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"Rocket", the first NHL player to 50 goals in a season, and 500 in a career
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00:00You don't believe in miracles yet?
00:02He is moving like a tremendous machine.
00:05Secretariat by 12.
00:15Kerry Strong has won the gold medal for the United States team.
00:20And Graham's goal scorer in National Hockey League history.
00:24Michael Johnson running to the goal.
00:26And he...
00:30A goalie's nightmare.
00:40He charged the cage, black hair wild, bodies strong, and eyes aglow.
00:45He drank from the Stanley Cup eight times, scored 50 goals in as many games, and 544 in 18 years.
00:52Often, when he scored a goal at home, he would skate in small, lonely circles,
00:57while the ice was cleared of programs, newspapers, and hats.
01:01More than a hockey player, more than a man, Maurice Rocket Richard was French Quebec at its best.
01:07Honorable, dedicated, and deeply human.
01:11I see.
01:12Rocket Richard probably was the greatest skater from the Blue Line Inn.
01:26He would come in on a goalie, gathering speed, and he was just scary looking.
01:31The Rocket was bombastic and played with enormous...
01:38The Rocket...
01:40The Rocket...
01:42The O-Tatter played for the New York Rangers.
01:46Told me a story one time how they play the game in Montreal.
01:49The game's out of sight.
01:50The games are leading 5-1, 6-1, something.
01:52And the net is wide open, and Rocket scored a goal, and he said he fired that thing at that net like he was going to put it through the net and out onto the street.
01:59And he said, I said to him, Maurice, what are you doing?
02:02He said, Charlie, I just want to score the goals.
02:05Everyone says he just...
02:06This maniacal drive for the net.
02:10He craved goals.
02:12Everyone wants to score goals.
02:14He craved them.
02:15We played for the Rocket, because we knew he was the home run hitter.
02:19He could put the puck in the net.
02:21And that's why they call him the Babe Booth of Hockey.
02:24Although Richard's records did not stand the test of time, his popularity never waned.
02:34The Rocket was God, to the Francophones.
02:38When the Rocket scored a goal, it was just beyond deafening.
02:43You could feel the entire forum shaking.
02:46It was the Rocket roar.
02:49God.
02:50If hockey is a religion, Maurice Richard was God.
02:52Probably Canada's most famous athlete.
02:55For the last 10 years in big league hockey, the name of the Rocket, Fire on Ice, he was described in one sports illustrated story.
03:03Maurice Richard, would you stand up there and take a bow, please?
03:09He was the mirror of the French Canadian.
03:12He was the one who threw away the inferiority complexes of the French Canadian.
03:19I said, we are as good as the Anglophones.
03:23So, Richard, when he was driving to the net, there was 4 million Quebecers driving to the net with him.
03:30You've got to remember that the French Canadians in those days were a minority.
03:34They were African Americans who were in the 30s in the States.
03:40They were dumped on.
03:41In March of 1955, the French Canadians' passionate identification with Richard ignited one of the most infamous incidents in Canada's history.
03:5354-55 season, the team was terrific.
03:56He was at the top of his game.
03:58And it was a week before the end of the season.
04:01And the Canadians went into Boston.
04:03Again, they hated Bruins.
04:04And always a problem there.
04:06Of particular concern for Richard was Hal Laco, a former teammate.
04:13Laco gave him a cheap shot with a stick, and Rocket never took a back step to anybody.
04:18They feared him, because he was a strong and tough individual.
04:23Morris, on the other hand, he went ape at the sight of his own blood.
04:28In this particular play, Laco accidentally cut him.
04:31Morris could see the blood coming down, and he just went, crackers.
04:36And so when he saw that blood, he went after Laco.
04:40Now, the linesmen, at that time, didn't get in between them, because I believe they still had their sticks.
04:46So he jumped on Morris' back.
04:49And now, officials are not supposed to jump somebody's back.
04:53So naturally, the Rocket thought, this is another player.
04:56When his arms were pinned, and he broke away, he turned around to hit who was ever holding him.
05:02I think he would have hit me, or a Bruin player.
05:06It was unfortunate.
05:08It was a linesman.
05:10Rocket faced a hearing before NHL president Clarence Campbell,
05:14whom the Canadians felt was partial to the five Anglo-owned teams.
05:18The owners told Campbell, if they want to make sure this guy or your job is on the line.
