By Gilbert Rogin

Reissue date: March 14, 1994

''What makes Toronto tick?'' asked the TV announcer. ''What makes Toronto dead?'' Maurice (the Rocket) Richard asked back. Richard, who has played right wing for the Club de Hockey Canadien Inc. every winter since 1942, sat, his shoes off, in a dark room in the Royal York hotel, laughing at Red Skelton and smoking a cigar -- a burly man of 38 with an erect carriage, tilted, somber, devout face, inflexible eye, abundant black hair which also thickly mats his chest and back, making him look like a mangy bear, and queer, thin, knobby legs. ''If he had another hair on his back, he'd be up a tree,'' says Kenny Reardon, who is vice president of the Montreal Canadiens. Richard's roommate in Toronto, Marcel Bonin, who once wrestled a toothless, suffering bear in a carnival (''I never win,'' he admits) was out somewhere in the cold, solid city. The Ontario Good Roads Association was making roisterous marches up and down the long, dim hotel corridors, X's on the backs of their red necks and violent apocalypses on their neckties. One of them hammered on Richard's door.

''Go to bed, damn it!'' Richard shouted. ''That's my whole life trouble,'' he said, ''trying to sleep. My mother was the same way. If I sleep four or five hours a night, it's good. TV puts me to sleep every time. Where would we be without TV, eh?

''Eighteen years of this,'' he said. ''In the town. Out of the town. I really get tired of all these trips.'' He got up and closed the transom, shutting out the racket. ''People bother me,'' he said. ''The young ones, they're all right. It's the old ones who have had a drink or two too much, yelling at me, asking all sorts of questions.'' He made a face. ''I was at this sports banquet. A famous person got up to speak. He had too much to drink, like James Dean in that movie. He kept on talking, and no one knew how to stop him. It was embarrassing. I'll never be like that.''

And no one, certainly, will ever be quite like Maurice Richard, who next week, as their captain, leads the Canadiens toward their fifth consecutive Stanley Cup. Not even himself. ''You should have come up five years ago,'' he had said in the men's room of a Montreal-Detroit sleeper several days before, where he has sat so many nights reading until the porter fills the room with hockey players' shoes. ''It's getting to be my time now. I'm getting near the end. I have had some good times, some bad. I started out with three bad injuries (fractured left ankle, left wrist, right ankle) and am ending with three bad injuries (sliced Achilles tendon, fractured left tibia, depressed fracture of facial bone). The old days are gone. These are the new days. I'll never score five goals in one night.'' He looked out the window at the dismal, glaring snow, listening to the wheels as the train bore him to his 1,091st game. Behind him, the glorious past, the records: 50 goals (and in a 50-game season); five goals in a playoff game; 18 game-winning goals in 14 playoff series, six of which were in overtime; 26 hat tricks; 618 goals; 1,076 points; at least one goal in nine straight games; etc.

''He was a wartime hockey player,'' says Frank J. Selke, the 66-year-old managing director of the Canadiens. ''When the boys came back, they said they'd look after Maurice. Nobody looked after Maurice. He looked after himself. When the boys came back, they said they'd catch up with him. The only thing that's caught up with Maurice is time.''

''It's changed. I'm the oldest; the rest are kids,'' Richard said one night in a Detroit bar that advertised a stereophonic jukebox. ''I know I'm not playing good hockey now. I'm weak now. My legs are tired. After a minute and a half, I'm tired. I will try to diet. I weigh 194 pounds. I got to take off five or six pounds before the playoffs. Only one beer. That's all I'll drink. I'll drink gin. That isn't fattening.''

He watched on TV a tape of the game he had played in an hour earlier. He had scored two goals. The bartender got in front of the TV while he scored the first goal, and Richard did not see it. He was told he had been chosen the game's best player. ''Me?'' he said. ''I don't believe it. I did not deserve it. Luck.''

''He kids himself that if he's feeling well, he's at the right weight,'' Selke says. ''You don't feel well at the right weight. You're crabby. But he makes so much money! He's wonderful to sign. 'How much do you want?' I ask. 'How much do you want to give me?' he says. I always give him a little more than anyone else I hear about through the grapevine. He has done so much for the game.''

Richard's annual income has been estimated at $60,000 -- half of it from his contract with the Canadiens -- his total worth at $300,000. He is a public relations man for Dow Brewery and Quebec Natural Gas, has part interest in a store that sells gas appliances, has bought a tavern that he is calling No. 9 after his uniform number and referees professional wrestling matches. ''They're smart guys, the wrestlers,'' he says. ''Ninety percent of them are educated. I know most of the guys. I wrestle a lot with Boom Boom (Geoffrion) in the room. Do a lot of crazy things.''

''I've been in hockey 53 years, and I've never had an aging athlete admit he was through,'' Selke says. ''He misses passes he never missed. He tops the puck like a golfer. He never did that. He's gotten too big in the middle. I'd bench him. He'd damn well get in shape. I wouldn't sign him for another year. I wouldn't let him make a fool of himself in front of a crowd.'' Richard had played ineptly the night before, and Selke, like a proud, rigorous, loving father, spoke not in intemperate anger but with old, gruff affection, hurt by loss and memory. If his Maurice wanted to play next year, he would probably relent.

''If I play bad,'' Richard says, ''people will talk. I like to leave the game before people criticize me, boo me. I used to skate a little better, go around the fence a little better. I've got to watch myself. The day of the game I'm afraid to get hit. I know when I feel that, it is getting close to the end.

''I have to work so hard all the time,'' he says. ''When a guy is a natural he doesn't have to drive himself.''

''He used to be a whirlwind,'' says Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings. ''Now he's just a whirlwind half the time. But when he's not doing a lot, you notice it. Not like the others.''

''I'm a little too old to be called Rocket,'' says Richard.

''I first saw him in 1942,'' says Reardon. ''I was playing for an Army team. I see this guy skating at me with wild hair and eyes just out of the nuthouse. 'I'll take this guy,' I said to myself. He went around me like a hoop around a barrel. 'Who's that?' I asked after the game. 'That's Maurice Richard,' the guy said. 'He's a pretty good hockey player.' 'Yes,' I said, 'he is.' ''

''When he's worked up,'' says Selke, ''his eyes gleam like headlights. Not a glow, but a piercing intensity. Goalies have said he's like a motorcar coming on you at night. He is terrifying. He is the greatest hockey player that ever lived. I can contradict myself by saying that 10 or 15 do the mechanics better. But it's results that count. Others play well, build up, eventually get a goal. He is like lightning. It's a fine summer day, suddenly. . . .''

''Holy Dirty Dora!'' says Montreal coach Toe Blake. ''You got to give it to the fellow. The fellow was fantastic. That's why you got to give it to the fellow. That will!''

''In all my experience in athletics, academic pursuits, business,'' says NHL president Clarence Campbell, ''I've never seen a man so completely dedicated to the degree he is. Many people who prosper take prosperity for granted. He doesn't to this day. He is the best hockey player he can be every second. You know, he is the eldest of a fairly extensive family raised in relative poverty. Somehow or other, he was going to lift himself. He has an inner urge to transcend.''

''He is not the Pope,'' says Camil Des Roches, the Canadiens' publicity man, wistfully.

''He is God,'' says Selke.

Richard is regarded in Canada as no athlete is in the United States. He is not only a sports idol, he is the national idol, particularly among the French-speaking people of Montreal and the province of Quebec. When Maurice Richard scores a goal in the Forum, even an insignificant goal in a meaningless game, it touches off a unique celebration. First, an astonishing, prolonged din of cheering and applause, then newspapers, programs, galoshes, hats are thrown onto the ice. Richard skates in abstracted, embarrassed, lonely circles through the heavy snow of objects. The game has to be stopped until the attendants clear the ice. But adulation sits on him like an uneasy crown.

''Nothing goes to my head,'' he says. ''I don't think I deserve it. That's my whole trouble all the years. There are better hockey players, but they don't work as hard. I like to win.''

''We were playing Toronto once in a benefit softball game,'' Selke says. ''Instead of just using the Maple Leaf players, they used the best softball players they had in their entire organization. They were beating us 25-5. Maurice was playing third base. Someone laughed about the score. 'You might think it's funny getting licked 25-5 in front of 14,000 spectators,' Maurice said to him. 'I don't think it's a bit funny.' ''

''I never did like to see anybody laughing,'' Richard says, ''making a farce out of something. I don't like to lose. I like to meet people, but not to talk about hockey when we had a bad game and lost. I stay away from everybody and go home. But I'm afraid to let the French people down. That's why I'm worried. I don't want to be kept on the ice through sympathy.''

''He is more important than the cardinal or Duplessis,'' explains one fan. ''There are many cardinals. Duplessis was only the head man of Quebec. Maurice Richard was not only the best of the French but of the English as well. He came to epitomize the desire of superiority of the French Canadian nationalists. He was one of their best expressions. But you must understand that he has no personal interest in that. Maurice Richard never did a thing to accentuate it. He was a person to fix their eyes. Here was a demonstration.''

While an idol, Richard has also been a figure of controversy. He fought a lot on the ice, violently and well, although the sight of blood makes him ill. ''I see myself bleeding or anyone else bleeding,'' he says, ''I feel funny. Once I cut my hand as a little kid and I passed out.'' In 1955, after a series of incidents culminating in the slugging of a linesman, Campbell suspended him for the last three regular-season games and the playoffs. That decision caused the notorious Forum riot and inspired a ballad to the tune of Abdul Abulbul Amir:

Now our town has lost face And our team is disgraced, But these hotheaded actions can't mar Or cast any shame on the heroic name Of Maurice (the Rocket) Richard.

Richard has also been called aloof, sullen, moody, uncommunicative, tight. ''I'm unpredictable,'' says Richard, cheerfully.

''His difficulty was the language barrier, a very modest formal education and the disparagement of no war service,'' the fan says. ''He was tagged with aspersion.''

''Somewhere at the back of his mind,'' says Selke, ''there is a feeling that someone is trying to put it over on him. He has a tremendous dread of poverty.''

''You can say that again,'' Richard says, laughing.

''You can say a lot of things to Maurice,'' Selke says, ''but you got to be careful of your adjectives. Maurice just can't take anything. But there is no meanness in Maurice Richard. He's 100 percent solid gold; someone you'd be proud to have as the husband of one of your daughters; faithful, devoted.''

''For 15 years he's been a law unto himself,'' Reardon says. ''He has been so good he didn't have to do the things others did. The time hasn't come when he realizes he's human and has to do the things everyone else does. But if he wasn't so obstinate, he couldn't have done the things he has done. He was watched, watched, watched until he finally blew. When he blew, he blew good. No one could have taken (the cheap shots) as long as he did and done less about it.''

''It's different,'' says Richard. ''Today they don't have to bother me like before. But every fight I've been in, every suspension, I was not the first. I'm not the type to hit a guy. Many times I don't like a guy, but I get on the ice, I forget all about it. Now it's no use to fight. Ten minutes, $25 fine. If you keep fighting too long, they send you out. It's a match penalty, $100 fine!''

''I told him,'' says Selke. ''You don't prove anything at your age to take on a young buck. You win? You've won so many fights already. You lose? They'll say you let a bandy rooster lick the cock of the walk.''

''I am a very quiet man,'' says Richard. ''At the beginning of my career I didn't know what the English people were talking about. Even today, they ask me to make a speech. I like to, but I am a man of few words.''

''Richard the sphinx!'' says Reardon. ''He used to ride all the way to Chicago, sitting in the corner. He didn't even read a book. Henri, his brother, was that way, too. After Henri had been with the club two years, a reporter asked the coach if he could interview him. 'Sure,' he said, 'go ahead.' 'Does he speak English?' the reporter asked. 'Hell,' said Blake. 'I don't even know if he speaks French.' Maurice is just a great company man. He shows up for the game. Does a great job and disappears into his shell.''

Richard lives in a spacious one-story house by the Back River on the rim of Montreal. ''I have six kids,'' he says. ''One for each 100 goals. If I reach the 700 mark, I'll have to get another one, but I think I'll have to stop. I mean, there's no more on the way yet. My oldest is Huguette. She is 16 and studying to be a beautician. All she does now is ski. She doesn't do her skating anymore. I'd like to do figure skating too, but I'm embarrassed.

