I phoned Terry Harper this morning, just to say hello and also to take him up on his invitation from several months ago to call him again after I’d had a nice long chat with him back then. Shooting the breeze with Terry Harper
He said “call me again” and so I did.
He was a tall, stay-at-home [...]

It began with heart-warming moments. Onto the ice in full uniform came Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden, Pete Mahovlich, Larry Robinson, Bob Gainey, Steve Shutt, and a host of others. It was like seeing a 1976 pre-game warmup.
And the best was yet to come. Others were introduced, and for me personally, seeing Ralph Backstrom, Bobby Rousseau [...]

It would be nice if we could look at the existing Habs lineup and go through it and examine and say, yes, that’s it, should be good. But there seems to be no sense yet in doing this, because this might not be the final team. Bob Gainey has hinted that an impact player may [...]

This very special email arrived this morning;
“Your recent interview with Terry Harper was excellent. You are an exceptional writer. It was such a pleasure to read his comments and his thoughts on his fellow players of his era. He always was a down-to-earth, good guy. It is very nostalgic to revisit the 6 team era with [...]

He played during a time of legends, when Gordie Howe, Jean Beliveau and Bobby Hull roamed the ice; when Jacques Plante, Terry Sawchuk and Glenn Hall stopped pucks; and when Toe Blake and Punch Imlach pulled strings from behind the bench.
He’s Terry Harper, the lanky, stay-at-home defenceman for the Montreal Canadiens from 1963 to 1971, and I [...]

 
Don Cherry was almost a Montreal Canadien. He belonged to the club in the early 1960’s, but Sam Pollock took him aside one day and asked him to lay off the beer. Cherry said he wouldn’t and was promptly shipped to Spokane.
This is Cherry, number 6, with the Hull-Ottawa Canadiens of the EPHL (Eastern Professional [...]