The Goal of My Life by Paul Henderson Page A

I guess that something had to give. And something did, and it was big – and it involved me.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I LOVED PLAYING IN D ETROIT . I WAS PLAYING WELL , I felt we had a pretty good hockey team, and all in all, life was going fine for me. My career was really just starting, and I was able to produce.
    How could I not love playing in Detroit? I was only a kid – I was more awestruck than anything else. The city itself really didn’t do anything special for me, and we spent most of our time in Windsor after we moved there anyway. But the atmosphere in the arena was tremendous, and the rink was filled every night.
    They had great hockey fans in Detroit, with a real passion for the game. It was the six-team era of the National Hockey League (up until expansion in 1967, of course), and tickets were a scarce commodity. It was very lucrative for me too; the Red Wings had a tremendous bonus structure, and in my first few years there, we went to the finals and semifinals, so the extra money certainly helped. But even though the money was good – and I needed it with a young family tolook after – primarily I was just so thrilled at being able to play in the National Hockey League. Every day, I had to pinch myself because I had made it to the best league in the world. “Holy moly!” I would say to myself, looking around that dressing room. “There’s Gordie Howe. There’s Bill Gadsby. I’m actually playing with these guys.” I thought I was in heaven.
    We really had nothing in Lucknow, and now I had everything in Detroit. I’d be sitting in the dressing room and we’d be talking back and forth during intermissions, and Gordie Howe might say to me, “Nice play there, Henny. Way to go!” Just imagine how good that would make a kid like me feel. Whenever somebody said that to me, I’d always think, “Where’s my dad? He should be hearing this,” and wished I had a tape recorder so I could have him listen to it! It was such a fantastic time for me.
    Detroit was a great sports town, and a winning sports town. Since the 1930s, it has been known as the City of Champions. The baseball Tigers were doing well, and would win the World Series in 1968. The Lions had won three National Football League championships in the 1950s and had a fiercely loyal following. The University of Michigan, in nearby Ann Arbor, won the Rose Bowl one year. It could also be a tough city, and it was going through a difficult time with all the violence and the riots in the summer of 1967, but inside the Olympia the fans were great. It really was a great environment.
    Outside the arena was something else, though! After practice, we would always stop by a convenience store on the corner where the Olympia was. We’d get a pop or whatever, and one day, Gary Bergman left his brand-newChevy running while he went inside. Sure enough, while he was in the store, some kid just came along and drove off with that new car!
    But for a kid coming into the NHL from a place like Lucknow, stuff like that didn’t matter. I was just happy to be in the NHL , and I was very happy being a Detroit Red Wing.
    Then, on March 3, 1968, the unthinkable happened. The Red Wings dealt me to the Toronto Maple Leafs, along with centre Norm Ullman and right-winger Floyd Smith. In exchange, the Wings got left-winger Frank Mahovlich, centre Peter Stemkowski, rookie Garry Unger, and the NHL rights to former Leafs defenceman Carl Brewer, who had joined the Canadian National Team and by now was playing in the International Hockey League with Muskegon. It was, at the time – and probably still is when you think about it – one of the biggest trades in hockey history.
    That deal is still talked about to this day, as it involved a lot of prime-time players. Imlach was always fond of veteran players, but when you fell out of favour with him, you were quite often on the way out of town. Mahovlich clearly needed a change of scenery, and the Wings wanted to shake things up as well, so