The Miracle on Manchester remains a prized memory for Kings fans even after the team won two Stanley Cup championships this decade.Courtesy of the Los Angeles Kings
Don Perry knew only one code in hockey: Do unto others before they do unto you.
He survived for two decades in the snake-pit arenas of hockey’s minor professional leagues, brawling and battling to keep a job as much through tenacity as skill. Most of his playing career was spent as an enforcer in the notorious Eastern Hockey League, a blood-and-guts circuit that inspired the madcap hockey movie, Slap Shot, starring Paul Newman.
Mr. Perry, who has died at 89, paid his dues and finally made his National Hockey League debut after more than three decades as a player and coach in pro hockey. Just two weeks into his new job as coach of the Los Angeles Kings, an on-ice fight led Mr. Perry to invoke his code only to have a player disobey.
In a game in Vancouver on Jan. 24, 1982, Mr. Perry ordered one Paul Mulvey, a 6-foot-4 forward, on to the ice to fight the fearsome Tiger Williams of the Canucks. “Go out there,” the coach said, “and don’t dance.” The player ignored the coach’s command three times. After another player did the coach’s bidding, all players on both benches, including the reluctant Mr. Mulvey, hopped over the boards to brawl.
“Is this more my style? I certainly hope so,” a satisfied Mr. Perry said after the game, which ended 5-5.
For admitting to having ordered a player to leave the bench to fight, Mr. Perry was suspended by the league for 15 days, the span of six games. The club was fined $5,000. Mr. Mulvey was demoted to the minors, never to return.
The incident reflected the NHL’s inconsistent approach to violence. The league insisted fisticuffs was a spontaneous expression to be expected on occasion in a fast sport with body contact. Some thought the coach was punished for being honest about hockey’s Old Testament edict of a slash for a slash, a punch for a punch.
Mr. Perry found redemption a few weeks later. In a playoff game against the Edmonton Oilers, the underdog Kings trailed 5-0 after two periods. In the dressing room between periods, the coach gave his players an inspirational speech.
The Kings responded by scoring five goals, the last coming with just five seconds left in regulation time. A goal by Daryl Evans early in overtime completed the 6-5 comeback, which was dubbed the Miracle on Manchester. (The Kings’ arena, the Forum, was situated on West Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood, a Los Angeles suburb.) It remains the greatest single-game comeback in Stanley Cup competition.
Donald Frederick Perry was born in Edmonton on March 16, 1930. He showed great promise as a teenaged hockey player with the Edmonton Athletic Club. In 1947, while a student at Strathcona High School, he was named the city’s schoolboy heavyweight boxing champion the day before his 17th birthday.
Mr. Perry was signed to a pro contract by Eddie Shore, a former NHL star known for his violence on ice and his parsimony in operating hockey clubs. At training camp in Woodstock, Ont., in 1950, Mr. Perry used his husky frame to bash opponents in exhibitions and teammates in practice.
The rookie was sent for seasoning to the Boston Olympics. After one year, he joined the Springfield (Mass.) Indians, where Mr. Shore encouraged his 6-foot-2, 205-pound protégé to ignore hockey’s rule book, as well as boxing’s Marquess of Queensberry rules. In 62 games, Mr. Perry scored five goals and 32 assists, but, more importantly, served 160 penalty minutes, the equivalent of eight full periods of hockey.
“He’s got the guts,” Mr. Shore said approvingly.
“He may not be impressive to the fans because of his awkward skating style,” said coach Eddie Barry, “but we know the job he’s doing.”
While intimidation was the key to Springfield hockey, Mr. Perry dreamed of making the NHL and earning enough money to open a ranch in Alberta. Instead, he spent 18 seasons in the EHL, playing in dismal arenas in factory cities before patrons often more excited by goons than goal scorers.
Fans in the circuit eagerly anticipated bouts between the notorious Mr. Perry and his equally nefarious nemeses, a rogue’s gallery including Pat Kelly, Ray (Moose) Crew and Joe Nolan, an Ojibwa from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., who one season spent nearly six hours in the penalty box. (Mr. Nolan appears in Slap Shot in a memorable cameo.) Mr. Perry’s arch enemy was John Brophy, known as the Grey Ghost for his prematurely silver hair, a peppery defenceman from Cape Breton Island who used his stick like a pitchfork. Later, the pair patrolled the blue-line together with the Long Island Ducks, a two-man wrecking crew whose exploits turned hockey score sheets into lengthy rap sheets.
“There’d always be someone there to test you,” Mr. Perry told Leigh Montville of the Boston Globe in 1982. “Young guys every year, looking to make a name for themselves. You’d have to be ready.”
The defenceman became a playing coach in his second season with the New Haven (Conn.) Blades, his own fearlessness a standard by which other players were measured. In 1955-56, he led the circuit in scoring by a defenceman with 14 goals and 46 assists before coaching them to the league championship. In one overtime game lasting more than 68 minutes, the defenceman was on the ice for all but three minutes. A New Haven newspaper rated his effort “one of the greatest individual performances of all time.” The defenceman was rewarded with 26 silver dollars to mark his 26th birthday at the next home game.
He retired as a player after the 1968-69 season at age 39, having spent nearly 100 periods contemplating his transgressions while sitting in the penalty box.
Working behind the bench and as a manager for the Saginaw (Mich.) Gears, he won two Turner Cup championships (1977, 1981) and was named the International Hockey League’s coach of the year for 1976-77. He was coaching the New Haven Nighthawks when the NHL Kings hired him to replace Parker MacDonald early in 1982.
The new coach insisted on a disciplinarian’s regimen, threatening free-wheeling wingers with $100 fines every time they were farther than a stick-length from the boards.
The Kings, a young, underperforming team, squeaked into the playoffs only to upset in the first round the Wayne Gretzky-led Oilers, thanks in part to the Miracle on Manchester.
Over three seasons with the Kings, Mr. Perry had a coaching record of 52 wins, 85 losses, 31 ties. He went 4-6 in the 1982 playoffs.
After returning to New Haven to coach, he acknowledged the style of hockey he had learned was no longer deemed acceptable.
“Times have changed,” he told the New Haven Register. “You can’t hit a guy over the head like you could 10 years ago.”
After retiring as a coach, he worked as a scout for the Kings while living in the resort town of Hague, N.Y. He later moved to Arizona.
Mr. Perry died on April 15 at an assisted-living home in Green Valley, about 30 kilometres south of Tucson. He leaves his wife, the former Margaret McMullen, and sons Raymond Perry and Cameron Perry. A full list of survivors was not available.
The Miracle on Manchester remains a prized memory for Kings fans even after the team won two Stanley Cup championships this decade. Mr. Perry’s inspirational dressing-room speech was described by defenceman Rick Chartraw in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1985. The coach told the players, “Give it your best effort every shift.” He then left the room. Seconds later, the door opened. “Oh, by the way,” Mr. Perry said. “Anyone who doesn’t give it their best effort won’t dress for the next game.”