Then there is Maurice Jr., who is 14. He's good at school. Not too bad. He's a fair hockey player, right wing. He wants to play hockey, too. He is an inch and a half taller than me. Normand is nine. This one is the one that likes every sport. A right wing, too. He's a natural. Just fair in school. Then Andre, who is five. He is starting to go to school this year. He's kind of young, but he's all right. Suzanne is two, and Paul is one. My wife, Lucille, has missed only two hockey games in 18 years. She was sick for a week this year.''

Richard adores children and is, perhaps, most at ease with them. He always carries postcards with his picture on them, which he signs and gives away. Children adore Richard. If they are not French, he asks them if they speak French. If they do, they proudly and hurriedly say their few words of high school French and flee with their autographs.

''I never wanted to have a fan club,'' Richard says, ''because of the exploitation. I have fans but no clubs. Instead of the kids spending money on us, let us spend money on them.''

Richard often skates with kids or referees their games. ''The kids all call this one place where we skate Maurice Richard Park,'' he says. ''That's not the real name. In Montreal most of the people things are named after are dead people. Parents should spend more time watching their kids play,'' he says. ''I come out after the game starts and stand hidden in a corner. I like to play with them in the park. The kids get such a kick out of it. They talk of nothing else for a week afterward.''

One night in Detroit several weeks ago, Richard sat at the bar in a steak house with some businessmen friends. ''When I got friends,'' he says, ''I keep them and stay with them all the time.'' He had been telling his friends about Varadero Beach in Cuba, groping for words to describe its beauty. ''The wife and I were swimming 50 or 60 feet offshore,'' he said. ''Fish of all different colors came around us and touched our legs. The wife got scared. It was so beautiful. The water was all different colors.'' Suddenly he stopped and drank his screwdriver. ''You never know what you want to do in life, eh,'' he said. ''I'm fed up with hockey, I don't want to skate anymore.''

''You said that last year,'' a friend said.

''And four years ago,'' Richard said and smiled thinly.

''No, I'm not fed up with hockey,'' he said, as he walked back the dark blocks to his hotel through the snow in his deep-blue overcoat and a hat with a red feather in the band. ''That's my living. I'm fed up with the traveling, the fear of accidents, the. . . . I. . . . Good night,'' he said, ''I'm going to watch The Late Show until I get sleepy.''

There is a poster on the wall of the Canadiens' dressing room in the Forum. It is a quotation from Abraham Lincoln. It reads, in part, ''I do the very best I know how -- the very best I can -- and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.''

''I read that almost every game,'' Richard says. ''Dick Irvin (the late Montreal coach) put that up. It's right in front of me.''

At the NHL meeting last year there was some facetious talk of the end, the day when Richard would get so old Montreal would no longer protect him and he would be available for the $20,000 waiver price. ''I'd pay $20,000 for him,'' said Phil Watson, then coach of the New York Rangers. ''I'd put him in a glass case in Madison Square Garden and say, 'Pay your money and take a good look at the great Maurice Richard!' ''

The Maurice Richards, May 1959

BY JUNE CALLWOOD

Maurice Richard and his wife Lucille live with their six children in a thirteen-room stone house on the northeast shore of the island on which Montreal is built. Their living-room windows overlook a strip of park, beyond which is the river where in summer the Richard boat is in constant use, towing the older children or their father on water skis.

In the winter Maurice is kept busy at his trade which is hockey. The man known as Rocket holds 16 individual scoring records, the greatest scorer the game has ever known. Only four players in the history of the National Hockey League have scored more than 300 goals; at midwinter this year Richard had scored 525 in season play and an extra 81 in playoff games. He has been named on all-star teams 14 years in succession; only severe injuries, a broken leg one season and cut tendons the other, kept him from stretching that record to 16.

This winter, in his 17th season, the Montreal Canadiens phenomenal right winger was injured again. He broke a bone in his ankle, an accident that reminded apprehensive fans that Richard at 37 is the oldest active player in the league and cannot be expected to withstand much more battering. Richard himself needed no reminders; for the past few years he has been thinking of little else; he is heavy with dread.

In February, while Maurice was still limping around with his left foot in a cast, I visited the Richards for Maclean's to discuss with them such topics as their marriage, which has a tenderness congruous with Maurice's reputation for taciturnity and temper; their children, whom they frankly indulge; hockey and French Canadians, fame and the future. The interviews were conducted in pockets of time over a period of three days and were laced through with the ringing of the telephone as many as five times to the half hour, with tumbling French exhortations to the children, who speak no English, and with Popeye (pronounced P'peye by the small Richards) rescuing his shrill lady friend with such volume from the television that Maurice's soft, accented answers were difficult to hear. Lucille was at home only the first day, departing that night to give birth to their sixth child, an almost 10-pound boy the Richards have named Paul.

Some of the appointments inside the Richard home could be transposed, just as they are, to a Maurice Richard wing on hockey's hall of fame. The wrought-iron frame of the mirror, in the front hall, for instance, is studded with 400th, 500th and600th-goal pucks. The living-room mantel holds nine trophies, awards or mountings of other pucks. Several other trophies, including a small version of the Stanley Cup, are scattered through the room. Lucille has stored literally dozens of cups, statues and plaques in a glass-doored case in the recreation room, along with boxes of pucks--all identical in appearance--labeled to indicate that this one won a Stanley Cup playoff game and that one broke a scoring record. The scrapbook situation is almost out of hand and so is the number of paintings of Maurice that fans have made from photographs and sent to him. Several are hung in the living room, others in the recreation room. One, a real trial, is over six feet high and leans against a basement wall.

Many gifts have been of great value, among them a color television set, a freezer, a stove, a marble-statue floor lamp and four refrigerators. Lucille dispersed the abundance of refrigerators by putting the biggest one in the kitchen, another in the bar in the recreation room and two others in the back entrance vestibule. One of these is packed to the doors with beer, a reflection of an affiliation Maurice has with Dow Breweries, rather than of his drinking habits, which are only a notch above teetotaling.

Lucille Richard is a small, animated, pretty woman of 35 with mildly red hair and blue eyes. Only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lucien Norchet, the former a butcher of comfortable means, Lucille was raised in a warm, hearty household that was a gathering place for her friends and any number of people her two older brothers might happen to bring home.

The afternoon of the first interview was viciously cold in Montreal, 20 below zero with a wild wind. The Richard home was warm, sparkling clean and bright with sunlight. Lucille, greatly pregnant but untired-looking, explained that Maurice was away on an errand to the Forum, taking five-year-old Andre with him. "He often does that, when he must make a few calls," she added, leading the way into the living room. "He is so fond of the children that he hates to be away from them. When he telephones home while the team is away on a road trip he starts by saying, 'How are the kids?' I say, 'What about me?' He tells people that he loves his children and hockey, sometimes he remembers to put me in there. I come before hockey, but after the kids."

She settled in a chair that caught the thin winter sunshine. As we talked, Lucille's parents arrived and were introduced, her father shyly removing himself to the recreation room and her mother joining us with the same air of uncritical interest that marks her daughter's attitudes. The maid, a timid, awed young girl, was working silently in the kitchen. "I met Maurice when I was 13," Lucille said, in answer to my question. "My older brother was playing hockey and he used to rave about Maurice Richard. Maurice was scoring four or five goals every game. Then he brought him home to meet us. Maurice was 17 then, so shy, so quiet. Remember, mama?"

Mrs. Norchet chuckled. "I remember. His clothes were so, I shouldn't say, but not right. Not poor, but just . . . you know. My heart went out to him. He used to comb his hair straight back, very long. One day I took a comb and parted it on other side and combed it for him. 'There,' I told him. 'That's better.' He still parts it that way."

"Maurice had no girl," continued Lucille, "but he always came to our house after the hockey games with all the rest. We would roll up the rugs and dance and eat peanuts and potato chips and drink soft drinks. I was very young, but I taught Maurice to dance. After a while, he was very good at the rumba."

"Was Maurice popular?" Lucille was asked.

"Oh sure," she responded, "he was such a wonderful hockey player, everyone was talking about him and waiting to meet him. Except for hockey, he didn't have friends. He was so shy, so quiet. He just watched people."

Despite the image most people have of all French-Canadian families being close and jolly, the Richard family is a cool one and its members, with the exception of Maurice and his hockey-playing broth Henri, rarely see one another. Lucille says, "Maurice had it tough when he was young, really tough."

His father was a CPR machinist, out of work for a two-year period during the depression. Maurice was the oldest of eight children. When Lucille first met Maurice, he was attending technical school, taking training as a machinist. Hockey was a hobby; he never considered it as a career. When she was 17 and he was well into his 20th year, Maurice proposed and Lucille accepted. Neither had ever dated anyone else. The Norchets approved of young Richard but were appalled at the couple's youth. Despite the objections, Lucille and Maurice were married the following year. "You should have seen her leave for the church," Mrs. Norchet recalled, grinning wryly. "Most brides are nervous but she was as gay as a bird, turned and waved like she was going to a movie. Me, I was crying."

It was 1942, and Maurice was earning $40 a week as a machinist in the CPR shops, making extra money in the winter playing for the Canadian Seniors. Neither spoke a word of English and when Maurice began to play for the NHL Canadiens the following winter, Lucille drank coffee with the players' wives before the games and was taught English. Maurice was learning from the players and from watching movies in the strange cities where the team traveled to play. He was wretched with loneliness, developing the protective veneer of cold hostility that he outgrew only recently.

The Richards' eldest daughter, Hugette, now 15, had been born shortly after their first anniversary and a son, Maurice, Jr., followed. "He is another Rocket," the nurse told Lucille, displaying the new baby.

"Maurice waits at the hospital when Lucille is having a baby," observed Mrs. Norchet. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, he won't leave. Would you believe it, he cries. My sons never shed a tear when their wives are having babies, but Maurice weeps every time."

"He's supposed to be so hard," added Lucille, "but wait till you see him at home. He's so gentle and kind, so good to the kids. Too good, I tell him."

"We used to fight a lot when we were first married," smiled Lucille considerably, "but not any more. He is much happier now, much more contented. He is living a good life and it makes him feel well, proud. He is wonderful to us. Last Christmas he gave me this diamond ring . . ."

"And a mink coat," prompted Mrs. Norchet.

"No, it was a stole. Christmas before it was a lamb coat. And in the spring he will get me a Pontiac convertible. Neat eh?"

It's not all diamonds and cars. Lucille's nails are bitten to the quick from the nervousness she suffers before and during every hockey game. "The worry is when he is playing on the road and I am listening on the radio and the announcer says, 'Richard is hurt, he's leaving the ice.' I almost die."

Lucille Richard and young Rocket sit directly behind the visiting team bench in the Forum. Since league president Clarence Campbell often sits nearby, it's a position that strangles her natural exuberance. "I can't say what I think about the referees, everyone knows me."

The day of a game, Lucille tries to keep the children in the recreation room so the house will be quieter. Maurice goes to a players' meeting in the morning, returns and at three o'clock has filet mignon, medium, one potato, a vegetable, some tomato juice, maybe fruit or ice cream. "For 16 years, I have been fixing the same food, 16 years," Lucille murmured in gathering astonishment. "16 years! Then Maurice goes down to sleep, but he doesn't sleep--he lies there. He comes out of the room around five or six. I say, 'Did you sleep?' and he says, 'No.' We don't talk much, just get ready and drive down to the Forum. All the wives go with their husbands and we drink coffee until the game starts and talk."

She was reflective. "I don't know what we will do when there is no more hockey. The first year is going to be terrible, just terrible for him."

The next day, Mrs. Norchet opened the door beaming. "You've heard the news? Lucille had a son last night, 10 pounds! It's been on the radio all day. Maurice is still at the hospital, he stayed all night with her. Come in, come in."

