Tony Esposito savors All-Star experience

ST. PETERSBURG., Fla. -- Goaltending legend Tony Esposito holds an NHL All-Star Game record for an appearance he knows he never should have made.
It was 1980, Esposito's sixth and final All-Star Game, and the man known as Tony O chose to play for one reason: at age 36, he didn't expect he'd ever again be able to suit up on the same team as his big brother Phil, who was about to turn 38.

Two days before the Feb. 5 game at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, Esposito suffered a badly cut left hand when he was struck beneath his blocker by a shot off the stick of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Wilf Paiement.
Esposito took 14 stitches from that shot, but the Chicago Blackhawks star flew into Detroit for the League's 34th All-Star Game, against his better judgment, ready to share goaltending duties for the Campbell Conference with Pete Peeters of the Philadelphia Flyers.
"Wilf cut me wide open, and the shot probably broke my hand, too," Esposito said over dinner, tucking into a burger with his wife, Marilyn, at Engine No. 9, the popular St. Petersburg sports bar/restaurant owned by the couple's son, Jason.
"I'd played with Phil in the 1972 Summit Series for Team Canada against the Russians and a few times back in minor hockey in Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario), Phil in his last year at each level and me in my first. I saw the 1980 All-Star Game as probably our last chance to play as teammates."

Campbell Conference coach Al Arbour started Esposito, but less than 16 minutes into what was supposed to be 30 minutes of work, the goalie was drilled in the hand by a Gordie Howe shot, opening the wound to the degree that blood pooled in the fingers of his blocker.
"So I pulled myself out of the game," Esposito said, yielding the net to Peeters after having surrendered two goals in an eventual 6-3 loss to the Wales Conference. "If I'd stayed in, my hand would have opened wider."
Indeed, Esposito missed the Blackhawks' first game back after the All-Star Game, his hand still mending.
"It was so swollen, I couldn't grip the stick at all," he said.
Peeters, unbeaten in 25 games to that point that season, did well in his 44:50 of action against the Wales Conference until he was abandoned by his defense. Meanwhile, Esposito's 15:10 would be the briefest appearance of an All-Star goalie since the first official game in 1947, a record that remains to this day.
His first All-Star Game had come a decade earlier, playing alongside the New York Rangers' Ed Giacomin in 1970 to represent the East Division. Esposito would wear the colors of the West Division in 1971 in Boston, 1972 in Bloomington, Minnesota, 1973 in New York and 1974 in his home rink, Chicago Stadium.

He also was selected for the three-game 1979 Challenge Cup series at Madison Square Garden, pitting the NHL All-Stars against a team from the Soviet Union. But he never played a minute; the goaltending was split between Montreal's Ken Dryden and Boston's Gerry Cheevers in the Soviets' 2-1 series win.
Esposito's career All-Star Game record: two wins and no losses, with a solid goals-against average of 2.53.
He has a few personal highlights salted away from those six games. Esposito cherishes a framed 1971 photo of himself wearing his dark blue West Division jersey with Phil in his predominantly white East Division sweater, the brothers leaning on their proud father, Patrick.
There was the 1974 game in Chicago and a cocktail party attended by comedian Joan Rivers, who Esposito said had a serious gleam in her eye for at least one player. In a photo taken at that party, Esposito is looking like he tore down his grandmother's parlor drapes to make his velvet tuxedo -- sadly, the photo is in black and white, because the tux was purple -- with Flyers goalie Bernie Parent beaming in the background, wearing a ruffled shirt and massive bow tie.

Esposito joked over dinner about Jan. 27 being the 40th anniversary of a remarkable 1978 regular-season game, in which he earned his 62nd career shutout with a 5-0 blanking of the visiting Cleveland Barons, witnessed by just 527 fans because of a blizzard that choked the city.
"I had good concentration," Esposito said. "Stan (Mikita) asked me after the game how I had stayed focused. I said it was easy, once I was into the game. Stan told me there were only about 500 fans in the stands, but I had no idea. I was so focused, I thought the place was full."
The All-Star Games, by contrast, were more a chance for Esposito to catch up with old friends on both teams, and to make new friendships.
The 1980 game in Detroit, the League's 34th, is most famous for the venerable Mr. Hockey and a phenom to become known as the Great One. It was the 23rd and final All-Star Game for 51-year-old Gordie Howe, still a record for appearances, and the first of 18 for Wayne Gretzky, then 19, who would become Gordie's great friend.
For Esposito, the 1980 game at Joe Louis Arena was over almost before he broke a sweat, thanks to a suture-splitting Howe shot that would be the last the goalie would see while wearing an All-Star jersey.
"The Joe went crazy all night for Gordie and I got to enjoy a lot of it from the bench. But you know what?" Esposito said with a grin, a stainless-steel utensil working smoothly in his once-stitched left hand. "I always liked the Detroit Olympia better."