......And Sometimes It Is So Much More.Anyway.
I'm hanging around at Mr. Beer 'N Hockey's place, reading his latest stuff, when I suddenly find myself pounding out a comment about the remnants of my Dad's old 1959 Strat-O-Chief that used to sit in the garage when I was a kid.
Which, of course, got me thinking about Johnny Bucyk.
So I went off to have a look at his numbers.
Mr. Bucyk's I mean.
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Johnny 'Chief' Bucyk had his best season with the Boston Bruins in 1970/71 (51 goals and 65 assists). It was quite a year for the left winger who had never scored more than 3o goals in any one of his previous fifteen seasons in the NHL.
Which begs the question....
Why?
Why did Bucyk suddenly have such a great year statistically?
Well, the big bad Bruins of yore were a great and dominating team.
But, perhaps even more importantly, they also had the greatest puck distributor, not to mention the greatest player, of all time manning the blueline (and, let's face it, every other line on the ice) at the time.
In fact, what stands out most amongst Robert Gordon Orr's numbers in 1970/71 are not his unbelievable goal (ie. 37) or even his stratospheric assist (ie. 102) totals for a defenseman back when all defensemen were meant to stay at home.
No.
What really stands out is Orr's inconceivable plus/minus total of...... Get this! ........ one hundred and twenty-four.
To the good that is.
Now, to put this in perspective, even Wayne Gretzky, when he was racking up crazy-legged points totals that were almost twice that of Orr's in the go-go '80's, never broke a hundred in the plus/minus category.
Wow!
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True story.....This year I got a bunch of the young twenty-somethings I teach to tell me who they thought the greatest of all time was.....Turns out that a not inconsiderable number of them thought I was crazy to suggest that Orr was better than, not Gretzky, but.......Crosby!!!! Sheesh.
And when did I ask 'em? Well, when I was lecturing about CD4-positive T-cells, of course.
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