Pat Stapleton obit

RIP Pat Stapleton: Strathroy star, Team Canada '72 legend, puck-mystery master

Every time Pat (Whitey) Stapleton answered his phone, the 1972 Summit Series legend offered the caller a familiar greeting. “Hello, hockey heaven – Strathroy division.

 

He was not on the list.

Every time Pat (Whitey) Stapleton answered his phone, the 1972 Summit Series legend offered the caller a familiar greeting.

“Hello, hockey heaven – Strathroy division.”

The former NHL star defenceman and Chicago Blackhawks captain, who passed away Wednesday at age 79, was a role model, trusted mentor and memorable coach for so many young budding Southwestern Ontario stars.

And even, in Warren Rychel’s case, a guardian angel.

“My godfather Don Walker was Pat’s best friend and farming partner,” the former three-time Memorial Cup champion GM of the Windsor Spitfires recalled Thursday. “One day, I was playing with Pat’s sons at the top of the grain elevator. They’d get in there and you get sucked down and just crawl out the bottom. But I wasn’t used to it and I went down and kind of hit an air pocket and got stuck with my feet sticking out.

“All the farmers were across the street having coffee and Mike and Tommy (Stapleton) started yelling at them.”

Rychel couldn’t move because the wheat density was so heavy. He was drowning in the grain.

“I was young and scared – it was nuts,” he said. “Pat was so strong and my uncle Don was a huge man. They just pulled me out and I was very lucky. If it wasn’t for Pat, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Forty-two years ago, Don Van Massenhoven left the family farm in Parkhill to try out for the Strathroy Junior B hockey team (then called the Blades, now the Rockets). Stapleton, who was just winding down his playing career in the World Hockey Association, was helping out the Blades look at some prospects.

He took the teenaged Van Massenhoven under his wing and invited him to live and work on his farm. The hockey-crazed kid would be doing the chores when famous guests like Bobby Hull would suddenly pop in for a quick visit.

“The Stapletons had two houses and I lived in the little farmhouse with Tommy,” the former long-time NHL referee said. “Pat treated you like part of the family. When my wife and I got engaged, we moved a half-mile down the road because Don Walker had a little bigger house for us.

“And when I stopped working at the farm, my dad took over the job and worked for Whitey for many years. They hit it off so well and he loved it.”

Stapleton always encouraged Van Massenhoven to advance himself to the higher levels of officiating.

“I found out years later he made calls to people in high places in the NHL to take a look at me,” Don said, “and even when I found out and asked him about it later, he would never admit it.

“He was never looking for credit.”

Stapleton won the Memorial Cup in 1960 with the St. Catharines Teepees and spent nine full seasons in the NHL with Chicago and the Boston Bruins, scoring 43 goals and 337 points in 635 games. He finished his playing career with five years in the World Hockey Association in Chicago (two seasons as the Cougars player-coach before the club folded), then Indianapolis and Cincinnati.

He was the first pro coach for teenaged Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier with the Indianapolis Racers in 1978-79 before the team suspended operations in December. He raised an NHL son in Mike, who played 697 big-league games and is now an Anaheim Ducks scout.

Pat started a nationwide hockey program, sponsored by Pepsi and Canadian Tire, called Fundamentals in Action and instituted drills he believed would foster a love for the game among young players.

“He was always a thinker,” Van Massenhoven said. “He had a ton of ideas about hockey and he was a very positive person. You’d ask him how he was doing and it was always, ‘Perfect, just perfect’.”

When the Strathroy junior program fell on hard times in the early 1990s, Stapleton took it over and injected life – and success – into it. He remained an advisor to the club for many years.

“It’s a sad day for our organization, but also the community here and also hockey in general,” Rockets GM Kent Coleman said. “He revitalized things back in the day and he’s largely responsible for a lot of the good people who have come through our program.

“He added a lot of professionalism and really helped us.”

Five years ago, Stapleton ended one of hockey’s great mysteries by admitting he did pick up the puck from the famous Paul Henderson goal that ended Canada’s eight-game Summit Series win over the Soviets in ’72. He always got a kick out of media and hockey enthusiasts asking to see it.

“I’ve never seen it, but I definitely think he has it,” Van Massenhoven said, “and I know friends of mine have seen it. Back then, nobody cared about pucks so it wasn’t a big deal. Pat wasn’t a collector, but he had a lot of stuff from over the years.”

It’s been there all this time in the Strathroy division of hockey heaven.

Stapleton played Junior B hockey with the Sarnia Legionnaires before spending two seasons with the St. Catharines Teepees of the Ontario Hockey Association, winning the Memorial Cup in 1960. With the Legionnaires he won two Western Jr. 'B' championships and one Sutherland Cup as an all-Ontario champion. Although he was a defenceman, he led the Legionnaires in scoring during his second season.

His first full season was with the Sault Thunderbirds of the Eastern Professional Hockey League in 1960–61. Stapleton had signed with the Chicago Black Hawks, but was claimed by the Boston Bruins in the intra-league draft in June 1961 and began his National Hockey League career with the Bruins in the 1961–62 season. The next year, he split his time between Bruins and their EPHL affiliate, the Kingston Frontenacs. Stapleton spent the next two years in the minor leagues, playing with the Portland Buckaroos of the Western Hockey League. He received the Hal Laycoe Cup as the WHL's top defenceman for the 1964–65 season.

Stapleton was briefly the property of the Toronto Maple Leafs in June 1965 as part of a trade with the Bruins, but he was left unprotected in the intra-league draft and was claimed the next day by the Chicago Black Hawks. Wearing number 7, he played some games with the Hawks' Central Hockey league affiliate, the St. Louis Braves, in 1965–66, but they would be the final minor league games of his career. Stapleton remained in the NHL for eight seasons with the Black Hawks, and was named Second Team All-Star three times (1966, 1971, and 1972). Stapleton played with the Black Hawks in the Stanley Cup finals in 1971 and 1973. His highest scoring season was 1969, where his 50 assists set a new NHL record for assists in a season by a defenceman (broken the next year by Bobby Orr).

Stapleton was a member of the Team Canada team at the Summit Series in 1972. During the tournament he was a +6 and was often paired with his Black Hawks teammate Bill White. It is believed that Stapleton was the owner of the puck used by Paul Henderson to score the series-winning goal. Stapleton himself admits that he didn’t know which one of the hundreds of pucks he owns is that game winning one, though it was in his possession.

In 1973, Stapleton jumped from the NHL and signed a five-year deal with the Chicago Cougars of the World Hockey Association where he became player-coach, replacing Marcel Pronovost as coach. He was a WHA first-team all-star in 1974 and won the Dennis A. Murphy Trophy as the league's top defenceman in the 1973–74 season.

Stapleton again represented Canada in the 1974 Summit Series against the national team from the Soviet Union, this time as team captain, recording three assists in eight games. He was again player-coach of the Cougars in 1974–75, and the team struggled on the ice and financially. In December 1974, he and teammates Dave Dryden and Ralph Backstrom bought the troubled franchise. At the time, Stapleton also owned two small arenas in the Chicago area along with other business interests.

The Cougars folded after the 1974–75 season and Stapleton was claimed by the Indianapolis Racers, where he played for two seasons and was named a second-team all-star in 1976. When the Racers refused to honor his contract in 1977, Stapleton was transferred to the Cincinnati Stingers, where he played one season before retiring in 1978. Over his career, Stapleton scored 337 points in the NHL and 239 in the WHA. He is a member of the WHA Hall of Fame.