The Icehouse Gang

Earlier this year, while the Boston Bruins were roaring toward an Eastern Division title in the National Hockey League, Star Defenseman Bobby Orr was asked to do a TV commercial. It would have shown him making a sloppy play because he hadn't eaten his Wheaties. His attorney, Alan Eagleson, disdainfully rejected the idea. "Bobby Orr," said Eagleson, "does not get paid to make mistakes."

Neither do his teammates. When regular-season play ended last week, the Bruins had not only won the division title easily, but had eclipsed no fewer than 35 N.H.L. records--itself a record. In setting new marks for the most victories at home and on the road, they made more goals (399) than any team has ever scored in a season. Ten Boston players each put in 20 or more, which is roughly equivalent to a baseball team's having ten .300 hitters. Center Phil Esposito alone netted 76, far surpassing the old record of 58 set by Chicago's Bobby Hull in 1969. Little wonder, then, that although the Bruins split the first two games of the Stanley Cup quarter-finals with the Montreal Canadiens, they were heavy favorites to repeat their 1970 cup victory.

Teddies No More. Under Coach Thomas Johnson, a former Montreal defenseman, Boston is an awesomely versatile and balanced club, capable of dizzying speed and split-second playmaking. Its popular image, though, is of a body-checking, fist-swinging style of play that delights the fans and keeps the players in stitches. BOBBY ORR AND THE ANIMALS PLAY TONIGHT, say the headlines when Boston comes to town. In one of the many scraps during their Stanley Cup opener, Bad Boy Defenseman Don Awrey twisted the neck of Canadien Marc Tardif's sweater so tightly that Tardif's breathing was cut off and he sank to the ice like a rag doll.

The bruising Bruins of today, however, were for years more like Teddy bears. They had not won the Stanley Cup since 1941, and prior to 1967 they went for eight straight seasons without even making the playoffs. Toward the end of those hapless years, the N.H.L. began expanding from six teams to its present 14. While many other clubs suffered from the resulting thin spread of good players, Boston made some shrewd trades, cultivated junior prospects from Canada and put together a hard-hitting Icehouse Gang--comparable in talent and toughness to the celebrated Gas House Gang of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals in the 1930s.

The most important of these acquisitions was Bobby Orr, who some hockey experts believe is already the best all-round player in the game's history. In his first season (1966), he was the N.H.L.'s rookie of the year and made the All-Star team (on which he has played ever since). In 1970, he won the N.H.L. awards for best defenseman, highest scorer and most valuable player. Amazingly, for a defenseman, Orr this season broke six scoring records, including most assists (102, beating his own record of 87) and most goals by a defenseman (37).

Promised Land. On the ice, Orr has both blinding speed and a diverse repertory of shifty moves. Skating at full steam, he will suddenly come to a dead stop in front of a startled defender. Then, without losing the puck, he can pivot in a full circle and either flip a backhand pass to a teammate or bolt around the defender. In a variation on the classic give-and-go of basketball, he will lob a lazy pass across the blue line to the center, then streak for the net in time to receive the return pass and slap it in. His awed teammates call him Moses--"because he has led us to the promised land."

Building around Orr and longtime veteran Bruin John Bucyk (51 goals this year), Boston tapped the minors for Goalie Gerry Cheevers and Center Derek ("Turk") Sanderson. The hairy, mustached Sanderson, a forechecking terror and a Bruins "policeman," is one of the league's best at controlling face-offs. From the New York Rangers, Boston acquired John McKenzie, a hard-charging right-winger who scored 31 goals this season. From the Chicago Black Hawks came another fine right-winger, Ken Hodge (43 goals), plus Centers Fred Stanfield (24 goals) and Phil Esposito. The fast, gangling "Espo" has been playing as if scoring had just been invented. His 76 goals constitute only one of the ten new scoring records he set this season, among them the most points (152) and the most game-winning goals (16).

Other Climaxes. The Bruins are almost as colorful off the ice as on. Sanderson, with a Playboy-style pad and an unbuttoned lip, plays the role of a freaked-out Joe Namath. "Scoring goals," he likes to say, "isn't the only climax in my life." Esposito festoons his locker with trinkets to ward off "evil spirits." Orr has become a prospective millionaire. He is co-proprietor of a successful hockey camp and is just launching a hockey equipment company with projected first-year sales of $1,250,000.

Not that Orr or any of the Icehouse Gang need worry about security for a while. Already the commanding force in hockey, they are shaping up as a sports dynasty to rival such formerly great teams as baseball's Yankees, football's Packers and basketball's Celtics. Orr, for example, is only 23, Esposito is 29, Sanderson 25 and Hodge 26. At the moment it may still be a debatable proposition whether they are the greatest team the game has ever known. But clearly they will have ample time in which to prove it.

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