The telephone rang; although the number is unlisted, it was to ring all day almost as soon as the receiver was replaced. After a time, Maurice arrived. A thick-bodied, not tall, man, Richard normally has an expression of remote sadness and his black eyes are fathomless. "Lucille says you are too good to your children," I commented, when he had settled on the chesterfield and Suzanne was comfortable on my lap. "They can have anything they want, anything at all," he agreed.

"Your childhood was very different." A closed look came over his face. "I don't want to think about the differences. If I do, it will be hard for me."

"What kind of rules do you have, raising your family?"

"Rules? I don't know. I want them home or else I want to know where they are and who they are with. That's the only rule. Rocket was going to a school where he hung around afterwards with the rest of the boys. I took him out and put him in another school. Now he comes home. And Hugette, she goes skiing on the weekends and the priest is along with them. If the children are at home or with good people, they are not getting into trouble, that's for sure."

"Why are the Canadiens so good?"

"They get along good," he said. "On the trips we all eat together, go to movies together. There's never an argument among our players. Some other teams have players who argue with one another even during a game. Not us, we are friends."

He paused. "It's been tougher for us to keep going the last two or three years. The younger guys on the Canadiens help me." His accent thickened. "It will be very hard on me when I quit hockey."

"Why do you love it?"

He gave himself time to consider. "It's because of the big thrill, before and after every game. Before, you keep wanting the game to start, but you're afraid, too. You're afraid of a bad injury, or not playing good game. That's what I think about all day of a game. Then, when you start to play and begin to sweat, it all goes away and you feel good."

"Have you ever been satisfied with yourself?"

"Never," replied Richard immediately. "I've never played well enough to be pleased with myself. If I get three, four goals, I know some of them have been lucky ones. You can't be proud of yourself for that. It's impossible to be perfect. You try, maybe come close, but the next day it's over. It was just another game."

The next morning Maurice had a half hour to spare before attending the funeral of a former Canadiens trainer. We began by discussing the consequences of being famous. Lucille had mourned, "We can't go anywhere, can't eat in a restaurant, can't walk down in the street before somebody comes over to talk to Maurice. And he must smile and be pleasant, while his dinner gets cold." She too is recognized everywhere in Montreal. "I am looking over a table for bargains when I notice heads begin to turn and people whisper. I have to drop the bargain and buy something more expensive. I don't want people to say that the wife of Maurice Richard is cheap."

Maurice was embarrassed by my question about fame. "Sometimes I get fed up, but I can't let it show," he said uncomfortably. "It's not nice for kids to hear about me being sore at people."

"What's the angriest you've ever been?"

"The time in Toronto, three or four years ago, when I was fighting with Bob Bailey and he put his fingers in my eyes. When I first felt my eyes, I thought they were gone. I was yelling at the referee, so I got a match penalty. Funny thing about Toronto, I used to hate playing there. The rink was like a morgue. Now, you know what--the fans cheer me, cheer all the visiting teams. It's a good place to play now."

"They say you are the greatest in the word."

"I'm not," Richard said quietly. "Howe is better than me, Schmidt was better, Elmer Lach, lots of guys are better than me. Beliveau, Geoffrion, lots of guys on the Canadiens today are better hockey players than me."

"What is it then that you have got, if it isn't ability?"

Said Richard. "Desire."

The last meeting with Maurice Richard took place in an odd setting a few hours later. He agreed to meet at the Montreal Forum for a last question or two and suggested, when we met in the lobby, that we go into the rink. "There's no one there," he explained.

The rink was dark, with only a single light hanging over centre ice. Workmen had started to set up the ring at centre ice for the night's wrestling bouts: they had departed for their lunch. The empty tiers of seats stretched into darkness and our voices were hollow in the vast emptiness. We sat in box seats and Richard stared at the cluttered ice, where his hunched figure, skating raggedly with wounded-animal fury, has scored hundreds of goals and brought the entire arena-full of people to their feet, screaming his name in ecstasy. A sense of old ghosts made Richard speak heavily, slowly and sadly.

"I've thought about nothing but money, all my life. There's a lot I've missed. I don't read books, only magazines on the train. Lots of times I am ashamed because people are talking about things I never heard about. Every year I think I ought to get interested in another business, start a restaurant or something. But when the hockey starts, I forget about everything else. Maybe if I had other interests I wouldn't have lasted so long in hockey."

"Are you afraid of anything?"

Richard was quiet a long time. "Yes. I am afraid of the future. I am afraid to grow older. I never used to think of it, now it's on my mind every day. I will be so lonely when hockey is over for me."

"Can you coach, maybe?"

"No, I can't change the way a man plays hockey. Either he can play it or he can't . I can't help him."

He looked at the ice, his eyes moving up and down its length. "I give myself another day, that's all. I just count one day ahead to be able to play. For the last four or five years, I've been the oldest in the league. That's terrible for a man to think about."

We were both quiet again. "Nerves give you a lot of trouble, I hear."He nodded. "My stomach nerves were very bad for a while. I still don't sleep maybe four or five hours a night. The rest of the time I lie awake. I don't know why."

The workmen returned and the lights came on with splintering brightness. They looked at the man in the dark overcoat, looked away, looked again. Richard didn't see them. "I've heard other hockey players say that this is their last season, that they think they will retire at the end of the year. I don't know how they can say it. I couldn't make myself say that. I love hockey so much, I couldn't say such a thing."

"Are you still playing as hard as you used to?"

"I pace myself. When I was younger I used to skate for nothing. Now I save it for a burst when I think I can score. I have to do it that way."

The brightness of the rink and the curiosity of the workmen suddenly embarrassed him. He rose and we left. In the lobby again, people lined up before ticket windows saw him and nudged one another in excitement. "I've got a little put by," Richard was saying, "but not enough to live on for the rest of my life. I'll have to work. But what can I do? I don't know anything but hockey." He shrugged, turned and limped away.

Maurice Richard would play only one more year for the Canadiens and won a Stanley Cup, his eighth, in that final 1959-1960 season. Although Richard won the MVP trophy only once, he is known as one of the fiercest competitors ever to lace up skates. A prolific-and timely-goal scorer, he was the first player to score 50 goals in a season. The Rocket moved to a public relations job in the Habs organization after retiring, but left within the year. He has since held various business and public relations jobs in the Montreal area.

The Richard Hockey Riot,

BY SIDNEY KATZ

On March 17, 1955, at exactly 9:11 p.m., a tear-gas bomb exploded in the Montreal Forum where 16,000 people had gathered to watch a hockey match between the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings. The acrid yellowish fumes that filled the stadium sent the crowd rushing to the exits, crying, shrieking, coughing and retching. But it did more. It touched off the most destructive and frenzied riot in the history of Canadian sport.

The explosion of the bomb was the last straw in a long series of provocative incidents that swept away the last remnant of the crowd's restraint and decency. Many of the hockey fans had come to the game in an ugly mood. The day before, Clarence Campbell,

president of the National Hockey League, had banished Maurice (The Rocket) Richard, the star of the Canadiens and the idol of the Montreal fans, from hockey for the remainder of the season. The suspension couldn't have come at a worse time for the Canadiens. The were leading Detroit by the narrow margin of two points. Richard's award for individual high scoring was at stake, too--he was only two points ahead of his team mate Bernie (Boom-Boom) Geoffrion. Furthermore, it had been a long tough hockey season, full of emotional outbursts. All during the first period of play the crowd had vented their anger at Campbell by shouting, "Va-t'en, Campbell" ("Scram, Campbell") and showering him with rotten fruit, eggs, pickled pigs' feet and empty bottles.

At one time there were as many as 10,000 people--patrons, demonstrators and onlookers--packed around the outside of the Forum. Many of them rushed around in bands shrieking like animals. For a time it looked as if a lynching might even be attempted: groups of rioters were savagely chanting in unison, "Kill Campbell! Kill Campbell!" The windows of passing streetcars were smashed and, for no apparent reason, cab drivers were hauled from their vehicles and pummeled. The mob smashed hundreds of windows in the Forum by throwing bricks, chunks of ice and even full bottles of beer. They pulled down signs and tore doors of their hinges. The toppled corner newsstands and telephones booths, doused them in oil and left them burning.

When the mob grew weary of the Forum they moved eastward down St. Catherine Street, Montreal's main shipping district. For 15 blocks they left in their path a swath of destruction. It looked like the aftermath of a wartime blitz in London. Hardly a store in those 15 blocks was spared. Display windows were smashed and looters carried away practically everything portable--jewelry, clothes, clocks, radios and cameras. The cost of the riot was added up later: an estimated$30,000 worth of damage due to looting and vandalism; 12 policeman and 25 civilians injured; eight police cars and several streetcars, taxicabs and private automobiles damaged. "It was the worst night I've had in my 33 years as a policeman," said Thomas Leggett, Montreal's director of police.

But the greatest damage done was not physical. Montrealers awoke ashamed and stunned after their emotional binge. The Montreal Star observed, "Nothing remains but shame." The Toronto Star commented "It's savagery which attacks the fundamentals of civilized behavior." Canadian hockey was given a black name on the front pages of newspapers as far apart as Los Angeles and London, England. "Ice hockey is rough," observed the London News Chronicle, "but it is now a matter of grim record that Canadian players are spring lambs compared to those who support them." A Dutch newspaper headlined the riot story: STADIUM WRECKED, 27 DEAD, 100 WOUNDED.

The newspapers and radio were blamed for whipping up public opinion against Campbell before the riot. Frank Hanley, of the Montreal city council, said that Mayor Jean Drapeau must accept at least some of the responsibility. Had he not publicly criticized Campbell's decision to suspend Richard instead of appealing to the public to accept it? Drapeau, in turn, blamed the riot on Campbell who "provoked it" by his presence at the game. Frank D. Corbett, a citizen of Westmount, expressed an opinion about the riot which many people thought about but few discussed publicly. In a letter to the editor of a local paper, he said bluntly that the outbreak was symptomatic of racial ill-feeling. "French and English relationships have deteriorated badly over the past 10 years and they have never been worse," he wrote. "The basic unrest is nationalism, which is ever present in Quebec. Let's face it ... the French Canadians want the English expelled from the province."

All of these observations contained some germ of truth but no single one of them explains satisfactorily what happened in Montreal on St. Patrick's Night. In the case history of the Richard riot, the night of March 13, four nights before the Montreal outburst, is important. On that night, the Montreal Canadiens were playing against the Boston Bruins in the Boston Gardens. An incident occurred six minutes before the end of the game which set the stage for the debacle in Montreal. Boston was leading 4-2, playing one man short because of a penalty. In a desperate effort to score, the Canadiens had removed their goalie and sent six men up the ice. Richard was skating across the Boston blue line past Boston defenseman Hal Laycoe when the latter put his stick up high and caught Richard on the left side of his head. It made a nasty gash which later required five stitches. Frank Udvari, the referee, signaled a penalty to Laycoe for high-sticking but allowed the game to go on because Canadiens had the puck.

Richard skated behind the Boston net and had returned to the blue line when the whistle blew. He rubbed his head, then suddenly skated over to Laycoe who was a short distance away. Lifting his stick high over his head with both hands Richard pounded Laycoe over the face and shoulders with all his strength. Laycoe dropped his gloves and stick and motioned to Richard to come and fight with his fists. An official, linesman, Cliff Thompson, grabbed Richard and took his stick away from him. Richard broke away, picked up a loose stick on the ice and again slashed away at Laycoe, this time breaking the stick on him. Again Thompson got hold of Richard, but again Richard escaped and with another stick slashed at the man who had injured him. Thompson subdued Richard for the third time by forcing him down to the ice, With the help of a team mate, Richard regained his feet and sprang at Thompson, bruising his face and blackening his eye. Thompson finally got Richard under control and sent him to the first-aid room for medical attention.

Richard was penalized for the remainder of the game and fined $100. Laycoe, who suffered body bruised and face wounds, was penalized five minutes for high-sticking and was given a further ten minute penalty for tossing a blood-stained towel at referee Udvari as he entered the penalty box.