05:26Whether this type of conduct is the product of temperamental instability,
05:30or what will the clients of the authority of the game, does not matter.
05:34The chair will be suspended, and all games, both league and playoff,
05:38for the balance of the current season.
05:40Now, that's like sentencing a pickpocket for the electric chair.
05:45Huh.
05:45Give me a break.
05:47I mean, what, are you kidding?
05:48And, of course, the indignity was felt by all of the French-Canadian fans.
05:55And when the decision was handed down, it was calamitous.
06:00The results of it were devastating to the team.
06:03The suspension really hurt us.
06:05We had a chance to finish first, and we did have a good chance to win the Stanley Cup.
06:09People in Montreal weren't too happy with Clarence Campbell after that night.
06:13A day after Richard's suspension, the Canadians played their next game in the forum.
06:19So, there was a great hubbub in Montreal, but this was, well, racially motivated, I guess, is the only nice way to say it.
06:28And Campbell was seen.
06:30And Campbell was seen ethnically motivated.
06:33As the English oppressor of the French-Canadians, the police thought something might happen.
06:41The radio stations are telling people to come down.
06:44People are saying, as around 8 o'clock, that people are throwing beer bottles and other bottles against the building, and the glass is raining down on their head as they're coming in.
06:53When Jean Drapeau, the mayor of Montreal, saying, don't show up at the game, don't come to the game, it's dangerous, it's provocative.
07:02And Campbell came anyway.
07:04Not only did he come, but he came in fashionably late, making sure he drew attention to himself.
07:12They were bombarded with tomatoes and whatever people had to throw.
07:17And at the end of the first period, a youth walked up towards Campbell, a man, and extended his hand.
07:25And then Campbell reached to shake it, and he swung his fist out.
07:29And a tear gas bomb was set off inside the forum, and with the natural reaction to it, people started storming for the exits.
07:39And the game was forfeited to the Red Wings and called off.
07:43They had to evacuate the whole place.
07:45It was a miracle nobody got killed.
07:48Then vandals just destroyed downtown Montreal.
07:52We used to buy papers from them.
07:55They have these outdoor little cabins outside the forum.
08:00They put the guy's place on fire.
08:02And here's a poor guy crying with his place burning up.
08:06Trolley cars were overturned.
08:08Shops were busted.
08:11People were looting.
08:11Maybe it was the first time that French-Canadians did, you know, did something different.
08:18And it was the first time that my grandfather realized that it was so important.
08:21Well, he was at the game.
08:23He was probably stunned by the intensity of the reaction.
08:27There was a segment of the population that was aching for a reason to do something.
08:33And they seized upon this.
08:35So he was asked to go on the air on radio and television.
08:38I blame the guy who hit Maurice Richard with his stick in the first place.
08:45The Bruins guy.
08:47Pleased for con.
08:48I want to do what is good for the people of Montreal and my team.
08:53So that no further harm will be done, I would like to ask everyone to get behind the team
09:00and help the boys to win from Rangers and Detroit.
09:04Decatur, the French residents of Quebec, characterized that night at the Forum
09:09as the birth of their movement to secede from Canada and form their own country.
09:13I think you could rightly trace the surge of a French-Canadian aggressive cry
09:21to the night of March 17, 1955.
09:23There was a feeling of empowerment that the riot expressed,
09:30that we are taking matters into our own hands.
09:33We are becoming masters of our own house.
09:36And this is not a riot that we see after fill-in-the-blank team wins a championship.
09:42I mean, this had grave implications for all society.
09:45This is a debate that continues in Canada to this day.
09:49Richard came from a French-Canadian family living in the north end of Montreal.
09:54Born on August 4th, 1921, Richard was one of eight children.
09:59His father was a machinist for Canadian Pacific Railways.
10:03They were actually a very poor family.
10:05My father got to work very young because he had to help for the other kids in the family.
10:10My grandfather and grandmother, they had to work also all the time.
10:15Rocket was a child of the Depression.
10:18He was French-Canadian.
10:20Their life was not an easy one.
10:24In the 30s, you had to fight for everything you got.
10:27Nothing came easy.
10:28And during the Depression, the father got laid off, as many people did.
10:33There were times when the young Maurice, who had a job in a machine shop,
10:38actually was the family's chief provider.
10:41Despite hard times and long working days, Richard's father insisted that his sons play sports, especially hockey.
10:50Maurice needed little encouragement.
10:51He was born with skates.
