BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – Hockey has been ingrained in Kevin Morrison’s DNA from his early days in Nova Scotia through the time he passed through Connecticut in the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaving an indelible mark in New Haven.
In the fall of 1969 New Haven, while much of America was embroiled in tremendous social change and a great degree of civic disorder very similar to the turmoil the nation faces currently.
Student protests against the Vietnam War raged on in The Elm City at nearby Yale University. The country was coming apart on the heels of two very public and brutal assassinations of the Reverend, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert Kennedy. Meanwhile, the 1969 trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale and the “New Haven Nine” was just starting.
However, amid the chaos and disorder, there was one thing that was a uniting and dominant force, hockey on Saturday nights with the Eastern Hockey League’s, New Haven Blades at the old New Haven Arena.
“It was a crazy time,” then Blades d-man, Morrison said. “Cops told us what streets to avoid to get away from any hassles. We all mostly lived in East Haven, so about eight of us met at a gas station and followed one another in (on I-95 South). We got off the first exit over the bridge (Q-Bridge/Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge) and worked our way down to the arena (via Chapel Street), which had a gated parking garage (on Grove and Orange Street) at the time and we all parked there.”
Entering his first season as a professional, Morrison was a rough-and-tumble, solid-skater who had a solid slapshot. He was from Sydney, Nova Scotia in the Canadian Maritimes, and was discovered by a New York Rangers scout, “Soupy” Campbell (long before Colin Campbell, who played and coached with the Rangers) who saw Morrison at a Sydney Academy high school hockey game where he scored five goals in a mid-60s game and signed him to a junior deal for an audition.
He was originally supposed to go to the Kitchener Rangers.
”Back then, in other provinces, especially in Ontario, you were allowed to have up to eight players from other provinces in the country. Well, the teams in the West and Quebec complained, because Ontario was getting all the good guys. So the rule was changed to six players, So Kitchener said, they had enough. The Rangers said, ‘We’re gonna make a deal in Drummondville to put our team there, so we’ll send you there. I didn’t care. I just wanted to play hockey. Team affiliations and arrangements were very different in those days. The Drummondville Rangers then, with the Quebec Junior Hockey League (QJAHL), gave him the exposure on a big stage at the Drummondville Civic Center.”
The QJAHL was one of the two junior circuits in the 1960s in the province of Quebec along with the Montreal Metropolitan (Junior) Hockey League (MMHL) before they merged and became today’s Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Morrison’s coach was Maurice Filion, who would become one of the top executives with the WHA’s Quebec Nordiques, and two of his teammates then were Michel Parizeau, who he would cross paths with later in his career, and the great Marcel Dionne, then just a local boy just blossoming into one the great players he would become in the NHL.
For Morrison, he started out as a forward and by chance became a defenseman.
“I was a forward. The guy who went down checked the guy in the corner and got back up your wing. There was no weave in those days! One day in practice I was doing this backward drill and I was skating through the (goal line) line on both sides bumping into his coach and I figured as long as I got it right, I wouldn’t have to do it again. So by backing into coach Filion from that point on he put me at defense, I stayed there the rest of my career.”
Morrison arrived from Sydney and played in the last ten regular-season games. The team had qualified for the Memorial Cup tournament and he played three games the previous season prior to the school year starting.
Drummondville played in the 1968 Memorial Cup tournament under a different format than the one in place currently. They lost the Quebec final to the Verdun Maple Leafs three-games-to-one missing out the big tournament in its 50th season that year. His opponents included future Hall-of-Fame defenseman, Guy Lapointe (Montreal), future New Haven Nighthawks, and NHL center, Guy Charron, defenseman, Andre “Moose” Dupont and goalie, Gilles Meloche. The other goalie, Wayne Wood, Morrison would see years later in the WHA. He stoned them in Game Four.
“We outshot them by a wide margin,” Morrison stated. “We couldn’t put anything past Wayne that day. The irony is Wayne would be drafted by the Rangers the year after I turned pro.”
The Drummondville Rangers didn’t get the recognition by the new QMJHL Voltigeurs when the team was formed and hockey returned to the city in 1982. When they entered the Q and not until ten years ago, when the man whose name is now emblazoned atop the arena, Dionne helped correct the oversight.
“It was so nice when Marcel had Drummondville Rangers hats and jerseys made up for all of us and we finally got our banner raised to the rafters. It was long overdue to get our acknowledgment of our contribution to hockey in Drummondville. Marcel’s parents were still with us, and they were so happy to see it happen, as much as he did. They thanked me for protecting him all those years,” Morrison said with a laugh. “It was a special fun night and we now have a wall honoring our team. One of the best nights of my hockey career.”
The following year, Drummondville was in need of a goalie when the season started, so Filion traded Morrison to acquire one.
In 1968-69, he played for the St. Jerome Alouettes and was named an All-Star with the team, He won the final title in the seven-team Montreal Metropolitan (Junior) Hockey League (MMHL) history, beating the Laval Saints in five-game series playing in the Melancon Arena with a regular-season record of 35-10-3. The team beat Montreal North Beavers in five games in the first round of the playoffs. The league’s leading scorer was from the Laval team, Pierre Brind’Amour, who would become a Blades teammate two years later.
The team lost to the Sorel Blackhawks in the Quebec Provincial Final, in three straight games to advance to the Eastern Canada Memorial Cup playoffs.
Hockey was changing like the world around it. The NHL had just gone through two expansions that took “The Original Six” to 14 teams creating a growing number of opportunities.
He was drafted by the New York Rangers in the fourth round (35th overall) in the 1969 Draft. In those days, the NHL Draft was not the glitzy show it is today. Morrison found out he had been selected an entire week later while reading a local newspaper, the Cape Breton Post.
“It was in small-type just, ‘K. Morrison, drafted by the Rangers, 3rd round, 45th overall by the New York Rangers. No calls or anything.”
He did receive a nice $3,000 signing bonus at the time, a pittance by today’s standards. Morrison put it towards his immediate needs when he got to New Haven, a workable set off wheels.
“I brought a 1970 Chevelle. I think it was like $2,800. The team had a deal with a local dealership, so for the time, I got a brand new car.“
The Blades were a fixture in New Haven as part of the old Eastern Hockey League (EHL). They were providing players with a place to play and for the local community, a viable community asset, to cheer for.
The Blades, in part, inspired the movie Slapshot, the fictional movie based entirely on real people and real events. The film premiered at the Yale Repertory Theater on Chapel Street in the mid-1970s.
The movie may have been a parody, but it told the stories of many people who crossed Morrison’s path in the brawling, carnival atmosphere that was on display at the New Haven Arena.
In his first season, Morrison played well for a raw rookie who was just embarking on a wild ride in the next ten years.