Richard's emotional and physical resistance were at a low ebb on the night of the Boston game. It was near the end of a long exhausting schedule. The Canadiens had played Boston only the previous night in Montreal. Richard had been hurled against a net and had injured his back. The back was so painful he hadn't been able to sleep on the train trip to Boston in spite of the application of ice packs. On the morning of the game he confided to a reporter, "My back still hurts like the dickens. I feel beat." He never considered sitting out the Boston game. There was too much at stake. With three scheduled games left, the Canadiens chances of finishing first in the league were bright. Furthermore, Richard was narrowly leading the league for individual high scoring. If he won, he would receive a cup, $1,000 from the league and another $1,000 from his club. He was still brooding over an incident that had threatened his winning the top-scoring award. In Toronto the previous Thursday, he had been in a perfect position to score when he was hooked by Hugh Bolton of the Maple Leafs. Bolton was penalized but it still meant that Richard was deprived of a goal he desperately wanted.

Accustomed to the "win-at-any-cost" brand of hockey, some fans resort to violence of their own. Once in Botson, a woman jabbed Butch Bouchard, captain of the Canadiens, in the hip with a pin as he was entering the rink. Only a few months before the Richard riot, a Canadien supporter sprinkled pepper on the towels used by the Boston Bruins to mop their faces. Many observers feel that the Richard riot was merely another example of how lawlessness can spread from players to spectators. Team owners, coaches and trainers have promoted disrespect for law and authority in hockey by their attitude. They complain bitterly when referees apply the rules strictly. A few weeks before the Richard riot, coach Jimmy Skinner was using abusive language from the Detroit bench during a game. Campbell left his seat and approached him. "You've got to stop talking like that," he warned him. Skinner turned his abuse on Campbell. "Beat it, you -- -- ," he is reported to have said. "You're only a spectator here."

In this new brand of hockey which permits rough play and often ignores the rules, the most harassed player in the NHL is Richard. Thirty-four years old, five foot nine in height, Richard weighs 180 pounds and is handsome in a sullen kind of a way. His dark-brown hair is slicked back, he has bushy eyebrows, a small mouth and his characteristic expression is dead pan. His intense, penetrating dark eyes seem to perceive everything in microscopic detail. Talking to him at close range, you sometimes feel uneasy. It's possible that Richard is the greatest hockey player who ever lived. Canadiens were once offered $135,000 for him -- the highest value ever placed on a hockey player. Frank Selke, Canadien managing director director, refused, saying, "I'd sooner sell half the Forum."

Opposing teams fully recognize Richard's talent and use rugged methods to stop him. One -- and somethimes two -- players are specifically detailed to nettle him. They regularly hang on to him, put hockey sticks between his legs, body-check him and board him harder than necessary. Once he skated 20 feet with two men on his shoulders to score a goal.

His opponents also employ psychological warfare to unnerve him. Inspector William Minogue, who, as police officer in charge of the Forum, is regularly at the rink side during games, frequently hears opposing players calling Richard "French pea soup" or "dirty French bastard" as they skate past. If these taunts result in a fight, both Richard and his provoker are sent to the penalty bench. Opposing teams consider this a good bargain.

Because of these tactics, Richard frequently explodes. But he is a rarity among men as well as among hockey players. He is an artist. He is completely dedicated to playing good hockey and scoring goals. "It's the most important thing in my life," he told me. In hockey, Richard has found a kind of personal destiny. "He's on fire inside all the time he's on the ice," says Frank Selke. "I've never had a player who tries so intensely." Even after 13 years of professional hockey Richard still approaches each game as though he were about to undergo a major surgical operation. He is in a brooding, uncommunicative mood. "I feel nervous the whole day," he told me. "I feel sick in the stomach. When we are lined up for the National Anthem I pray silently to God that I might play a good game." As soon as the game starts, however, he loses his queasiness and is unaware of the crowd. "I think of only one thing," says Richard, "scoring goals." He has never been known to miss a practice or to be late for one. He doesn't want to be anything less than the greatest hockey player. "No one will have to tell me when to stop playing hockey," he told me. "When I stop scoring, I'll quit. I wouldn't be able to take that."

He suffers mental agony after a game in which he thinks he's done poorly. He'll slink quietly into the dressing room and sit on the bench for half an hour before making an attempt to get out of his uniform. On some such occasions he's been know to burst into tears. "A poor game makes me feel bad," he explains. "I'll go home and not talk to anybody, not even my wife. I'll sit by myself and think, over and over again, about all the chances I missed to score. I try to forget about it but I can't. I won't get to bed till about three or four in the morning." On the road, he'll sit on the edge of his berth repeating to himself, "I was lousy." He never offers alibis or blames a defeat on others.

There are better skaters, better stick-handlers, better checkers and better play-makers than Richard, but no better hockey player. He seems to have the power to summon forth all his strength at the very instant it's needed. "His strength comes all at once like the explosion of a bomb," says Kenny Reardon, an ex-hockey player who is now assistant manager of the Canadiens. Most of the time this concentrated outburst is channeled into the scoring of goals. But sometimes it is used to strike back at his tormentors --as it was in Boston on Sunday, March 13, when he assaulted Hal Laycoe and Linesman Cliff Thompson.

On the night of the Boston fracas, Clarence Campbell was traveling from Montreal to New York by train to attend a meeting of the NHL board of governors where plans for the Stanley Cup play-offs were to be made. In Grand Central station next morning he read about the rumpus in the New York Times. Hurrying to his hotel, he phoned referee Frank Udvari and linesmen Sam Babcock and Cliff Thompson to get a verbal report . Disturbed by what he heard, he announced a hearing would be held in Montreal to ascertain all the facts and to decide on what punishment should be given to the players involved. The time set was two days later--Wednesday March 16 at 10:30 a.m.

In the intervening time, the Boston incident was widely commented on. Dick Irvin was angry at his players. "What kind of spirit have we got on the Canadiens?" he asked. "There were four of five players on the ice and they hardly gave Richard any help!" He suggested that the Richard hearing be televised. Most of the comments were in a more serious vein. Richard's supporters contended that because of lax refereeing their hero had been badgered beyond his endurance. On the other hand, the Toronto Star described Richard as "a chronic blow-top and an habitual offender." Campbell was advised by many out-of-town newspapers to ground the Rocket long enough to teach him a lesson. Marsahll Dann, a Boston columnist, said angrily that "if Richard is permitted to play one more game of hockey this season, Campbell should be fired. Richard is the most pampered player in the league. For his repeated misbehavior, he has drawn only mild wrist slaps or inconsequential fines from Campbell."

In January, 1954, in his regular column in the Montreal weekly Le Samedi-dimanche, Richard denounced Campbell as a "dictator" who was prejudiced again the Canadiens and who "gloated when an opposing team scored a golal against us." He was required to apologize and post a $1,000 bond for good behavior. In December, 1954, in Toronto, he charged into Bob Bailey with his stick, broke two of his front teeth, then turned and struck linesman George Hayes. He was given two 10-minute miscondut penalties and fined a total of $250.

And now, three months later, came the incident in Boston. Both Richard and Campbell refrained from making public statements

until after the hearing. Richard, because of his head wound, spent most of the time under observation at the Montreal Western Hospital which was then located across from the Forum. On the morning of the hearing, March 16, he got dressed but did not shave.

He looked pale and worried and wore a patch on the left side of his head. He walked across to the Forum where he picked up coach Dick Irvin and assistant manager Kenny Reardon. The three men got into a cab. On the way over to NHL headquarters about a mile away, Richard broke his silence only once to observe ruefully, "I always seem to be getting into trouble."

The NHL suite on the sixth floor of the Sun Life Building was a beehive of activity. A large group of young people from the adjoining offices, mostly girls, lined the corridors to catch a glimpse of their hockey hero. Reporters, photographers and TV cameramen had overflowed the outer office, sitting on the desks and monopolizing the phones. Richard posed unsmilingly for the photographers, forced a weak grin for the TV cameramen. When he entered Campbell's office with Irvin and Reardon, the other participants in the hearing were already seated around Campbell's desk: referee-in-chief Carl Voss, referee Frank Udvari, linesman Cliff Thompson and Sammy Babcock, Hal Laycoe and Lynn Patrick, manager and coach of the Boston Bruins. The hearing was private.

It lasted for three hours. The officials read their reports of the incident and submitted to questioning. Everyone present was then invited to give his version of what happened. On some points, there were sharp differences. Campbell took notes busily. In defense of Richard, Irvin said that he had been temporarily stunned by the blow on his head and was unaware of what he was doing. Richard remained silent until asked if he had anything to say. "I don't remember what happened," he replied. Later, Richard told me: "When I'm hit, I get mad and I don't know what I do. Before each game I think about my temper and how I should control it, but as soon as I get on the ice I forget all that."

At 1.30 p.m. the filed out. They refused to comment to the 40 newsmen who had now gathered in the outer office. Richard returned to the hospital. Left alone, Campbell ordered a ham sandwich on brown bread and a cup of coffee and began studying his notes, preparatory to writing out his decision. "I had a hard time making up my mind," he told me later. By three o'clock Campbell had written out the first page of his decision. As each page was completed it was carried across the office by referee-in-chief Voss to a private office to be typed by Phyllis King, Campbell's secretary. He had made thousands of unpopular decisions--but none nearly so unpopular as the one he made public to the assembled newspapermen in his presidential office at four o'clock that March afternoon.

The attacks on Laycoe and Thompson were deliberate and persistent, he found. "An incident occurred less than three months ago in which the pattern of conduct of Richard was almost identical. . . Consequently, the time for leniency or probation is past. Whether this type of conduct is the product of temperamental instability or wilful defiance doesn't matter. It's a type of conduct that cannot be tolerated." The room was completely silent as Campbell then pronounced the punishment. "Richard is suspended from playing in the remaining league and play-off games."

At about 4.30 p.m., Irvin, Reardon, Elmer Lach, a former Richard team mate, and Elmer Ferguson, of the Montreal Herald, were sitting around the Canadien office when they heard the news on a radio broadcast. About 10 minutes later Richard came in. He had just been discharged from hospital. According to Ferguson this is what followed:

Richard asked, "Is the ruling out yet?"

Irvin was silent for a few seconds, then said quietly, "Be prepared for a shock, Rocket. You're out for the season--including the Stanley Cup play-offs."

Richard didn't believe it. "You're kidding-now tell me the truth."

Irvin said, "Sorry. That's the way it is, Rocket. No kidding."

Richard shrugged his shoulders, said good night and walked off to his car. Nobody spoke. A few seconds later Lach said, "There goes the greatest of them all."

Richard later told me that the decision came as a great shock. "I didn't expect it to be so severe. I had always been in the play-offs before. I was so disappointed I didn't know whether I would stay in Montreal or not. My first impulse was to go to Florida. But I changed my mind. I wanted to watch my team play. I didn't want the fans to get the idea that I was no longer interested just because I was suspended."

No sports decision ever hit the Montreal public with such impact. It seemed to strike at the very heart and soul of the city. Upon first hearing of the suspension a French speaking employee in the Gazette composing room broke down and cried. A bus driver became so upset by the news that he ignored a flashing railway-level-crossing signal and almost killed his passengers. The French station CKAC invited listeners to phone in their opinions: 97 per cent said that although some punishment for Richard was justified the suspension for the play-offs was too severe. The switchboard became so jammed, the station had to appeal to listeners to stop calling. The sports departments of the newspapers were so besieged by the phone calls and visitors that some of the writers had to go home to get their work done.

There were portents of what was to happen on the night of March 17 in the phone calls received by Campbell. Many of them were taken by Campbell's secretary, Phyllis King, an attractive, willowy blonde in her early 30s. "They were nearly all abusive and they seemed to grow worse as the day wore on," says Miss King. One of the first callers said, "Tell Campbell I'm an undertaker and he'll be needing me in a few days." Still another announced, "I'm no crank but I'm going to blow your place up." Many of the callers were so angry they could hardly talk. There were dozens of crying women on the phone. A 40-year old secretary from Toronto ran up a $20 long -distance phone bill pleading with Campbell to call off the suspension.

The strong racial feelings engendered by the decision should have sounded an ominous warning. These were reflected in hundreds of letters that Campbell received. One of them said, "If Richard's name was Richardson you would have given a different verdict." From Verdun: "You're just another Englishman jealous of the French, who are much better than you."

