Brad Park has big plans on Thursday for his 75th birthday.
He's taking out the garbage.
"I'm going to the town dump!" the legendary defenseman declared with a laugh from his summer home in Sebago, Maine. "It's open Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays but it's closed today (July 4) for the holiday. So, Thursday will be a big day."
Park cut the grass of his lakefront property last week, another highlight at his three-quarter-century mark, but we'll come back to that.
The Hall of Famer's sense of humor was as radiant as the sun that sliced through the afternoon's rain clouds, especially when asked to name his favorite birthday as he reaches 75 years.
"My 76th," he said, laughing again.
The brightest moment of Park's milestone won't be his trip to Sebago's dump. His greatest enjoyment came last Saturday, when he and his wife, Gerry, who share a July 6 birthday, were feted together.
New York Rangers defenseman Brad Park and goalie Ed Giacomin defend against Toronto's Paul Henderson in a Dec. 20, 1969 game at Maple Leaf Gardens. Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame
"We were having a neighborhood 'social' on our lawn, maybe 25 or 30 family members, neighbors and friends," Park said. "Two of our kids told those coming that it was actually going to be a birthday party for Gerry and me. My son ordered a cake that said, 'Happy Birthday Brad and Gerry,' but when they brought it out, Gerry's name wasn't on it. She'd scraped it off.
"She didn't want her birthday acknowledged, but I made sure everybody knew when I announced it. She's still talking to me… it was our little joke."
Park hit a windfall of about $52, he says, from the 100 or so lottery scratch tickets he was given. With help from grandsons aged 7 and 8, the cash prizes were revealed.
"I gave them all the winners, but we haven't cashed them yet," he said. "I told the boys I wasn't going down to the store just yet to stand there while every ticket is checked."
It comes as news to Park that he shares a July 6 birthday with Ron Duguay, who on Thursday turns 66.
Brad Park with the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins, for whom he almost evenly split his time over 15 NHL seasons. Denis Brodeur, Getty Images
"I never knew that, and 'Dugie' and I played together two years in Detroit, then I coached him," he said. "But I do know that (late Maple Leafs legend) George Armstrong and I were both born on July 6."
(He'll take your word for it that so, too, was defenseman Harold Starr, the 205-game, five-team NHLer who skated 37 games for the 1935-36 Rangers.)
Park was one of the greatest defensemen of his era and any other, a seven-time All-Star and six-time Norris Trophy runner-up -- four times to Bobby Orr and twice to Denis Potvin. He played his first seven-plus seasons with the New York Rangers, from 1968-75, then was part of an early-season blockbuster trade on Nov. 7, 1975, that sent him, center Jean Ratelle and defenseman Joe Zanussi to Boston for center Phil Esposito and defenseman Carol Vadnais.
After seven seasons with the Bruins, Park signed as a free agent with Detroit on Aug. 9, 1983, playing the final two seasons of his NHL career with the Red Wings. He was voted winner of the Bill Masterton Trophy in 1983-84, his first year with Detroit, for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
Brad Park in 1983 action with the Detroit Red Wings, for whom he played his final two NHL seasons. Paul Bereswill/Hockey Hall of Fame
The Toronto native scored 896 points (213 goals, 683 assists) in 1,113 NHL games, on his way to 1988 Hockey Hall of Fame induction, with another 125 points (35 goals, 90 assists) in 161 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
His most memorable goal, he says, was his Game 7 overtime winner for the Bruins in the 1983 Adams Division Final against the Buffalo Sabres, having scored the 2-2 equalizer midway through the third period.
"I wish I had the puck, but I couldn't get to it. I was on the bottom of the pile," he joked of the celebrating Bruins mob.
Park's most cherished game is the finale in Team Canada's clincher against a team of Soviet all-stars in the landmark eight-game 1972 Summit Series.
"The greatest experience and greatest feeling I've ever had after one game," he said of the game in Moscow, all of Canada on the edge of its seat for Game 8 in the winner-take-all political slugfest.
Park is one of three players, along with Phil Esposito and Yvan Cournoyer, who played all 11 of his country's games through the month of September 1972 -- the eight-game series, two exhibitions in Sweden before Game 5 and one in Czechoslovakia after Game 8.
