Story and Photo By: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – Doug Roberts, 80, is the older of the Roberts brothers who played with the New England Whalers and was a trailblazer throughout his hockey career.
The Detroit-area native and his brother Gordie appeared for his first visit at the summer’s Hartford Whalers weekend celebration thrown by the Hartford Yard Goats last week.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a lot of these guys. It’s very exciting to renew old friendships and be here with my brother Doug. It’s a very wonderful thing the team (the Yard Goats) do for us old Whalers,” Roberts said.
Doug Roberts, Sr., started with the first Detroit junior hockey team in 1960-61.
“Gordie Howe was everybody’s hero, so at 16 or 17 it was natural to play for the junior Red Wings, and playing in Canada was our only choice back then, and we had a lot of animosity built up in those days between us,” he said with a laugh.
COLLEGE
Roberts had three solid years at Michigan State (1963-65), where he entered on a football scholarship. They allowed him to play two sports. He chose hockey.
An All-American in 1965, he was team Michigan State’s captain in his senior year, became the Spartans MVP, and finished his career with 56 goals and 109 points in only three years of play. Freshmen were ineligible for varsity sports as per the NCAA rules at the time. He did, however, lead them in scoring as a junior (21 goals) and senior year (28 goals and 61 points), earning a three-year varsity letter.
“I really wanted to help my parents financially and the football scholarship, which I was lucky to get, allowed me to go and to ease the burden on the family with all the other boys in the house,” said Roberts.
The Detroit Red Wings selected him in the early draft process in that era, in which they took a player outside of the “draft.” Then, the draft was just two rounds making you in their “territory.” Roberts was signed as a free agent on June 12, 1965.
“I naturally expected it would be the Red Wings. You didn’t have much choice then as you do today. They had followed my career with the Junior Red Wings and at Michigan State, so I was fortunate.”
BEGINNINGS
He played part-time with the Red Wings and spent most of his time in the Central Professional Hockey League (CPHL) playing in Memphis years before the Nashville Predators came to Tennessee. He was also in Ft. Worth, Texas, as the forerunner to the original Central Hockey League.
Roberts played a season-and-a-half of his 12-year NHL career with the Red Wings. At the time, they were a dynasty in the six-team NHL. Also on that roster were “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio, and Ted Lindsay.
Canadian players, almost exclusively, populated the NHL. Roberts and Tommy Williams from Minnesota were the only two American college players in the entire NHL then.
“There weren’t many of us (Americans) around and it took time for them to accept us. That’s something the WHA (Whalers GM Jack Kelley in particular) brought around more of us American players on the rosters.”
CHARLIE FINLEY
When the first expansion came along, doubling the six-team league to 12, he was part of an off-season trade on May 27, 1968. It was a four-for-two player deal for the established NHL’ers of the day. He and Bob Baun and Ron Harris spent three years with Oakland/California Golden Seals with their notorious owner, Charles O. Finley.
Finley knew little about hockey when he bought the team into the league for the 1970-71 season. He changed the team name to the Bay State Seals for the season’s first two games and treated it like a carnival circus act. They had the legendary white skate blades, iconic for their early years until their GM, the late Bill Torrey, got him to go to a green/gold color scheme of his other owned pro sports franchise, baseball’s soon-to-be World Champions, the Oakland A’s.
Torrey would quit halfway through the season.
“(Finley) had an ego. He didn’t know much about hockey other than owning the team. Fortunately, I never had to wear those white skates. That came after I left. I did have the green and yellow skates for a season and those poor trainers had to paint those blades green and yellow to match our uniform colors,” Roberts said with a laugh.
SEALS
Roberts represented the Seals in the 1971 NHL All-Star game and became the first American player to do so. His coach at the time was Scotty Bowman, who was then with the St. Louis Blues.
He spent the evening with Bobby Hull (game MVP), Yvan Cournoyer of the Montreal Canadiens, Eddie Giacomin and Jean Ratelle of the New York Rangers, and Boston Bruins’ greats Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr.
Roberts was traded for cash to Boston on September 4, 1971. That year he mostly played in the AHL with the Boston Braves at the Boston Garden. He avoided playing in the Boston Arena (now the Matthews Arena home to Hockey East power Northeastern), where the Braves played the following year.
Roberts played for half the season and the playoffs with the 1972 Stanley Cup Champion Bruins. He was one of the games’ first swing players taking time at both forward and defense, filling in for injured ex-Ranger Carol Vadnais.
“It was at night playing in Boston as opposed to California in those days. The fans were excellent, so loud and supportive. The locker room with Esposito, Orr, Cashman, Sanderson, and Cheevers. It was always electric with so many good players. You always felt confident you could do something with that group you were with,” remarked Roberts.
TRADED AGAIN
Roberts was then traded back to Detroit (again for cash) on November 23, 1973, as the Red Wings were beginning their downward flight organizationally.
Roberts then did what many other players at the time saw as an opportunity to join the new upstart World Hockey Association (WHA). They all felt it would give them a new, extended lease on their hockey life and some good cash in their bank account.
Sitting in Tidewater, Virginia, with the AHL Virginia Wings, Roberts received a sales pitch on the WHA as he split the year between Detroit and Tidewater in his second season back.
He signed with New England Whalers as a free agent in September 1975. In the original WHA General Player Draft, he was initially drafted by the Los Angeles Sharks (14th pick, Rounds 1-10) on February 12, 1972.