There's abundant evidence that Richard holds a special place in the heart of French Canada. Perhaps anceint nationalist feelings would not have been as important a factor in causing the riot had people in positions of authority urged acceptance of Campbell's decision in the interets of law and order. Such mollifying statements were not forthcoming in sufficient number to influence public opinion. On the contrary, many prominent people added fuel to the fire. Mayor Jean Drapeau issued a statement castigating Campbell. "It would not be necessary to give too many such decisions to kill hockey in Montreal," he said.

The Montreal press, both English and French, reinforced the fans' feeling that Campbell had victimized them. Le Devoir called the punishment "unjust and too severe." One French weekly published a crude cartoon of Campbell's head on a platter, dripping blood, with the caption: "This is how we would like to see him." The English press followed a similar line, although somewhat more temperate in tone. Dink Carroll said "it was a harsh judgment" in the Gazette, while Baz O'Meara in the Star found the decision "tough and unexpectedly severe."

On March 17 at 11:30 a.m. came the first sign that Montreal fans would not be content to limit their protests to angry words. A dozen young men showed up at the Forum where Canadiens were scheduled to play Detroit that night. They bore signs saying "Vive

Richard" and "A Bas Campbell." At 1.30 about 20 young men arrived, apparently college students. They carried signs, one with a picture of a pig with Campbell's name on it; another had a picture of a pear which is the French equivalent of knucklehead. The police felt they weren't doing any harm and allowed them to march up and down. At about 3.30 another group of men between the ages of 18 and 35 arrived.

An air of excitement and anticipation hung over the city. Newspapers and radio stations headlined every new development. The crucial question now was: Would Campbell dare show himself in public at the game that night? When Campbell announced that he would definitely attend, excitement reached a fever pitch. At four o'clock, station CKVL dispatched a mobile sound unit to the Shell gas station across the road from the Forum and set up a direct line to its transmitter. "We were almost certain that there was going to be trouble," says Marcel Beauregard, feature editor of CKVL. "It was in the air." It was at about this time, too, according to a Montreal newspaper report, that an attempt was made to buy up a number of tickets near Campbell for the express purpose of tormenting him.

Why did Campbell decide to go to the game? As he saw it, he would be hanged either way. If he failed to go, he would be branded as a coward. "I never seriously considered not going to the game," he later said. "I'm a season ticketholder and a regular attendant and I have a right to go . I felt that the police could protect me. I didn't consult them and they didn't adivse me not to attend."

Mayor Drapeau offers a different version. Campbell, he says, phoned the police during the afternoon to announce his attendance and ask for protection. A highly placed officer suggested that he stay away. Richard, the other central figure, was undecided about going until the last minute. His wife finally made up his mind for him. "She told me that she was going so I decided to go along too," he says.

The activity outside the Forum mounted steadily as the hour of the game approached. Bands of demonstrators moved up and down with signs saying "Unfair to French Canadians." At about 6.30 a number of panel trucks circled around Atwater Park, across from the Forum, a few times and discharged a number of young men in black leather windbreakers bearing white insignia. Their windbreakers had special significance for the police. They were the garb of youthful motorcyclists who had been involved in disorders on previous occasions. Other groups kept arriving steadily. By 8.30, when the game started, there were probably about 600 demonstrators. The Forum loudspeaker announced that all seats were now sold. A picketer shouted back, "We don't want seats. We want Campbell!" The cry was taken up and repeated endlessly with savage intensity.

A few minutes after the Canadien-Detroit game started, Richard slipped into the Forum unnoticed and took a set near the goal judges cage at the south end of the rink. He gazed intently at the ice, a look of distress on his face: the Canadiens were playing sloppy hockey. At the 11th minute of the first period Detroit scored a second goal and the Canadiens saw their hopes of a league championship go up in smoke. It was at this minute that Clarence Campbell entered the arena. He couldn't have chosen a worse time.

As soon as Campbell sat down the crowd recognized him and pandemonium broke loose. They shifted their attention from the game to Campbell and set up a deafening roar "Shoo Campbell, Shoo Campbell" ... "Va-t'en, Va-t'en." "The people didn't care if we got licked 100-1 that night," says Dick Irvin. "They were only interested in Campbell. Evidently our players were too because they paid no attention their hockey." In the remaining nine minutes of the first period, Detroit was able to score another two goals, making the score 4-1. The next 40 minutes were to be sheer torture for Campbell. Vegetables, eggs, tomatoes, rubbers, bottles and programs rained down on him. They were from the $1.50 seats and standing section far above. Campbell was wearing a dark-green fedora and a dark-grey suit. They were soon smudged by oranges, eggs and tomatoes. At one point Campbell's hat was knocked off by a heavy flying object and an orange hit him square in the back.

Campbell's ordeal was shared by his neighbors. Jimmy Orlando, an ex hockey player who sat below Campbell was struck by a potato. Campbell's friends who shared his row--Audrey King, Hilda Hawkes, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper Smeaton and Dr. and Mrs. Jack Gerrie, were struck and splattered. A city hall employee who customarily sits near Campbell became alarmed by the violence. "Go home...Please go home," he pleaded with Campbell.

But Campbell stood his ground. He was tight lipped but occasionally managed to smile. He tried to carry on his usual practice of making notes on the refereeing in a black notebook, but had to abandon it as the hail of peanuts, pigs' feet and programs continued. Each time he got to brush the debris from his clothes, the clamor grew louder. Whenever the Detroit team scored the crowd's temper rose and the shower of objects on Campbell thickened. From his rink-side seat, Richard occasionally turned to see what was happening. "This is a disgrace," he said to physiotherapist Bill Head who was sitting beside him.

The first period ended. Ordinarily, Campbell spends the intermissions in the referees' room. Tonight he decided to remain in his seat, believing that this would cause less excitement. His friends in the same row did likewise. A woman going by leaned over and whispered in Campbell's ear, "I'm ashamed. I want to apologize for the crowd." She was close to tears. About a minute later, one AndrŽ Robinson, a young man of 26 who resembles Marlon Brando, confronted Campbell. Without uttering a word he squashed two large tomatoes against Campbell's chest and rubbed them in. As he fled down the stairs Campbell kept pointing at him, signaling the two policeman to arrest him. At that moment, Frank Teskey, of the Toronto Star, aimed his camera for a shot. A grapefruit came whizzing down and knocked the camera out of his hand. Now hordes of people came rushing down from the seats above, surrounding Campbell's box. The ill feeling against Campbell was growing more intense by the second and there was nobody to help him.

Where were the police? On hockey nights the Forum is responsible for maintaining order inside the arena; the Montreal police department, outside. Because of the special circumstances on March 17 the police stationed two of their constables near Campbell's box. Frank Selke, manager of the Canadiens, employed eight plainclothesmen for similar duty, but they had to be rushed to guard the entrances against the demonstrators outside. Ordinarily, the Forum employs 350 ushers, 12 policemen and 24 firemen; for the Detroit game they added an extra 15 police--regular constables who were off duty. Ordinarily, the police have 25 men outside the Forum; on this night they had double that number to start with. But at 9.11, when Campbell was being surrounded by a hostile mob, none of them were there to protect him. At that critical moment he was delivered by the explosion of a tear-gas bomb 25 feet away. As the thick fumes fanned upward and outward, the crowd immediately forgot Campbell and began fighting their way to the fresh air outside.

Who threw the bomb? This question has never been answered. There is no evidence that the thrower intended to befriend Campbell but that's what he may have done. Chief of Detectives George Allain later observed, "The bomb-thrower protected Campbell's life by releasing it at precisely the right moment." The bomb, a type not on sale to the public, landed on a wet rubber mat on the aisle adjacent to the ice surface. The people nearby, of course, didn't know what it was. Some thought that the ammonia pipes had sprung a leak; others that a fire had broken out in the basement. Within a few seconds they were coughing and choking as the fumes clogged their eyes, throats, stomachs and lungs. To protect themselves as they hurried out they wrapped coats around their faces. Women were screaming. Somebody yelled "Fire!" A middle-aged man got stuck in one of the turnstiles in the lobby and was shouting to be released but nobody could hear him above the din. A pregnant woman fought her way to the fresh air outside and had to be taken to hospital. At the height of the exodus, with tears streaming from everybody's eyes, the organist high in the loft began playing "My Heart Cries For You".

Panic was averted by the fast work of police and firemen. When Tom Leggett, director of police, saw the bomb go off he immediately assigned his men, who were outside the Forum, to keep all exits open and to keep the crowd moving out. Jim Hunter, the superintendent of the building, hurriedly switched on his 13 powerful fans to suck the fumes out of the building. Campbell made his way to the first-aid centre 50 feet away under the stands. Richard had also made his way to the first-aid centre but had never come face to face with Campbell because he was in a different room. He was aghast at what had happened. "This is terrible, awful," he said. "People might have been killed."

In the next 10 minutes the outcome of the Montreal-Detroit hockey game was to be decided. Armand ParŽ, head of the Montreal fire department, was unwilling to have the game continue. He felt that the temper of the crowd was such that there was real danger of panic and fire. Campbell sent the following note to Jack Adams, the Detroit general manager, after conferring with Selke;

"The game has been forfeited to Detroit. You are entitled to take your team on its way anytime now. Selke agrees as the fire department has ordered this building closed."

Back in the Detroit dressing room, manager Jack Adams was in an agry mood. News of the forfeiture seemed to intensify it. "What's happened tonight makes me sick and ashamed," he said. He then turned to a group of newspapermen. "I blame you fellows for what's happened. You've turned Richard into an idol, a man whose suspension can turn hockey fans into shrieking idiots. Now hear this: Richard is no hero! He let his team down, he let hockey down, he let the public down. Richard makes me ashamed to be connected with this game."

Until the bomb exploded the demonstration outside the Forum was neither destructive nor out of control. The explosion, however, signaled a change of mood. When thousands of excited, frightened fans poured outside and joined the demonstrators it seemed to unleash an ugly mob spirit which ended in a shameful episode of physical violence, vandalism and looting.

In a mob riot only a small core of people are required to initiate violence. They act as a catalyst on the crowd. Other people are carried away by the excitement and drawn into their activities. In the Richard riot, the core of violence was made up of bands of teen-agers and young adults. There were probably about 500 or 600 of them. Like packs of wolves, they moved up and down in front of the Forum, shrieking wildly and inflaming the crowd. They took rubbers off the feet of spectators and threw them at the police. There was soon a high pile of rubbers in front of the Forum. They attacked a side door of the building and tore it off its hinges. They hurled chunks of ice and empty bottles, smashing windows. Dissatisfied with this ammunition, they marched off to where a new hospital was being built half a block away and returned with chunks of brick and concrete.

The police had cleared a wide space directly in front of the Forum, pushing the crowd back to the park across the road. As soon as the rioters discharged their ammunition they sought shelter in the crowd. "It was dangerous to rush into the crowd to get them," says Chief Leggett. "It was full of women and children--some of them in carriages, some in arms. It was slippery. Had we used too much force, many people might heave been trampled."

It is doubtful whether most of the troublemakers were hockey fans. Inspector William Minogue arrested a husky man in a black-and-red mackinaw. He identified himself as a lumberjack from Chalk River. "You must love Richard," said Minogue. A blank expression came over his face: "Richard? Who's he?"

Across the street CKVL broadcasters were giving the Montreal public a dramatic blow-by-blow description of the riot: "The bomb has gone off!. . . There goes another window!. . . The police are rushing the crowd!. . ." This marathon broadcast and others attracted thousands more people to the Forum.

By 11 p.m. the crowd numbered at least 10,000. It was too big for the police and the Forum was now virtually in a state of siege. The Forum was now virtually in a state of siege. It was unsafe to wander in the vicinity of the windows. Don Smith, manager of the box office, ordered Violet Trahan and Peggy Nibbs, the Forum telephone operators, to close down the switchboard and leave. Before abandoning the office himself he began to shove everything portable into the vault. As he was emptying the cash register a small rock came hurtling through the window, narrowly missing him and landing in the $10 compartment of the drawer. Eddie Quinn, a wrestling promoter whose office is on the east side of the Forum, invited a friend in for a chat. "Nobody will bother us here," he said. "Everybody knows I'm a Richard fan." He was referring to the fact that he employs Richard to referee wrestling matches during the summer. A few seconds later a large rock demolished his office window.

