The trouble with such nostalgia is that we only remember the very best, and the very worst.  The highs and lows.  We tend to forget the drab, everyday matters, the faceless games that ran into each other, week after week, month after month, season after season.  An uninspired mid-season Tuesday evening game is the same in any decade.

One part of life that appears to have gone by the wayside here in North America is the infusion of colour in the mainstream wardrobe.  Everyone now seems to wear the subdued shades of black and grey, as if we’re all in a collective state of mourning for something we’re not exactly sure about.

There is one aspect of the mainstream 80’s that Retro Nights get right; the parading of day-glo colours, and other wacky, over-the-top pastels that screamed at you then, and scream at you now.  Everyone did seem to dress up as an extra from the “Let’s Get Physical” video or any Culture Club offering.  There were those of us that rallied around the Johnny Cash man-in-black look, but for the most part, that approach was relegated to the shadows.

In the long history of hockey, there probably wasn’t an NHL team that better represented those overly colourful eighties than the Team of that Decade, the Edmonton Oilers.  They won four Stanley Cups in five seasons, and probably should have won five-in-a-row.  If Gretzky had remained in Northern Alberta, then that team could have taken seven Cups in-a-row, easily.

Recently on The War Room, Peter Berce and I were kicking around some great games from the past, games we would have liked to have attended.  One that leapt to mind for me was the 11-9 game between the Oilers and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

January 8th, 1986.  At Maple Leaf Gardens.

The lowly Leafs really must have put up a fight that night, scoring nine goals against the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Except it was the Leafs who scored the eleven goals.  They won the game 11-9.

That’s twenty goals in sixty minutes of play.  An average of a goal every three minutes.

You wouldn’t have wanted to leave your seat for popcorn in case you missed something.

I was at the Montreal Forum that same January evening, watching the Canadiens beat, ahh, someone.  Trouble is, over the years, I can’t recall who.  We were too busy keeping an eye on the Forum out-of-town scoreboard.  As the digits rose in that game, the hub-bub at the Forum rose in tandem.

To my knowledge, there had never been an NHL game where both teams scored in double digits.  Most of the crowd around me were tickled pink that the Leafs were scoring that many goals on the Oilers, a team not renowned for its defence, but a team that could easily give up five goals and still win the game.  Their offense was that explosive.

A check of the 1985-86 Oilers’s game-by-game record bears that out.

They won a total of seven games when the opposition scored at least five goals against them.  One of those barnburners was a 12-9 win at Chicago on December 11th.  At that point, the gun slinging Oilers sported a 21-5-and-4 record.

This team could play it all ways.  They could squeeze out a tight, defensive victory, such as a 3-2 win over the New Jersey Devils on November 23rd.

They could blow a team out of the arena, such as the 13-0 pasting of Wayne Gretzky’s favourite punching bag, the Vancouver Canucks, on November 8th, or a 12-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings on March 14th.

For a team that led the circuit with 426 goals that season (the second highest total in NHL history after the 446 by the 83-84 Oilers), those three games represented the only times they cracked double-digits in goals scored in a game.

Speaking of records, the 1980’s Oilers hold the top five marks for most goals scored in one NHL season.

That 12-9 win over the Blackhawks tied a Montreal Canadiens/Toronto St. Patrick’s game from 1920 for the most goals scored in one NHL game…not counting All-Star Games.

That 11-9 loss to the Leafs is tied with a 12-8 win by the Oilers over the Minnesota North Stars in January of 1984 for the second-most goals scored in one NHL game.

Image that happening today.  Last week, the Tampa Bay Lightning survived a 8-7 arm wrestling contest with the Philadelphia Flyers, and we got all excited about a mere 15 goals in a game.

Back to the 80’s.

During the 1985-86 season, the Toronto Maple Leafs managed to light the lamp a total of 311 times, which was only good enough for the 12th best total in the 21 team league.

The Oilers led the league with 119 points; the Maple Leafs were 19th with 57 points.

On that January night, it shouldn’t even have been close.

A search of the internet brings up the game summary for that contest.  Hold on, it’s gonna get busy.

Every time the Oilers made their way to Eastern Canada, it was a media circus.  Everyone wanted a piece of Wayne Gretzky.  Even back then, there were calls for the Great One to be moved to the Maple Leafs, or the New York Rangers, in the name of getting the NHL more exposure in the eastern-based U.S. media.

