UKRAINIAN PRO HOCKEY UPDATE

by Ihor Stelmach

Sadness suffered by shutout King

From the very second he strapped on his deceased brother's goalie pads, it seemed like Terry Sawchuk had signed a deathly pact with the devil himself. This Ternopil, Ukraine, native (American hockey guidebooks mistakenly list Sawchuk as being born in Winnipeg) would go on and become one of the greatest, arguably the greatest, National Hockey League goaltenders of all time. Fame, money, stardom and notoriety all would eventually be his. However, it would all come with the usually unfortunate price tag.

In all actuality, Mike Sawchuk, Terry's older brother, was the true goalie in this family, but at the tender age of 17, Mike died of a heart ailment. The loss of his older brother had a devastating impact on 10-year-old Terry. "I couldn't believe when it happened," Terry told an interviewer many years ago. "I missed him for a long time afterwards."

It was when the regular goalie on Sawchuk's bantam league team moved away that Terry Sawchuk had the occasion to strap on his brother's pads. "The pads were there, where I could always look at them," Sawchuk said in another past interview. "The day they put me in the net I had a good game. I've stayed there since."

When Sawchuk's father wrecked his back in a bad fall off a scaffold, young Terry was left as the family's sole breadwinner. Hockey proved to be his family's salvation. A naive 17-year-old, Sawchuk cashed his $2,000 signing bonus check from the Detroit Red Wings into small bills, returned to his Windsor, Ontario, motel, threw the money into the air and proceeded to roll around in it. Of course, in the early 1950s, $2,000 was major money!

Then came a professional hockey career underlined by greatness and injury. On his 18th birthday, while playing pro minor league hockey in Omaha, Sawchuk was nailed in an eye by a hard slap shot. As luck would have it, an excellent surgeon happened to be passing through town and Sawchuk's vision was saved via a successful operation.

This brave unmasked warrior accumulated a total of more than 400 stitches in his face. His injury list was further highlighted by a herniated disk, severed wrist tendons, which did not permit him to close his left hand, bone chips in one of his elbows and some chronic arthritis. Terry's right arm ended up being two inches shorter than his left one after elbow surgery. He also lost two inches in height after some needed back surgery.

The good natured, fun-loving kid who actually grew up in Winnipeg transformed himself into a very angry, chain-smoking adult, full of hate. He lived, as one can readily imagine, in constant physical pain. He was often seen in public poking and scratching at his many bodily scars. One can only imagine the severe mental anguish and trauma that went hand-in-hand with the physical sufferings.

He gained the reputation of a semi-sadistic weirdo when it was learned he actually kept the teeth he lost, the spurs doctors removed from his elbow and even pickled his own appendix after having it removed.

His tragic-laden, hurt-filled short life created a moody, complex and angry individual. "When we woke up in the morning, I would say good morning to him in both French and English," said one-time Red Wings' roommate Marcel Pronovost. "If he answered, I knew we would talk at least a little that day. But if he didn't reply, which was most days, we didn't speak the entire day."

Invariably, Sawchuk's actions spoke much more loudly than his mere words. He came up as a spectacular prospect who was the first ever to be selected rookie of the year in three different hockey leagues: the United States League, the American Hockey League and the NHL.

Sawchuk adopted the style of a reflex goalie, placing scarcely any emphasis on covering/cutting down angles. His reactive approach was to try and cover the goal net with his explosive movements. He gained a reputation as the toughest goalie of his hockey era to beat one-on-one. His record of 103 shutouts, which he earned in only 971 matches, remains one of hockey's few unattainable standards.

Some of his other truly amazing accomplishments: a streak of five straight campaigns with a goals-against average of less than 2.00. He was and is one of only eight netminders to earn four shutouts in one playoff season - he notched those four in 1952 when his Red Wings won eight straight games to capture Lord Stanley's coveted Cup. Sawchuk went on to win three more NHL championships.