Frank Selke was sitting out the riot in the directors' room along with other club officials and newsmen. He ordered the steward to make up a large batch of sandwiches and coffee. "Looks like we're going to be here for a while," he said. Campbell remained in the first-aid centre. The trampling and shouting of the crowd and the shattering of glass were ominously audible. Everyone was tense. Did the crowd know where Campbell was? Would they attempt a raid to capture him? Later Campbell said, "I was never seriously afraid of being lynched. As a referee I learned something about mobs. They're cowards."

By about 11.15 p.m. the back entrance of the forum was fairly quiet. Gaston Bettez, the Canadien trainer, drove Richard's car up to the door and hastily loaded Richard and his wife into it. "When I got home I listened to the riot on the radio," says Richard. "I felt badly. Once I felt like going downtown and telling the people over a loudspeaker to stop their nonsense. But it wouldn't have done any good. They would have carried me around on their shoulders. It's nice to have people behind you but not the way they did on the night of the Detroit game." The phone rang all night in the Richard home saying that Campbell got what he deserved. It was answered by the housekeeper. Richard himself retired at 4 a.m. and slept in next morning.

At 11.30 Jim Hunter, the Forum building superintendent, entered the first-aid centre and announced, "I think it's safe to go home now, Mr. Campbell." Leggett concurred. There was some discussion as to whether it would be safe for Campbell to spend the night alone at his home. Billy Wray, an undertaker and friend, was insisting that Campbell be his guest for the evening. Someone else suggested that he check into a hotel under an assumed name. Campbell refused both suggestions. Led by Hunter and a husky policeman, Campbell and Miss King made their way to the back of the building where Hunter's dark blue 1951 Ford was waiting inside. The policeman sat in front with the driver; Campbell and Miss King sat in the back.

Campbell, who lives four miles from the Forum, was dropped off first. As soon as he got home he phoned his father in Edmonton to say that he was safe. Although his phone is unlisted it started to ring incessantly. Most of the callers were abusive and spoke in broken English. He lifted the phone off the hook and went to bed about one o'clock. "I had a fine night's sleep," he said. He got up at his usual hour of 7.30.

By midnight the frenzy of the rioters outside the Forum became almost demoniacal. They were unaware of Campbell's departure. They attacked a newsstand at the southwest corner of St. Catherine and Closse Streets, sprinkled it with oil from a small stove they found inside and set it afire. Within a few minutes it was a pile of smoldering ashes. It was a wanton and tragic act. The stand belonged to Auguste Belanger, the 56-year-old father of four children. After a considerable struggle he had only recently managed to set himself up in business. "Why did they have to do such a thing to me?" he sobbed.

The rioters now turned their attention to the firms that rented space on the ground floor of the Forum, facing St. Catherine Street. They heaved rocks through the plate-glass windows of the Royal Bank of Canada. The supervisor and three salesgirls of a United Cigar Store had to barricade themselves in the stock room to escape injury. Patrick Maloney, proprietor of a jewelry store, took refuge in the small windowless room where he repairs watches. His windows and stock were demolished by chunks of rock, metal and bottles. Many objects were stolen including a $490 diamond ring. Maloney passed the time brewing coffee. Occasionally, he would step into the store and pick up a full bottle of beer or pop that had been hurled in and drink it. Debris came flying through the windows of the York Tavern. Benny Parent, the manager, ordered that the building be evacuated. The police continued the hard task of arresting the rioters. Whenever they had a full load of them, the patrol wagon would rush off to the police station with its siren wailing. A young doctor from the hospital across from the Forum stepped outside for a minute to see what was going on; before he knew what was happening he was on his way to the police station in a wagon. A little old lady with fire in her eyes approached Chief Leggett. "Let's start getting tough with them," she said, "I'm with you."

The little old lady was not the only person offering advice to the director of police. Dozens of people urged him to use more forceful methods against the demonstrators. Had he wished to do so the means were at hand. Each constable was armed with a stick and a revolver; a police car stood by with a supply of tear-gas bombs; the firemen had a high-pressure water hose ready. But Leggett withheld the order to use any of these strong-arm methods. "It might have led to panic and hysteria--and that's when people get killed," he said. As it was, not a single person was seriously injured.

By midnight some people had left, but even more had arrived, drawn by the radio broadcasts. Finally, Pierre DesMarais, chief of Montreal's executive committee, appealed to the radio stations to stop broadcasting news of the trouble. He reached Marcel Beauregard, who was at the scene of the riot. "It would help the police if you went off the air," said DesMarais. Beauregard checked with his boss, Jack Tietolman, the proprietor of CKVL, who agreed. CKVL finally went off the air after more than seven hours of on-the-spot broadcasting. The other stations did likewise.

By one o'clock the crowd had thinned out. About 40 policemen, linked arm to arm, formed a solid chain across St. Catherine Street. They started moving slowly eastward, taking the crowd along with them. They felt that at last the riot was on the wane. But they were wrong. Ahead of them, hidden from view by hundreds of people, groups of demonstrators began smashing store windows and stealing their contents. A heavy safety-zone lantern was hurled through the window of the International Music store; instruments were smashed and looted. The mob noticed a picture of Richard and the Canadiens in the window of Adolph Stegmeier's photographic studio. To get at it, they hurled a 20-pound block of ice they found on the road at the window. Before they could reach in and seize the photograph their way was barred by tenants who occupied apartments above the studio. Signs at Red Cross headquarters were torn down. Costly plate-glass windows at Ogilvy's department store were shattered. When Gilles Rouleau, owner of a florist shop, heard the crowd approaching, he locked his doors, doused his lights and waited. The rioters passed him by. He noticed that the vandals were teenagers but that they were being egged on by older people, many of whom appeared to be drunk.

In the 15 blocks along St. Catherine Street, east of the Forum, 50 stores were damaged and looted. The stolen goods included kimonos, men's pants, dresses, high-chair pads, shoes, bracelets, cameras and assorted jewelry. At first it was believed that $100,000 worth of goods (including windows) had been damaged and stolen. Revised estimates scaled the amount down to $30,000 or less.

The police now sent out special patrols to find the vandals and recover the loot. They arrested one man who was carrying an armful of alarm clocks. By searching restaurants along St. Catherine Street they were able to pick up three other young men in possession of stolen goods. Only a few items of the pillaged goods were ever recovered. "Most of the stolen objects were mass-produced small items not easy to identify," says Chief Detective George Allain, "and there were no clues to follow." A few days after the riot A. Jeffries, proprietor of a photo-supply store, received a parcel in the mail containing a camera worth $100 that had been stolen from him. An unsigned note said, "My conscience has been bothering me ever since I took it from your window."

By 3 a.m. the last rock had been hurled, the last window had been smashed and the last blood-curdling shriek of "Kill Campbell!" had been uttered. The fury of the mob had spent itself. By the end of the riot the police had picked up 70 people and delivered them to No. 10 police station. Twenty-five were juveniles (under 18) and were driven home to their parents. The remainder were transferred to the cells at police headquarters on Gosford Street. They talked hockey for an hour or so, then stretched out and went to sleep. At seven in the morning a guard came in and announced (wrongly) that Campbell had resigned. The arrested men roused themselves, cheered, jumped up and down and broke out in a song. Addressing the offenders in municipal court the next morning, Judge Emmett J. McManamy intended his words to go far beyond his courtroom. "Last night's riot," he said, "brings home to the people of Montreal a terrible lesson of the narrow margin between order and disorder. It must never happen again."

The mood of most Montrealers following the riot was a mixture of shame and regret. It was well summed up by the terse opening sentence in Dink Carroll's column in the Gazette on March 18; "I am ashamed of my city." Others, like Mayor Jean Drapeau, were less remorseful. Drapeau issued a statement which, on the surface, seemed to absolve the public of all responsibility for the outbreak. It came about, he said, because of "provocation caused by Campbell's presence."

Campbell showed up at his office the next morning at the usual hour of 8.30. He refused a police offer of bodyguards. Newsmen were asking him for a statement. He said that he had no intention of resigning, as had been frequently suggested. Richard was still asleep when reporters knocked on the door of his home at eight o'clock. It was answered by his six-year-old son who said, "I hope you didn't come to talk to him about hockey." When the reporters returned later, Richard was attired in a white T-shirt and a pair of slacks. His face was lined with fatigue. "This certainly isn't the time for me to say anything," he said. "It might start something again." By three o'clock he changed his mind. He showed up in Frank Selke's office and said that he wanted to make a public statement. Selke said he could see no objection. At seven o'clock, seated in front of a battery of microphones, he made the following short speech in French:

"Because I always try so hard to win and had my troubles in Boston, I was suspended. At play-off time it hurts not be in the game with the boys. However I want to do what is good for the people of Montreal and the team. So that no further harm will be done. I would like to ask everyone to get behind the team and to help the boys win from the Rangers and Detroit. I will take my punishment and come back next year to help the club and younger players to win the cup."

As he repeated the speech in English, Richard appeared restless and upset. He rubbed his eyes, tugged at his tie and scratched his left ear. His words seemed to have a settling effect on the city. The question of his suspension was laid aside, at least for the time being. Mayor Drapeau and other leaders followed Richard with strong pleas for law and order. There was to be no further violence for the remainder of the season, despite the fact that the Canadiens lost the championship.

Burning intensity, a champion’s spirit, the pride of a man who knows the glory and loneliness of supremacy

By Herbert Warren Wind

Issue date: December 6, 1954

For all that has been said and written about the heights of fanatic devotion achieved by the fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Notre Dame football teams and the Australian Davis Cup defenders, it is doubtful if there is any group of sports addicts anywhere which year in and year out supports its team with quite the super-charged emotion and lavish pride expended so prodigally by the citizens of bilingual Montreal on their hockey team, Les Canadiens -- the Canadians. In June each year, four months before the next season begins, every seat in the Montreal Forum, save 800 or so that the management holds for sale on the day of the game, has been sold out for the entire 70-game schedule. On play-off nights it is not uncommon for crowds seeking standing room to run into several thousands and to swarm over Ste. Catherine's Street and beyond onto Atwater Park.

Hockey is deep in the Montrealer's blood. After a fine day by a member of the home team or, for that matter, of the visiting team, the Forum reverberates from the rinkside to the rafters with sharp enthusiastic applause. But many volts above this in feeling and many decibels above in volume is the singular and sudden pandemonium that shatters the Forum, like thunder and lightning, whenever the incomparable star of Les Canadiens, Maurice (The Rocket) Richard, fights his way through the enemy defense and blasts the puck past the goalie. There is no sound quite like it in the whole world of sport.

A powerfully built athlete of 33 who stands five-ten and now weighs 180, having put on about a pound a year since breaking in with Les Canadiens in 1942, Joseph Henri Maurice (pronounced Mohr-riz, with the accent about equally divided) Richard (Ree-shar'), Gallicly handsome and eternally intense, is generally regarded by most aficionados, be they Montrealers or etrangers, as the greatest player in the history of hockey. Whether he is or not, of course, is one of those sports arguments that boil down in the final analysis to a matter of personal opinion. However, as Richard's supporters invariably point out, hockey is in essence a game of scoring, and here there can be no argument; the Rocket stands in a class by himself, the outstanding scorer of all time. Flip through the pages of the record book; Most Goals -- 384, set by Maurice Richard in 12 season (with the next man, Nels Stewart, a full 60 goals away); Most Goals in One Season -- 50, set by Maurice Richard in a 50-game schedule in 1944-45; Most Goals in a Play-off Series -- 12, Maurice Richard; Most Goals in a Playoff Game 5, Maurice Richard; Longest Consecutive Scoring Streak -- at least one goal in 9 consecutive games. Maurice Richard; and so on and on. The record book supplies no entry for Most Winning Goals, but several Montreal fans who lovingly compile all Richardiana can document that, by the beginning of the season, their man had scored the goal that won no less that 59 regular season games and 8 playoff games.