His first head coach was the legendary Don Perry, who was, at the time, a giant of a man and a legend in New Haven hockey history. Slapshot’s coach, Reggie Dunlop, had a lot of Perry in him.
“I didn’t know much about Perry. He had just retired.” Morrison said. “Or the Eastern League for that matter. My first meeting, he told me, ‘Watch this guy, he’ll chop your face off, and this other guy will hit ya’ from behind. I’m wondering, ‘What the hell have I gotten myself into here?’ I made up my mind right there, if this is how it’s gonna be, I’m gonna be doing the giving not getting smacked around.”
He also paid his dues as a rookie by having a scrap against one of the league’s tougher players, and a New Haven Blades legend in his own right, the late Blake Ball. In New Haven, Ball had accumulated an amazing 1,273 PIM in just 277 games (4.59 PIMs per game average). He accumulated a total of 2,029 PIM in 450 EHL games.
Then a player-coach for the Long Island Ducks, when Ball got into a scrap with Morrison, who did very for himself catching Perry’s eye.
“I went into the corner and gave him a solid hit. He was a big man. I saw his gloves sliding off. I got mine off quicker and did very well for myself.”
He posted solid numbers. In 48 games Morrison tallied 24 goals and 42 points and 136 PIMs. He played with one of the craziest characters in hockey history, John Brophy, a minor-league menace in his own right and who played in New Haven the year before.
Perry was very pointed about him. He inspired a lot of the “Dr. Hook,” Tim McCracken character.
“Never take your eyes off him. You go in the corner with him, he’ll put his stick in your face. He’ll spear you and John was 38 at that point. Perry told me one night in Salem, from the Southern Division, was in town the season before and had a new tough guy from Quebec, this French guy who had no idea about Brophy. Brophy came around the net and just takes a whack at the guy. The Salem player wants to kill him, but Brophy goes up ice yelling and cursing at the ref, ‘What did I do?’ Next shift, he did the same thing, going around the net, and this time he hit the guy in the mouth. He only got a major penalty. Today he would have been suspended 20 games.”
A broken ankle cost Morrison over 20 games. He played mostly forward on a team that had enough defenseman. He was the odd man out, so he played left wing and was a swingman before that term became commonplace.
His team finished in second place with 39 wins (93 points) and swept Johnstown in the opening round of the playoffs. They lost to the fiercest rival New Haven had at the time in the Clinton (Utica, NY) Comets in a seven-game series. The Comets would go on to win the EHL championship.
“They were our rival. We were down three-to-nothing and Dave Hainsworth threw three straight shutouts. We tied the series up at three. We thought we had them, but we just didn’t finish it off.”
Hainsworth was very complimentary of his play.
“He was much better, I think more comfortable as a defenseman than as a winger. In those days, rosters were much shorter. We had just four defensemen with nine forwards and 13 players total, so he got a lot of ice time. He was always there to back us up. When we needed it, when the play got rough, he took care of things. Kevin had a scrap or two,“ Hainsworth said. “He played the game simple, really good on both ends of the ice. One of the better players that we had. We had the Rangers, who we were (affiliated with) here. He was a part of them and they had drafted Kevin. So they advanced him a bit more, but he was a lot better than some guys, a little more polish, but breaking in pro hockey then was very tough in those days.”
His play in the first year was noted by fellow rearguard, Gord Smith a three-year member of the Blades who still lives in West Haven, and who’s the younger brother of New York Islander goalie-great, Billy Smith.
“Kevin and I actually played against each other when we were kids in junior. I was in Cornwall (Royals) and he was in St. Jerome. He handled the puck very well and he was a big guy. We were a smaller team. He was the enforcer,“ Smith, who recently retired said. Smith was also drafted by the Rangers the same year as Morrison, but in the fifth-round (59th overall).
Morrison knew he was a good fighter after an early bout in his first year with the visiting Salem (VA) Rebels, and the now infamous, Dave “The Hammer” Schultz. At this time, Morrison had begun to solidify himself as a New Haven fan favorite, but the scrap didn’t go as Morrison had wanted. “Everybody knew about his (Schultz) reputation, and there was a scrum on the ice and I had a different player and he sucker-punched me. I was so mad and wanted a piece of him, but he was never on the ice with me again, but I didn’t forget it. The year before Schultz was brought into the Quebec league (with Sorel) from the Western League (Swift Current) to take care of me, he wouldn’t fight me then. We went to Salem later that year, and he did the same thing. Telling me he was there just to play hockey.”
After the Blades playoffs were over, Morrison was sent to the Rangers’ Central Hockey League affiliate, the Omaha (NE) Knights. He went along with Smith for the CHL Adam Cup playoffs.
He played with a number of future NHL’ers, Syl Apps Jr. (Pittsburgh), Don Luce (Buffalo), Pierre Jarry (NYR, Detroit, Toronto, Minnesota), and Andre “Moose” Dupont (Philadelphia).
The team won the Adam Cup championship in four games defeating the Iowa Stars after beating Fort Worth in seven in the two-round playoffs. Morrison and Smith each played in five games.
Joe Zanussi was also on the team. He would become a hockey-historical-footnote being involved in the biggest deal in hockey prior to the deal for Wayne Gretzky when the Boston Bruins traded Phil Esposito and Ken Hodge to the Rangers for Jean Ratelle and Brad Park. Zanussi was tossed in by the Rangers.
The 1970-71 season with the Blades in the chicken-wired New Haven Arena saw Morrison elevated his game as they finished first in the North Division with 38 wins (91 points) in the 74 games of the regular season. He played in 64 games registering 11 goals and 55 points and led the league with 348 PIMs and league-best 67 in the playoffs.
“Perry put me back on defense, and to be honest, I felt more comfortable. We made some trades and we became a very solid group and we got some victories.”
He was named to the EHL North Division First Team All-Star team and the Blades marched to the league finals by dispatching Clinton in five games, paying them back from the year before, and sweeping Johnstown, and then was set to play for the championship.
It was the Blades’ fourth trip to the finals earning only one championship, in 1955. There was a fifth trip to the EHL Final in their first season as the Tomahawks that ended up in a loss to Johnstown in 1952.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go well, dropping the championship series, losing in five games to the original Charlotte Checkers.
“That was tough on a defenseman like Kevin. They had 15 players in Charlotte and a very tough team. He spent his time fighting their tough guys in that series,” said Hainsworth.
Describing the New Haven Arena for those who haven’t seen it, Morrison said, “The fans were just great to us. That (chicken) wire was something else. One night there was an extra ten feet of wire wrapped in a ball and it was bunched up. I took a guy into the corner, he couldn’t get out because it was stuck to his jersey. Somebody got a rubber chicken one night lowered it from the rafters and on a faceoff hit a guy in the head with it. There was a haze at the top of the building which was only about 4,000 seats in the building, but they smoked like 5,000.”
