"We had a war with St. Louis, oh yeah," Glen Sather, president of the New York Rangers, recalls with a laugh, keeping an eye on the Stanley Cup Final between the Penguins and Nashville Predators from a home he owns in Loreto Bay, Mexico.
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Sather was in his third full NHL season in 1969-70, having gone to the playoffs the past two seasons with the Boston Bruins.
After being claimed by the Penguins from the Bruins in the June 1969 intraleague draft, Sather took his 146 games of NHL experience to Pittsburgh to play for general manager Jack Riley and coach Red Kelly. He settled in a community called Shadyside, a college town close to Pittsburgh's downtown, and included defenseman Bryan Watson and his wife Lindy, who lived nearby, as good friends.
At 26, he played all 76 regular-season games for a team that featured Al Smith, Les Binkley and Joe Daley in goal, Ken Schinkel, Ron Schock, Jean Pronovost, Keith McCreary, Bryan Hextall and Michel Briere up front, anchored by leading scorer Dean Prentice, and a defense corps headlined by Watson, a world-class agitator.
The penalty boxes nearly overflowed with the ice still wet in Game 1 against the Blues. By the final siren of the Blues' 3-1 win at St. Louis Arena, the Penguins had 83 minutes in penalties, the Blues finishing with 66. Pittsburgh defenseman Tracy Pratt led the parade with 32 minutes, and Hextall took 22. Blues defenseman Bob Plager earned 17 minutes, defenseman Noel Picard and forward Tim Ecclestone had 15 each. Curiously, Watson took only one minor penalty.
"Watson had lots of fun with the Plagers that series," Sather joked of defense brothers Bob and Barclay. "And I remember the Blues defenseman Noel Picard, a big, tough guy who (at 6-foot-1, 185 pounds) was one of the biggest guys in the League at the time. I called him 'Merry Christmas' (for the English translation of the word Noel)."
The Penguins lost in six games to the Blues, then missed the playoffs the following season. Sather wasn't in Pittsburgh then, having been traded to the Rangers on Jan. 26, 1971, for Syl Apps Jr. and Sheldon Kannegiesser.
Sather's 658-game, 10-season career would take him to the Blues in 1973-74, the Montreal Canadiens in 1974-75 and the Minnesota North Stars in 1975-76 before he played his final pro season with the 1976-77 Edmonton Oilers of the World Hockey Association.
It was behind the bench and as general manager of the NHL Oilers in the 1980s that Sather would become most famous, guiding Edmonton to five Stanley Cup championships in a span of seven seasons and earning induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997 as a builder.