It is not simply the multiplicity of Richard's goals nor their timeliness but, rather, the chronically spectacular manner in which he scores them that had made the fiery right-winger the acknowledged Babe Ruth of hockey. "There are goals and there are Richard goals," Dick Irvin, the old "Silver Fox" who has coached the Canadiens the length of Richard's career remarked not long ago. "He doesn't get lucky now. Of these, 370 have had a flair. He can get to a puck and do things to it quicker than any man I've ever seen -- even if he has to lug two defensemen with him, and he frequently had to. And his shots! They go in with such velocity that the net and all bulges."

The Seibert goal

One of the popular indoor pastimes year-round in Montreal is talking over old Richard goals -- which one you thought was the most neatly set up, which one stirred you the most, etc., much in the way Americans used to hot stove about Ruth's home runs and do today about Willie Mays' various catches. In Irvin's opinion -- and Hector (Toe) Blake and Elmer Lach, Richard's teammates on the famous Punch Line also feel this way -- the Rocket's most sensational goal was "the Seibert goal," in the 1945-46 season. Earl Seibert, a strapping 225-pound defense man who was playing for Detroit that season, hurled himself at Richard as he swept on a solo into the Detroit zone. Richard occasionally will bend his head and neck very low when he is trying to outmaneuver a defense man. He did on this play. The two collided with a thud, and as they straightened up, there was Richard, still on his feet, still controlling the puck, and sitting on top of his shoulders, the burly Seibert. Richard not only carried Seibert with him on the way to the net, a tour de force in itself, but with that tremendous extra effort of which he is capable, faked the goalie out of position and with his one free hand somehow managed to hoist the puck into the far corner of the cage.

There are two interesting epilogues to this story. The first concerns Seibert and serves well to illustrate the enormous respect in which Richard is held by opposing players. When Seibert clambered into the dressing room after the game, Jack Adams, the voluble Detroit coach, eyed him scornfully. "Why, you dumb Dutchman," he began, "you go let that Richard" - "Listen, Mr. Adams," Seibert cut in, interrupting Adams for the first time in his career, "any guy who can carry me 60 feet and then put the puck into the net -- well more power to him!" And that ended that. The second rider to the story is that Richard is perhaps the only hockey player who, to increase his ability to operate with a burden, has frequently spent an extra half hour after the regular practice sessions careening full steam around the rink with his young son, Maurice Jr., "The Petit Rocket," perched on his shoulders.

There is no question that Richard's most heroic winning goal was "the Boston goal" -- the one he scored against the Bruins three years ago to lift Montreal into the finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs. It came late in the third period of a 1-1 game in which the Canadiens were playing badly, Richard in particular. Early in that period Maurice received a deep gash over his left eye. He was taken to the clinic inside the Forum, and the cut was hastily patched up . Blood was still trickling down from the dressing over his cheek when he returned to the bench and took his next turn on the ice. "I can see that goal now," Frank Selke Jr., the son of the Canadiens' managing director reminisced recently. "Hundreds of us can. Richard sets off a chain reaction whenever he gets the puck, even if it is just a routine pass. It's strange and wonderful, the way he communicates with the crowd. Now, this time he got the puck at our own blue line and you knew -- everybody knew -- that the game was over right then. Here's what he did. He slipped around Woody Dumar, who was the check, and set sail down the right-hand boards. Quackenbush and Armstrong, the Boston defense men, were ready for him. He swung around Armstrong with a burst of speed, using his right hand to carry the puck and fending off Armstrong with his left, but Quackenbush pinned him into the boards in the corner. And then, somehow, he broke away from Quackenbush, skated across in front of the net, pulled Jim Henry out of the goal, and drove it home.

For 10 years now because of his courage, his skill, and that magical uncultivatable quality, true magnetism, Maurice Richard has reigned in Montreal and throughout the province of Quebec as a hero whose hold on the public has no parallel in sport today unless it be the country-wide adoration that the people of Spain have from time to time heaped on their rare master matadors. The fact that 75% of the citizens of Montreal and a similar percentage of the Forum regulars are warm-blooded, excitable French-Canadians -- and what is more, a hero-hungry people who think of themselves not as the majority group in their province but as the minority group in Canada -- goes quite a distance in explaining their idolatry of Richard. "If Maurice were an English-Canadian or a Scottish-Canadian or a kid from the West he would be lionized, but not as much as he is now," an English-Canadian Richard follower declared last month. "I go to all the games with a French-Canadian friend of mine, a fellow named Roger Oulette. I know exactly what Roger thinks. He accepts the English as as good as anyone. But he would hate to see the French population lose their language and their heritage generally. He doesn't like that fact that the government's pension checks are printed only in English. He feels that they should be printed in both English and French since the constitution of the Dominion provides for a two-language country. For Roger, Maurice Richard personifies French Canada and all that is great about it. Maybe you have to have French blood, really, to worship Richard, but you know, you only have to be a lover of hockey to admire him.

No cheap connections

As befits the Babe Ruth of hockey, Richard is the highest-paid player in the history of the game. While Les Canadiens' front office prefers not to divulge his exact salary, it amounts to a very healthy chunk of his estimated annual income of $50,000, which is filled out by his commissions for endorsing such products as a hair tonic and the Maurice Richard-model windbreaker, his cut from the sale of Le Rocket de Hockey and other publications about him during the off season as a wrestling referee. "Maurice could earn much more than he does but he has been careful not to connect himself with anything cheap," Camil Des Roches, the Canadiens' publicity director, says. "If he wanted to, he could referee a wrestling bout every night of next summer. His appearance is enough to insure the success of any affair in the province, from wrestling to a church outing." A few years ago, Richard and his teammate Kenny Reardon dropped in for lunch at the Canadian Club, a restaurant in Montreal. "When the other diners spotted Rocket," Reardon relates, "They began to pass the hat for him. It was a spontaneous gesture of appreciation. They collected $50, just like that. People can't do enough for him." Richard, in consequence, is the perfect companion to travel with should you journey anywhere in the province of Quebec. No one will let him pay for a meal, for lodgings, for transportation, for anything.

Richard's teammates remember the tail end of the 1952-53 season as the time of his most alarming mood. This was the year that Gordie Howe (playing a 70-game schedule) was on the verge of breaking Richard's record for goals in one season, the 50 he had scored in 1944-45 when the league was playing a 50-game schedule. With one game to go, Howe stood at 49. The remaining game was in Detroit against the Canadiens. "The night of that game, that was the only time I ever was afraid to put a hockey player on the ice," Coach Irvin said not long ago. "I remember watching Rocket's eyes as we were going across the city in the cab. 'I can't play him tonight,' I said to myself. 'He'll kill somebody.' I played him but I made sure he wasn't going to be on the ice any time Howe was. In spite of my precautions, one time they were for a few seconds, I think Rocket was coming out of the penalty box. He skated straight across the ice and charged right at Howe. Then he turned around and skated back to the penalty box. Rocket was proud of his record, but it was more than that. He would have felt humiliated if Howe had beaten or tied it playing against him or his team. Anyway, Howe didn't score. After the game Richard was in the dressing room breathing hard and little Gerry McNeil, our goalie, went over to him. 'Well, Rocket,' Gerry told him with a big smile, 'Howe will have to start all over again with number one.'"

Stopping the Rocket

Because of his own scoring proclivities, Richard has for a dozen years been subjected to far more physical punishment than any other player since the National Hockey League was organized back in 1917. To beat Montreal, you must stop the Rocket, and to stop him opposing teams assign one man and sometimes two to do nothing but stay with Richard "right into the dressing room" if necessary. Some of the men assigned to Richard play him cleanly but, more often than not, opposing "defensive specialists" resort to holding him, grabbing his jersey, hooking him, and whenever they get any king of shot at him, belting him with their Sunday body check. One of the best ways to stop Richard, of course, is to get him off the ice. With this in mind, some of the rival teams have made it a practice to use a left wing against him with instructions to ignite deliberately the Rocket's red glare. Then, if Richard retaliates and the referee calls a double penalty, Montreal loses Richard and the other team a far less valuable man. Considering the abuse both physical and verbal he has taken from lesser men, Richard, all in all, has done a very good job of keeping his trigger temper under control, in recent years particularly. However, if he always ranks near the top in goals, he also does in penalty time, and not all of his penalties, by any manner of means, are the result of self-protection. The Rocket probably holds the league record for misconduct penalties, 10-minutes "rests" which are awarded for telling the referees off in overly pungent language. And the Rocket is always up among the leader, for that matter, in major penalties, five-minute cool-off sessions for fighting. He has lost some fights, but only when he has been ganged up on. In man-to-man combat, he acquits himself extremely well. When Bill Juzda of the Leafs challenged him one night, Maurice stripped off his gloves and flattened Juzda with one blow. In 1945 he knocked down Bob (Killer) Dill of the Rangers twice on the ice, and when Dill decided to start things again in the penalty box Richard knocked him out.

The ambition of most Canadian boys is to be hockey players when they grow up, good enough to make the National Hockey League with their favorite team - Les Canadiens, if the boy is of French descent. Maurice Richard was never confused by any other ambition. He was born on August 4, 1921 in Bordeaux, a typical parish on the reaches of Montreal, the oldest child of Onesime and Alice Laramee Richard. After Maurice came Georgette, Rene, Rollande, Jacques, Margaret, Henri and Claude. Henri, no 18, plays for the Montreal Royals, the Canadians' farm team in the Quebec Hockey League. Not too hefty, Henri, has a great deal of his older brother's dash and scoring flair, and has been dubbed "The Pocket Rocket." Claude is just 17 and also has the makings, in Maurice's opinion, of a pretty fair hockey player.

With a family soon on his hands, Richard pere was forced to give up any ideas he had about making a career in baseball. An accomplished center fielder although he stood not much over five feet tall, he continued to play semipro baseball until he was 45, but he earned his living, as he still does, as a workman in the machine shops of the Canadian-Pacific Railroad. Maurice began to skate when he was about 4. In those days Canadian winters were much more severe than they are today. From October through April snow covered the outlying parishes like Bordeaux, and deliveries of mile and break were made by sleigh. When the snow in the streets had been packed down into a hard crust, the children would skate to school on top of it. After school was out at 4 o'clock, Richard remembers he would play hockey till 5:30 when it was time to go home for supper. "Many days I kept my skates on while I ate," he says. "Then I would go out and play some more hockey until 10 o'clock." When rink ice was hard to find, Maurice used to skate on the treacherous Riviere des Prairies, or the Back River as it was called, since it is the branch of the Ottawa River that flows to the north or the back of the island of Montreal. Skating on the Back River was forbidden by law, buy young Richard discovered that the ice within 15 feet of the banks could be counted on to be reliable.

A strong rugged forward

After finishing the ninth grade of elementary school, Maurice spent two years in the Ecole Technique in downtown Montreal studying the machinist's trade. He played for the school team and for about four others simultaneously, a strong, rugged forward but not a player for whom you would have been instantly able to predict a glowing future. (One of the teams which Richard played represented the Garage Paquette and had been organized by a pal of his, Georges Norchet. The only significant upshot of the liaison was that Maurice met Georges' sister, Lucille, whom he later married. A sturdy, hockey-loving woman, Mme. Richard attends every Montreal home game. So does Richard's father. His mother misses a few now and then, but not many.)

Late in 1940, Richard was given an opportunity to join the Verdun Maple Leafs, the bottom club in Les Canadiens' farm system. He played with the Senior Canadiens in the Quebec Senior Amateur League the following two season, but it was impossible to get much of a line on him for he was laid up with injuries the better part of both seasons, first with a fractured left ankle, then with a fractured left wrist. He was invited to the Canadiens' training camp in September the next year but only because the team had been floundering at the bottom of the League and was grasping for any straw. He was kept on the squad only because Dick Irvin had never in his life seen a youngster so imbued with the desire to make good. The unknown quantity started off well with Les Canadiens. He piled up five goals and six assists in the first 15 gams. In the next game he fractured his right ankle in a collision with Jack Crawford. He was out for almost the entire season again, returning only for the final game.