The Arena on Grove Street was also known for another famous night on December 9, 1968, when another Morrison, the late Jim Morrison, then the lead singer of the legendary rock band, “The Doors” was arrested on stage by the New Haven police department during the band’s performance.
He was surprisingly never queried despite the last name similarity just two years removed from the famous incident.
“Nobody said a thing to me or asked me, the fans or cops. Nobody ever asked me if we were related in any way. I played against a Jim Morrison when he was in Baltimore (Clippers) (his last pro season) the year I was with the Nighthawks.”
The irony of the situation is the New Haven FBI building now sits on the site of the old Arena that was torn down in 1974.
The Blades were displaced in New Haven by the Nighthawks in 1972 and moved to the West Springfield, MA for a year. They played at the Eastern States Coliseum and were christened as the New England Blades, but negotiated the initial lease for the Hartford Civic Center for the 1974-75 season that never came to be.
Morrison’s hockey fortunes changed that summer when in the NHL Intra-League Draft, a creature of a non-union pro hockey world at the time. He was taken by the Detroit Red Wings, a team in transition with its older players retiring and his hopes for an NHL shot seemed very near.
The 1971-’72 season saw him play with three different teams that left his head spinning. He played just 11 games in Tidewater, VA, but he was dispatched to Fort Worth (TX) Wings in the old Central Hockey League.
“I started the season out with my defense partner was this guy (Larry) Johnston. He was a tough son-of-a-(gun) and whenever anything happened on the ice, he was right in there battling and fighting. I thought great, I don’t have to do the fighting all the time. The GM of Detroit at the time was Ned Harkness. He came to town one night and comes to me and says, ‘We’re sending you to Ft. Worth.’ I asked him, ‘Why?’ ‘You’re not fighting enough!’”
He went down and played 26 games where he tallied two goals and three points but accumulated 56 PIM by getting in about five or six fights.
“I was doing well and every time they called down to see who the best player was, my coach (Bob Lemieux) would say, ‘Morrison,’ but I wasn’t recalled. Then Harkness, comes down, about game 20 or so, after one game he and I are talking. I said, ‘I’m playing more physical here and he goes to me,’ ‘You’re fighting too much.’ I’m going, ‘What the hell do you want? You sent me here because you thought I wasn’t doing enough in Tidewater.’”
In Ft. Worth, he played with future NHL’ers Gerry Hart (Islanders), Randy Manery (Atlanta Flames), Ralph Stewart (Islanders), future WHA’er, Bobby Guindon (Winnipeg), and Gord Redden, the father of one-time, CT Whale and Ranger, Wade Redden.
Morrison ended up the rest of the year with AHL Rochester Americans in the most unique way. “I finally got called up to Tidewater again and we’re going on a road trip, so I see the trainer get all my gear put my stuff on the bus. The new coach was Larry Jeffrey, I hadn’t seen him yet. He replaced (Johnny) Wilson who went to Detroit while I was in Ft. Worth. He comes out of the bathroom on the bus, he looks at me says, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I was called up and here I am. He goes, ‘We loaned you to Rochester for the rest of the year yesterday. We were going to Rochester the next night for a game. So, I took the team bus to Rochester and had to give the trainer back all my socks, leggings, and everything walked over to the Rochester locker room when we got there.”
Morrison scored just twice in 29 games and had 49 PIM. His teammates included future New England Whaler, the late, John Cunniff, as well as future WHA’ers, Dave Dunn (Winnipeg), Poul Popiel (Houston) from Denmark, one of the first Euro’s to play in North America in a sport then mostly dominated by Canadian talent.
Willie Marshall, the AHL’s all-time leading scorer who was at the end of his career and the last season of playing for the irreverent, “Mr. Canada,” Don Cherry.
He had a chance to get even with Schultz in a Rochester-Richmond Robins game one night.
He told Cherry, who was coaching the team on an interim basis, that he had some unfinished business with him and asked to be put on right-wing.
He lined up with Schultz and he reminded him he hadn’t forgotten the sucker-punch in the game in New Haven a few years back. “I was ready. He was yapping that he was here to play hockey. I said, ‘You said that in Salem. We gotta settle this.’ The puck is dropped, I dropped my gloves and he literally skated away from me and avoided me completely for the rest of the night.”
A new hockey league was forming in the World Hockey Association (WHA) and on February 12-13,1972 in Anaheim, California. The WHA held its Universal Draft where anybody could be drafted – who was active or not.
He was taken by the Los Angeles Sharks in round 21, 50 ahead of Gordie Howe and then future former teammate, Willie O’Ree!
“I never got a phone call or anything. I found out reading the Hockey News which came out weekly.”
Though ’72-’73, he came back to New Haven with the brand-new AHL’s New Haven Nighthawks, the farm team for the brand new NHL expansion team, the New York Islanders in a brand new building, the New Haven Coliseum.
Another plus for Morrison the team was coached by a Sydney native, the late Parker McDonald, who was starting what would be a seven-year run coaching in Elm City.
“I was originally in camp I had signed with Minnesota (North Stars) (after his rights were traded by Detroit) and their farm team was in Cleveland than in the American (Hockey) League and that’s where they were going send me. I explained to them that my wife is from New Haven, and if you’re sending me to the AHL, can you send me to New Haven? The North Stars had a partial agreement with them and they said, ‘Yes,’ so they loaned me to the Nighthawks and that’s how I wound up back there.”
That was a good move as the Cleveland Barons were relocated in the midseason to Jacksonville, Florida.
With the Nighthawks, he had a strong season with 28 assists (35 points) and team-high 154 PIMs while playing with several future Stanley Cup players.
Among his teammates were Bobby Nystrom, who scored the Islanders’ first Cup-clinching goal in OT against the Flyers in 1980. Garry Howatt was also on the team as was the ever-loquacious goalie, Glenn “Chico” Resch.
Morrison and three other Blades would be the only Blades to play for the Nighthawks, Elgin McCann (11 games), Gord Smith, and Dave Hainsworth.
Also among his teammates were the aforementioned O’Ree from Fredericton, a fellow Maritimer who, in 1958, was also the first black player to play in the NHL. He played with Boston in Montreal, where O’Ree would also score his first NHL goal two years later in the Forum.
