One Of A Kind
I guess it’s only fitting that we end up where we started,
with a member of the Boston Bruins.
There is a given
for professional athletes in most cities: Play hard, play well, produce victories
and fans will overlook most any shortcoming, including bad behavior (I’m
talking Manny Ramirez bad behavior, not Aaron Hernandez bad behavior). But here
in Boston, a city fortunate enough to be involved in three of the most storied
rivalries in sports history, we take this spoils-of-victory attitude a step
further. Play hard, play well and produce victories against the Yankees, Lakers
or Canadiens, and we just might petition to have you immortalized in bronze (as
great as the Patriots have become, they do not have a rival to match the other
three local franchises).
When the Bruins
traded Barry Pederson to the Vancouver Canuks for Cam Neely and a draft pick (1st
round, 3rd overall in 1987, used to select Glen Wesley) in 1986, it
had been 43 years since they’d last won a playoff series against the Montreal
Canadiens, a stretch that included 17 meetings, all won by Montreal. My dad,
who was 51 at the time, hadn’t seen the Bruins beat the Canadiens since he was
8 years old. The seasons were piling up, and the Canadiens dominance over the
Bruins rivaled that of the Yankees over the Red Sox. Enter Cam Neely.
Bruins fans
discovered right away that Neely was special. In his first season in Boston, he
led the team in goals (36), more than doubled his previous season’s point total
(72) and spent 143 minutes in the penalty box; many of those minutes served for
taking on the league’s best fighers. But the season ended on a familiar note: a
4-game sweep by the defending Stanley Cup Champion Montreal Canadiens in the
first round of the playoffs. Make it 44 years and 18 straight series.
The drought
would end there.
In 1988, a
slight shift occurred. I say slight because it’s impossible to make up for
nearly a half-century of looking up at the team you measure yourself against in
just one season. But you’ve got to start somewhere. The Bruins finished behind
Montreal in the standings and lost game one of the Adams Division Finals (2nd
round, to simplify the ever-changing NHL playoff format) 5-2 at the Forum.
There was no reason for optimism going into Game 2, but the Bruins squeezed out
a 4-3 victory before coming home and sweeping the next two at The Garden. They
won Game 5 at The Forum by a convincing 4-1 score on the strength of two Cam
Neely goals. They’d finally beaten their nemesis.
I remember, at the end of that series, as I watched the
Bruins congratulate one another, thinking, Don’t celebrate too much. Don’t
show them how much this means to you. I was trying to transfer my pride as
a fan onto them. I was picturing those Russian Red Army players,
watching in semi-amazement as the US celebrated at Lake Placid in 1980. But
then I thought about how openly the usually stoic Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
celebrated after finally beating the Celtics at The Garden in ’85. We’d see it
again in 2004, when the Red Sox would come back from 0-3 in the ALCS to finally
beat the Yankees at The Stadium. No, this was not a Stanley Cup championship,
or even a conference final, but it was a BIG deal, and a tremendous relief.
The Bruins would
eliminate the Canadiens from the playoffs in four of the next five seasons. And
even though Cam Neely would miss two of those series due to injury, his
influence could always be felt. It’s like when the bully is beaten, so is his
spell of invincibility. Neely was the heart and soul of those teams. He had a
knack for raising his level of play against Montreal, and, more specifically,
against goaltender Patrick Roy. Roy was, arguably, the best goalie of his era
(Brodeur or Roy, take your pick) and Neely is generally regarded as his
toughest opponent; with 13 career playoff goals scored against Roy, it’s hard
to argue. Along with defenseman Ray Bourque and, later, center Adam Oates,
Neely helped form the nucleus of a team that would change the culture of hockey
in Boston.
The Stanley Cup
disparity between Boston and Montreal—24-6, in favor of Montreal—is almost as
lopsided as the World Series gap between the Yankees and Red Sox (27-8). I
don’t imagine either will be considerably narrowed during my lifetime, but the
Bruins have won 7 or their last 11 playoff series against Montreal. No
longer do we, the fans, look upon a meeting with the Canadiens as a no-win
situation. And much of the credit goes to Cam Neely.
Locally, Neely will always be revered for his big-game
greatness (57 goals in 93 career playoff games), but across the NHL, he will be
remembered as the archetype of a position he both popularized and
revolutionized. Power Forward: a unique combination of intimidating strength
and elite offensive skill. Gordie Howe was the early prototype, and the
Islanders Clark Gillies was the best example from my youth. But Howe’s prime
was spent during an era of limited exposure in a 6-team league, and Gillies,
who was as tough as they come, lacked an elite scorer’s touch. Cam Neely scored
50 goals three times, was a devastating body checker and one of the NHL’s best
fighters. He was a disruptive force, a multi-dimensional star playing for a
flagship franchise during an era of growth and popularity for the league.
If I had to
describe Neely to a non-hockey fan, I’d tell the basketball fan to think of
Maurice Lucas, the baseball fan, Kirk Gibson, and the football fan, you guessed
it, Mark Bavaro. And to the non-sports fan, I’d say, Picture the toughest guy
with the most surprising skills.
Speaking of
which...
