Hadfield's Rangers legacy cemented by having number retired

NEW YORK -- You'll have to duck to avoid being hit by the fabulous Vic Hadfield stories flying around here this weekend; the New York Rangers are celebrating the 14th captain in their history by retiring his No. 11 at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Hadfield will join his iconic linemates Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert in the rafters before the Rangers host the Winnipeg Jets (6 p.m. ET, MSG, TSN3, NHL.TV).

His No. will be the 10th retired by the Rangers, joining Gilbert's No. 7, retired in 1979; Eddie Giacomin (No. 1, in 1989); Mike Richter (No. 35, in 2004); Mark Messier (No. 11, in 2006); Brian Leetch (No. 2, in 2008); Adam Graves (No. 9, in 2009); Andy Bathgate (No. 9) and Harry Howell (No. 3), together in 2009; and Ratelle (No. 19, in 2018).

Hadfield played 841 games during 13 seasons with the Rangers from 1961-74, and had 572 points (262 goals, 310 assists) with 1,041 penalty minutes. He remains the only Rangers player with at least 200 goals and 1,000 penalty minutes.

He was the first Rangers player to score 50 goals in a season when he had 106 points (50 goals, 56 assists) and 142 penalty minutes in 1971-72.

He was the battering-ram presence on the "GAG Line" (Goal-A-Game), with silky playmaker Ratelle at center and the swift Gilbert on the right wing. Put together by coach Emile Francis, it was the first line in NHL history to have each of the three players score at least 40 goals in the same season.

Hadfield will also be honored for his leadership, having followed the traded Bob Nevin into the Rangers' captaincy in 1971 and serving in that role until his May 27, 1974 trade to the Pittsburgh Penguins for defenseman Nick Beverely.

But when Hadfield and his former teammates gather during a reunion dinner Saturday before assembling on Garden ice Sunday the best memories shared - beautifully embellished with age - will be those of Hadfield's creative, even legendary mischief.

Gilbert has a thousand stories about Hadfield. One of his favorites is about a date in Detroit during his 1962-63 rookie season that evaporated when Hadfield and Bathgate, new York's captain got word to the woman behind Gilbert's back that he was a married man, which he wasn't.

Later, Gilbert and Hadfield were making life miserable for opposing goaltenders on either side of Ratelle, their center.

"This was the year Vic scored 50 goals," Gilbert said, laughing. "All of a sudden, he thinks he a goal-scorer. The fact is, he could never make a play. He was just a really solid, aggressive guy who got in front of the net and mucked in the corners.

"We had a play where Vic would come in on the left wing and the goalie would come out on me to cut down his angle, I'd pass it over to him and he'd have an open net. He liked the feeling of scoring. One night, it was 1-1, I faked a pass, the goalie moved to cover Vic and I slipped it in the short side and we win the game. As soon as we get to the bench, Vic's yelling at me, 'Didn't you see me?!' That became my nickname for him.

"He was a playmaker, but not on the ice. He was a practical joker off the ice, he kept all the guys on their toes. Vic led by example, he was a tremendous asset physically and emotionally. And if opponents took liberties with us, especially Jean and me, he had a conversation with them that wasn't very pleasant. Vic was our line's strength."

Francis, the Rangers coach and general manager at the time, is almost embarrassed when he's called a genius for putting the three together as a line, which was done after Gilbert and left wing Camille Henry were knocked around by Toronto Maple Leafs forward Eddie Shack in a game.

"What played in Vic's favor is that he could park himself in front of the net and no one was going to go near the guy," said Francis, who calls the GAG Line the best Rangers trio he's ever seen. "He was able to pick up a lot of goals there. Ratelle was a great center, such a great playmaker that I could have put a goalkeeper on the wing and he'd have scored 20."

If Ratelle, a quiet, dignified gentleman, was ever pranked by Hadfield, he's not telling. Ratelle recalls his left wing not as much for his muscle and mischief as for his being a perfect fit with himself and Gilbert.

"Vic was very easy to play with, he did everything well," Ratelle said. "When you're with players who have the skill of Rod and Vic, it's easy to play with them. It doesn't mean that you'll always have success, but most of the time you will. He skated well, he had a great shot, he could score. And he was a very easy guy to get along with, on and off the ice. We drove together for years and our families were good friends. He was our captain for three years and he did a good job with that, too."

Ratelle used his own jersey retirement in February to have Gilbert stun Hadfield on the ice with news that the latter's No. 11 was the next to be retired.

"To have your whole line is up in the rafters is incredibly gratifying," Ratelle said. "It brought my career full circle, having played, been elected to the [Hockey] Hall of Fame (in 1985), named to the NHL's Top 100 in the League's Centennial year, my Rangers jersey retired and now this. To have Rod and Vic and me reunited in the rafters is icing on the cake."

Defenseman Brad Park, who played on the Rangers from 1968-75, suggests that Hadfield being placed with Ratelle and Gilbert, a skater with a robust style joining two skill forwards on a line, changed the complexion of the NHL.

"Vic was the force, the muscle on the GAG Line," Park said. "He kept everybody pretty honest. And that set a precedent. Look after that. You had Tiger Williams joining Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald in Toronto; Clark Gillies with Bryan Trottier and Mike Bossy on the New York Islanders; Dave Semenko with Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri with Edmonton. The better the (gritty) guy was at finishing, the better the line was. Vic was probably the best finisher of all those so-called muscle guys. He'd do it both ways."

Park remembers Hadfield's practical jokes as a thing of legend.

"We'd take our bridges out of our mouths and put them in paper cups over our dressing room stalls," he said. "Vic got thrown out of a game early and when we came in later and showered, we reached up to take our teeth out of the cups and none of them fit. He'd switched all of them."

Which ranks right up there in Park's view with a stunt Hadfield pulled in the game room of a Chicago hotel.
Hadfield found a way to play the pool table for free, stuffing napkins into the holes on the table so the balls would not disappear and force them to eventually pay for a new game.

"Finally, Vic got knocked out of the game and he said, 'I'm off, see you guys later,'" Park said.

About 10 minutes later, the hotel manager comes down and throws the players out of the room for cheating him out of quarters. According to Park, Hadfield previously told the manager about the napkins.

For all the laughs that will be shared this weekend, Hadfield's teammates know that the man being honored will be profoundly emotional when his number is raised to the rafters.

"Last year, Vic was sitting next to me and Jean at the Saturday dinner the night before Jean's number was retired," Gilbert said. "I said, 'Vic, if you'd been a little bit nicer to us, learned a couple of French words, we could have brought you up to the rafters with us. But you know, you weren't too nice about it, telling us, 'Speak English.'' I said, 'We can't do that because we're talking about you.'

"The next night on the ice at the Garden, I announced that his number was going to be retired and my God, was he excited. We set him up pretty good."

For Gilbert, it was a bit of sweet payback for Hadfield having soured a rookie's date in Detroit more than half a century ago.