10:53He was born with a small sovereign street and a sidewalk where very icy, so he could keep his skates almost all the time.
11:02And he played hockey in the back of the school.
11:04They called it the Back River.
11:06It was a creek that ran through the area of Montreal they lived in.
11:10And all he did was play and skate like a great many Canadian kids.
11:14Organized hockey then was not what it is now.
11:17So I got to play a great deal uncolached and untutored and just learned to play against other kids.
11:26He played for his school.
11:27He played for amateurs.
11:30And at the very start, he was the strongest player on the team.
11:33And I remember he scored something like seven, eight, nine goals a game.
11:37The first time he tried out for a junior hockey team was in an area of Montreal called Vritte.
11:41And they had to pick, let's say, 15, 16 kids to play in this junior team.
11:45And they were down to one spot open on the team.
11:49Wearing a star-spangled Esso Imperial hockey sweater, the 17-year-old Richard got the nod from veteran players.
11:57And they said, that fellow with the stars on his sweater, you know, he's not bad.
12:00He might be okay.
12:03Fellows who played on that team with him have often wondered, looking back, if he hadn't have made that team.
12:07If they'd have just ignored him, would he have kept playing hockey?
12:09You know, I mean, he was the last man picked on the junior hockey team.
12:15That year, Richard met his future wife, a younger sister of a teammate.
12:21My mother was not as shy as my father was.
12:24She kind of looked at him and liked him at the very start.
12:28And she made a few passes to get acquainted with him.
12:31She taught him how to dance the tango when she was 15 because the players on this junior team would congregate at the coach's house after the practices for milk and cookies or whatever.
12:44And the neighborhood girls would show up.
12:48She was 17 or 18 when they were married.
12:51And everybody speaks of her with great regard.
12:58And it sounds like a wonderful relationship, the kind that he needed to have some peace in his life.
13:04When he played, this was an outside rink.
13:06My mother was there every day.
13:08Well, as a 30 below or 35 below, she was beside the rink.
13:12I don't think she ever missed a game that he played or maybe one or two when she was having one of his seven children.
13:19When he wasn't on the ice, Richard worked in a machine shop where it appeared he would stay.
13:24He could score, but nobody was that impressed with him.
13:29His early reputation was that he was brittle.
13:34Because in his last two years amateur hockey, he broke an ankle, he broke a wrist.
13:39In fact, it was said that he would never be a big leaguer because he was injury prone.
13:45Injury prone.
13:45And it was very easy to dismiss a player as being brittle.
13:49Twice during the war, Richard tried to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces, but was turned down because of ankle injuries.
13:57In 1942-43 season, a lot of players had left the NHL for the armed forces.
14:06So the Canadians, like other teams, needed to replenish their roster.
14:12This created more of a demand for a player than it would have, say, in 1938, before the war.
14:20So this was an opportunity for Richard.
14:24Right place, right time.
14:29Well, there's no doubt about it.
14:31The Montreal Canadiens, by their own admission, were in bad shape.
14:36The Montreal Maroons had folded because of lack of attendance.
14:41And there was even some thought, and banished that thought, that Montreal Canadiens might fold.
14:49Joining the Canadians in November of 1942, Richard scored five goals before his rookie season ended abruptly in his 16th game.
14:58The first time I ever saw Morris Richard play hockey, it was around Christmas time, 1942, and the Canadians were playing the Boston Bruins.
15:04Later in that game, he got a terrific body check from a player named Johnny Crawford, who broke his leg.
15:10So that was the end.
15:11Brock Morris Richard was a forgotten man.
15:13And he himself told me a couple of times, he was surprised that he got invited back to the training camp in the following October.
15:18He thought, well, they're just going to forget about me.
15:20All I do is break my leg or my arm every time I play hockey.
15:24But Richard had impressed coach Dick Irvin.
15:27And in 1943, he opened his second season with Montreal.
15:30I joined the Canadian Army, and I was playing for the Army team in Ottawa, and they arranged an exhibition game between our team and the Montreal Canadiens in the forum.
15:46He's like, I went around me a couple of times, you know, and afterwards, we were reminiscing with my old coach.
15:52I said, who the hell was that guy that went around me?
15:55He said, that's the rocket.
15:56I said, who the hell was that rocket?
15:58Well, we were playing a game in Montreal when on the lock fed Richard the puck.
16:04And he took that, but he was going at high speed and was in the net before you knew it.