In 1970, Terry Sawchuk was 40 years old and barely a shadow of the man and the backstopper he had been during his heyday. His last hockey days were spent barely hanging on with the New York Rangers. After returning home from Detroit, quite affected by his inability to get a failed marriage back on track, Sawchuk picked a fight with his Ranger roommate, Ron Stewart. Stewart had no inkling of what or why. He was just a nice guy, sharing a Long Island cottage with, maybe, the wrong guy.

In an unnecessary skirmish, both fell over a barbecue pit and Sawchuk suffered severe internal injuries. He seemed like he was going to recover. He officially forgave roommate Stewart and said it was his own fault it happened. Stewart came to visit him in the hospital. The diagnosis was life-threatening liver damage. During surgery, a blood clot worked its way through an artery and finally stopped this long-hurting heart.

Thus, a 30-year unfortunate chain of events that began with a broken heart and an abandoned unused set of goalie pads had somewhat tragically arrived at the very same ending.

Substance over style

Sitting there stunned, Johnny Bucyk watched them leave, friends and teammates, one at a time, eventually sent packing back to everyday normal life. Bucyk, the Boston Bruins' all-time leader in games played, had outplayed most of them and certainly outlasted each and every one of them.

"It breaks your heart when a club lets your buddies go," Bucyk once told a hockey writer. "But you can't be soft about it. It's a hard game and a hard life, and you do the best you can."

Bucyk sure did the best he ever could for as long as he possibly could, and he came out a true champion on two occasions. He lasted for 21 Bruins seasons, notching an astonishing 545 goals. Both of these achievements stand as team records. His other hallmark - 1,436 games as a Bruin - is destined to fall due to the relentless assault of present Bruin captain Raymond Bourque.

Bucyk grew up in Edmonton, in a poor household. His dad, Sam, was unemployed for some four years during the Great Depression and passed away when Johnny was only 11. Mom Pearl Bucyk worked on a farm picking potatoes with a salary of $1 per day and also wrapped meat in a packaging factory for 36 cents per hour to support her struggling family.

"I used to wash the clothes in a big tub, and then I would throw the water out into the backyard," she once told an interviewer. "In the winter, it would freeze over and make a rink, a blue rink from the blue in the water. All the kids would be on the rink and they would ask me to throw more rinse water out: 'Please Mrs. Bucyk, please throw some more water out.'"

Although Johnny was very athletic, he got his first pair of skates when he was 13 because of his family's poor finances and he was consequently a very slow skater. His minor hockey coach ordered him to take extra skating between periods when everyone else was resting. And he went further by signing the youngster up for figure skating lessons, which were with a private trainer during the summer so his teammates and friends would not find out. Still, when Bucyk started playing junior hockey for the Edmonton Oil Kings, he couldn't yet cross his left skate over his right.

Born with a strong physique, Bucyk used sheer willpower to make himself into a bonafide NHL player. "It's an old saying, but if you want something badly enough, you'll get it," said Ken McCauley, one of Bucyk's minor league coaches. "Johnny Bucyk wanted it a little more than the next guy."

So, Bucyk made the National Hockey League, but at first languished as a third-line left-winger for two seasons after breaking in with the Detroit Red Wings in 1955. But, as he demonstrated time and again, his hard work and willful perseverance meant consistent improvement as a professional. The improvements were impossible to ignore, and when Red Wings' general manager Jack Adams decided to reacquire Ukrainian goalie (how ironic was this?) Terry Sawchuk from Boston in 1957, Bucyk was the price to be paid in this deal.

Coming to the Hub city meant reunion time for Bucyk with his old junior teammates, Bronco Horvath and Vic Stasiuk. This troika was aptly nicknamed the "Uke Line," named so for the Ukrainian background of all three forwards. The "Uke Line" was kept intact for some six seasons by the Bruins, but even their stellar play and production could not boost their team. The Bs made it into the Stanley Cup playoffs only twice in Bucyk's first 10 years in Boston. The "Chief" nicknamed for his dark, Indian-like looks, continued to taste defeat too often and with unfailing reluctance.

