Irons recalls wild, bizarre three minutes as Blues rookie in 1968

Fourteen men in history have had shorter NHL goaltending careers than Robbie Irons, from the eight seconds of Jorge Alves for the Carolina Hurricanes in 2016 to the 2:44 for Robert McVicar with the Vancouver Canucks in 2005.

None can claim a wilder, more entertaining stay than the 2:59 of Irons, the St. Louis Blues rookie who skated into his net against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 13, 1968 to replace ejected starter Glenn Hall, faked an injury during warmups at his team's request, was pushed back onto the ice by an angry referee while being "treated" in the dressing room, made one save in 2:59, then was yanked for Jacques Plante.
Plante was in the press box eating hot dogs when summoned to his bench by the public address announcer.
"Basically, that's all pretty true," Irons said with laugh during a recent talk, his bizarre NHL road map laid out before him.

Robbie Irons at home in Fort Myers, Florida, and the Official Report of Match rosters for his only NHL appearance on Nov. 13, 1968, with the scorer's remarks on the Blues' goaltending switch.
It was a surreal night in New York, Rangers coach and general manager Emile Francis and team president Bill Jennings roaring over to the St. Louis bench, shredding coach Scotty Bowman for the fast one they claimed was being pulled, an alleged scheme Bowman still maintains he knew nothing about.
Irons isn't so sure, but more than a half-century later, the different spins only add to the lore.
Bowman dug into his legendary memory bank to reassemble the game, one of 2,494 in the regular season and Stanley Cup Playoffs he coached in the NHL. His version is reasonably close to that of Irons, but since the goalie played one tick less than three minutes in his entire NHL career, let's use the 75-year-old's recollections, fleshed out by those of Hall, who was wearing a mask for the first time in his Hockey Hall of Fame-bound career.

St. Louis Blues goalies Glenn Hall (left) and Jacques Plante, who together would win the 1968-69 Vezina Trophy.
At Blues teammate Red Berenson's suggestion, Hall pulled on a mask that Nov. 13, players by now experimenting with wildly curved sticks. Just 1:16 after referee Vern Buffey dropped the puck for opening face-off, Rangers forward Vic Hadfield beat Hall with a long shot off his bent blade, the puck dropping dramatically and ringing in off the crossbar.
Thirty-five seconds later, Buffey penalized Blues defenseman Noel Picard for delay of game. Ten seconds after that, a steaming Mr. Goalie lost it.
"Vern gave 'Pic' a cheap penalty," Hall recalled. "And I don't need a ref screening me, so I voiced an opinion about the way Vern skated and things didn't turn out good. I said a little more and did a little more that wasn't complimentary. I told him, 'You big (expletive), get outta the way, you fell right in front of me.'"
At 2:01 of the first period, Hall poked Buffey's chest with his Stan Musial-model first-baseman's mitt and was chased, given the only game misconduct of his storied career.
"Every time I wear a mask, I get thrown out," Hall said later.

Masked St. Louis Blues goalie Glenn Hall (left) makes a save against Toronto Maple Leafs' Dave Keon.
Greybeards Hall, then 37, and Plante, 39, were on their way to easily winning the Vezina Trophy for the fewest goals-against in the NHL, 39 less than the No. 2-ranked Rangers.
Bowman would have Irons, Gary Edwards or Ted Ouimet up from the Blues' Central Hockey League affiliate in Kansas City to fill the second practice net the day after a game and give some rest to the starter the previous night. Occasionally, Bowman would dress a farmhand as the backup goalie.
Irons, whose 22nd birthday was six days away, picks up the story from his winter home in Fort Myers, Florida.
"I'm on the end of the bench when Glenn is thrown out. I'm looking down at Scotty and he gives me the thumbs up," he said. "So I'm taking a few warmup shots when Doug Harvey says to me, 'Scotty needs you over at the bench. Fake an injury. He wants to talk to you.'"
Harvey was playing the final season of his Hall of Fame career, having won the Stanley Cup five times with the Montreal Canadiens and the Norris Trophy voted as the best defenseman in the NHL seven times, six with the Canadiens, once with the Rangers.