That night the Leaf faithful, who were probably bracing themselves for a beating, were just sitting down with their lattes when Russ Courtnall opened things up with a pair of goals, the first at the 2:40 mark of the first period, the second almost five minutes later.

Seven minutes into the game, the Maple Leafs had a 2-0 lead.

Make that 3-0, after Miroslav Frycer potted one on the power play at the 12:25 mark.

Old MLG must have been rocking.

Gretzky got the Oilers on the board at 14:03 with his 29th goal, but that would be it for the big boys, as the Maple Leafs pumped in two more goals before the end of the period.
Steve Thomas and Brad Smith (Brad Smith!!!) got the goals.

5-1 Leafs after one. 

Going into this game, the Oilers had won five in-a-row, and eleven of their last thirteen.  Maybe they were due for an off-night.

So who were the goaltenders for this epic?  The game summary shows that Andy Moog and Grant Fuhr split this one, while the Leafs went all the way with Tim Bernhardt.

With just under five minutes gone in the second period, the 16,282 in attendance must have been feeling pretty good.  Leave it to Wayne Gretzky to put some doubt in their minds. 

His 30th at the 4:58 mark made it 5-2 Toronto.  All still seemed fine for the home team.

In game that featured twenty goals, there was about a six-and-a-half minute stretch where the red lights got to catch their breath.

At 11:19, Raimo Summanen scored.  And then Gretzky completed his hat-trick less than four minutes later.  C’mon, in a game with twenty goals, you knew Gretzky had to have some of them.

That made the score 5-4 Maple Leafs, with five minutes left to play in the second.

Toronto stopped the Oilers’ express with the second goal by Steve Thomas, a mere 24 seconds after the Gretzky tally.  Undaunted, Kevin McClelland responded for Edmonton just over a minute later.

The Oilers finally tied things up, when Paul Coffey got on the score sheet with his 18th goal of the season.

Toronto had blown a four-goal lead, and was going to head into the dressing room tangled up in a 6-6 tie.

Until Wendel Clark scored 33 seconds after Coffey tied it.

Toronto went to the dressing room with an improbable 7-6 lead.  Edmonton had outscored them 5-2 in that second frame, and still the Leafs led the game.

By the time they dropped the puck for the third period, it was probably safe to assume that nobody had left the game early.  Who could be sure what would unfold in the third?  Often these sort of games calm down by the third period.  There was no worry of that happening on this night.

Who knows what the Oiler’s coaching staff barked at their troops during the intermission.  Edmonton came out loaded for bear, and Jari Kurri joined the scoring parade, popping one in a mere 28 seconds into the third.  Less than a minute later, Glenn Anderson scored his 27th goal of the season, giving the Oilers their first lead of the game.

Image the see-saw emotions of the crowd at Maple Leaf Gardens that night.  They watched their team carve out a 5-1 lead after one period, only to fall behind 8-7 less than two minutes into the third.

Maybe that was the point that some of the faithful lost the faith, and beat a hasty retreat to the subway.

They shouldn’t have thrown in the towel so easily. 

That would be the only time the Oilers enjoyed a lead all night, because 45 seconds after the Anderson go-ahead goal, Frycer replied with his second of the game.

And then he completed his hat-trick less than three minutes later, and the Leafs were on top again, 9-8.

But if anyone thought the run-and-gun Oilers were done, they were wrong.  Less than four minutes later…an eternity in this game…Anderson scored again for Edmonton.

With just over a dozen minutes left in the third, things were knotted up at nine apiece.

And then a strange thing happened.  The scoring slowed down considerably.  With nine goals in the first 48 minutes of the game, the Oilers ran out of bullets.

Miroslav Frycer entered his name into Maple Leafs’ lore when he got his fourth goal of the game at the 10:51 mark.  The Leafs had cracked the double-digit barrier for the second time that season.  They had put 10 goals past the Devils in a 10-7 goal marathon on December 4th, so they knew a little bit about these goal fests.

Dan Hodgson got the insurance marker at 18:42, and the Leafs held on for the 11-9 win.

At the Montreal Forum that night, most of the crowd around me were pulling for the upstart Leafs to upend the Oilers, though we all wanted to see Edmonton also get to double digits.

Considering there were twenty goals scored that game, only three of them came on the power play, Toronto with two of those.  Overall, there were only seven minor penalties called all night.