16:08I just said to him, boy, you went in there like a rocket.
16:11And I guess Dink Carroll was standing behind me, who was the writer for the Gazette.
16:15And he wrote that the next day, and that's how the rocket stuck to him.
16:20When he was a rookie, they had three or four rookies on the team.
16:23So, not all of them could play.
16:25So, the first time that my father decided that Maurice would sit out the game, my dad said, you're not playing tonight.
16:31Richard, this young kid, who barely knew my dad and vice versa, got the news, immediately turned, stormed out of the dressing room, slammed the door loud enough that he was going to break, and left the building.
16:43Irvin positioned Richard, a left-hand shot, on the right wing with veterans Elmer Locke and Toe Blake.
16:52Soon dubbed the punchline, the trio proved to be Montreal's ticket to success.
16:57They needed a closer, and that's what the Richard was for them.
17:02They were excellent skaters, wonderful puck handlers, who would create confusion in the defense.
17:09The rocket would come late, they'd give him the puck, and away he'd go toward the net.
17:13It was just a natural fit.
17:15So, you had Blake to get the puck, you had Locke to pass the puck, and you had this young kid shows up on the right wing, who suddenly has developed this remarkable map of scoring goals.
17:25His first season they played together, Richard had 32 goals.
17:29Powered by the punchline, Montreal won the regular season title with 38 victories, double that of the previous year.
17:36Then, with Richard scoring 12 goals in 9 playoff games, the Canadians won their first Stanley Cup in 13 years.
17:44Yes, sir.
17:46Canadians who hadn't lost a home game all year, played Toronto in the first round of the playoffs and lost the first game at home ice.
17:523-1.
17:53What a shock this was, you know.
17:55Well, they proceeded to win the next 8 straight and win the Stanley Cup, but in Game 2 of that series with Toronto,
18:00the final score was Montreal 5, Toronto 1, and Richard scored all 5 goals.
18:03The three stars were announced as Richard, Richard, and Richard.
18:07Hmm.
18:08In his third year, Richard exploded, eclipsing the single-season goal-scoring record of 44 by netting 50 in 50 games.
18:18If you wanted to even consider yourself an offensive-minded player in the National Hockey League,
18:22you could strut around rather proudly having scored 15, 18, 20 goals.
18:28To score 50 in 50 games.
18:31Nobody had ever scored that many goals, and since the Rockets' ascent to stardom happened so fast,
18:41it was breathtaking to see what he was doing.
18:44But it's very important to remember this all was done against wartime opposition.
18:52I mean, there were some pretty terrible goalies that he was shooting at.
18:56There was a guy playing for the Rangers named Steve Bozinski, who was arguably the worst goalie in the history of hockey,
19:03and his nickname proves it.
19:04His nickname was Steve Bozinski, the Puck Gozinski.
19:09In 2-43, the hockey put in the red line, and they allowed, for the first time, they allowed passes over the defensive blue line.
19:17And who are you going to head man the puck, coming through center ice to, but Richard.
19:22Allowing the pass over the defensive blue line did more to enhance the play of Richard
19:27than did the momentary depletion by World War II.
19:32I can remember there was people in the Toronto media calling him a wartime hockey player,
19:35and about 10 years after the war ended, and the Rockets scored 45 goals one year,
19:39and I remember my father saying, well, that's a long war, eh?
19:42Richard's landmark season was the first of five in which he would win the goal-scoring title.
19:48He never shot in the same spot all the time.
19:51He would shoot one through your legs and on the ice and over your shoulder and the right shoulder, the left shoulder.
19:57He just had me guessing.
19:59I couldn't size him up at all.
20:01He'd always score.
20:02I'd go to church and light candles and everything else.
20:04Instead, it didn't help me.
20:05And you always had your eye on the right side, because he was a right winger with a left-hand shot.
20:11And, oh, boy, he got that puck, and he just put his shoulder down and wheeled in in the backhand.
20:19He had a great backhand shot, I'll tell you.
20:21You always knew when he was on the ice, when he went off the ice, he went, shoo!
20:25Thank God he's gone off the ice.
20:27Once you get in there, there was only one way he was going to go,
20:30and you'd have to shoot him or lasso him or something to stop him.
20:35Earl Siebert was a defenseman, and Siebert was big for his time.
20:38He probably weighed over 200 pounds.
