Hadfield known for creative pranks with Rangers

NEW YORK -- The list of practical jokes Vic Hadfield pulled on teammates is long, storied and splendidly creative.

Pressed Sunday to choose the one that best defines him, the New York Rangers left wing selected one that was more gentle mischief than elaborately crafted. Granted, he was put on the spot to come up with an anecdote that involved Rangers coach Emile Francis.

"I don't remember what I had for breakfast, how am I going to know that?" Hadfield said with a grin, chatting with reporters a half hour before a ceremony at Madison Square Garden to retire his No. 11.

"Emile had a superstition," he said. "He'd go back in the New York Knicks dressing room (between periods) and when it was time for us to go on the ice, he'd come out and anything that was on the floor -- a piece of paper, a piece of tape -- he'd pick up and put in the garbage.

"We were a little tight in this particular game. We had to loosen it up a little bit. I got a piece of tape and put it in the center of the floor where I knew he was going to see it. But I put a string on it. He bent over to pick it up."

Hadfield yanked on the string.

"We had to wait to see what reaction Emile had," Hadfield said. "He started to laugh. We laughed, the whole team was howling. It kind of broke things up. It was a good move because we were tight."

If even a fraction of the Hadfield stories shared by former teammates during the weekend were true, the former Rangers captain has an encyclopedia of pranks. Indeed, the back of Hadfield's half-century-old 1968 O-Pee-Chee hockey card shows a cartoon of two players shaking hands, one wearing a joy-buzzer, the caption reading, "Vic leads the league in practical jokes."

"Looks like that photo was taken yesterday," he said with a laugh of the square-jawed, hair-slicked guy featured on the front, a fine mist falling outside the Garden on Sunday when he, Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert, members of the famous "Goal A Game" line, met fans and posed with the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Hadfield's number retirement capped another memorable gathering of Rangers greats, his No. 11 the 10th New York number to be raised to the arena rafters.

The storytelling is glorious at any gathering of former NHL teammates, especially those of Hadfield's era who enjoyed free-wheeling camaraderie without the unblinking eye of social media. The greatest casualty, of course, is the truth, facts at these gatherings bent like a Stan Mikita stick blade to suit the heckling of the target, who inevitably scores with the comeback he has ready for the rebound.

"I'll tell you what kind of teammate Vic Hadfield was," Hockey Hall of Famer Brad Park was saying Saturday in the bar of his midtown hotel. "I backchecked more than Vic did. And I was a defenseman!"

Every former player on hand had a story about the man of the hour, who volunteered to offer the "truth" about every tale if anyone cared to listen.

Hadfield will need some time to recover from the emotion and demands of the weekend, the Rangers shuttling him around for interviews and appearances with humans and horses right up to the moment his banner was raised.

He was delighted that the stories weren't all about him.

Park told a beauty about how his physical play caused a family divide.

"My mother loved Montreal Canadiens star Jean Beliveau," Park remembered. "Maybe the first year of my career (1968-69 as a 20-year-old with the Rangers), Beliveau came across the blue line and I laid into him with a hip check -- boom! -- and sent him up and over. My mother didn't talk to me for a month."

Then there was Park's brilliant tale about being at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens in 1960 as a 12-year-old, chasing autographs. He had collected many but was stunned when the famously polite Frank Mahovlich, a decade his senior, told him to get lost.

Park was stung by the rebuke, for years, and he said that after cracking the Rangers lineup at age 20 he'd get in an extra shot on Mahovlich any time they met in front of the Rangers goal.

"I finally told Frank why I punched him, but it wasn't until we were playing old-timers hockey together," Park said, "And it was Frank who apologized to me, saying he'd probably had a bad day with (coach) Punch Imlach."

"You should have asked me," joked Bob Nevin, sitting beside Park. "I'd have signed for you."

Nevin would arrive in New York from the Toronto Maple Leafs on Feb. 22, 1964 as part of a blockbuster trade that exchanged himself, Dick Duff, Rod Seiling, Arnie Brown and Bill Collins for Andy Bathgate and Don McKenney.

He finally would be shipped by the Rangers to the Minnesota North Stars on May 25, 1971, with Hadfield replacing Nevin as Rangers captain after Nevin succeeded Bathgate.

Nevin's last game with the Rangers was Game 6 of the Stanley Cup semifinal against Toronto on April 15, 1971. In fact, he scored the series clincher in overtime, at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Hadfield said he believed Nevin was the only man in the room he had never pranked. And then he grinned again.

"But it's early."

Photos courtesy of Doug Ball

Video: WPG@NYR: Rangers raise Hadfield's No. 11 to rafters