St. Louis Blues defenseman Doug Harvey, seen clearing the puck during the 1968-69 season, played a large role in Robbie Irons making his one, very brief NHL appearance.
Harvey knew that the seasoned Plante, with whom he had played in Montreal and New York, was in the building, no limit by the rules of the day as to how many goalies a team could use. The rookie Irons wasn't going to disobey his superstar defenseman.
"Ironically, we'd played in Boston three nights before and in warmup I'd been hit in the back of the ankle while skating around," he said. "So that's the injury I used when Doug told me to go down. I went to the bench and the trainer grabbed me and took me down the hallway to the dressing room.
"He's undoing my pad, but I had no idea what was going on. I'm upset, thinking, 'Hey, put me in the net. I want to do this.' The referee (Buffey) comes into the room and says, 'Get him dressed and onto the ice or you're all gone.'"
Irons headed back to the rink, the score 1-0 for the Rangers, Francis and Jennings still in a shouting match with Bowman.

Scotty Bowman in the early 1970s as coach of the Montreal Canadiens, and in September 2021 with his biography, written and published in 2019 by Ken Dryden, his former Canadiens goalie.
"They figured something was up and said I was going to be suspended for life because of it," Bowman says today. "But Doug was the guy who did it, I didn't figure what was going on. Everybody thought this was a phantom injury."
Irons recalls the puck going behind his net as the game resumed and hearing Harvey bellow at him when he moved to corral it, ordered to get back in goal.
"I made one save, grabbed the puck and got a whistle," he said. "Then I looked over to the bench and they're waving to me, Plante standing there, in uniform. Scotty was quite an innovator; he was always thinking outside the box. It seemed to me that Jacques, who'd been in the press box just 10 minutes ago, was there in an awful hurry. I come off, Emile is yelling and screaming again, 'This is (expletive)!', Plante goes in, plays out of his mind and we win 3-1."
"That was the worst part of it for the Rangers," Bowman said, laughing. "Plante shut them out."

New York Rangers coach and GM Emile Francis (left) and referee Vern Buffey, both very busy the night of Robbie Irons' NHL debut.
Irons soon would be returned to Kansas City. He was released by the Blues in an organizational shakeup a couple of seasons later and decided to head home to Toronto.
"I told my (late) wife, 'We'll pass through Fort Wayne (Indiana) on our way to Toronto, let me see if they need a goalie,'" he recalled of the International Hockey League's Komets. "I phoned, they said they did. Two days later I was in their nets and I played there the next 11 years."
Irons became a legend with Fort Wayne, playing 523 games, winning the 1973 Turner Cup championship and the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the best goalie in the IHL. His No. 30 retired when he hung up his pads for good in 1981, Irons immediately headed to the broadcast booth, where he'd spend four decades as the analyst. He was inducted into the Komets Hall of Fame in 1987.

Thirty years after he'd retired, Robbie Irons skates onto the ice for the 2011-12 Fort Wayne Komets home opener.
Out of nowhere, headed into his final Komets training camp in October 1980, Irons took a call from Francis, now GM of the Blues, who asked him to suit up that weekend for a Bowman-coached St. Louis alumni team against Chicago Blackhawks alumni in an exhibition. The goalie had spent the offseason working in sales for Pepsi-Cola, a job he would hold in Fort Wayne for three decades.
"I told Emile that he must have looked a long way down the Blues alumni list to find me," Irons joked, happy to suit up.
"Halfway through the game, Scotty comes down the Blues bench and says, 'You're in.' I stood on my head and we won 2-1 against Chicago's Glenn Hall," he recalled. "Scotty came up to me after the game and said, 'Maybe I should have taken another look at you in St. Louis.' "
More than a decade earlier, Irons left the NHL with perfect statistics: a save percentage of 1.000 and goals-against average of 0.00.
"I remember when I came off the ice in New York, Lynn Patrick (Rangers coach from 1948-50 and the Blues' first GM) came down and stood above our bench," he said. "He leaned over, gave me the thumbs up and said, 'Robbie, good job.'
"I did what I think my team had planned."
Photos: Robbie Irons; Hockey Hall of Fame; Fort Wayne Komets; Getty Images; Dave Stubbs