20:40He jumped on the Rocket's back as the Rocket took a pass at the blue line,
20:44and Richard kept skating with the puck.
20:46And the Rocket made Deke the goaltender and pulled him out and threw it in
20:51as he's falling with Siebert on his back.
20:54You don't see that very often.
20:56Siebert went back to the bench.
20:57He said, if any guy can carry me on his back from the blue line in, he deserves a score.
21:01After winning the Stanley Cup in 1946, Montreal repeatedly fell in the playoffs
21:08as Toronto and Detroit controlled the Cup for the next six seasons.
21:12But, as he showed in the 1952 playoffs, it wasn't because the Rocket wasn't playing in full force.
21:18Montreal-Boston semi-finals, seventh game, winner-take-all.
21:24Well, Detroit got some guy named Gordie Howe.
21:28It was a huge rivalry between the Bruins and the Canadians.
21:33It's just huge.
21:35And the Bruins had a forward named Leo Labine, who was tough, and he was good.
21:40So, in the early part of the second period, Richard came down, and he tried to cut through
21:44the Bruins' defense.
21:45The Rocket was coming down, and he didn't see Labine, and Labine cross-checked him, and
21:53he knocked the Rocket unconscious.
21:54Ooh.
21:55It was flat, out, looked like he was dead.
21:59And they told Dick Irvin, the coach, that he, you know, he would not be able to play again.
22:04And the third period starts, and you still know Richard.
22:07And you have to assume he's...
22:10On the trail bench, but the Rocket.
22:13Somehow, when Morris came back, and the face-off was in the Montreal end, he got control of
22:20the puck deep in his own end, and he went from one end to the other, all up the right boards.
22:26He was playing against one Hall of Fame defenseman, and Bill Quackenbush, and Bob Armstrong, and
22:33they were on defense for Boston, and Quackenbush pushed him right into the corner.
22:39But somehow, with this absolute fierce drive, he circled around Quackenbush, even though
22:46he was fenced into the corner, circled around, came out in front of the crease, and jammed
22:53the puck past Sugar Jim Henry, who was the goalie.
22:56And how Morris got around him, behind him, and came out in front, and moved Armstrong out
23:03of the way, I'll never know.
23:05Morris, the goal, won the game, and the series, and after the game, the Rocket and Henry,
23:11who was also batted himself, was wearing bandages, he himself had been through hell, they shook
23:18hands at center-rights, and if you ever want to see a picture of two warriors at the end
23:22of a game, nothing says it more.
23:24They script that for Hollywood, and they say, yeah, that's phony, but that's exactly what
23:28happened.
23:29Knocked out, comes back, scores the winning goal.
23:32That was him.
23:33That was him.
23:34Hmm.
23:35He grew.
23:36His profile as one of the NHL's arch-intimidators gathered layers of mythology.
23:41William Faulkner, the great American novelist, at one point, was asked by Sports Illustrated
23:50to write a piece about Richard.
23:53William Faulkner wrote that Richard's eyes had the fatal quality of snakes.
23:58He had this habit of glaring at people, and it was almost like sunlight focused through
24:06a magnifying glass, it almost burned holes in you.
24:10He had a great deal of difficulty controlling his temper.
24:14He was so intense, winning was so important, that he'd get himself worked up to the point
24:20where he would snap a little bit.
24:22He was one of the best fighters at the game of hockey ever seen.
24:25He's the best one-punch fighter I've ever seen.
24:28He knocked guys out, right, left, and center.
24:31I mean, I don't mean just knock them down, he knocked them out.
24:34And you know, they went after him, big time.
24:37My father always said Rock had to fight his way through the league.
24:39The Rangers had a defenseman named Bob Dill, Killer Dill was his nickname, and he had been
24:45a Golden Gloves boxer.
24:47In that particular game against the Rangers, Bob Dill challenged the Rocket to a fight in
24:52the penalty box, the Rocket knocked them out.
24:55It was in the first period.
24:57In the third period, Dill thought it might be a little bit different, so he challenged
25:02the Rocket again.
25:03They both wound up in the box for high-sticking, and the Rocket knocked them out again.
25:09Two KOs of a guy who'd been a Golden Gloves champ.
25:11Not bad.
25:12There's no way.
25:13Dick Irvin, coaching Morris, felt that the way to get the most out of Morris was to keep
25:18him boiling.
25:19Dick used to say to him when he'd come off the bench, don't let those guys do that to
25:23you.
