Mike Byers, hockey player (1946-2010)

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
February 9, 2011

Mike Byers scored an impressive 27 goals in his rookie season in the National Hockey League, yet his scoring touch was overlooked in an era of goon hockey.

A slick-skating forward with good hands, Byers played in 166 NHL games for five different teams. He had an audition on the right wing of a Buffalo Sabres line featuring Gilbert Perrault and Rick Martin, losing the coveted spot to Rene Robert, who would become an essential part of a trio celebrated as the French Connection line.

Byers jumped to the rival World Hockey Association, where he played in an all-star game and won a championship.

Michael Arthur Byers, who was born in Toronto on Sept. 11, 1946, joined the junior Toronto Marlboros at age 17. The Marlies played an exciting brand of hockey, attracting large crowds to games at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Byers scored more than 20 goals in each of his three seasons as a junior. In December, 1965, he was named to an all-star team for an exhibition against the Soviet Union’s national team. His all-star teammates included such future NHL stars as Bobby Orr, Danny Grant, Derek Sanderson and Serge Savard.

The Marlies were a powerhouse club during the mid-1960s, sending many players on to the professional ranks. In 1966-67, the roster featured such future NHL players as Brian Glennie, Gerry Meehan, Terry Caffery, Chris Evans, Mike Pelyk, John Wright, and Brad Park. That season, the last for Byers as a junior, the Marlies won the Memorial Cup championship, vanquishing the hometown Port Arthur (Ont.) Marrs in five games.

Painting by Kurt Kauper.

The Toronto Maple Leafs invited Byers to training camp at Peterborough, Ont. The young forward performed well, but coach Punch Imlach sent him and defenceman Jim McKenny, a Marlies teammate, to Toronto’s farm team at Tulsa, Okla.

“There’s no sense keeping these kids around and not play them,” Imlach said. “It’ll be to their benefit if they play regularly some place else.”

The forward spent most of the season split between the Tulsa Oilers and the Rochester Americans. While in the minors, he was scouted by Scotty Bowman, who soon after began a brilliant coaching career in the NHL. His verdict at the time: “Great speed, but he doesn’t have the puck enough. I like to see a player on top of that puck.”

Injuries opened a roster spot on the Leafs in March, 1968, and Byers was recalled from the minors. He scored his first NHL goal by shoving home his own rebound past Ed Giacomin of the New York Rangers in a 3-1 victory at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Byers began the following season back in Tulsa. The Leafs called him up again for five games of spot duty towards the end of the season before trading him to the Philadelphia Flyers in a five-player deal. Byers put in another five games with his new employers, but balked at first when they wanted to demote him to their minor-league affiliate at the start of the following season.

“If he applies himself, he can make our team,” said Flyers assistant general manager Keith Allen.

Byers spent the entire 1969-70 season with the minor-league Quebec Aces. The Flyers then traded him to the Los Angeles Kings.

He performed admirably in his first full season in the NHL, scoring 18 assists to go with 27 goals, the latter a club record for rookies that would last a decade.

Another trade put Byers with the Sabres, where he was reunited with Imlach. The fleet forward scored five goals in his first five games with his new club.

In the offseason, he jumped to the Los Angeles Sharks of the WHA, a new circuit whose owners were offering spectacular pay raises to players. Midway through the league’s inaugural season of 1972-73, the Sharks traded Byers to the New England Whalers. The club’s green,black and white sweater would be the ninth different one he donned in less than six seasons as a pro.

The Whalers were the class of the fledgling league, finishing first overall before eliminating the Ottawa Nationals, Cleveland Crusaders and the Winnipeg Jets to win the inaugural Avco World Trophy. Byers notched six goals and five assists in 12 playoff games.

He followed with his best pro season, scoring 29 goals for the Whalers. He managed to score even after taking 12 stitches over his left eye in one game.

As he neared age 30, though, his scoring slumped. After recording just four goals and three assists in 17 games to open the 1975-76 season, general manager Jack Kelley announced his disappointment in Byers’ play. The veteran right-winger was given an unconditional release after none of the league’s team claimed him for the $100 waiver price.