“He was a complete gentleman in every sense of the word, a quiet man. Willie never raised his voice. He worked hard every shift. When he found out I was from Sydney, we immediately got along. I saw him again in San Diego when I was with the (WHA) Mariners because he lived there, after playing on the old Western League team there and had retired. He confided to me that he couldn’t see out of his right eye (injured in the 1955-56 season in a game as a member of the OHA Kitchener Canucks) and never told anybody because he knew the rules, they wouldn’t allow him to play, so he was switched to right-wing (in 1964 scored 38 goals) as a left shot, (unorthodox) in those days, so he didn’t have to turn his head over his left shoulder to receive the puck. It takes a special type of player to do that for as long as he did and kept it a secret and I kept it as well,” said Morrison.
As a team, The Nighthawks struggled for most of that season going 1-10-2 in the first month of the season and didn’t make the playoffs, but one night on the road with O’Ree came an encounter for Morrison that still angers and embarrasses him.
In the third game of the season, while in his old haunts from the season before, against the Virginia Red Wings were still in Tidewater. The ugly side of the South reared its ugly head in the defeated Confederacy, an hour or so Northeast of the Confederate capital of Richmond. Fans were taunting O’Ree with racial slurs, with cotton balls being tossed on the ice, and even a black cat was placed on the ice.
“I don’t quite remember if Tidewater or the league did anything at all about this, but I remember us as a team took the cat off the ice and gave it to the trainer, so the fans couldn’t throw it back on the ice. The cotton balls were picked up by the linesmen and we made some gestures to the fans who we thought had thrown them (cotton balls) on the ice. They were told by us if they did it again, we were going into the stands. The rest of the night was very calm and quiet. Every time Willie was on the ice, we would give him a little pat on the back, shoulder rub type thing to make sure he and the fans knew we had his back. At the end of the game, we made a corridor by the gate with our sticks (raised) and let Willie go through.”
The season in New Haven did help Morrison get back on track as a player after a difficult season the year before.
He had a memorable battle for the Nighthawks. One night that season against a Cherry-coached Rochester team, with one tough hombre, J. Bob “Battleship” Kelly. Morrison fought Kelly three times, the last one, that Cherry has said was among the top five fights he ever saw.
“Before the game in the dressing room Bobby, Gary and I talked about what to do if we fought Kelly. He had the longest arms I ever saw on a player, so I said whatever you do, stay inside on him. The first scrap, I didn’t listen to my own advice and he got the better of me. The second time, I did much better stayed on the inside. The third fight, Bobby was in a battle in the corner with someone else, so we drifted away from the action and I said, ‘Ready for round three?’ The tiebreaker. Away we went. We just kept throwing‘em. We stopped, rested, went at it again. Finally, we both ran out of gas. That was a memorable one and we never fought again.”
His fortunes would change again after the season when his WHA rights were traded by the LA Sharks to the New York Raiders where the fun really began with 1973-74 season, his first in the WHA.
Playing in a near-empty Madison Square Garden, Morrison and the Raiders were originally supposed to play at the Nassau Coliseum in their first year, but the NHL got it first.
The Raiders were to be the marquee franchise for the new league, but the team was on its third owner, Ralph Brent, to start their second season.
The team name was changed by Brent from Raiders to Golden Blades. The uniforms were also changed going from orange-and-blue to purple-and-gold with white skates and gold blades.
After a 6-12-2 start, mounting debt, and no fans, the team was surrendered to the league by Brent. Their then head coach, a Ranger great, Camille Henry, was let go and another Ranger great, Harry Howell, who was nearing the end of his career, was named player-coach and immediately had the skates painted black.
“I felt so sorry for the trainers. They had to paint them after practice and every game, every set of skates. It was awful. Those gold-and-white skates were terrible.”
On November 21, 1973, the WHA moved the Raiders to an old Eastern League outpost in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The first Jersey Devils incarnation and the EHL had gone out-of-business the year before. The WHA re-branded the team as the Jersey Knights, it left Morrison in shock.
“I said you have to be kidding me !? It was a dump by EHL standards, but for the WHA, a major new hockey league, it was embarrassing. It made the New Haven Arena look like a palace. Easily, the worst building I ever played in junior or pro.”
The rink in Southern New Jersey was about 10-15 miles from Philadelphia and actually had an upward slope to the ice surface that opponents had to endure for two-of-the-three periods.
“One night, Andre Lacroix sent me a cross-ice pass at the left point. The puck was about ten feet out from me and it suddenly flips, and zoom, it sails by my head and almost knocked me out and the other team has a breakaway.”
The rink had chicken wire atop the boards, but only from the faceoff dots and the corners, and behind the net. There were no plexiglass or chicken wire at all.
“It was great for a defenseman. You went into the corners got underneath a guy and sent him right over the boards and into the stands. The locker rooms were made for 13 players, which was what the Eastern League had, and we’re a professional team with 20 players. It was crazy. You didn’t have any locker room space. I remember the great Bobby Hull coming in with skates over his shoulders getting half-dressed and waiting for other guys to finish up.”
On the ice, it was a very successful season for Morrison, who finished second on the team in scoring with 24 goals with 67 points. He was second behind Lacroix and Morrison become the first defenseman in WHA history to record a hat trick, plus he scored 20 goals and led the team with 132 PIMs as well.
Lacroix, a sleek skating, assist-machine, and the all-time leading point-getter in WHA history, was acquired from the Philadelphia Blazers before they jettisoned to Vancouver. He was the league’s top player and he recognized Morrison’s talent.
“Kevin was one of the best teammates I ever played with. I don’t think Kevin ever got the credit he deserved. He was a great skater and had a great shot. He could play the game any way they wanted to play. He could be physical when he had to. He was a very good playmaker. He never seemed to get tired during a game. The more ice time he had, the better he played. He was a real winner. He was in several All-Star games,” Lacroix, who should be in the Hall of Fame, said.
For Morrison having Lacroix was great, he was magic with the puck. “He would say, ‘Drift into this area,’ or ‘Set up there.’ He would find you’. He always had his head up .”
The Knights were thankfully sold to a Maryland businessman, Joe Schwartz, who exceeded the players’ dreams and moved them to San Diego, California where things were calm for three years as the blue-and-orange-clad team and Morrison’s on-ice fortunes blossomed. “We were supposed to go to Baltimore. That’s where he (Schwartz) was from, but they never got the lease at the arena. When we heard we got the deal in San Diego, I couldn’t get in the car fast enough to drive there.”
Howell made a big impression on Morrison. “He was 38 at the time, and played 20-plus years in the NHL and was in great shape. I watched him every practice. He would skate-up one side, say to the left-wing hash mark, and then he’d cut back, reverse, go-back around the net, and do the same thing up the right-wing boards. He did it every practice, starting with six laps. So I asked him, ‘What’s your secret?’ ‘Conditioning. Gotta help your lungs and your legs. If you don’t have those, you won’t last long. I do this every practice. By Christmas, you’ll notice you can handle longer shifts. I do this every day starting in training camp throughout the whole season.’ So, I added it to my routine, and damn Harry was right. It made a big difference in my game.”