Along came Bobby Orr. Soon after hockey's all-time No. 4 came Phil Esposito. These two all-time Bruins would definitively change those losing ways. In the year of 1967, at the maturing age of 32, Bucyk finally found himself on a winning team and contributed with his first 30-goal campaign.

"Management had to weed out and trade off the guys who couldn't stop thinking like losers," said ex-teammate and long-time Bruins' commentator Derek Sanderson. "They had to have guys who think of winning and nothing else. The Chief always had that, never will lose it."

Bucyk won his first Stanley Cup two days before his 35th birthday. He proceeded to celebrate his first 50-goal season one year later, becoming the oldest puckster ever to accomplish this feat. He went on to rival Gordie Howe as one of the most productive old-timers ever, recording seven 30-goal seasons past age 32.

Over the course of his rather lengthy NHL career, Bucyk managed to purposely transform himself from one of the league's hardest hitters into a two-time most gentlemanly Lady Bing winner. Yet throughout this period of his career, the offensive element of his hockey game never changed. Bucyk, 6-foot-1 and a rock-solid 215 pounds, made it a point to park himself within a few scant feet of the goalie crease. "Johnny Bucyk," wrote Toronto Star columnist Milt Dunnell, "is as obvious as a goal post."

"I've thought of myself as a spear-carrier, not a star, really," Bucyk once observed of himself. "I'm not a glamour guy and I've just gone along getting what I could out of every game. It has added up."

With time, so did the ultimate price he had to pay for his super successful career. Toward the final years, Bucyk could not sleep on either one of his sides due to lingering damage from several separated shoulders. Still another recurring hurt, this time to his back, made sleeping face up quite impossible. Poor John was left to a quick nap on his stomach, pain permitting.

When he finally took the plunge into retirement at the age of 43, Bucyk ranked as the fourth-leading NHL goal-scorer and point-producer of all-time. The poor kid from Edmonton had proven, without any doubt, that the race to the Hall of Fame does not go to the fastest kid on the block. Instead, nine times out of 10, triumph goes to the performer who is steadiest in body and heart.

Ukrainian Scoring Leaders (Final regular season)

Player	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	PIM
Wayne Gretzky	N.Y. Rangers	82	23	67	90	28
Peter Bondra	Washington	76	52	26	78	44
Keith Tkachuk	Phoenix	69	40	26	66	147
Dimitri Khristich	Boston	82	29	37	66	42
Dave Andreychuk	New Jersey Devils	75	14	34	48	26
Alexei Zhitnik	Buffalo	78	15	30	45	102
Steve Konowalchuk	Washington	80	10	24	34	80
Tony Hrkac	Dallas-Edmonton	49	13	14	27	10
Ed Olczyk	Pittsburgh	56	11	11	22	35
David Nemirovsky	Florida	41	9	12	21	8
Oleg Tverdovsky	Phoenix	46	7	12	19	12
Richard Matvichuk	Dallas	74	3	15	18	63
Andrei Nikolishin	Washington	38	6	10	16	14
Curtis Leschyshyn	Carolina	73	2	10	12	45
Joey Kocur	Detroit	63	6	5	11	92
Brian Bellows	Washington	11	6	3	9	6
Dave Babych	Vancouver-Philadelphia	53	0	9	9	49
Drake Berehowsky	Edmonton	67	1	6	7	169
Wade Belak	Colorado	8	1	1	2	27
Steve Halko	Carolina	18	0	2	2	10
Brad Lukowich	Dallas	4	0	1	1	2
Yevgeny Namestnikov	N.Y. Islanders	6	0	1	1	4
Todd Hlushko	Calgary	18	0	1	1	27
Ken Daneyko	New Jersey Devils	37	0	1	1	57
Ryan Huska	Chicago	1	0	0	0	0

	GP	MINS	GA	W	L	T	PCT	AVG	SHO
Kelly Hrudey, San Jose	28	1360	62	4	16	2	0.897	2.74	1
Peter Sidorkiewicz, New Jersey	1	20	1	0	0	0	0.875	3	0

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 7, 1998, No. 23, Vol. LXVI

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