Welcome to The TSN Hockey Bobcast - where TSN Hockey Insider Bob McKenzie addresses your questions on hockey...and just about anything else.

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Here are a couple of topics from this week's edition that stood out.

 

Salming's bravery

For my money, I would say that Borge Salming – who by the way is 65-years-old now – is one of the bravest, most courageous players that has ever played the game of hockey in the NHL. I say this because at the time Salming and his pal Inge Hammarstrom came and joined the Toronto Maple Leafs back in the 1970s, it was the era of the Broadstreet Bullies, it was as dangerous a time as you could possibly imagine to be a player in the NHL. So much fighting, so much violence that ended up spilling off the ice and into the courts.

I don’t know if people today can truly appreciate how much like the Wild West the 1970s was in the NHL. And here was this Swedish defenceman who comes to blaze a trail and the physical abuse that Salming and Hammarstrom took was absolutely incredible. And I don’t think it took very long for Salming to prove that he had the heart of a lion; that no matter what they did to try and physically and mentally intimidate him, it wasn’t going to work.

And the stuff the Philadelphia Flyers did to this guy was off the charts. A person today couldn’t even fathom the level of violence that was exacted on Salming by the Flyers and by a lot of people in the NHL.

I grew up in Toronto in the ‘60s and my favourite player was Tim Horton. And I think most people would say that Horton was the greatest Maple Leaf defenceman of all time. But I certainly think that you could make a case that Salming could challenge Horton on that front and that’s almost sacrilege for me to say, but the numbers don’t lie.

 

 

Doing colour at Joe Louis Arena

So I always remember getting on that private jet - it was a very small one, probably only about six, seven seats - It was like a little bullet. And I was on the runway, it was raining at the time, and I was kind of panicky because I hadn’t done colour commentating for a while. I used to do it on junior games on TSN. I don’t think I was ever particularly good at it but here I was thrust into this situation in Game 7. So, I’m sitting there on the plane and I get out my NHL guide and record book and I get out a notepad and I get out a pen and I’m going to start making notes and I’m kind of panicky thinking I’ve got to coming up with some information and stuff to be able to do the colour commentary that night. So just as I was about to kind of go through it and start making notes, I looked over and I noticed there was a bar there and I noticed that there was rye, rum, scotch, vodka, you name it, so I looked at the book, the NHL guide, and I looked at my notepad and I thought, ‘ah what the hell.’ I closed that up and I thought, ‘I think I need a rum and coke more than I need to make some notes,’ so I gave myself one stiff belt of rum and coke and the private plane took off. 

We landed in Windsor, they put me in a cab and had to clear customs through the tunnel and there was quite a lineup there to get through for everybody from Windsor who was going over to the game at the Joe [Louis Arena] as well. Anyways, long story long as I like to say, the cab pulled up to Joe Louis Arena, I’m going to say it was 7:30, I believe it was a 7:30 start, but in any case, 7:30 start, 7:38 puck drop, cab pulls up it’s about 7:28, 7:30 almost at Joe Louis Arena. Our technical director at TSN was there to greet me in the cab, he says, ‘come on, we’re on the air,’ so I ran up the stairs of the Joe, couldn’t take the elevator, no time, had to run up the stairs into the press box at the Joe Louis Arena completely out of breath and the puck was just being dropped, the anthem had just finished and Jim Hughson was there by himself doing play-by-play. I sat down beside him, tried to catch my breath, and at the first stoppage started doing colour commentary on the game that night.

 

 

Bob's concert experience

Best to listen in on this one.