HOCKEY GREAT TURNS 90

VIC STASIUK HAD A STELLAR CAREER IN THE NHL

One of Lethbridge’s most prominent sports figures is celebrating his 90th birthday today. Doing the math, I realize that means Vic Stasiuk was 47 the first time I met him. His days as a National Hockey League player were long behind him then, in 1976, when we were both rookies — Vic as coach of the Taber Golden Suns and measa wetbehindthe-ears Lethbridge Herald sports reporter.

Though I tried to maintain a cool professionalism, I was a little awestruck. I couldn’t help it. I had Vic’s hockey card when I was a kid, for Pete’s sake, when he sported a Detroit Red Wings uniform during his second stint with the club. And here I was interviewing him. I

could hardly wait to tell my dad.

I remember being struck by how big Vic was. HockeyDB.com lists him at sixfoot-one and 185 pounds in his playing days, which was big by the NHL standards of the time. By 1976, he had added a few pounds and looked as though he could snap a hockey stick as if it was a toothpick in hands that were clearly honed by hard, physical work. I could picture him being quite capable of holding his own against the roughest and toughest players in the NHL of his day.

But Vic was much more than sheer brawn. I knew he had been a part of the famed “Uke Line” — it said so on the back of my hockey card — during his days with the Boston Bruins. There, he teamed with Johnny Bucyk and Bronco Horvath to form one of the most potent lines in the league. In his best year, 1959-60, Vic totalled 29 goals and 68 points to rank among the league’s top 10 scorers. It was his fifth straight 20-goal season. These days numbers like that would be worth a multi-million-dollar contract.

In his years before being traded to Boston, Vic had been part of three Stanley Cupwinning teams with the Red Wings, in 1952, ’54 and ’55. Some years ago, on a visit to Toronto, I visited the Hockey Hall of Fame and made a point to look for Vic’s name on the cup. Sure enough, he’s there.

While Vic was big, he could skate, too, according to former Herald sports editor Pat Sullivan. Sully told me about playing hockey with Vic after the former NHLer had been released by Detroit in 1963 and returned home to Lethbridge, and while Sully could apparently motor at a pretty good clip in his younger days, he was no match for Stasiuk. Sully recalled, “I thought if this guy isn’t fast enough to play in the NHL any more, how fast are the guys who are there?”

I can’t say I remember seeing Vic play, though I’m sure I must have during Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada telecasts on our old black-andwhite television. Earl Ingarfield remembers, though, and from a much closer vantage point. A Lethbridge hockey product himself who also enjoyed a long NHL career, Earl was a New York Ranger when he played against Vic and particularly remembers Vic’s days with the Bruins.

“He was a big man, strong,” Earl says. “He was very hardworking” and “a real good team man.”

Earl remembers the Uke Line well.

“They had a great line and scored a lot of points and won a lot of games for Boston.”

Vic, who is a member of the Lethbridge and Alberta Sports Halls of Fame, paved the way for a number of other Lethbridge hockey players from that era who cracked the NHL ranks, including Ingarfield, Aut Erickson, Doug Barkley and Les Colwill.

“I definitely admired what he accomplished,” Earl says of Vic, adding that Stasiuk worked extremely hard to make himself into an NHL-calibre player.

“Hardly anybody would work as hard as he did,” says Earl, recalling that from seeing Vic play when he was younger to the time he encountered him in the NHL, “he really improved his game, and that was from hard work.”

After Vic’s playing days were over, he went into coaching, guiding minor pro teams for six seasons before becoming head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers in 1969. He coached the Flyers for two seasons and, just before the team was about to become an NHL power on the strength of developing stars like Bobby Clarke and Bill Barber, Vic was let go. He went on to coach the California Golden Seals and Vancouver Canucks for one season each before leaving the NHL for good.

Vic coached Taber’s Alberta Junior Hockey League team for two years before guiding the Medicine Hat Tigers for two seasons. Then he retired to his farm to grow corn and play golf. The land he farmed eventually became Paradise Canyon Golf Course.

I ran into Vic in downtown Lethbridge some years ago, when he was selling his corn from the back of his pickup truck.

After we had chatted for a bit, he asked me, “Say, do you like corn?” I said I did and he handed me a bag of corn to take home. It was deliciously sweet. Vic could grow great corn — perhaps as well as he could play hockey.

And boy, could he play hockey.