The muscular skater eventually signed as a free agent with the WHA’s Cincinnati Stingers, managing just three goals in 20 games. He ended his playing career in the minors with Rochester.

In 166 NHL games, he had 42 goals and 34 assists. In 263 WHA games, he had 83 goals and 74 assists.

After leaving hockey, he pursued a career in finance, becoming an executive with an investment firm in Los Angeles.

He continued to play old-timer hockey, once facing-off against a team including the actor Richard Dean Anderson, star of television’s MacGyver, in a charity match. The celebrity had been a prospect as a young man and found the old hockey ways bubbling to the surface during the game.

“This guy, Mike Byers, he started taking the stick across my chest, kind of holding me up and checking me real tough, and started getting higher and higher on my body, and finally it was across my neck,” Anderson told the Los Angeles Times in 1987.

“This was like a charity game and they’re winning, 9-3, and I took off my gloves. Now this guy was known to be able to hold his own in fisticuffs, and all my team members are going, ‘No, no, forget it!’ We both got two minutes.”

A few years ago, Byers was the subject of a portrait by the American painter Kurt Kauper, who earned notoriety for his imagined rendition of Bobby Orr in the buff. Byers’ image is based on his 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee hockey card, featuring him in the golden livery of the Los Angeles Kings, a rendition the New York Times described as “Christ-like.”

Byers died of cancer on Sept. 16, five days after his 64th birthday, at his home at Novato, Calif.

Once, during his playing days, Byers had an odd exchange with a literary figure. His brother, Stephen Byers, a musician, had befriended the Beat writer William S. Burroughs, whom he took to a game at Maple Leaf Gardens. After the match, the two spectators went beneath the stands to the dressing room, where Burroughs witnessed the sweaty player handing a signed hockey stick to a boy in a wheelchair. The “gentleman junkie” author of such works as “Naked Lunch” then demanded an autographed stick of his own, which Byers duly presented. What Burroughs did with the souvenir is unknown.

This 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee hockey card was the model for the  painting by Kurt Kauper.

He was the NHL's oldest rookie and he scored in seconds

Bob Barlow holds a stick autographed by the championship Victoria Maple Leafs team in 1966. He has turned part of a basement into a shrine honouring his hockey career. Photographs by Deddeda Stemler for The Globe and Mail. BELOW: An elated Barlow celebrates his first NHL goal, scored just seconds after he stepped on the ice.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 13, 2010

VICTORIA

On hockey night, you can find white-haired Bob Barlow, 75, at the arena sitting in Section X, Row 8, Seat 14. He likes the seat designation, as it matches a uniform number he once wore.

Between periods, Barlow cruises the concourse at Bear Mountain Arena in suburban Colwood, greeting his cronies and handing out a free hockey card to children.

“I tell them dreams do come true if you work hard,” he said. “I tell them I finally realized my dream at 34.”

The colourful piece of cardboard features Barlow in the green, white and gold livery of the Minnesota North Stars. He wears No. 14 on his sleeves and a crew cut atop his head. The image comes from his O-Pee-Chee rookie card issued after he finally got a National Hockey League job after spending 15 seasons in the minor leagues.

All that training paid off. After a long apprenticeship, Barlow stepped on the ice on Oct. 12, 1969, as the oldest rookie in NHL history. Seconds later, he was on the scoresheet by firing a 30-foot shot past Bernie Parent of the Philadelphia Flyers.

A photograph captured him with both arms in the air in celebration, his toothless grin evidence of a lifetime spent dodging pucks and sticks.

“Took the puck to the bench, told (coach) Wren Blair, ‘What’s so hard about this league?’ ”

As his teammates laughed, Barlow added, “Why didn’t you bring me up a little sooner?”

Back in the 1960s, Barlow used a modest playoff bonus to put a down payment on the split-level rancher he still calls home. The basement includes a small wet bar decorated with memorabilia from his hockey career. Among the items is the puck from his first NHL goal, mounted on a small wooden base.

The basement includes pucks and pennants, stickers and programs, autographed hockey sticks and a library of hockey books.