Jari Kurri had a great night, with a goal and five assists.  Gretzky had his usual production, getting three goals and chipping in with three assists.

For the Leafs, Frycer led the way with four goals.  Marian Stastny assisted on the last three Toronto goals. 

Frycer, who defected to the Quebec Nordiques around the same time the three Stastny brothers did, had a couple of good years in Toronto.  His four goals this game represented a career high.  He scored 32 goals that season, also a career high, and retired in 1989 with 147 goals in 415 games, most of them with Toronto, but he also served time with Quebec, Detroit, and Edmonton.

As for shots, the Maple Leafs edged the Oilers 39-31.  Which means there were twenty goals on seventy shots.  Obviously no problem with goaltending equipment being too bulky this game.

Will we ever see a game like this again?  Well, probably not for a while, considering that it took 64 years between 20-goal games.  Then the league had three in short order, but
that’s part of what made 1980’s hockey so invigorating.

The Maple Leafs were unable to build on that game, dropping ten of their next twelve games, including a 10-1 loss in St. Louis a week later.  Two night after 11-9 slugfest, the Leafs lost 9-7 in Buffalo.

How many goals did Toronto surrender that season?

386.  Only the Red Wings and Kings were more porous.

And that team that Montreal beat that same night at the Forum?  None other that their age-old rival, the Boston Bruins.  One would think I would have remembered being at that game, but we were all too busy scoreboard watching…in January.

- Mick Kern

Other banner-raisings have been more momentous.

And others were more emotional than when Glenn Anderson’s No. 9 finally went up to the rafters at Rexall Place last night.

But what made this one extraordinarily memorable was the players from the past who showed up to be there for the player who had to wait the longest to get there.

“Everybody was there,” said Anderson when it was over.

“It was tough to hold back the emotions. They were right there with you,” said Anderson.

No. 9 said he’s glad he didn’t have the banner-raising before his Hockey Hall of Fame induction.

“If it had been the other way around, I don’t think I’d have been able to go through my speech.

“It was amazing to have them all there. I think we showed the strength of the organization and the team we had and what we meant to each other. Everything was overwhelming,” said Anderson.

“It was a real good feeling,” said Glen Sather of being out there with all his players of the past.

“It’s nice to see everyone back here. This is what it’s all about,” said Wayne Gretzky.

The Oilers do banner-raisings better than anybody, but after you’ve done Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Grant Fuhr and Al Hamilton, how do you top that with the one guy who had been overlooked by the Hockey Hall of Fame for so long?

Simple. Play the theme from the Magnificent Seven and introduce them one by one. Then cut to the Zamboni entrance where No. 9 stood in the dry-ice fog, his back to the crowd.

Except that wasn’t Glenn Anderson.

It was the Edmonton Oil Kings’ Drew Nichol.

“I got to be Glenn Anderson. And I get to keep the uniform,” said the Oil Kings tough guy.

The spotlight then hit the Oilers bench. And the real Glenn Anderson stood up, jumped over the boards and began a slow trip around the rink, waving to the crowd, many of whom were sitting in the same seats when he was scoring more game-winning goals, than any player in Oilers’ history.

There were lots of little touches, like Anderson stopping to pick up his six-year-old daughter Autumn, and to have a special moment with wife Susan and his dad Magnus who, despite his health, was able to make it after not being able to attend his Hall of Fame induction in November.

Anderson shook hands with Sather and John Muckler, who Gretzky put to work behind the Phoenix Coyotes bench as a coach for the occasion.

One by one, he did the same with every former teammate.

Eventually, Anderson took his place to watch No. 9 make the slow trip to the top of Rexall Place, the crowd standing from beginning to end when, taking a page from the Coffey banner-raising, they called on Messier to send Anderson a pass on the right side to break in on the net and score.

The only thing that might have made it better was if Billy Smith had been in the goal in a New York Islanders uniform, slashing him with his goal stick as Anderson crashed the crease to score.

Oilers president of hockey operations Kevin Lowe gave the banner-raising speech.

“Glenn, it’s nice to see you back in that uniform,” he said.

“And it’s terrific to see all these other guys. We haven’t had as many of these guys on the ice at the same time since the Heritage Classic.

“I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get to have this celebration,” he said of the time Anderson had to wait to finally make it into the Hockey Hall.”

He spoke of Anderson’s “courage, guts and bravery” and how “when it came to crunch time, there was never anybody any better.”