25:24Well, Morris would get steamed up and he'd go out the next shift and he'd take a whack
25:28at somebody.
25:29I know Sid Abel, the great Detroit center, talks about the Rocket having a battle with
25:33Howe and then a battle with Lindsey, and the Rocket had not done too well in them because
25:38it's also tough guys.
25:39There's somebody on my back, and I remember leaning on one knee, and this little head come
25:46out underneath just a little farther, and I bopped him a good one.
25:50Rocket slipped one down, and he had to come up right beside Boot Nose Sid Abel.
25:54Boot Nose, he had his nose broken so I was like, they call him Boot Nose, so he couldn't
25:58help but say, you know, what's the matter, Rocket?
26:00You finally met your match or something?
26:02I won't.
26:03He hit Boot Nose, he broke Boot Nose's nose again.
26:07What you saw was how he was.
26:09He couldn't contain his emotions.
26:12He wore the CH, but he also wore his emotions out there, and I think that's what made him
26:17so very attractive to so many people because you could see the man behind the player, and
26:24it was all rolled into one.
26:26And that's awfully attractive in any era.
26:28Richard's rage to win sometimes spilled over into his family life.
26:33I would say he was the same man on ice as he was in real life.
26:38But when he got mad, we knew what we had to do, sit down and be quiet.
26:43He was somebody with a very hot temper, even off the ice.
26:48The single calming influence on Richard was his wife, Lucille, who faithfully watched home
26:55games from her seat in the forum.
26:57It must have been tough for her to fulfill all the commitments that it took to be the
27:03Rockets' wife, and I'm sure he wasn't easy to live with either.
27:06With having a temperament like that and having the strong desire that he had, he must have
27:13had times at home that he would have been difficult to live with, especially when things
27:17weren't going the way he considered they should be.
27:19After the Canadians lost to the Red Wings without the suspended Richard in the 1955 Stanley
27:24Cup Finals, Dick Irvin was replaced as coach by Toe Blake.
27:28The feeling was that Blake would be able to control the Rockets, to mellow him just enough
27:43to enable him to become less crazy but more productive, and it worked.
27:52Richard's spirits improved further when his younger brother became his teammate.
27:58The Rockets was getting up there in years, but a miracle happened.
28:03He opened up training camp in September 1955, and there's this little skinny kid who looked
28:10like he should have been a stick boy, and his name was Henri Richard.
28:14So it looked like the kid was there for a laugh.
28:17Every game in the scrimmages and the exhibitions, there was one major problem.
28:24Henri Richard was the best player on the ice.
28:26They were going to send Henri back to Junior, I've read this dozens of times, and he was
28:31so good at training camp.
28:31He was the best guy, and he said, I'm going to make this team, and at 19 he made it.
28:37So you had Henri playing with his much older brother, and this was just a tonic for the
28:45Rocket.
28:46The Richard brothers together was like dynamite in a match.
28:51Tremendous combination.
28:53And if you look over history at the great combos of all time, Adam Oaks, Brad Hall, Wayne Gretzky,
28:59Yari Curry, you could put right up at the top of that list, Maurice and Henri Richard.
29:05The brother act produced 57 goals and 54 assists in 1956, as the Canadians won the first of five
29:13consecutive Stanley Cups.
29:16The Canadians teams from 55 to 60, probably as good as any group that has ever been put
29:22together.
29:23There was nobody as good as Jaquan.
29:24So number one, we had the best goaltender in the world ever.
29:30Number two, we had the best defenseman in the world ever, and Doug Harvey.
29:36Number three, we had the best center iceman in the world, and John Bellow.
29:41A lot of teams may have one or two superstars, but we had six or seven.
29:47Over five seasons, the Canadians won four regular season titles and ten straight playoff series.
29:53But in the midst of his team's glorious run, Richard Starr had already begun to dim.
30:00He had been very badly injured during the latter part of the dynasty.
30:06A player named Mark Rayoum of the Maple Leafs, the defenseman, had collided with him, and
30:11Rayoum's skate sliced through the rocket's tendon.
30:13It was a miracle that he was able to come back and play.
30:16It was a terrible injury.
30:18Terrible.
30:19And the injury, coupled with his age, really militated against anything like the rocket we
30:27had seen before.
30:29After Montreal won the Stanley Cup in 1960, Richard was the subject of retirement.
30:36He had rumors.
30:37My pop said to him, look, you want to play?