Before there was analytics, there was “Harry’s Tips.”
In 1974-’75 Morrison was named to the WHA First All-Star team with 20 goals and 81 points. He led all defensemen with 143 PIMs. He was the fourth-leading scorer on an offensively-talented Mariners and represented the team at the WHA All-Star game in Richfield, OH home of the Cleveland Crusaders.
“That was a lot of fun, and after warm-ups, we’re in the (dressing) room and Bobby Hull says, ‘You get that truck for the game MVP?’ They had it in the arena where the Zamboni’s are and I said, ‘Bobby, get out here.’ ‘No, the truck is going to the MVP of the game,’ he said. “So I go to my defense partner for the game, the great Pat Stapleton of the Chicago Cougars (who recently passed away), and shook his hand. He goes, ‘What’s that for?’ I said, ‘Don’t get used to seeing this face too much tonight, I’m going for that truck.”
The Mariners finished second in the Western Division with a 43-31-3 record (90 points) and had the fourth-highest goals total behind Houston, Toronto, and Quebec. They would knock off the Toronto Toros in the first round of the playoffs, four-games-to-two. With the Avco Cup within sight, they ran into a Houston Aeros juggernaut of a team that was led by “Mr. Hockey,” Gordie Howe. They were swept.
For Morrison, playing against a living legend was both awe-inspiring and fear-inducing.
“We were in Houston one right and Gordie is barreling down the right-wing and I go to line him up for a hit. He slides to the inside, switches his stick to his left-hand and just threw me aside like I was a feather and fires it to the far side with his left-hand for a goal, I get back to the bench wondering, ‘What the hell just happened?’ Our coach, Ron Ingram, is giving me hell. ‘How did you just let an old man just beat you like that?’ The building (the Summit Arena) had one of the first big-screen scoreboards above center-ice and played the video and it showed the goal. I looked at Ingram and said, ‘How the hell do you defend against that?’ He and Bobby Hull were two of the strongest players I ever played against, very difficult to get the puck away from them.”
Before his second season started in San Diego, Ingram told front office worker Gussie Diamond to contact Morrison and teammate Norm Ferguson, both from Sydney, how they wanted to pick up their visas, if they were flying or driving to San Diego?
“Gussie tells Ron. He called Sydney and nobody knows either guy, and they live in the same damn town. Turns out he called Sydney, Australia. We gave him a map that year, and Maps…that was his nickname from then on.“
In the 1975-76 season, Morrison was named to the WHA’s Second All-Star team. He played in all 80 games adding 22 goals. He was the only defenseman in the seven years of the WHA, and the first rearguard, to score 20 goals in three straight seasons while tallying 65 points. He also had developed a strong reputation as a player so he didn’t have to fight as much as he only had 56 PIMs.
One player who always had to compete against Morrison was Tim Sheehy, the former New England Whalers, and Birmingham Bulls forward.
“Kevin was a very good player who enjoyed playing the game. A broad-shouldered defenseman who could play any way he needed to play. Earlier in his career, he piled up a lot of penalty minutes and earned the space to really develop his game. Eventually, he became an all-around gifted defenseman who could handle the puck, shoot and pass it, and make special plays like the All-Star he was.”
Morrison nearly made it to the NHL earlier in the season when he received an unexpected December phone call from an Eastern NHL team.
“Don Cherry called me, who was coaching in Boston then, and said, ‘We wanna sign ya’ and play you with Bobby Orr. He’s fighting too much. Harry (Sinden the Bruins longtime GM) is gonna call you.’ Well, he calls and says, ‘I can offer you $35,000.’ I said, ‘How about bonuses for this and that and get close to what I was making.’ ‘No, we’re not sure if you can play or fight at this level and all this, all I can do is $35,000.’ I was making $75,000. I’m not a rocket scientist or stupid enough, but I’m not gonna play for half the money. I said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Sinden,’ and that was it. I was in the middle of a five-year contract with San Diego. Cherry calls me two weeks later and asks, ‘What the hell did you tell Sinden?’ I didn’t tell them anything, I told him what happened. He said, ‘Let me talk to him.’ Sinden calls back and says, ‘I can do $50,000.’ So, again, I asked him again about bonuses. ‘Get me close to at least 70 thousand to make up the difference. We never got close and I never heard from him again.”
The team finished under .500 at 36-38-6 (78 points) and knocked off the Robbie Ftorek led Phoenix Roadrunners in the opening round. They fell again to the Aeros in the quarterfinals in six games.
“In all those WHA years, Houston and Winnipeg were great teams. Houston was great because they had the Howe’s Gordie, Mark, and Marty. Terry Ruskowski, Don Laraway, and John Tonelli. Winnipeg had Bobby Hull and those Swedes, (Anders) Hedberg and (Ulf) Nilsson. With Hull, they were like fireflies trying to stop them on the ice, just zip right by ya!”
He also got to see that season one of the true characters of the game, up-close, and personal, albeit briefly, in a teammate, Bill “Goldie” Goldthorpe (aka Oglethorpe), who was portrayed as the King Goon in the movie Slapshot. He was billed as advertised. “He was a little out there. He knew his job, but he took things a little too far. He comes out to me one day in his shoes. ‘I could fight with you right now.’ ‘How you gonna do that,’ I said. ‘I’m on skates. I would kill you.’ He did it several times in his career, fighting police, and or players on the ice in his shoes. I said, ‘It’s not gonna happen.’ He didn’t wanna do things, so he had to go, so he was traded to Baltimore. In fact, we were in Baltimore the next day for the game after the trade. Damn, if he wasn’t on the ice in his shoes at 5 PM for a seven o’clock game and wanted to fight us. We never saw him again after that.”
The last season of Mariners’ hockey started out with great promise. The team was sold to the founder of the McDonald’s franchise, Ray Kroc, so the players thought, a million burgers and fries sold they were on solid ground financially. They would go on to learn what a tax write-off means.
“He really didn’t like the game. We were always trying to do things in front of his box to impress him. By the end of the game, on most nights, he was gone. He never saw the end of a game. We’re at a bar after the game asking the front office people, ‘Does he like us?’ There was always something he didn’t like. In his book, in chapter 11, his life with hockey was blank. The next page was chapter 12.”
In 75 games that season, Morrison’s numbers slipped to just eight goals (38 points) and a garish minus-30.
“I had a knee injury in training camp and I really couldn’t skate like I had, and I was never comfortable all season and didn’t heal to the off-season. It really affected my play.”