“As much as Glenn marched to his own drummer, when the chips were down, we knew Glenn would deliver.”

Lowe ended it by saying, “Tonight, I hope this makes your dream come true.”

Messier’s eyes were wet as he listened to Anderson start his speech.

“It was a lot easier watching someone else,” said Messier, who was the focus of the previous banner-raising.

“He was nervous before it. As we waited for it to start, you could tell the moment got bigger and bigger.”

Messier said he wouldn’t have missed this.

“We played on the same line, roomed together on the road, lived together here in town.

“To me, he’s my brother.

“We’re all like brothers. To look out there at all our guys together again, it felt like we should still be playing,” he said.

Anderson told the crowd, “It’s great to be back in this uniform again. This jersey represents home and home is where the heart is. Right here is where my heart is.”

His last comments he saved for the fans.

“You are the greatest hockey fans in the world,” he said. “We had the time of our lives here.”

Last night was another of those times.

Terry Jones appears courtesy of the Edmonton Sun

You got spoiled if you were a fan. Every night the expectations were high, nothing but a win. Nothing but a blowout win. Try being a goalie, or a defenseman against that squad.

Today, there is another unique, dynamic player entering the Hall of Fame and it is the right call by the selection committee, just slightly overdue. Anderson was a gifted, free spirit off the ice and a competitive, free wheeling big time player on it. Maybe his loose and off beat personality kept his 498 regular season goals out of the Hall for this long, who knows. He was nearly a point per game when it mattered most, the postseason. He scored big goals at big times. Clearly a difference maker, but hidden somewhat behind the other big 3 up front.

Make no mistake, every dynasty has layers of great players, all put in a position to succeed. Would Glenn Anderson have been able to carry the mail for that franchise if he was the lone, go-to guy? Not likely. The team was put together with solid drafting and a timely WHA sale with the Greatest player ever. Up the middle its Gretzky and Messier. Patrolling the wings its Kurri and Anderson. On the bleuline, its Lowe and Coffey. In the net it is Fuhr and Moog.

Everything has its order. The players all have their rightful place in the line up and the coaches have the right players to put in match ups against any style of team. You ask any of their coaches and they will tell you they could all play defense when they had to. They could win 2-1 when they needed to. And it was the star players that bought in and sold it to the rest of them. Anderson was unique. He was a winger that would challenge you with speed, tenacity and an edge that bordered on reckless and careless, especially with his stick.

I remember the 1st game I played in Edmonton and the Oilers were coming at us pretty good. As a goalie, studying the likes of Gretz and Messier were one thing. You knew Mess liked to shoot the puck on his “wrong” foot, across the grain to the far side. He was looking for the goalie to be slightly off his angle and by shooting early in a game, he got you thinking he would do it all the time. It backed you off.

Gretz was simply amazing in the way he found the late man, especially on the weak side of the ice. He put pucks where he just came from, always against the flow, causing you to turn your head, if just for a split second. Impossible to defend against.

Anderson could dipsy doodle, beat you with speed or simply run over you. He ran into me so hard that night in Edmonton, I thought I was going right through the mesh in the net. He set a tone. He wanted to know if I would challenge him the next time, or would I get deep in the net and play passively?

I recently spoke with Hall of Fame defenseman Denis Potvin about Anderson. I got the feeling Denis originally felt Anderson might be a little ‘soft’ in the tenacious department. But Potvin said he went at Anderson pretty good one night, and Potvin was one tough player, especially when he buried the heavy wooden Titan in your back or mid section. He goes right at Anderson and gets him good. Anderson didn’t back down. He knew he had to earn space and respect in the scoring areas and came back at Potvin with a discreet, timely crosscheck to his back. He stood up to him and that caught Potvins and the rest of the Islanders attention.

The game hasn’t changed that much. You have to show the veteran, tough players you aren’t afraid. If you are, they know it right then and soon the entire team knows about it and that is how soft players get a reputation as being, well, soft players. Not Anderson.

He was unique. He wanted the puck in big games and he delivered. Welcome to the Hall of Fame Glenn Anderson.

For Gretzky.com, I’m Darren Pang 40

The game, featuring a record total of 19 Honoured Members, will be played Sunday, November 9 at 2pm at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

“Stepping on to the ice again with Mark, Paul and Jari will be a real thrill,” said Glenn who will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday, November 10. “It’s a great honour to have the support system back in place as we once did.”

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