This Day in Hockey History – May 10, 1970 and 1979 – Bruins Go Big and Go Bust

Bookending the 1970s, the Boston Bruins had their best and worst moments at the end of games held on May 10. Forty seconds into overtime on that date in 1970, Bobby Orr flew after scoring the Stanley-Cup-winning goal. In 1979, with 2:34 remaining in regulation, the Bruins were penalized for having too many men on the ice, leading to their elimination from the semi-finals.

In 1970, 14,835 fans gathered at Boston Garden to watch Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals. The Bruins had already taken the first three games and wanted the home crowd to see them win their first championship since 1941. Defenseman Bobby Orr later wrote, “The drought had persisted long enough — at least in the eyes of the Bruins faithful. As for the players, we wanted it done, right then and there. The chance to sweep on home ice was within our grasp.” The St. Louis Blues just wanted to keep the series going for the chance to stage a comeback.

Thus, the two teams each score a goal in each period. Johnny Bucyk potted the final one in regulation at 13:28. He would celebrate his 35th birthday just two days later. Of this goal, Bucyk commented, “But I don’t think there ever was one bigger than that.”

Tied at 3-3, the game, for the first time in 14 games, went into overtime. Orr wrote in his memoirs, “It was off to overtime, which is the way every kid wants to win the Cup. No one needed a speech in the dressing room to get motivated to go back out there. Not much was said. At least I never heard much. I suppose nothing really needed to be said. We all knew what was at stake.” Bruins Coach Harry Sinden later explained, “I started with what was known as the checking line, but my intent was to hopefully get through the first five or eight minutes of overtime. I thought the longer the overtime went, the better chance we had of winning it. Fortunately, we got the break in the first five minutes.” That was because he put the best defensemen, Orr and Don Awrey, behind the third line, Derek Sanderson centering for Wayne Carleton and Ed Westfall.

Sanderson took a shot that rebounded to the right-side boards. Orr passed the puck to Sanderson waiting behind the net. “Derek gave me a great pass and when I got the pass I was moving across,” described Orr. “As I skated across, Glenn [Hall] had to move across the crease and had to open his pads a little. I was really trying to get the puck on net, and I did. As I went across, Glenn’s legs opened, so I jumped.” At only 40 seconds into overtime, as the Boston Globe recapped, “Swooping in front of the Blues’ net, Bobby Orr took a swipe past old Glenn Hall in a move so rapid that there was a slight delay in the roar from the stands until a few moments after the red light flashed.” Orr admitted, “Honest, I really don’t know how it went in.” But he also wrote, “To actually do what you have dreamed of a thousand times since you were a kid is a feeling like nothing else.”

As the puck left Orr’s stick, Blues defenseman Noel Picard made a desperate attempt to stop the play. Instead, he tripped Orr lifting his legs with his stick. Orr, lifting his arms in victory, appeared to fly. According to Orr’s autobiography, “He brought me down, but not before I’d spent that moment airborne. And as soon as I fell back to the ice, Sanderson jumped on me, and the celebrations began.” Orr was immediately mobbed by his teammates as the game ended at 5:10 that afternoon.

The moment was immortalized by the press, but particularly in Ray Lussier’s photo. It shows Orr flying with arms raised as goalie Glenn Hall leans on the crossbar of his net with the puck at his feet. Despite his defeat, the iconic image has become the most famous of “Mr. Goalie,” who has been asked to sign it nearly as often as Orr. Hall commented, “Is this the most famous photo of me? Yes, I think they’ve probably made it so.” However, Hall, greatly admired Orr, saying, “He was capable of scoring goals and he did things different than we thought defensemen should be doing. I’ll tell you, he was a great, great player and he’s a great, great person, as are all the top guys who represent the NHL so well.” He had followed Orr throughout the play and noted, “I’ll tell you, if you were a goalkeeper and you didn’t know where Bobby Orr was on the ice, you weren’t paying attention. He was the whole focus.” When Orr and Hall captained the Eastern Conference and Western Conference (respectively) in the 1996 All-Star game, Hall said, “We were signing that photo, over and over again. I think I turned to him that day and said, ‘Bobby, was this the only goal you ever scored?’ You know, it might live forever. And that’s fine with me.” Orr’s image has certainly lasted as it has been turned into a statue outside TD Garden.

As one article about May 10, 1970 pointed out, No. 4 (as he was being tripped by No. 4) had scored the Bruins’ fourth goal in the fourth session of Game 4 to win the Bruins’ fourth championship. In addition to the Cup, that year Orr earned the Art Ross Trophy as lead scorer (with 120 points), the James Norris Memorial Trophy as lead defenseman, the Hart Memorial Trophy as regular-season MVP, and the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. He was the first to win all four trophies in one season.

