NOTE: I posted much of the following blog here last June when Freddie “The Fog” Shero was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a Builder. With his induction in the Hall as a member of its 2013 class on Monday of this week, I am reposting an expanded version of my earlier blog for those who may have missed it in June or may wish to read it again.
It has been almost a third of a century now since the late, great
Freddie "The Fog" Shero coached a hockey game, and 23 years since he passed away in
1990 at the age of 65, but on Monday of this week he will finally be inducted as a member of the 2013 class in to the
Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto in the
Builders Category ... a long long overdue honor for one of the greatest modern innovators of our game. I had many interesting conversations with Freddie during his seven years coaching the Flyers and in the years that followed, and while the "Fog" sometimes confused me with what he said I also always learned something from him as well!
While Freddie gained by far his greatest fame during his seven seasons (
1971-78) behind the bench of the NHL
Philadelphia Flyers which he led to consecutive
Stanley Cup titles in
1974 and
1975, Shero actually spent the majority of his hockey career in the
New York Rangers organization beginning as a defenseman with the EHL
New York Rovers in
1943, a total of
145 regular season and
13 playoff games with the NHL Rangers between
1947 and
1950, and another eight seasons playing mostly in the
AHL before retiring and turning to coaching (including several Ranger farm clubs) in development leagues for the next thirteen years.
Montreal Canadiens at New York Rangers, Feb. 20, 1949
The above lineup from a 1949 Rangers’ game with the Montreal Canadiens in which he played wearing jersey #3 as a Blueshirt blueliner includes five other Rangers who are already long time members of the Hall: fellow defenseman
Allan Stanley, center
Edgar Laprade, goalie
Chuck Rayner, GM
Frank Boucher and coach
Lynn Patrick whom Shero now joins. (The Canadiens also had seven future Hall of Famers involved in that game as well: goalie
Bill Durnan, defensemen
Doug Harvey and
Kenny Reardon, forwards
Maurice Richard and
Elmer Lach, GM
Frank Selke and coach
Dick Irvin.) After finishing his playing career he spent the next
thirteen seasons (
1958-71) coaching in the minors beginning with the SJHL
Moose Jaw Canucks and going on to win
four playoff titles in three different leagues -- twice with the
IHL St. Paul Saints (1960 and 1961), and once each with the
AHL Buffalo Bisons (1970) and
CHL Omaha Knights (1971).
Fred Shero coaching the IHL champion St. Paul Saints in 1960
Despite his outstanding record developing NHL prospects, however, Shero never got a call up to New York to coach the Rangers. That chance to coach in the NHL finally came, instead, when Flyers' GM
Keith Allen hired him in
1971 to take over the young Philadelphia club in just their fifth season after joining the league in the 1967 expansion. (Shero eventually coached the Rangers from 1978 to 1980 to end his career behind the bench.) Although the Flyers missed the playoffs in his first season behind their bench on a goal scored in Buffalo by the Sabres'
Gerry Meehan with just four seconds to go in the final game of the regular season, over his six remaining campaigns they made it to the semi-finals three times along with a trio of appearances in the finals on their was to a pair of Cup titles, Shero's fifth and sixth as a pro hockey coach.
It is well known that Freddie seldom talked to his players one-on-one preferring instead to address them as a group, writing his famous aphorisms on a blackboard, or leaving them little notes in their lockers, or having assistant coach
Mike Nykoluk deliver a message. (I once asked Flyer defenseman
Larry "Izzy" Goodenough what he thought of Freddie after he had been playing for him for a couple of seasons.
"I couldn't really tell you," he said with a chuckle,
"I've never met the man!") Freddie was, however, always willing to talk hockey anytime and anywhere with others who were not playing for him. Over his seven years in Philadelphia (and even after he left) I was fortunate enough to have had many such conversations with Freddie. I never failed to learn something new about the game in those chats which greatly enriched my understanding of it. What follows are a few of my memories of conversations I had with Freddie over the years as well as a couple of other anecdotes.
Freddie "The Fog" Shero -- Hockey Hall of Famer
This picture of Freddie above was taken on the opening day of the 1974-75 season Flyers training camp held at the
Class of '23 Rink on the grounds of the
University of Pennsylvania. Freddie at the time wore glasses with lenses so dark that the team's longtime photographer, the late
Bernie Moser, asked him if he had another pair with clear lenses because it was hard to see his eyes. When Freddie said that he didn't Bernie asked me to lend him my glasses which had similar frames to Freddie's but much lighter lenses and that's what he is wearing in this photo --
my glasses!!
