AS THE CANADIENS BEGAN preparing for the playoffs and the possibility of a sixth consecutive Stanley Cup, they found themselves readying for a familiar foe. In the first round, for the third consecutive year they would face off with the Chicago Black Hawks, who had finished in third place, 17 points behind Montreal.
Having been swept by the Canadiens in the previous year’s playoffs, and bowing out in five games the year before that, the Black Hawks had responded by building a bigger, more physical squad to augment their skilled players like Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita.
The first game seemed to bear out the media’s prediction that the Canadiens would eliminate the Black Hawks for a third straight year. Chicago used its physical advantage to pound and outplay the Canadiens for the first two periods. However, after 40 minutes the game was tied at two, and the Black Hawks were overwhelmed by a four-goal barrage by the Canadiens in the third period. However, in the course of winning the first game 6–2 they had paid a heavy price.
“We didn’t know it at the time but the most telling blow of all was dealt by Jack Evans against Jean Béliveau,” recalled Bernie Geoffrion. “Jean was checked into the boards behind the net by the Chicago defenseman and struck his head on the glass as he was falling to the ice. The next day Béliveau still was complaining of a headache and would not be the same for the remaining games. If one check could turn a series, that was it.”1
In addition to a suddenly impaired Béliveau, forward Billy Hicke was sent to the hospital with a slight concussion, and forward Donnie Marshall suffered a knee injury. Although the medical team recommended that he sit out at least the next few games, he chose to play, yet his effectiveness was unquestionably compromised.
For the first 40 minutes, the second game appeared to be following a script similar to the first. The two teams were tied at the conclusion of the second period. They exchanged goals in the third period, then Eddie Litzenberger, a former Canadien, beat Plante with less than three minutes to play, and the Black Hawks evened the series with a surprising 4–3 victory.
The series shifted to Chicago for game three. “This was not a game for the faint-hearted,” Bernie Geoffrion later wrote. “Chicago Stadium was like a volcano waiting to erupt even before the opening face-off and it stayed that way throughout as bodies crunched bodies.”2
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Red Fisher has been witness to over 4,000 hockey games, from regular-season tilts to playoffs, Canada Cups, World Championships, and the Olympics. When asked which is the greatest game he has ever seen, his answer is always the same: the third game of the 1961 semifinal series between the Canadiens and the Black Hawks.
“What occurred that night in Chicago was, arguably, the greatest performances by two goaltenders in NHL history,” wrote Fisher. “From the start, the game belonged to Jacques Plante and Glenn Hall. Breakaways, long shots, slapshots, close-in shots – they saw them all and stopped them all for the entire first period and most of the second. Then, with less than two minutes remaining in the period, a gritty, hard-nosed left-winger named Murray Balfour, who had been ‘sold’ to the Black Hawks by the Canadiens in June of 1959, scored the game’s first goal. The crowd erupted.”
With 40 seconds left in the game, Toe Blake pulled Plante from the net in an attempt to tie the game. After a stoppage in play there was a critical faceoff in the Chicago end of the rink. Taking the draw would be Henri Richard, who decided to gamble. Instead of drawing the puck back like he would on almost every faceoff, he slapped at the dropped puck. The puck was in the back of the net before an unsuspecting Glenn Hall could react, and the game was tied.
The overtime was the height of excitement. Both teams exchanged numerous scoring chances as both goalies successfully defended their nets through the first overtime period and then a second overtime period.
“As the clock neared the twelve-minute mark of the third overtime, referee Dalton McArthur whistled down the Canadiens’ Dickie Moore with a minor penalty,” remembered Fisher. “Borderline stuff, particularly considering the time, the game’s tempo, and the game’s importance. Put it this way: there had been occasions earlier in the game when far more obvious penalties could have been called – against either team. Twenty-eight seconds later, at 12:12, Murray Balfour put the puck behind Jacques Plante from a scramble in front of the net. It was all over – except for the bedlam which followed.”
