Hockey Hall of Famer and former New York Islander Mike Bossy waves to fans as he is introduced before the NHL hockey game between the Islanders and the Boston Bruins at Nassau Coliseum on Jan. 29, 2015, in Uniondale, N.Y.Kathy Kmonicek/The Associated Press
If you were a kid growing up in Toronto in the late 1970s and early 80s, you had to decide a few important things about yourself.
First, were you a hockey person? At the time, the only correct answer was ‘yes.’
Were you a Toronto Maple Leafs person? ‘Yes’ was the right answer, but ‘no’ was the smart one.
And were you a Wayne Gretzky person or a Mike Bossy person? The answer to this one filled out your grade-school Myers-Briggs.
Were you a front runner? A bandwagon guy? Someone who goes wandering after the first bright light someone shines in your face? Great. You’re a Gretzky kid.
But are you a stand-up guy? Quietly competent? Someone who understands that real quality is always undervalued? Then you’re a Bossy man.
Mike Bossy, New York Islanders great, four-time Stanley Cup champion, dies at 65
My younger brother was a Gretzky fan. We would have vicious fights about the importance of goals versus points, or championships as the great trump card in any argument about individual athletic excellence. I didn’t realize it then, but those discursive, non-sensical harangues, often ending in a fistfight, were better training than journalism school.
I lost the argument, but not my feelings for Mike Bossy. True sports love only happens once, and you mate for life.
Bossy, who died on Thursday night at 65, wasn’t much to look at. Gawky and lantern-jawed, wearing a helmet that looked like he’d tied watch straps onto a colander. In the early days, he had this bouffant hairdo that made him look like a walking scrub brush.
He didn’t dominate a game as did his linemate Bryan Trottier, or emanate manliness as did his other linemate, Clark Gilles. He wasn’t suave or especially tough. Bossy did just one thing really well – score goals.
Raised in Quebec back when that still really meant something in hockey terms, Bossy scored goals his whole life. He’s still holds a bunch of records in Quebec major junior.
Mike Bossy poses with some of the spoils reaped after the New York Islanders defeated the Vancouver Canucks to win the Stanley Cup at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on May 20, 1982.Marty Lederhandler/The Associated Press
But because he didn’t look like anyone’s perfect idea of a hockey player, no one wanted him. The Leafs – those nitwits – passed on him twice in the 1977 draft. The New York Islanders picked him up in the 15th spot.
This scouting disaster would have been forgivable if Bossy hadn’t been second in the NHL in scoring in his rookie year. As a sophomore, he scored 69 and led the league. In his third, the Islanders won the Cup. They did the same thing in his fourth, fifth and sixth seasons.
Bossy made scoring goals look so easy that instead of being amazed by how good he was, you wondered why everyone else was so bad. Get the puck in neutral zone; attack blueline; shoot at mail-slot-sized sliver of empty space over the goalie’s left shoulder or between his legs, aaaaand goal.
Bossy scored goals more predictably than any player in NHL history. He scored them just as easily in May as he did in November.
Someone once asked then New Jersey Devils coach Tom McVie what he’d like for his birthday.
“What I want is a Mike Bossy doll,” McVie said. “Wind it up and it scores 60 goals.”
Aside from that scoring quality, Bossy had no others. Or, at least, none that you noticed as a 9-year-old. He didn’t fist pump or ride his stick after goals. He famously refused to fight at a time when everyone fought. Whenever I vaguely recall him being interviewed on television, he isn’t talking. He’s standing there with a dull expression, waiting for it to be over.
Bossy offered something few other truly great athletes did at the time, and none can provide now – a blank slate. He was whoever the viewer wanted to imagine him being.
In your mind, he was shy and awkward, misunderstood and out of place. If you felt that same way, he was the player for you.
Despite his own tendency to introversion, Gretzky was the high-school quarterback who’d been born to win. Bossy was the unpopular outsider who’d managed to sneak inside by virtue of grinding effort.
As it turns out, some of those things were more or less true.
In a long, kind reminiscence of Bossy on Friday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman concluded with this: “He thrilled fans like few others.”
It’s a nice thing to say, but it’s not exactly right. Bossy scored thrilling goals, but what drew you to him was his workmanlike presence. He went out there and did his job at the highest possible level. Then he went home. In a sport then filled with working-class men, he was the one who best embodied his class affiliation on and off the ice.
His career seems short when you look back on it now – just 10 seasons. He was undone by back problems, though he kept scoring until the end. I remember feeling a sense of galling injustice that he was not fit enough to play on the 1987 Canada Cup team.
Mike Bossy reacts after he scored the winning goal in overtime to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs on April 20, 1978.Ray Stubblebine/The Associated Press
Because he was incapable of self-promotion, Bossy’s legacy was overshadowed and then overwhelmed by Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers.
“We never got one-millionth of the recognition we should,” Bossy told Sports Illustrated years later. “We had a very low-key organization. They didn’t want guys doing too much because they thought the hockey might suffer. People don’t talk about us in the first mention of great teams.”
He said he wasn’t bitter, but seriously, who wouldn’t be? It was another relatable thing about the guy.
In the second half of his life, Bossy worked for a living. He tried getting a job with the Canadiens, but they weren’t interested. He read the sports news on radio, did PR and sold potato chips. It was only very near the end that he worked as a TV analyst.
Early sporting deaths tend to prompt reconsiderations. Now that he’s gone, Bossy may finally find his way into the very highest echelon of NHL players – which is where he deserves to be. But in a strange way, that would feel wrong.
Bossy wasn’t just the most underrated great player of the past 50 years, he was also the least talked about. He stood apart in every way.
There won’t ever be his like again because hockey’s marketing industrial complex would not allow it. So as long as he remains just slightly outside the mainstream, Bossy gets to be an original forever.