The Rocket

A Chicago Black Hawk swung the first punch and Detroit's Red Wings shook off their heavy gloves--the better to bash an enemy nose. Reinforcements swarmed on to the ice from both benches; Referee Frank ("King") Clancy, who wasn't mad at anybody until he got slugged by a zealous spectator, began swinging too. For twelve minutes, with no cops in sight, there was bedlam last week in Chicago's jampacked Stadium.

Afterwards, everybody felt better. Until then, pro hockey just hadn't been its old unruly self this season. The 1947 accent was on razzle-dazzle attack, not rough & tumble. The man of the year -- Maurice ("The Rocket") Richard -- was not the biggest thug on ice but a shy fellow with a sure eye.

This week Richard (pronounced Ree-shar) put on his 12 Ibs. of shin & shoulder pads, ankle-length underwear, skates and stovepipe pants, skated onto the ice before Montreal's largest hockey crowd of the season (12,674). Once during the evening, against the arch-rival Toronto Maple Leafs, the crowds got what they came to see. There was a pass, a swift attack by Richard on the cage, a flick of his stick; and The Rocket had scored. The stands rang with cowbells, cheers and whistles.

Ouvrez la Porte. Maurice Richard is the left-handed right wing of Montreal's league-leading Les Canadiens. He has made a runaway of this season's scoring race (with 36 goals, 22 assists), though for a while one rival club assigned two men to guard him -- as frank a tribute as baseball's right-side shift against Batsman Ted Williams. They gave up that strategy when Rocket-Richard decoyed his defenders out of the play to give his mates a better shot at the cage.

In partisan Montreal, fans speak of The Rocket in the same breath with hockey's immortal Howie Morenz. Other hockey towns, which have heckled him by calling out "Ouvrez la porte, Richard," are now ready to agree that he is more than a wartime wonder.

A powerful, 175-lb. French Canadian, Maurice Richard is deservedly the highest-paid player in hockey ($9,000 a year). He has a whiplike getaway: in three strides he can be at full speed; he doesn't telegraph his goal shots: the puck is in flight almost before the goalie knows Richard has snapped his stick. His only serious shortcoming, which Howie Morenz did not share, is a weakness on back-checking; critics call him a "one-way player." But his scoring strength offsets that defect.

The Rocket, only 25, is the despair of publicity men: he does not smoke, drink, gamble or swear; and he wants no one to exploit his broken English for gags.

Although he has spent 55 minutes in the penalty box this season, he is not a rough player. (Says Coach Dick Irvin: "He is the most marked man in the league. He has done well because he keeps his mouth shut, his ears open and his hands up.") The Rocket saves his tantrums for the golf course where he often breaks a club over his knee in a magnificent rage. At home, easygoing Maurice Richard lets his wife, Lucille, do the talking as well as the cooking. Says he: "She's not too bad . . . she's 21 -- just a baby, whatthahell."

Richard is convinced that the worst thing that ever happened to him was to break the scoring record in his third season in the big time. The following year, worrying about keeping it up made him flub instead. This year, not worrying, he may set a new record. Says he coolly: "It is my own record I'd break. What difference does it make?"

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