The crowd went delirious in celebration. Making his way through the sea of debris that now littered the ice, an enraged Toe Blake made a beeline towards the scorer’s bench, through the attempts of his players to restrain him. “McArthur still had his back to Blake when the Canadiens coach flung a punch which struck the referee on the shoulder and deflected onto his jaw,” reported Fisher. “It was only then that McArthur turned, his eyes widening in surprise at the sight of Blake. That was also the moment when several Canadiens players wrapped their arms around their coach and led him from the ice.”3
The repercussions from this chaos were sudden and severe. Toe’s outburst would not go unpunished for long, and while he avoided a suspension, he was fined a then-record $2,000 by NHL president Clarence Campbell. For a man whose yearly salary was $18,000, it was a substantial amount. His punishment was not the only one. The following summer the NHL quietly relieved Dalton McArthur of his refereeing duties.
The loss of the game and Blake’s record fine helped obscure a serious injury sustained by Geoffrion earlier in the game. Suffering from torn ligaments in his left knee, he had his leg secured in a cast, rendering him unavailable for the upcoming games in the series.
“We blew it against Chicago,” Dickie Moore laments today. “I felt so bad at the end of game three because I took the penalty. It was a stupid penalty and the referee shouldn’t have even called a penalty because the guy took a dive. I did put my stick on him, but not enough to pull him down. After the goal was scored, I slowly left the penalty box and felt horrible. I saw Toe coming across the ice, and I thought he was coming after me, but it turns out he was going after the referee.” Moore laughs. “I was so thankful. I felt that I had cost the team the last game. And Toe, because of what happened with the referee, had taken all of the attention off me and the team and placed it all on himself. That was Toe Blake. I felt that I owed him and the team.”4
Having scored only one goal in six periods against Glenn Hall two nights earlier, the Canadiens came out in game four and overwhelmed the Chicago goalie by bombarding him with 26 shots in the first period and 60 in total, for a 5–2 victory that evened the series. Leading the way was a spirited Moore, who paced the team with two goals.
In a series Rocket Richard called “the dirtiest I had ever seen,” the physical play of the Black Hawks had been the main theme so far, and the Canadiens, despite having a generous rest in between games four and five, were a wounded group.
“The Black Hawks were kicking the stuffing out of us,” wrote Bernie Geoffrion. “Their tough defense had practically nullified our offense. To give you an idea how much our attack was affected, our leading scorer for the series wasn’t Béliveau, Moore, Henri Richard, or me, it was little Phil Goyette. Worse than that was the fact that we didn’t have an antidote for their roughhousing.”5
The list of the walking wounded now included Jacques Plante, who, despite playing with a brace since his return, was now suffering increased pain in his knee. Undoubtedly, the pressure of playing so many games in a row on an injured leg worsened the injury. Before games five and six, in the privacy of the dressing room, Jacques Plante was given a needle to anaesthetize his throbbing knee.
For the next two games, a weakened Jacques Plante knew he needed to be nothing short of great. He wasn’t. Unfortunately for him and the Canadiens, Glenn Hall was perfect. Not one of Montreal’s 32 shots beat Hall, as Chicago took control of the series with a 3–0 win in game five at the Forum.
“That was the worst we ever played in a play-off game since I’ve been here,” complained Toe Blake. “But I still have confidence we’ll pull it out of the fire. Our team always plays its best under the pressure.”6
The desperate Canadiens, now facing elimination, boarded the train for Chicago for game six.
“Our predicament was clear,” recalled Geoffrion. “We were a game away from having our Cup streak ended. My predicament was complicated. Dr. Larry Hampson had put my leg in a cast until April 7. But our do-or-die game in Chicago was April 4.”7
On the train ride, Doug Harvey, the team’s captain, ambled over and sat beside the injured Geoffrion. “Boom, we really need you tomorrow night,” he said.
“Why don’t we cut it off, see how you feel without it?” suggested Harvey. “If you think it’s okay, try working the power play.”8
In the first five games of the series, the Canadiens had enjoyed a manpower advantage 22 times. They had scored the grand total of two goals. There was no doubt that the sudden disappearance of the Canadiens’ vaunted power play was one of the series’ enduring mysteries and a source of consternation for the increasingly frustrated Blake.
