of the franchises and was one of the most stable franchises in the history of the WHA along with Edmonton, Quebec City, and Winnipeg. We never had the problems some other cities had.”
The team won the first Avco Cup, a trophy that wasn’t in existence the week before the final game, and it was a nationally televised championship-winning game that would be bumped at the end of the contest by CBS-TV for a tennis tournament in Montreal.
“It was a different time then for sure and remember the Bruins had their AHL team, the Braves, playing in Boston then too. We knew we’re number three, but we made the best of it, and in the end, it all worked out for us.”
Those two years in Boston produced a host of hockey war stories. The story of team equipment being stolen, and the late John Cuniff, who had a friend who knew, the now late gangster, Whtey Bulger, who ruled South Boston. He remembers it well.
“What was even worse in losing the equipment, it was all brand new! We had just gotten the goalies’ stuff that was measured for their pads and everything, and we had a home game two days later. So, we show up for practice and holy crap, all our gear was gone. Some of the thieves weren’t too bright though, some were wearing our jerseys playing on the basketball court, so they found out quickly who it was and we got everything back the next day.”
Then came the move to Hartford, then a brand new building, market, and city that they could call their own. They were not going to have to compete with the Giant Spoked-B and the legendary number 4, Bobby Orr, or the shadow that drowned them out on the Boston hockey landscape at the Boston Arena (now known as Matthews Arena).
“Having Tommy Webster Woody (Selwood) and Jim Dorey helped make the transition easier. We all were familiar with one another in a new place. To have good friends then, so I was very, very fortunate in that regard.”
The on-ice portion of the experience was equally different.
“When you get there the roles changed a bit, the biggest thing is you got more minutes to play. In Toronto, I was the fifth or sixth defenseman, and then with the New England Whalers, I’m one of the top pairs, so that was a major difference. You got some power play and penalty killing time that you didn’t get in Toronto.
“The NHL owners never thought the WHA would last and the pay was very different too. My last year in Toronto I was making $18,000 a year. In Boston, my first year of the WHA, I was making $78,000.”
The WHA was his highlight. He played in six of the seven All-Star games and was named a first-team All-Star in the first and last year of the league. In the final year, he was named WHA Defenseman of the Year winning the Dennis Murphy Jr, Trophy, named after one of the league’s founders.
The 1976 All-Star Game was in Hartford, the first European and North American pro hockey series were major highlights.
So was the infamous, “Brawl in the Mall” with the Minnesota Fighting Saints. The fight was instigated by Jack Carlson, who suckered a then young heavyweight, Nick Fotiu, who would also play for the NHL Whalers, that would set off a 35-minute slugfest.
“That was even crazier than that Memorial Cup game. I’d never been a part of anything like that, but Jack, who played with me in Hartford, hit Nicky when he went into the bench. Nicky wasn’t a guy you wanted to have upset at you. We all saw it and went to help him. We never thought it would go that long.”
Ley proudly defends the WHA.
“The league was knocked around by people, but remember the NHL, five-to-seven years after the merger, saw that half of the top ten scorers in the NHL were former WHA players. We helped make the first real changes in wages for pro hockey players and the players today, who were not even born then, have no idea how much the economics of the game today can trace their roots right back to the WHA.”
The Whaler part of his life would last nearly two decades from his years as a player in the WHA (1972-1979), and the Whalers first two years in NHL (1979-1981) before he retired as a player, to his becoming an assistant coach (1982-1984), then a scout, then coaching for their AHL affiliate in Binghamton (1985-1987). He went on to coach the old IHL for five years, four with Muskegon and one in Milwaukee, before returning to Hartford for his last two-year stint as head coach for the Whalers from 1989-1991.
Those last two years, Ley has some regrets, especially when he took the “C” off Ron Francis’ jersey, which landed him in Whalers hell that lasts to this day. Ley sat straight up in his chair as he wanted to explain that whole incident.
“I’m glad you asked that. For years Eddie Johnston (the team’s GM) and I, caught a lot of (crap) from fans about that. It wasn’t our call. Prior to the start of the season, the owner, Richard Gordon, wanted to see us for a meeting. He told us, in no uncertain terms, we had to trade four players before the season was over. Their contracts were expiring and their salary requests were going up and he couldn’t afford them. Ronnie and Ulfie (Ulf Samuelson) were the first two.
“I was captain in my career. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, but we had no choice then. Richard Gordon was a pleasant man to talk to. He had a Ph.D., but he thought he knew everything. He knew nothing about running a hockey team. He was a terrible owner.
“Remember, you never want to be in the foxhole with the foxes,” Ley said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Ley went off to join Vancouver and hooked up with Pat Quinn as an assistant coach from 1991-1994 and then the head coach from 1994-1996 before Quinn replaced him mid-season. He was a Canucks pro scout for two years before returning to where he started in Toronto as an assistant coach for eight years before retiring in 2006.
The Whaler move nearly 23 years ago now is conflicting for Ley.
“Of course, I have deep feelings for Hartford after spending nearly twenty years here. You hated to see it. The support for too many years wasn’t there, however, everybody wants a villain. I really can’t blame the owner. The salary increases in the 1994 CBA were like the WHA increase and the spike was so high some teams, like Hartford and Quebec, couldn’t handle that unless they were prepared to borrow large sums of money or raise ticket prices too high. It was sad all the way around.”
What isn’t sad is for Ley and the fellow players and coaches to have a July summer day to celebrate his time with the Whalers.