A recurrent mystery in sports is how a player who has never shown any signs of greatness will suddenly and inexplicably "arrive" as a full-fledged star. When Richard reported to the Canadiens training camp in Verdun prior to the 1943-44 campaign, everyone recognized that he was an altogether different and better hockey player. On the strength of his showing in these practice sessions, Coach Irvin, looking for someone to take Joe Benoit's place, gave Richard a crack at right wing on the first line with Elmer Lach, the superb center, and the veteran Toe Blake, "The Old Lamp Lighter," at left win. Due to the scoring punch the new line supplied, Les Canadiens, who had finished a floundering fourth the year before, won the League championship and went on to capture the team's first Stanley Cup play-off victory in a full 12 years. Richard eclipsed all play-off records by scoring 12 goals in nine games, and in one game against Toronto, went completely berserk and scored all five of the Canadiens' goals.

The Punch Line, as Blake, Lach, and Richard came to be called, played together through the 1946-47 season, a stretch in which they led the Canadiens to three more league championships and one other Stanley Cup victory. They were a marvelous line to watch. Fast skating, spirited, and quick to take advantage of all opportunities offered them, they mapped out no set plays, but each of them, knowing his linemates' style perfectly and sharing an instinctive understanding of how a play should be developed (and the necessary alternative moves depending on how the defense reacted), always seemed to know, without looking, where the others should be, and together they could set up good shots on goal like few lines in the history of hockey. Blake's retirement in 1947, after he had suffered a fractured leg, broke up the Punch Line. Lach and Richard, working with a variety of left-wingers, continued to team up until this season when Lach retired.

A left-handed right wing

If there was anything unorthodox about the Punch Line it was that Richard, a left-handed shot, played right win. "I know he'd played some right wing as an amateur," Dick Irvin has said in explaining this move, "and there have always been a few left wingers who do well on right wing. It doesn't work the other way so often. Most hockey players, you see, skate counter-clockwise. Right wing was good for Rocket because it gave him a bit more leverage on his shot and a bit more of the net to shoot at. Besides, his backhand shot was as powerful as his forehand." Another aspect of Richard's sudden maturity was, oddly enough, the fact that he had fractured his right ankle the year before joining the Punch Line. After he had fractured his left ankle two years earlier, he had been inclined to overuse his right leg. After his right ankle was fractured he could no longer do this, and he began to skate with a far better distribution of leg drive. A long strider with amazingly quick acceleration, he rocks from side to side when he skates, a style that would be awkward in anyone else and which, if anything, has added to his deceptiveness. As for Richard himself, he considers that the great break of his entire career was that he was able to come back after three fractures in three consecutive years.

"Don't depen' on me"

The first time he saw Richard play, Conn Smythe, the head man of the Toronto Maple Leafs, offered Les Canadiens the (for hockey) fabulous sum of $50,000 for him. In making this offer to the Hon. Donat Raymod, the owner of Les Canadiens, Smythe declared in a characteristic Smythian comment, that he was willing to go this high even though Richard was a "one-way man" -- a player not remarkably conspicuous on defense. Raymond was not at all interested in selling his new star but suggested to Smythe that if they made Richard a two-way man, it would be only proper for him to double his figure. (Only a short time ago, Smythe was offering $135,000 for Richard.) Jack Adams, the Detroit boss, after seeing Richard set a new league scoring record for a single game of five goals and three assists on the evening of December 28, 1944, declared him to be "the greatest hockey player I've seen in 20 years." This eight-point spree astonished Richard more than anyone. Before the game he had stretched out limply on a rubbing table in the dressing room. "I'm all tired out," he had yawned wearily to teammates who had gathered around him.

"Dis afternoon I move my 'partment 'bout tree block and can't get no truck. My brudder and me, we move everyt'ing. Tonight, don't depen' too much on me." After he had tallied his eight points, to be sure, Richard's vitality perked up noticeably (Richard, by the way, spoke no English at the time he joined Les Canadiens. He resented the fact that opponents made his broken English a target for wisecracks and it is typical of the pride he takes in everything he does, the way he dresses, the way he handles his hobbies, that today he speaks just about perfect English).

Richard's eight-point night was the high point of his second complete season, 1944-45, in which he set the league record of 50goals. By this time he was the toast of the famous Millionaires Club, a group of exuberant Montreal rooters who attended the games wearing bright wool toques and Les Canadiens jerseys. The Millionaire Club was disbanded after the war - it was a financial necessity for the management, since the members were paying only $1.25 or $1.50 for $2.00 seats -- but Richard has not lost his standing in the affection of their heirs and all Montreal fans as the team's premier hero. New stars have come up, stalwarts like Bill Durnan (the six-time winner of the Vezina trophy for goalies), Emile (Butch) Bouchard (the four-time All-Star defenseman), Boom Boom Geoffrio, (the colorful, carefree youngster with the big shot who is married to Howie Morenz' daughter), Jean Beliveau (Le Gros Bill) - who made so much money as the star of Quebec's amateur team that it was a financial hardship for him to turn professional. There is room for them all in the Canadiens fan's heart, but Le Rocket -- he has always been something special and apart. He is their oriflamme. They urge him on with a hundred different cries, but in a tight spot the Forum seems to rise up with one shout in particular. "Envoye, Maurice!" This is a Canadian slang form of the imperative of the verb envoyer, to send or to expedite. "Envoye, Maurice!" -- "Let's expedite this game, Maurice!" "Envoye, Maurice!" -- "Let's go, Maurice!" "Envoye, Maurice!"

Tempestous and incident-prone

Maurice has never let his fans down but there have been moments when he has worried them sick. Largely because of his tempestuous temperament, he is what you might describe as incident-prone. A few years back, for instance, during a Red Wings-Canadiens game in Montreal which referee Hugh McLean was officiating, the Rocket swooped in from his wing to follow up a rebound and in the resulting melee before the Detroit goal, was sent sprawling to the ice by the Detroit center who practically used a headlock. There was no whistle for a penalty. Boiling with indignation, Richard skated up to McLean and demanded to know what the referee was going to do about it. McLean did something about it. He handed Richard a misconduct penalty for abusive language. Burned up by what he considered a vast miscarriage of justice, the Rocket tossed all night in his berth as the Canadiens traveled by train to New York for a game with the Rangers. The next day, still smoldering, he was sitting in the lobby of the Picadilly Hotel when he spotted McLean. He rushed over and grabbed the official by his coat collar, but before he had time to continue his protest, Camil DesRoches and some teammates jumped on him and managed to pull him away. It was very fortunate they did. For his assault on McLean, Richard was fined $500 by President Clarence Campbell of the N.H.L., the highest fine ever levied by the league, but he had been restrained in the nick of time. A real assault and Richard would have been suspended.

Last year this almost happened. In a game in New York, Ron Murphy of the Rangers swung at Geoffrion with his stick. He missed. Geoffrion, retaliating, caught Murphy on the head. The blow fractured Murphy's skull and he was out for the season. Geoffrion was suspended for all the remaining games against the Rangers that season. As Richard saw it, Geoffrion had been punished all out of proportion for a fight he had not started. Richard was then "writing" via a ghost, a column for the Samedi Dimanche, a French-language weekly. "If Mr. Campbell wants to throw me out of the League for daring to criticize him," Richard stated in his column, "let him do it. Geoffrion is no longer the same since his affair with Murphy… he is demoralized and humiliated for having dared to defend himself against a sneaky and deliberate attack by a third-class player. We know that on numerous occasions, he [President Campbell] has rendered decisions against Canadiens players … Let Mr. Campbell not try to gain publicity for himself by taking to task a good boy like Boom Boom Geoffrion simply because he is a French-Canadian…. If this brings me reprisals, I will step out of hockey, and I know that any other players on the Canadiens team will do the same."

Well, here is something -- a direct challenge to the authority of the president of the league. Richard was clearly miles out of line. The affair could have been disastrous, not only for Richard but for organized hockey, had it not been handled with consummate intelligence by Frank Selke, the managing director of Les Canadiens who has been part of hockey since 1906. At the heart of the crisis Les Canadiens returned to Montreal after a road trip. Selke was at the station to meet them. He collected Richard, Geoffrion, Ken Mosdell and their wives and took them to dinner at The Windsor hotel. He never once mentioned what was on his mind and everyone's. The dinner over, Richard and Selke found themselves seated alone together in the hotel lobby for a moment.

"I'm surprised, Mr. Selke," Richard said, "I thought you were going to be very angry with me."

"Maurice," Selke said quietly, "I've never known you to do a rotten thing in your life before. You're accusing President Campbell of things that aren't true. That isn't like Maurice Richard. I don't believe you wrote that column."

"No, I didn't, but I authorized it," Richard replied. "I take full responsibility."

"I want you to act like a big leaguer," Selke went on. "President Campbell's office is just across the street. I know he works nights. I want you to come over with me and see him."

Richard sat silently for a moment. Then the two go up and called on Campbell. Richard spoke up immediately. "Mr. Campbell, I want to apologize to you," he said, his deep voice almost an octave lower than usual. "I apologize not because anyone has told me to do so. I want to apologize because it is the decent thing to do. I have been wrong to say the things I said. It will not happen again."

During the weeks that followed Richard's apology, which ended the affair, many of the French papers accused him of selling out. He never batted an eye. "Maurice Richard never disappoints you," Mr. Selke said recently. "We have had a lot of dealing. When a mistake is pointed out to him and he sees it is a mistake, he has the character to recognize it and to make genuine rectification. He has great class as a person."

The Richards live in a modest, trim home in Cartierville, which adjoins Bordeaux. During the hockey season Maurice spends the bulk of his free hours at home playing with his kids -- Huguette, 11, a pretty girl who is a natural figure skater; Maurice Jr., 9, whom the family calls "Rocket" as matter-of-factly as if it were a prosaic nickname like Bud; Normand, 4,; and Andre, an infant of 6 months. Richard is not just a devoted father, he is crazy about his kids. During the summer, at least once a week, Richard and his wife bundle the family into the car and head for the country for a day together in the open air. It is his truest pleasure.

Fishing, softball, and golf

Richard puts in some time in the summer as a sales representative for the Petrofina Company, a Belgian concern which operates gas stations in Canada, but a large part of every day goes to keeping himself in shape. It is his custom to take off on several three-day fishing trips when each hockey season is over. This is pure relaxation, but after that he plays his sports with an eye to preparing himself gradually for the coming hockey campaign. In June and July he plays some softball but principally he golfs. A 10-handicap man, he responds so well to competition that for the last two season he and Elmer Lach have won the tournament for major league hockey player which takes place before the big Canadian golf tournament, the La Batt Open. Halfway through July he switches to tennis and handball. "I think they are very good sports for sharpening the eye and strengthening the legs," he told a friend not long ago. "When it is time to go to training camp, I find it not too hard to get into condition."

Richard has mellowed discernibly in recent years. In a relaxed mood he can be wonderful company, intelligent in conversation and very responsive to old friends. His shyness with strangers has lessened somewhat and he meets people far more gracefully. He has even displayed the edges of a dry sense of humor. Not long ago the exchange for Richard's telephone number was changed to Riverside. "Just dial RI," he said with a straight face to a rural photographer who had forgotten the exchange, "RI… for Richard." And old friend who stood by couldn't believe his ears.

Toward the 400th

Most of these relaxed moments, it goes without saying, take place from April to September. Then another hockey season is on, and while Richard today may be a shade less volcanic than formerly as he moves steadily toward his 400th goal, he still burns with a fierce sense of purpose. During a team slump or a personal scoring drought, he is still a good man to avoid. Silent and seething, he builds up intensity to such a pitch that, eventually, it must explode. Sometimes the Rocket explodes all over the place, in fights, in arguments with referees, in overly aggressive if fruitless hockey. Sooner or later, though, he will explode with a splurge of dramatic goals. On these evenings, it is an experience to be in Montreal, for it is then that the Forum roars like one huge happy lion, the most jubilant hullaballoo you can hear in the sports world. It is not an extravagant tribute. After all, of all the great athletes of our time, none has played his game with more skill, more color, more competitive fire and more heart than Maurice Richard.