“I can’t understand what’s happened to our power play,” Blake complained to the media. “I’ve told them over and over again that they’ve got to shoot the puck. But it happens all the time. They hold on to it, or they make that extra fancy pass, and the next thing we see is the puck going into our own end.”9
With all that in mind, a hesitant Geoffrion acceded. “Doug got a knife from the train kitchen and the two of us sneaked into the ladies’ washroom,” Geoffrion remembered. “With my leg up on a chair I watched my captain saw away at the heavy plaster cast. He cut it lengthwise and the way the train was bouncing around it was a miracle I wasn’t cut. It seemed to take hours to complete the job. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was done but soon had second thoughts. Pain shot up my leg when I stood up. I began to consider the repercussions of what we had done. I had plenty of time to think it all over because the leg hurt so much that I hardly slept a minute on the train that night.”
The next morning the entire team saw the results of Harvey’s handiwork. To say they were shocked would be an understatement. Toe Blake and Frank Selke were less than thrilled with the amateur medical procedure, but Geoffrion begged the two men to allow him to play, and after much deliberation and an injection to freeze the injured leg, Geoffrion skated out for game six.
“I wasn’t trying to be a hero by biting the bullet and all that but I did have a sense of loyalty to the Habs and if they ever needed a boost this was it. After all how many times do you get to go for six straight Stanley Cups?”
Blake decided to use Geoffrion solely on the power play, and an opportunity presented itself midway through the first period. The opposition knew of Geoffrion’s weakness, and as soon as he touched the puck he was met by a charging Bobby Hull.
“Sure enough Hull connected,” Geoffrion wrote. “In fact he connected so hard that I crashed backward onto the bad knee. I knew then that they were determined to get me out of the game. I hobbled back to the bench and begged for one more chance but when it came on another power play they just knocked me right off my gimpy leg once more and that was really it. I was finished.”10 A dejected Geoffrion spent the rest of the game sitting on the bench.
The Canadiens fired 27 shots at the sturdy Hall, who once again presented an impenetrable figure, which the injured Plante was unable to match in the 3–0 defeat that ended the series and the season. It was a depressed and damaged group of players who solemnly made the long train ride back from Chicago.
“What a difference a year makes,” commented Charlie Halpin in the Montreal Star. “This could very well have been the reaction of the vanquished Canadiens who arrived home today to the almost hushed cheers of a few banner-waving fans at Central Station.”11
The greatest team the game had ever known had been dethroned, and an era of unmatched stability was about to become a time of change for the Canadiens.
The postmortem on the Canadiens’ season began right away as many sought to explain their failure to win a sixth straight Stanley Cup.
“They were a powerhouse,” recalled Frank Selke Jr. “But when the Rocket retired in 1960, he not only took his talent and skills away with him, he took his heart, too. I think maybe that had more to do with the team not being able to win the next year, win a sixth straight, than anything else. It wasn’t the same team without his fire.”12
With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see that the Black Hawks’ victory over the Canadiens was merely the first step in a change of direction in the way the game was coached and played. Chicago had imposed its physical will on the skilled Canadiens. The fact that an average player like Jack Evans could render the great Jean Béliveau impotent for the whole series spoke volumes. Now a team of superior talent could be brought down to the opponent’s level of play through some mere roughhousing and intimidation. Thus began an era in which brawn took over from skill as the deciding factor in many a playoff series.
As was usually the case, the astute Frank Selke had seen the writing on the wall.
“Canadiens are going to be a lot tougher next season,” Selke promised on the train ride home. “We have been playing nice, clean hockey a little too long. The Black Hawks deliberately racked up five of our best players and not one of the Canadiens put a hand on them in retaliation. I’m tired of hearing fans calling our players ‘yellow-bellies.’ This is going to change.”13
Selke also vowed that Jacques Plante would be his goalie the following year. “But Jacques has got to take things more seriously,” Selke warned. “He wasn’t up to par through the early part of the schedule although he played his position better than most of the other players in the latter part.”14
With the season over, Jacques Plante wrestled with the weight of a critical decision. The pain in his knee was once again intense, resulting in many a sleepless night. His choices boiled down to two options: retirement or an operation.
Despite his inconclusive X-rays, Plante knew there was something amiss with his knee. Furthermore, he knew that there was no way he could play another season with the Canadiens in this condition. He did not take the decision lightly.
“I thought it might be the end of my career,” Plante recalled a year later. “A friend of mine who played goal in the minors had the same operation and he had to quit playing.”15
Plante decided to go under the knife. His career hung in the balance.