The team finished a mediocre 40-37-4 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Despite averaging over 6,000 per game at the San Diego Arena (now known as the Pechanga Arena) every year, the for sale went up on the team.
“We had some good teams in San Diego. We were just a few players short, We had a solid core, but once we were disbanded, we were all over North America, Houston, Edmonton, Indianapolis, Winnipeg, and Hartford.”
The team was under league control and they were supposed to go to Melbourne, Florida, then Hollywood, Florida. Names like the Mustangs and IceGators were being tossed around, but the lack of a building killed the deals, and the team was folded.
Morrison went out and signed a free-agent deal with the Indianapolis Racers in the summer.
He was able to hook up with his old Quebec junior league teammate from Drummondville, Michel Parizeau, but that was the extent of his happiness. The team finished in last place in a dwindling league, but Morrison was Indianapolis’s All-Star rep at the 1977-78 All-Star game in Hartford.,
Of the ten teams in the league, two were traveling-touring teams from then Warsaw Pact nations, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union.
The Racers still missed the playoffs.
He did have a memorable fight with Steve “Mad Man” Durbano that year. See it HERE.
The Birmingham Bulls, were the WHA version of the Broad Street Bullies that year. They were led by four bellicose hellions of hockey. Their lead hatchet guy, the late Durbano, Frank “Never” Beaton, the late Gilles “Bad News” Bilodeau, and Dave “Killer” Hanson.
Morrison was already in the penalty box as Durbano, an old fellow Ranger draft pick, also went to enter his penalty box. He escaped from the linesman and attempted to charge Morrison.
Meanwhile, the other linesman for some inexplicable reason jumped into the penalty box to “control” Morrison, who was just standing there, not moving.
Durbano escaped the linesman who tried to restrain him and threw an overhand right. Morrison got away from his linesman and countered with a perfect right cross that knocked Durbano down.
“I’m in the box and the ref tells me, ‘Don’t do anything or I’ll throw you out of the game.’ The other linesman jumped in and he’s holding me off I told’em, ‘Get outta the way.’ The other linesman can barely control (Durbano), so I’m thinking, ‘Damn, I don’t care if I get tossed out or not.’ If he gets any closer, and he did get a hold of my jersey, it was a perfect punch.”
Morrison had another fairly comical encounter with Durbano after this incident in Birmingham in a local nightspot.
“The rule was if you saw the other team in the bar you didn’t go in until they left. Durbano was giving us the evil eye, so the guys said, ‘Kevin, would you go tell him what the rule is and we’ll be leaving soon.’ I start to walk across and all this yelling starts and Durbano is getting into it with his wife at that time, and she hauls off and decks him. I walked over and said ‘I won’t be fighting Mrs. Durbano tonight.’”
Then in 1978-79, the last year of the WHA, Morrison started out with the Racers, but owner Nelson Skalbania’s major money problems with the Racers surfaced quickly, despite the addition of a 17-year-old phenom by the name of Wayne Gretzky.
Morrison is in the history books for having set up the Great One’s first professional goal on October 20, 1978.
Morrison made the perfect headman pass from behind the Racers net and put it on Gretzky’s stick at center ice. “The Great One” raced down the middle of the ice and beat Edmonton’s goalie, Dave Dryden, to the top-shelf with a backhander over the left shoulder at 6:02 of the second period.
Gretzky added his second goal just four seconds later.
“The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) celebrated the anniversary of the goal last year. The CBC came down to the rink to ask me about it. It was a great time, I looked at the kid then, I would never think he would go on to do the great things he did, but hey, I got Gretzky started! In fact, he loved me. Before I was traded, I told him I have two fridges in the garage, one had American beer, the other had my Alexander Keith from Nova Scotia. I told him, don’t touch the ones in the green bottles. They gotta last me the rest of the season. One night, I come home, I find a few empties. He was 17, so he couldn’t go to the bars with the boys, I left the garage open for him. So the next day at practice, I said, ‘Hey kid, the garage is locked. He asked, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘What did I tell ya?’ Leave the green bottles alone!’ He said, ‘I wanted to taste it because you said how good it was.’ He never saw or heard of it before.”
Morrison was traded to Quebec after the next game along with Richie Leduc to the Quebec Nordiques for future considerations (i.e. cash) and the 1979 second-round draft pick, the 1980 second-rounder, and a 1981 third-round Nordiques WHA draft pick.
The league was down to seven teams and weren’t going to make it to 1979, let alone 1981 as merger discussions were already going on.
The trade turned out to be good for Morrison because the Racers folded two months later.
“Anybody who made money, he sold, including Gretzky. They got four 18-year-olds in a trade with Cincinnati that included Mark Messier.”
For Morrison however, the Quebec homecoming didn’t go so well.
The Nordiques were loaded with an offense which included the gifted Real “Buddy” Cloutier, Marc Tardif, and Serge Bernier. On defense, there were two long-time pros, albeit at the end of their respective careers, Jim Dorey, who played his last professional season in New Haven, and J.C. Tremblay. Ice time for Morrison was limited.
Even on the heavyweight front, the Nordiques were stacked with Paul Baxter, Curt Brackenbury, Wally Weir, and Gilles Bilodeau.
“Real was one of the best scorers the WHA ever had. He didn’t have a powerful shot, but he could pick corners like nobody’s business. Top-shelf, corner, under the bar, left side, right side, he did it often. Marc (Tardif) was always good. Even when we were kids in Quebec, everybody knew him. They had their High Flying Frenchmen in Tardif, Cloutier, and Bernier. The ice time was limited at home at the Le Colisee. I was never on the ice, and on the road, I couldn’t get off the ice and the team was loaded with tough guys, some of whom I had fought.”
After 27 games, with just two goals and seven points, his old junior coach, Filion sent him to the Philadelphia Firebirds, the first AHL team in that city. He told the Nordiques that if they could, he would like to go back to New Haven, but Filion told him they had a semi-formal arrangement with the Firebirds, so that’s where he went.
He ran into a fellow WHA combatant, who was always ready, willing, and able to go with both fists, as well as verbally. That man was future NHL referee, Paul Stewart. He played with Paul Messier, the older brother of Mark, and a guy who played just six games, but would be atop the hockey mountain a year later, Mike Eruzione.
“He looked like he was 12 when came in from I think from Toledo for a few games. I didn’t think much of him. About a year later, he scores the game-winner to beat the Soviets. I said I remember that guy.”
He did get one last trip as a player in a game in New Haven (in February) where he saw some of the older guys from the Blades who were still in the area.
The irony was Philly relocated a year later to Syracuse, N.Y. The team’s new head coach would be his old pal, Parizeau.
Morrison’s WHA numbers stand for themself. In 418 games, he had 93 goals, 224 assists for 317 points. He is fourth all-time for defensemen in scoring and played in two WHA All-Star games. He was named to several All-Star end-of-season teams.