Roberts played just two seasons with the Whalers and was with one of the more stable franchises in the league. He got to play against Gordie Howe with Houston Aeros and his two sons Mark and Marty, Bobby Hull in Winnipeg, and his Swedish linemates Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson.
END IS NEAR
“It was the end of my career. I was 35 at the time, and I figured I take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself.”
He got a bonus in his last two North American pro years playing with his younger brother Gordie. He found during his contract talks as he would find out he was already on hockey scouts’ radar, so it was an early package deal.
“They gave me a two-year contract that was about how much I thought I had left to play. Boston wasn’t going to do that, and Detroit wasn’t going to do that. So, I took the money and offer and came to Hartford. It was a good decision all the way around.”
His brother, named after Gordie Howe, came in with him in the 1975-76 and 1976-77 seasons. They were the second pair of brothers on the team, joining the Swedish twins Christer and Thommy Abrahamsson.
“I really loved the fact that the Whalers gave me that opportunity to play with him, and he was just turning 18 at the time,” Gordie Roberts said. “He was pretty raw, but they really wanted him. I was really surprised, and so was he. We figured he had another two years in junior before he would turn pro. The money was good, so he took it. His birthday was a plus for him too. Being early October (4th), he only missed a few weeks of training camp and the regular season.
“I idolized Gordie Howe when I was growing up as a kid. I was the stick boy for the games for the opposing teams, so I got to hang around the locker room area at the (original Red Wings home) Olympia Arena, where they played. When I would go in to change the towels, the sticks, or the jerseys, he would playfully wrestle with me at the time and then actually play with him and then against him, and Gordie got to play with him too. It was very special, and we were so lucky. I learned early to keep my head up. He surprised me when he threw his elbow at me when he was out there. He was very, very strong.
“Tell you one night driving behind him his car one night. I could tell it was him just from his (silhouette) outline; it was him. That’s how big he was.”
EUROPE
Then as his playing career wound down, he ended his career in Finland playing for Jokerit Helsinki (going Division II this year) with Jari Kurri (pre-Gretzky line days) and outscored him four goals to two.
“He was underage that year, really, really young, 16 or 17, very raw. He wasn’t the same player he would become. He was so very quiet. He spoke almost no English at all,” remarked Roberts.
COACHING
Roberts returned to Connecticut and started his coaching career with a college club program. He began in New London along the CT Southeastern shoreline and the tiny liberal arts school, Connecticut College.
Initially, it was called Thame College, opened in 1911, then at the lowest level of college hockey. This co-educational institution was admitting men for the first time in response to Wesleyan banning women.
“It’s ironic how I got there. We were renting a house in East Hartford for the last two years I was in Hartford. Our next-door neighbor had graduated from Connecticut College. She told me they were building a new rink at Connecticut College. She asked me if I would be interested in coaching there. I was really interested in a program that was just developing. She wrote a fabulous letter of recommendation to the administration of the school. They were so impressed, and I went and interviewed, but they were so impressed by her latter, they had already decided to hire me before we met and spoke,” recounted Roberts.
It was a developing process.
“They had been admitting men, but there was an imbalance (ratio) man to women. The numbers were small. They didn’t get bigger or have the big sports, football and baseball, at the time. Gradually, the numbers became about equal, and the rink was built over two years.
Then the natural progression of the program was developed for hockey, and the rink was so important because the nearest one was at Wesleyan (in Middletown in the middle of the state) at that time,” commented Roberts.
After a first year of varsity action for the Camels, their program went 12-10-1, then Division II ECAC South ranked either #1 or #2 from 1986-1990. They finished as the conference runner-up and then spent the next three straight years as runner-up, finally capturing the top spot in 1990.
“We didn’t have a lot of good players at first. I started scouting in the Boston area at first, worked with folks at admissions and we started to build a team from there,” said Roberts.
In 1991, Connecticut College was invited to go to the stronger ECAC East conference. They finished as conference runner-up in 1998 and made the quarterfinals in 1996 and 1999.
CALLING IT A CAREER
He went 252-249-28, retiring in 2004 after 23 seasons, and ran the college’s arena, the Dayton Ice Arena.
“Once we got the word out, starting to have local skate nights on the weekend, senior leagues, it seemed to take off from there because we really opened it to the public. They’re not doing that much anymore. Like people in nearby Rhode Island and in other parts of the state had to go to Wesleyan or Hamden.”
The program was moved up to the ECAC East in 1998 and migrated to the NESCAC (New England Small College Athletic Conference) in 1982, joining Trinity College (Hartford).
“That was a critical step for the program to go to the NESAC. That turned everything around. We became a little small Ivy League conference. Our Athletic Director Fran Shields was friends with all the AD’s in the NESCAC and, despite not having the two big sports, turned the tables and got us in,” Roberts related.
His son Doug Jr. played four years with Camels playing on the 1990 ECAC South championship team before embarking on a short five-year minor pro career in the ECHL, CHL, WPHL, and WCHL.
His other son Dave bucked the family tradition. He played for his father’s rival college school, the University of Michigan, rather than for his alma mater. He played for the 1994 US Olympic team coached by the late Yale head coach, Tim Taylor, and had an 11-year career playing NHL time with Edmonton, Vancouver, and St. Louis.
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