Ed Hatoum’s indelible 26 games
Forward scored just one goal for first-year Canucks, but he’s still a fan favourite
For a guy who played just 26 games with the Vancouver Canucks during the team’s initial season in the NHL, Ed Hatoum is as well known as any player from that era.
Imagine the impact of a guy who scored just one goal having the nickname Ed ‘Sock’ Hatoum (Get it? sounds like “Sock it to ’em.”) — which was on the lips of every fan that 1970-71 season. Vancouver finally being admitted to the league was a very big deal in town and, for a short while, so was Hatoum.
“It’s amazing, really,” says Hatoum, now 67, some 38 years since his hockey career ended after more stops than any Allied Van Lines truck. “You tell me I’m so well-known and, hell, I only scored one goal. I don’t know why people still remember, but I guess some of them still do. I guess we all remember that first year.”
There’s a reason why Hatoum was so well remembered, and it had a little to do with the nickname and the promise with which he arrived. After having had a big year with the Detroit Red Wings’ Central League team in Fort Worth, Tex., he came to training camp with considerable promise — and for good reason. The Canucks’ players were all new, there were jobs open, and Hatoum could skate, shoot and score.
“The year before, when I was in Detroit for those five games, when they sent me back down I was packing up and Gordie (Howe) came over and said, ‘Where are you going?’ ” Hatoum recalls. “I said, ‘They sent me back,’ and he said, ‘What’s going on here? We need young legs on this team.’ But it was like that in those days. The big players didn’t have any influence with the coaches and owners.”
So Hatoum came to Vancouver with that promise, and at training camp head coach Hal Laycoe put him on the team’s top line with soon-to-be-named captain Orland Kurtenbach and Wayne Maki.
“I had a great camp, I think I had six, or eight goals and six, eight assists, we were really going,” says Hatoum when asked to rehash the team’s inaugural camp in Calgary.
“Then (defenceman) Jimmy Hargreaves tripped me at practice, and I went into the boards and separated my shoulder, and had to start the season in Seattle (of the WHL) after I recovered.
“When I came up at first, the team had a lot of points. We were in playoff contention, which was amazing for an expansion team, but then Kurt (Kurtenbach) got hurt and things began to slide.”
They began to slide for everyone, including Hatoum, who had drawn so much popularity because of his speed and his background.
He was born in Lebanon and moved to Ottawa with his dad Paul and brother Mike in 1957, to join Paul’s two brothers.
His mother followed a little while later, with Hatoum’s six other siblings.
“I came at the age of 10 and I had never skated in my life, but we lived right next to the rink and in those days during the winter there wasn’t much else to do,” says Hatoum.
“So I got a pair of old skates that didn’t fit me and learned to skate, and ended up playing four years with the Hamilton Red Wings in the OHA.”
The fact Hatoum was from Lebanon was enough for some to make snarky remarks about his background, even though the family were all Christians, not Muslims.
And when you see the following anecdote, try to remember the atmosphere in those days wasn’t nearly as politically correct as it is today.
Back then sportswriters watched and then wrote, they weren’t endlessly pounding and tweeting during games, and they would amuse themselves by making loud quips to draw laughs.
At one point, after Hatoum sped down the right wing and whistled a good scoring chance past the post, Province hockey writer, the late Tom Watt (not to be confused with the former coach of the Canucks), quipped for all to hear: “If all Arabs shot like Eddie Hatoum, it’s amazing the war lasted six days.”
The reference was to the Six Day War in 1967 between Israel and three Middle Eastern nations — none of them Lebanon, which made the crack incorrect in every way. But that was Hatoum’s world at that time.
Even so, he rose above all the stereotyping to have a solid career and emerge tremendously popular in town.
So much so he was brought in later by the Andy Bathgate-coached Blazers of the WHA, but again his tenure was brief.
“I was getting toward the end of my career by then,” says Hatoum, who soon after retired and went into the autobody business before coaching the senior-level Nelson Maple Leafs briefly for owner Gus Adams — the father of an even more famous Canuck, Greg Adams.
At the end of it all, he didn’t make a lot of money but the reward in those days was a great deal of fun, the players just beginning to realize the degree to which the owners were taking advantage of them.
“The deal I signed with the (WHA’s) Chicago Cougars (in 1972) — for $36,000 if I remember correctly — was the most I ever made in one season, but it was a helluva lot more than I would have got in the NHL.”
Hatoum still lives in Vancouver with longtime significant other Frances Godding.
“I only scored one goal. I don’t know why people still remember, but I guess some of them still do.”
— ED HATOUM
FIRST-YEAR CANUCKS FORWARD