30:41We want you to play.
30:43But you've got to do a couple things.
30:45You've got to get yourself in shape, and you've got to stay in shape.
30:48Because the last thing that I will allow you to do is to play here, fat, overweight,
30:54out of shape, and have people boo you.
30:57And I think Morris made the decision right then and there that I can't lose the kind of weight
31:02that I have to lose to do this.
31:04The time had come.
31:06They won the Cup, and it was the absolute perfect time for a hockey player, a great player,
31:14to retire.
31:15The last two years have been very tough.
31:17I was overweight, first of all.
31:19I had four, five, sometimes six pound overweight, and it was hard for me to follow the other
31:26guys.
31:27After an unsatisfying stint as a glad-hander for the team's public relations department,
31:32Richard went to work for team president David Molson.
31:36The rocket expected to be involved in hockey decisions.
31:39He was the assistant to a guy who didn't give him anything to do.
31:42So he picked up his hat and said, you know, enough of this, and left.
31:47After 23 years with the Canadians, Richard went from star athlete to small businessman.
31:53Hmm.
31:54In the 60s and into the 70s, he had an operation in his basement where he would literally spool
32:03crank the fishing line onto reels and package these and send them off like a mail order,
32:10a mail order business.
32:12The picture can be painted as somewhat sad of this man sitting in his basement at an old
32:19plywood table, winding, you know, spools of thread like a doughty ant or something, and
32:26selling them.
32:27But he said he was quite happy.
32:28He caught him fishing a lot.
32:34In the late 60s, Richard found new life when a group of retired NHL players formed a team
32:40and competed for charity.
32:42It's too bad the public couldn't have seen him.
32:45Like when we barnstormed across the country, we had our own bus, say, and few could have
32:50seen Rocket relax and enjoy just with his own gang in the bus, just with the team, and
32:55the kibitzing is going on, and the tears running down his cheeks from laughing.
32:59The people wouldn't believe what I saw.
33:01The thing that was tough for him was that everywhere he went, even five, six, seven years
33:06after, people expected him to score three, four or five goals every game.
33:11He was not capable all the time to do that, and he felt bad.
33:15He played with such desire that he almost had a heart attack on the ice, and he got dizzy
33:22spells.
33:23And the doctors told him that, you know, he was just a little old to be playing.
33:28He was 50 or 60, 56 or 60 years old at the time.
33:31He was a guy that couldn't be away from the game.
33:34In 1972, Richard tried coaching the Quebec Nordiques of the World Hockey Association.
33:40But his incendiary temper and introverted personality were not meant for the bench.
33:46He quit after two games.
33:48Two games.
33:49Maurice Richard returns to the Canadian's fold and bids farewell to the ice on which much
33:54of his legend was written.
33:55And it went on and on and on.
34:00The rocket, a man of great emotions, contained his emotions.
34:05It was an amazing evening because I think this was people's way of saying goodbye.
34:11Like Maurice Richard, and we used a kind of hair glue to keep it in place.
34:21We laced our skates like Maurice Richard.
34:24We taped our sticks like Maurice Richard.
34:27We cut his picture out of all the newspaper, and we knew everything there was to know about
34:34Maurice Richard.
34:35There was something very earthy about him that appealed to people in Montreal.
34:40They sensed he was one of them, perhaps like no other player before and no other player since.
34:47When it comes to feeling young, a lot of it's up here.
34:50Three years ago, Maurice Richard said goodbye gray hair.
34:53Hello, Grecian Formula 16.
34:55Everybody in Quebec who didn't see Rocket play saw him make a commercial for Grecian Formula
35:01where a referee skates by and says,
35:03Hey, Richard, two minutes for looking so good.
35:06At that point, Rocket Richard was an avuncular figure.
35:10He was everybody's uncle in the province.
35:12And that made no sense to me because throughout his playing days,
35:16there was nothing avuncular about Rocket Richard.
35:19Things that were combative, compelling.
35:22But somehow he managed to morph into everybody's family friend.
35:28In 1994, Richard lost the best friend he ever had.
35:32His wife, Lucille, succumbed to cancer shortly after their 51st wedding anniversary.
35:38She was everything to him in his life.
35:42He never had to do a thing at home.
35:44She did everything for him.
35:46And that was a big shock to him when it happened.
35:49When we lost our mother, I never saw somebody cry like my father did.
35:54He was very, very, very, very sad and very sorry.