In 1993-94,
following two injury-plagued seasons in which he played in only 22 games, Cam
Neely did something only 8 other players have ever done. He scored 50 goals in
50 games played. The “games played” part is important, at least to NHL
record-keepers, because the feat—50 goals in 50 games—is not considered
official unless the goals are scored within the team’s first 50 games of the
season. (This stipulation goes back to the very first 50/50 player, Montreal’s
Maurice Richard, who scored a then-record 50 goals during a 50-game season in
1944-45. When Chicago’s Bobby Hull scored 54 goals in a 70-game season in
1965-66, Montreal fans insisted that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police set out
to arrest Hull for breaking...Okay, I’m joking, kind of...Canadiens fans did
protest Hull’s record, sighting the longer season, so the NHL decided to
award Hull the record, but to also recognize Richard as the first, and to that point
only, player to score 50 goals in 50 games. Since then, the feat has been
firmly established, and clearly defined, in NHL lore.) I won’t quibble with the
technicalities or with the fans of Rocket Richard. The fact is, Neely scored 50
goals in just 44 games that season. Only Wayne Gretzky, who scored 50 in 39
(1981-82) and 50 in 42 (1983-84), did it in fewer games (Mario Lemieux also
scored 50 in 44 in 1988-89).
Neely’s 50th
came in the Bruins 66th game. He would play five more games without
scoring a goal before injuries ended his season. The question has always been,
How many goals would Neely have scored in 1993-94 if he had been completely
healthy? Of course, we’ll never know. But to hear Adam Oates tell it, perhaps
the real question is not, What if, but, How? In a recent ESPN interview to
commemorate the 20th anniversary of Neely’s amazing achievement,
Oates had this to say:
“I'm one of the
few people that know how hard it was for Cam just to play hockey at that stage,
let alone what he had to go through on a day-to-day basis to be able to play.
And to not be able practice in between games, people don't realize how
important that is for your conditioning, timing, etc. The rehab involved for
the guy just to be able to play, and then to do what he did on top of that ...
[and] do it in the condition he was in was incredible."
Incredible. It
surely was. Neely won the Masterton Trophy that season for qualities of
perseverance and sportsmanship. By this time in his career, and out of necessity,
Neely was more scorer than brawler. He still fought, but only on his terms.
The injuries were costing him so many games. Perseverance was a hallmark of
Neely’s career. I always thought he’d keep playing. But how many comebacks can
one guy make? In the wake of the remarkable, but truncated season, I did not
want to believe he was close to the end.
The end, at
least of his playing career, came on September 5, 1996. In a heartfelt, tearful
goodbye, Cam Neely, forced to retire at age 31, by a series of knee, hip and
thigh injuries, stood behind a microphone and explained how much he loved the
game of hockey, and that he would no longer be able to play it. It was
difficult to watch. One of the saddest sports farewells.
Neely remains a
sort of tragic figure in Boston sports lore. We cheered the many moments of
brilliance and suffered the frustrating stretches of absence. And I’m sure I
wasn’t alone among fans in thinking of Ulf Samuelsson on the day of that press
conference and the cheap knee-on-knee hit he delivered in the 1991 playoffs
that cost Neely all but 22 games over the next two seasons. As fans, we all
dreamed of Neely’s revenge while he went through the long, painful rehab. But
it didn’t play out the way we had hoped. When the two met in March of 1993,
Samuelsson wouldn’t fight back. He dropped his gloves and turtled before Neely
could land a satisfying blow. Vengeance would not be had.
Though he never
did win a Stanley Cup as a player for the Black and Gold, Neely played on four
teams that were, arguably, second best in that season. During Neely’s career,
the Bruins would lose to the eventual Cup champions in the 1988 Finals against
Gretzky’s Oilers, the 1990 Finals against Mark Messier’s Oilers, and the 1991
and 1992 Conference Finals against Lemieux’s Penguins. Gretzky, Messier and
Lemiuex. Sometimes it’s the era you play in.
Cam Nelly was
inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005 (sixth year of eligibility). I
must admit that, even after everything I’ve written here, if I had a vote, I
might not have elected Neely. If you ask me—I know, you didn’t—all of our
sports halls of fame are overcrowded with athletes who have not quite achieved
the legendary status that should be unquestioned to gain membership (at least
90% of the committee vote should be required, not the usual 75 [NHL and MLB] to
80 [NFL] percent – if you can figure out basketball’s election process, let me
know – there should be little, to no, doubt). But just like when Jim Rice
(another local borderline legend from my younger years) was elected to the
Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009, I was ecstatic for Neely. After all the thrills
he provided, through all the pain he endured, I simply love seeing good things
happen to Cam Neely.
I love that
Neely’s number 8 hangs from the Garden rafters, love watching him in his
current role as Bruins team president, exchanging awkward high-fives in the
owner’s box during big games. But I especially love that he finally got his
Stanley Cup ring in 2011, and that he continues to be successful as the leader
of the first sports franchise I ever followed.
In the summer of 2012, my dad was hospitalized at Tufts
Medical Center in Boston. The man who introduced me to the game of hockey was
having a procedure to block the flow of blood to an aneurysm in his brain. It
was a difficult time for my father, not a pleasant memory for anyone in our
family. But I remember visiting the ICU ward on the night of the operation,
walking by the large welcoming wall at the head of the unit: Michael Neely
Neuroscience Center. When my dad was home recovering, I remembered
to look up the name Michael Neely on the Internet. As I suspected, Michael
Neely was Cam Neely’s father, who died of brain cancer in 1993. The
neuroscience center was developed with funds raised by the Cam Neely Foundation
For Cancer Care. I thought, How can anyone not root for a guy like Cam Neely?
He was the
ultimate hockey weapon, a player who created disorder for the opposing team
every time he rolled over the boards. Would he leave his mark by flattening
someone’s face into the glass, or by ripping a shot past the goaltender’s ear?
There really should be some stat, some advanced indicator beyond plus/minus, to
measure a player like Neely’s effect on every shift. But how do you measure
presence? For years, NHL general managers have been on the lookout for the next
Cam Neely. The Search continues...
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