You guys are bigger hockey fans than me. I was mostly interested in players, not so much the teams except Montreal and Pittsburg. I never liked the Leafs because Conn Smythe made players keep their hair short or off the team.
If you'll suffer a bit for me, Bobby Bauer of the Kraut Line, then making skates in Ontario, gave me a case of hard liquor for the guys on a press train, I was asked if I was Gordie Howe in a grocery store, met half the Detroit team including Alex Delvecchio in Montreal.
But for all of them, on TV, ice or in person, no one ever turned me on like The Rocket in the Forum, his explosive intensity, his laser-like black eyes, boring on the wing inside the blue line , almost scary, I couldn't breathe.
I was crushed when I met him in a TV studio. He was shorter than me.