Brad Park with Team Canada, for whom he was a stellar defenseman in the historic 1972 Summit Series. Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame; Denis Brodeur, Getty Images
And most memorable of his 45 NHL games coached for the sad-sack 1985-86 Red Wings, having been hired on Dec. 30 to replace Harry Neale?
"The brawl which kind of led to my firing," Park said of the Jan. 13, 1986 gong show against the Maple Leafs in Toronto, his players badly outmuscled during a third-period melee against a few of the home team's heavyweights.
Referee Ron Hoggarth called 296 minutes in penalties that night, Park later suspended for six games and fined $5,000 by NHL President John Ziegler.
"I emptied the bench and I admitted it," Park said. "Any coach whose bench is emptied and they say they didn't do it is full of you know what. We were a last-place club and my thoughts were very clear. I said to myself, 'If I'm not sure that they'll play for each other, let's see if they'll fight for each other.' And they did. My problem is that I admitted that I sent my team onto the ice."
All of the above is just a fraction of Park's colorful body of NHL work, a happy reminiscence this week.
His place in Maine is big sky, fresh air and cool water, bought nearly four decades ago with his Red Wings signing bonus.
The vintage home sits on about two-thirds of an acre, half-a-rink length from a sandy beach. It was once an old inn whose original house Park figures was built in about 1890.
Brad Park with the major-junior Toronto Marlboros in the mid-1960s and late that decade, early in his career with the New York Rangers. Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame
"The numbers are still on the doors," he said of the many rooms.
Which brings his story back to his freshly cut grass.
"My riding mower was out getting serviced last week so I had to borrow a neighbor's mower," Park said. "It wasn't my first time walking behind one here or elsewhere."
He'd been rolling up his sleeves since boyhood, all-season chores blended at home with his love of hockey. Park's career began at age 6 on a makeshift front-yard rink built for him and his older brother, Ron, by their father, a tree in the middle of the ice surface capable of throwing a mean check.
In his teens, playing minor hockey in Toronto, he had his eye on the Canadiens' J.C. Tremblay, a crafty puck-mover, and Maple Leafs' Bob Baun, who crushed opponents with his physical play. In time, Park would blend the skills of both into his own style.
But a stringbean of 16 going on 17 in the summer of 1965, growing to his 6 feet but a long way from his 200-pound NHL playing weight, he began to build his strength.
Park landed a job as a laborer at Uplands Golf Course in the Thornhill district of Toronto, his father a friend of the owner, paid the princely sum of $1.25 an hour.
"Being the new guy, I got all the dirt jobs," he recalled. "First thing in the morning, they'd give me a long bamboo pole to swish the dew from the greens. Then I'd go back to the clubhouse and they'd give me a gas can and a lawnmower and have me cut the riverbed.
"There were two par-3 holes that dropped 30, 40 feet, a valley between the tees and greens. They told me I had to cut the hill on both sides. I said, 'I can't walk that, it's too steep.' So they threw me a rope and I'd lower the mower down then pull it back up. Down and up."
Brad Park and Toronto's Dave Keon battle for the puck in front of New York Rangers goalie Gilles Villemure during a game at Maple Leaf Gardens. Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame
With hugely improved upper-body strength, Park made the roster of the 1965-66 major-junior Toronto Marlboros, thoroughly scouted by the Rangers that season and selected second overall by New York in the April 25, 1966, NHL Amateur Draft (behind Barry Gibbs of Boston).
"Over the course of the summer, manual labor at Uplands blossomed me," Park said. "I didn't think about it but when I got to (Marlies) camp I felt much stronger. We didn't measure it in those days with gym work or weightlifting."
Three seasons of grooming in the juniors brought him to the Rangers for his NHL debut on Oct. 23, 1968, a 6-1 Madison Square Garden victory against the visiting Oakland Seals. Fifty-four games with the Rangers and 17 with Buffalo in the American Hockey League that season set him on his road to the Hall of Fame, elected in an illustrious 1988 class that included Guy Lafleur, Tony Esposito and Buddy O'Connor, who was elected posthumously.
Park traveled to the September ceremony in his Toronto hometown from Sebago, where the living is very easy indeed. It's sitting on the lakeshore this July 6 that he'll quietly celebrate his 75th -- right after his celebratory trip to the town dump.
Top photo:Brad Park relaxes on his lakefront property in Sebago, Maine with his dog, Ace, photographed July 4, 2023 by his daughter, Alexa Materazzo