But what goes up must come down. After winning the Cup again in 1972, the Bruins lost the finals to Philadelphia in 1974 and twice to Montreal in 1977 and 1978. Having topped the Adams Division in 1979, the Bruins wanted to finally defeat the Montreal Canadiens. They met in the semi-finals and played Game 7 on May 10.

The first bad sign was that the game was played at Montreal’s Forum. Still, after both teams scored one apiece in the first period, the Bruins took the lead in the second thanks to two goals by captain Wayne Cashman. At that point, Montreal Coach Scotty Bowman found the situation dire. “I really doubted we could win at that point unless we got some power plays.” He got his wish. Boston Coach Don Cherry complained to the press, “But I could sense something was going to happen with the officiating. It always does up here. They get away with murder. It’s always that way. What were the power plays in the game – five for them and two for us.” The Canadiens rallied and scored twice in the first half of the third period. The Bruins thought they essentially won when Rick Middleton scored at 16:01.

Then along came Canadiens superstar Guy Lafleur. The Bruins had assignments to shadow him for the game, so they had a mix-up with the shifts when Lafleur stayed on the ice for a triple shift. Later it was clarified that left winger Don Marcotte went out to shadow Lafleur while another Boston left wing was already on the ice. Immediately after the game, it was assumed that the mix-up came because of dual centers Pete McNab and Bob Miller. Either way, the Bruins clearly had too many players skating that shift. Linesman John D’Amico did not want to make the call but had to after this continued for 20 seconds. Only 2:34 remained in the game when Boston received a bench minor for having too many men on the ice.

The opposing coaches and the Bruins general manager had differing reactions to the call. Harry Sinden raged, “You just don’t make that call in that situation. I’ve been talking to all kinds of people trying to find one that saw it. I can’t find them yet. If we had an extra man on the ice, he didn’t interfere with the play and, if he didn’t, the call shouldn’t have been made. Never. Not in the final minutes of a seventh game of the Stanley Cup.” Bowman could afford to be kind stating, “They just got a little excited with two-three minutes to go.” Don Cherry bore the guilt saying, “When there are too many men on the ice it’s the coach’s fault. It’s the coach’s responsibility to see that things like that don’t happen.”

Lafleur capitalized on the power play. With 1:14 remaining in regulation, he sent a slap shot from the right circle to knot the game. Lafleur later commented, “Sometimes in a game, there’s a window [that] is going to open up and just can’t afford to miss it.” His teammate, Yvon Lambert scored the game-winner at 9:33 of overtime. “They took a stupid penalty,” Lambert stated bluntly. “I just know that a team with their experience shouldn’t be making a mistake like that in the playoffs.” The result was that the Canadiens became the first NHL team to win a Game 7 after trailing so much going into the third. They went on to win their fourth consecutive championship.

Gilles Gilbert, the goalie who had let these two goals past him, had faced 52 shots. “The most shots I’ve seen since I was a pee wee,” he said. “We were there, but we’re only human. We can’t stop everything.” Coach Cherry credited Gilbert saying, “Gilles was super. Just great. He didn’t have a chance on the winning goal. And Lafleur just made a fantastic shot to beat him at the end of regulation. I said when Himself (Bobby Orr) retired that the greatest player in the game was Lafleur. They gave everything they had, and in the end we just got worn down.”

Mourning the loss in the locker room, Brad Park said numbly, “There will be nothing out of me. There is nothing I can say. I feel too bad.” “We had ‘em once, we had ‘em twice,” bemoaned McNab. “The pain just doesn’t go away from a thing like this. It’s a lifetime pain.” Tearing up, Gerry Cheevers commented, “I want to cry for every one of them. Each guy I see makes me want to start crying all over. I just feel so sorry for all of them. They just tried so hard. I’ve never seen them try so hard.” The Bruins were in for yet another long drought. They did not even make it back to the Stanley Cup finals until 1988, and it took until 2011 for the team to once again raise the Cup.

Additional Sources:

• https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-centennial-bobby-orrs-flying-high-goal-guides-bruins-in-stanley-cup/c-289357902?tid=282169076
• https://www.nhl.com/news/glenn-hall-embraces-role-in-bobby-orr-goal/c-289354082?tid=282169076
• Mike Commito, Hockey 365: Daily Stories from the Ice (Toronto: Dundurn, 2018), kindle edition.
• Tom Fitzgerald, “Orr’s Goal Wins Cup for Bruins,” Boston Globe, morning edition, 11 May 1970, pp. 1 and 21.
• Leigh Montville, “Bruins fall, 5-4, in overtime after Gilbert’s gymnastics,” Boston Globe, 11 May 1979, pp. 1 and 64.
• Will McDonough, “Cherry mum on future – but not on officials,” Boston Globe, 11 May 1979, p. 64.
• Steve Marantz, “Losing 3-1, Bowman thought all was lost,” Boston Globe, 11 May 1979, p. 64.