The WHA was very special for Morrison and a whole generation has no idea how much it influenced today’s game.
“The WHA opened up a whole new world for hockey for pay, where you could play, and who could play plus a lot of new ideas, despite all the chaos at times. I got to play with, and against, great players like the Gretzky, the Howes, Hull, Cloutier, Tardif, Lacroix, Hedberg, Ftorek, and a (Vaclav) Nedomansky who was with Toronto and Birmingham. He is in the Hall of Fame now, that was a huge deal when he defected (from then Czechoslovakia) and came to play in the WHA. We had the Eastern European countries over to play, way ahead of the Canada Cup. We changed a lot of things.”
The goalies of the league were among the best of his era.
“Gerry Cheever of Cleveland (Crusaders) always had my number, Ron Grahame, and Wayne Rutledge in Houston. Joe Daly of Winnipeg, Al Smith of New England, and our guy in San Diego, Ernie Wakely, all were excellent.”
Morrison had his share of bouts with the top tough guys of which two immediately stand out, Jack Carlson, of New England Whalers, Edmonton Oilers, and Minnesota Fighting Saints, and Kim Clackson from the Racers, and Winnipeg Jets.
“Jack was a big man at 6’3 who had a huge set of mitts (hands) and long arms on him and Clackson was about my height 5’11 and six-foot, but weighed about 220 or 230. He was built like a cinderblock. He had a face like Frank Beaton, you just wanted to hit it. You would hit him, and he wouldn’t budge. When I got to Indy, they showed me a tape of him fighting (Nick) Fotiu the year before he had left tor Winnipeg. Fotiu was very tough. He hit Clackson off a faceoff with a huge, big overhand right, right on the button, would’ve knocked out other guys, it didn’t faze him. Guys who smile during fights are scary.”
Mark Howe is listed as number one in scoring by defensemen for the WHA, but his last season-and-a-half with the New England Whalers he played as a forward. The great J.C. Tremblay of the Quebec Nordiques should be number one with 424 and Morrison should be third.
Morrison’s last pro season, finally saw him get to the NHL based on his long-time association, but not forgotten by, Colorado Rockies head coach, Don Cherry. He signed a free-agent deal and had a solid training camp, but like in other venues, he was a scratch on-and-off the ice for the Rockies, who didn’t have much beyond a nice uniform.
He played just 41 games and recorded four goals (15 points) and 23 PIMs. However, the team, which had moved from Kansas City, was failing on-and-off the ice. That combination is usually deadly for both the franchise and its players.
Its sale slogan was a take on an old joke, “Come to the fights and see a Rockies game break out.”
Morrison’s first NHL goal was scored on October 20, 1979, at McNichols Arena in Denver against an old WHA foe, the Winnipeg Jets. The goal came at 8:07 of the second period against Jets goalie Gary “Suitcase” Smith, a former teammate in Indianapolis.
The goal was set up by Jack Valiquette in a 4-1 win. His goal would be the game-winner.
Smith played both with and against him. He earned his nickname because of how many times he was traded.
“I think he played for 12 (15) different teams in his career. He also took his equipment off every period, every game, and then put it back on. The strangest ritual I ever saw.”
Morrison played the first 13 games with the Rockies before being sent to Ft. Worth in the minors. It was his third trip to the Texas city and the fourth time in the old Central League.
“The GM, Ray Miron, and Don (Cherry) didn’t get along. He said I was out of shape maybe, I wasn’t playing my best, but our team wasn’t doing too well either. I think he knew Cherry liked me, so he decided one of his signees had to go,” Morrison said.
What was supposed to be a two-week conditioning stint evolved into a two-month stay where he put on 10 pounds.
Among his teammates in Texas were two young ruffians, a 6’6, Archie Henderson, and “Wild” Willie Trognitz.
The irony with Trognitz was that two years prior, he had been banned for life by the old wild and woolly IHL. The reason for his banishment was for clubbing Henderson over the head in a Port Huron Flags and Dayton Gems game-ending brawl.
“We also had Peter McNamee there who was an old teammate in San Diego. He was built like a sumo wrestler. We nearly went at it in the locker room with them. After one road game, our coach (Ron Ullyot), who was a bit of nut, came back after a six-hour bus ride and wanted us to go back on the ice. After a second time on the ice. We had a team meeting and we told guys, ‘You guys gotta do this and do that,’ and Willie and Archie looked at Peter and me. We gave them the look and they avoided us. We were close, but nothing happened.”
He returned to the NHL on January 20th and played the rest of the season.
His one-and-only NHL fight came against Boston against ‘The Battling Irishman,’ Terry O’Reilly. The fight came on February 15th, 1980 midway thru the third period.
“I guess I made the mistake of taking Jean Ratelle out in the corner. It wasn’t a dirty play, I was just taking the guy out. I guess I hit him a little harder than they liked. I turned around, and it seemed like the whole bench came after me. It was O’Reilly, (Stan) Jonathan, (Wayne) Cashman. They made a beeline for me.”
The Rockies would wind up with a powerplay out of the scrap.
The next game, on February 19, 1980, was at home in the midst of a seven-game homestand it would be Morrison’s best-ever NHL game. He scored a goal and had four assists against the Flyers in an 8-6 win assisting on the game-winner.
“I had everything going well that night. The Flyers kept taking penalties, and we kept scoring on the powerplay. My goal and two of the assists happened when we had the man-advantage. It was a tough year, but that was, by far, my best night in the NHL, a big accomplishment.” remarked Morrison.
Four of Morrison’s five points were on the powerplay including an assist on Valiquette’s empty-netter the only one that wasn’t. He was among the three stars of the game along with the late Rene Robert (five points), and Lanny McDonald (four points).
The Rockies team finished with the worst record in the NHL that season.
They achieved the dubious mark because they had one win less than Winnipeg despite each having 51 points in the old Smythe Division.
Morrison saw Barry Beck for ten games before the mammoth five-for-one trade that the Rangers engineered for him in a bid to win the Stanley Cup.
“He was like King Kong; 6’5, strong as a bull, and in training camp, we had a brawl with Vancouver. He just destroyed guys. He had a really good slapshot. We were losing on-and-off the ice though, so they moved him. It didn’t help the locker room at the time.”
Upon his return from Ft. Worth, Morrison switched from his initial jersey number from two to Beck’s five since it was available. He wore six in Drummondville, four in Indianapolis, and two in New Haven.
He saw his old Raiders teammate, and New Haven legend, Bobby “The Cat” Sheehan, and a pair of former New Haven players in Nick Beverly, who’s still an NHL executive with the Nashville Predators, and another physical New Haven Nighthawks-bred defenseman, Dean “The Hulk” Turner and a future hockey agent and NHL GM, Mike Gillis.