NBC televised the NHL on Sundays for a few years in the mid 1970s and had the Flyers at
Boston Bruins on its schedule for Sunday,
January 27, 1974. The Peacock Network had heavily promoted the game for several weeks as a showdown between
Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, and the powerhouse Bruins against the "Broad Street Bully" Flyers and their All Star goalie
Bernie Parent who would go on to defeat the Bruins for the Stanley Cup the following May. Bernie started virtually every game for the Flyers that year ... his first back with the club since returning from his couple of years in exile with the
Toronto Maple Leafs and in the
WHA ... but when the teams came out for the warmup surprisingly it was the very seldom used backup
Bobby Taylor who lead the Orange and Black on to the ice.
Veteran NBC producer
Scotty Connell was apoplectic and instantly ran inside the old Boston Garden from the TV truck to find out why. There he found Freddie sitting in a corridor in the bowls of the ancient building calmly puffing on a cigarette. "Freddie what are you doing to me," Connell shouted, "where is Parent?" "Bernie has started the last 22 games," Freddie deadpanned back without looking up. "It's simply Taylor's turn."
"The Fog" with Jimmy Watson and Bob Clarke
This was not the first time that Freddie had given Taylor a surprise start in a big road game that resulted in his later answering a question with his special brand of logic. A year earlier in
Montreal Freddie put Taylor in goal for the Flyers on
February 17, 1973 as they took on the defending Cup champion
Canadiens at the fabled
Forum. The Canadiens would drop just ten games in the 1972-73 season on their way to another Cup title, and one of those losses came that night as Shero's Flyers surprisingly defeated
Ken Dryden and the Habs,
7-6, as captain
Bob Clarke scored the winning goal at 16:31 of the third period to complete a hat trick.
As the final siren blew to mark the end of the game a stunned pack of Montreal hockey scribes and broadcast reporters rushed down from the pressbox to seek Freddie's "explanation" of how he had managed to coach his upstart Flyers to such a shocking slap down victory over the vaunted Canadiens in their own barn. After a few minutes Freddie appeared before the massed Montreal media mob to provide his analysis of why this happened which he did with just seven concise and well chosen words: "They played one goal dumber than us."
After winning the Stanley Cup in 1974 Freddie went to
Russia that summer to see the great Soviet hockey coach and Hockey Hall of Famer
Anatoli V. Tarasov many of whose hockey ideas and theories Freddie tried to emulate in his own coaching. When I saw Freddie at the opening of training camp that Fall I asked him what he thought of Russia. "It's a remarkable place," Freddie said to me with great seriousness, "and the amazing thing is that there's no crime there!" Taken aback by this (I had spent a month in the USSR in 1964 and knew this wasn't true) I said to him "Really Freddie? Why is that?" Freddie smiled and replied, "It's not allowed."
After a decade with the Flyers as a low scoring "bull in a china shop" left winger,
Bob "Hound" Kelly ended his playing career with the
Washington Capitals scoring 26 goals -- a career record by a mile -- in 1980-81 for the then perennial last place Caps. I saw Freddie sitting in the lobby of the Flyers training camp in
Vorhees, NJ, the following fall and mentioned this remarkable goal production to him which elicited a mild puzzled frown from Freddie. When I asked him why, The Fog replied with great seriousness, "Any coach who gets 26 goals out of Bob Kelly just isn't using him right!"
"The Fog" and “The Hound”
One of my most memorable chats I had with Freddie happened in
1984 when he was doing color on the radio for the
New Jersey Devils. My second book on hockey called
"The Hockey Trivia Book" (which I co-authored with
Gene Hart) had just been published and Freddie interviewed me about it between periods of a Devils' game against the Flyers at the
Spectrum. It was a surrealistic experience that I will never forget as his questions were both foggy and penetrating. These seven minutes will live with me forever.
When Freddie passed in November, 1990, it seemed that the whole hockey world showed up for his funeral in
Cherry Hill, NJ, where he still lived with his wife,
Mariette. His son Ray, now
GM of the
Pittsburgh Penguins, gave a beautiful eulogy, and after taking him to his final resting place everybody repaired to a local restaurant which the Flyers had completely booked for the afternoon for all of us to gather together. (Ray will speak on behalf of Fred and his family during the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies on Monday.) The bar was open and the drinks were free (and free flowing) to help all of us mourners share our many stories with each other about Freddie "The Fog". By the time I left many hours later I had laughed so hard for hours that it hurt but I was feeling no pain and neither was anybody else anymore. It was a truly glorious sendoff for Freddie and none of us there assembled that day would have missed it for the world!
So congratulations, Freddie, for finally being given the
official recognition of being an
"Honoured Member" of the Hockey Hall of Fame by being inducted as a Builder of our game. To me and many others, however, this is just giving you the due that you had earned decades ago ... for us you were always a "Hall of Famer"!!
The Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremonies will be televised live across Canada (TSN) and the US (NHL Network) on Monday, November 11 from 7:30 to 9:00 om EST.
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