35:58And he had a hard time coming out of it.
36:02And it's a good thing he met someone else a few months later
36:06because I don't think he could have lived alone.
36:09By the 1990s, the Canadians had new owners
36:13and they welcomed back the Rocket, hiring him as a goodwill ambassador.
36:17On March 11, 1996, Richard felt the love of millions
36:23when the Canadians played their final game in the Forum.
36:27Almost all of the living Hall of Famers
36:29who played or played for the Montreal Canadiens
36:31come out on the ice.
36:32And the last person to be introduced was naturally going to be Maurice.
36:36The greatest legend of the history of the Rocket,
36:38the number 9, Maurice Rocket Richard.
37:02It brought tears to my eyes when the Rocket was introduced.
37:05He started to cry.
37:06So everybody else around him started to cry.
37:09It was just an ovation that he never began.
37:20It was almost a 10-minute ovation.
37:22He just simply would not stop,
37:24even though he raised his hands and tried to stop him.
37:27And it was just, it was an amazing moment.
37:31There they were applauding him and thanking him
37:36and making him feel a little uncomfortable out there,
37:39but it was well-deserved.
37:40He's the one who really, he saved the building
37:42and he saved the franchise.
37:44And as the ovation continued on, on, on.
37:46I stood there and I looked around the building
37:48and I thought to myself, 75%, 85% of the people in this building
37:53tonight never saw him play.
37:55They never saw him score a goal even on television.
37:58He hadn't scored a goal in 37 years.
38:01And the fact that he was being received, people were crying.
38:07A year later, it was revealed that Richard was battling stomach cancer.
38:14He knew at that time that he was very sick,
38:16but he didn't want people to know it.
38:18He didn't want to show it.
38:20He was fighting all the time.
38:22You know, when he first came down with the cancer,
38:25I know I made the statement saying,
38:28he'll beat it.
38:31Because he's such a competitor.
38:33The last hour in his bed, actually,
38:35he was trying to get out of bed.
38:37We had to hold him down.
38:39He would say, I want to go back home.
38:42And he was, he was still strong.
38:44That was a few hours before he died.
38:48Three days after his death on May 27th, 2000,
38:52his body lay in state at the Molson Center
38:55as a stream of humanity, more than 100,000 strong,
38:58flowed slowly past his coffin.
39:01The thing that did strike me the most is the people.
39:08It's the emotion, the respect, the love.
39:11On May 31st, Maurice Rocket Richard was laid to rest
39:17after his state funeral.
39:41When the Cardinal finished his eulogy,
39:45the crowd stood up and applauded.
39:48I've been in a lot of churches in my lifetime
39:51and I've been to a lot of funerals
39:52and I've never, ever experienced anything like this.
39:55He was right up there with the Pope.
39:57He was the top man.
39:59And they just adored him.
40:02Well, Morris will always be Morris as far as I'm concerned.
40:06Anybody that saw him will never forget him.
40:09And those who didn't see him don't know what they missed.
40:12I've known athletes all over the world.
40:14Nobody had the desire and determination of Rocket Richard.
40:18And a hundred years from now,
40:20the kids will be reading about it in their history books.
40:22The Rocket was Babe Ruth on his skates.
40:26When the Rocket got the puck,
40:28it was like everybody in the arena just got five shots of adrenaline.
40:34He was never a player as focused, as forceful, and as gifted in what he did,
40:40which was scoring goals.
40:41I have to go back to his special skills of scoring goals in the clutch,
40:4650 and 50, the 500 goals.
40:48Those are the things that people will remember that he did first.
40:51What he symbolized to the French-Canadian people,
40:53I think as a socio-political icon,
40:55puts him on the same platform as Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali.
41:00He transcended the game.
41:02He touched people's lives.
41:04And he probably did more in terms of defining notions of Canada and Canadians
41:11to people of both French and English cultures
41:14than any politician, any great statesman, any great novelist, any rock star.
41:22He was the definitive emblem of Canada.
41:26During Richard's career, a poster hung on the wall of the Montreal locker room in the Forum.
41:37A quote from Abraham Lincoln.
41:39It read,
41:40I do the very best I know how, the very best I can,
41:43and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
41:47In the end, Richard's stature in Quebec approached that of Lincoln himself.
41:52He's not the pope, a team of publicity man once said.
41:55No, agree to colleague, he is a god.
41:59For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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