He brought out a watchcase. Inside could be found jeweled rings from each of the five championships he won in the minors. He wears a different one each night he goes to the rink to watch junior hockey.

To play on a championship team — at any level, in any sport — is to be bonded with teammates forever.

The first pro title he won came with the old Victoria Maple Leafs in 1966. A city not known for exuberant public displays went nuts for the Toronto farm team as it battled the Portland Buckaroos for Western Hockey League supremacy.

Barlow lived in an duplex in Esquimalt in those days, waking each morning during the playoffs to see a new rhyming sign posted by a hockey-mad neighbour.

“Here will lie the Portland Bucs,” read one, “laid to rest by Barlow’s pucks.”

The hard-fought series included an incident during which Barlow tussled with defenceman Jim (Red Eye) Hay. Both miscreants were dispatched to the penalty box for two minutes to contemplate their misdeeds. As they caught their breath, a reporter overheard an exchange between two old friends.

“Whatcha doin’ after the series?’ Hay asked.

“Been thinin’ about goin’ to Portland,” Barlow replied.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I just bought a big place,” Hay said helpfully.

“That so.”

“Yup. Be sure and bring the family and stay with us.”

“Okay,” Barlow said. “And thanks.”

With that, they returned to the ice to do battle.

Victoria won the series, Barlow leading all goal-scorers with 10.

The team flew home aboard a Viscount turboprop to be greeted at Pat Bay airport by about 100 fans and family members. At Memorial Arena, another 600 gathered beneath a marquee reading, LEAFS YOU ARE THE GREATEST. A junior band played. The crowd spilled out onto street, blocking traffic. A civic reception and a dinner were held that night.

“A great hockey team,” Barlow says of the Victoria squad.

A year later, two of his teammates were called up by Toronto as playoff reinforcements. Milan Marcetta and Autry Erickson, an Albertan who was named after cowboy singer Gene Autry, both got their names engraved on the Stanley Cup. Erickson qualified for the honour though he only ever wore Toronto’s storied blue-and-white sweater for a single game, making him one of the most obscure players to win the Cup.

Erickson died in Phoenix last month of stomach cancer, aged 72, his passing mostly going unnoticed. Even Barlow had not heard the sad news.

He nearly died himself three years ago after suffering a heart attack while doing yard work. Barlow was unconscious in hospital for three days. Doctors were worried about possible oxygen deprivation.

“They were ready to pull the plug when he woke up,” his wife, Marilyn, recalled.

They did not take into account an old athlete’s fighting spirit.

He now has a large bump near his collar bone beneath which rests a defibrillator. For a guy who often sported a black eye in his playing days, it looks like just another lump endured in a rough and tumble sport.

Barlow went hunting for another memento. It captures what it was like to be an ice warrior in those days.

Every month, he gets an NHL pension cheque. The total: $5.16.

He waits until he has three before cashing them. It saves on banking costs.

Five generations
Bob Barlow and his wife Marilyn (nee Mutrie) are at the heart of five generations of exceptional athletes.

Marilyn's grandfather, Lot Roe, was a world-class speed skater.

Her father, Dr. Ralph Dory Mutrie, was inducted into the North Bay (Ont.) Sports Hall of Fame in 1987 as a builder for his contributions to figure skating. He became active after Marilyn took up the sport. She continues to train yung skaters at the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre outside Victoria. She was named coach of the year by Skate Canada in 1992.

Hugh Barlow, Bob's father, won the Allan Cup in 1947 with the Montreal Royals.

Bob and Marilyn's daughter, Wendy Barlow, was a world-class professional tennis player who competed at Wimbledon. She has been inducted into the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame. Today, Wendy Pattenden is president of Canadian Sport Centre Pacific.

Hillary Pattenden — Wendy's daughter and Bob and Marilyn's granddaughter — is an all-star goalie for the Mercyhurst College Lakers in Erie, Penn. It is her dream to play for Team Canada at the Olympics.

Hillary Pattenden is a junior at Mercyhurst College and a possible future star for Team Canada. Her grandfather, Bob Barlow, played pro hockey for 22 seasons.