What turned out to be his last two NHL games were in old WHA cities in Edmonton and Winnipeg. He had missed the two games in Quebec City while playing in Ft. Worth.
“I was very lucky I got to play in the original six arenas in Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, and New York got some pictures taken. I loved all the rinks I played in. I liked Houston a lot. One night they had these big, six-inch cockroaches walking through our dressing room. We got two glasses captured him, taped it up, and put it atop the dressing stalls, and called him our good luck cockroach. We forgot about him and came back three weeks later for a game. The glass was still there and the cockroach was still alive. We figured if he could survive three weeks, we set him loose.”
He played a pair of games in February in Montreal, and then in Hartford the following night then back in Montreal at the Forum on a Thursday night having come full circle.
“That was a great night. Several friends from Drummondville, and my billet family from St. Jerome came to see me. it was really one of those fun nights, and I can say I played in the Forum.”
He also got a second look at Madison Square Garden playing before a full house on March 12, 1980.
“That was fun too because most of our Golden Blades games were played at 2 in the afternoon, and we would get guys on their lunch break for the game.”
He always rewarded Cherry who had shown him kindness, and despite his bluster, demonstrated that he cared about the players.
“I always gave him 150%. He was true to his word, right from training camp. We had a guy, I can’t remember his name, he needed like four games to qualify for his NHL pension then. Cherry took care of his players, so he played him. His name was John (former Nighthawk, John Flesch). He played left wing. He played those four games.” Cherry played him five just to ensure he got his pension.
After the season, Morrison was without a contract and fielded some offers, but a freak pre-season accident ended his next season before it began.
“I had a few offers, but nothing solid. I had a job now and was working. I was at a charity game on the ice getting the legs used to it and maybe be ready in case something in the AHL came about. There was no hitting or fighting for this game and I wasn’t paying attention before the game, and some guy comes up near me and takes a shot. It goes right off my ankle. A broken ankle, so I’m out for the year.”
The following year he was in a car accident, and sure enough, he broke the same ankle again and stopped receiving any calls.
“So now I’ve lost two years, I’m 32, and I had been out on the ice about a month feeling good before this happened.”
He would eventually play for eight more years with the Stephenville Jets in the Newfoundland Senior Hockey League (NFSHL) for a total of 260 games. Over that span, Morrison potted 76 goals, had 177 assists for 253 points. In 1985-86, he played in 39 games and scored 18 goals and had 43 points while compiling a team-high 110 PIMs.
He helped his team capture back-to-back Herder Cup championships in 1983 and 84. In 83, they beat the Grand Falls Cataracts in seven games with the series clincher going to double overtime. In 1984, they beat the Corner Brook Royals in five games.
His original offer to play senior hockey came out of left-field. Getting the offer was by sheer circumstance.
“I’m just out there, so this guy comes up and starts chatting me up, not thinking much of it. He tells me we really liked how you play, we’d like to sign you for a team in Newfoundland.”
Morrison was surprised and asked, “Do you know how far out Sydney is from Newfoundland? A ferry ride takes six-to-seven hours from North Sydney. No thanks, I’ve got a job on Monday.”
The owners persisted.
“No, no we’ll fly you over every Friday, play on the weekends and we’ll fly you back Sunday. You’ll be back in plenty of time for work on Monday. So, having heard that, I signed a good deal, and since it was a short season, they paid in cash, paid for the flights, and hotels for the weekend were taken care of, so I figured it was more than Moncton (Alpines) in the AHL was offering. I figured I would play for a few years, and it turned into seven or eight.”
In the first two seasons, his team was in the Allan Cup Senior National Tournament. They lost to the Cambridge Hornets both times in the Eastern playdown series. In 1983 that came in five games and in 1984, four games.
“In the second year, I missed the last two games. I got a puck shot in my eyes and had blurry vision, so I couldn’t play. The eyes are good though.”
For two years, from 1987-1989, he was the team’s playing head coach up until the team folded.
“The fans were great. It was a beautiful part of Canada and they never missed a payment, unlike sometimes in the WHA.”
One of his last fights was epic in how it came about.
A young rookie out of his old junior city, Drummondville, hadn’t been drafted or offered a pro deal anywhere. He signed with the NFSHL Port-Aux-Basque Mariners in Labrador on the western side of the island. Coming into town, the young man went to the local watering hole to partake of a few adult beverages with his brother Mario, and got a scouting report on the legendary Morrison.
The young man was Serge Roberge, one of the toughest minor league heavyweights ever.
Roberge had about 500 fighting majors over the course of his career in the QMJHL, NHL, AHL, IHL, ECHL, UHL, and LNAH, but his first pro bout was against that guy he heard about in Drummondville.
Morrison had a bad right shoulder at the time, but didn’t tell anybody and didn’t want the young buck to know either. Morrison won the moral victory wrestling him to the ice.
“I heard he was a tough kid, so before the game, guys were saying he wanted to go with me. My shoulder was a little wonky, but I didn’t tell anybody or want to disappoint him. I was able to get a couple of small shots in. We wrestled mostly, but I never knew that story, but I’m not surprised. He should have brought me an (Alexander) Keith after the game.” Morrison said.
Morrison, who’s now 70-years-old, lives in Sydney, on the eastern end of Nova Scotia. He still takes in the QMJHL Cape Breton Eagles games at the Centre 200 Arena as a part of his weekly ritual. The team is coached by a former New Haven Senator, Jake Grimes.
He and longtime friend and teammate, Norm Ferguson, have a seat always at rinkside. Ferguson’s son, Craig, a Yale grad, also played on the last AHL team in the Elm City, the Beast of New Haven.
“We have a spot behind the net with the fans and enjoy the games. It’s a great time.”
Morrison’s daughter moved from Connecticut back to Sydney several years ago and his son still lives on the Connecticut shoreline. He’s a grandfather now.
He spends time with the two boys. His four-year-old grandson is getting close to being ready for his first pair of skates and grandpa wants to teach him.
“I have had both knees replaced and haven’t been on skates in a while, but when he is ready, I’m gonna put them back on.”
Morrison was inducted into the Newfoundland-Labrador (2018), Cape Breton (2018), and Nova Scotia (2000) Sports Halls-of-Fame and he is proud of his career.
“I was very touched to be inducted, but I couldn’t get out there. We had a wicked late-season snowstorm here, so I couldn’t make it then. When they are retiring another guy’s number in the fall, they asked if I could make it then. ‘We’ll honor you then.’ It will be great to see everybody again.”
Morrison had a wonderful journey of a pro career that all started in New Haven.
