The Hot Line: How the Legendary Trio of Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson Transformed Hockey and Led the Winnipeg Jets to Greatness

By Geoff Kirbyson

When Anders Hedberg, Bobby Hull and Ulf Nilsson took to the ice they created a dynamic line that saw the Winnipeg Jets win two World Hockey Association championships. Their chemistry on the ice and impact on the game is explored in The Hot Line: How the Legendary Trio of Hull, Hedberg and Nillson Transformed Hockey and Led the Winnipeg Jets to With a foreword from acclaimed General Manager, Glen Sather.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Great Plains Publications
• Release date: Mar 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781927855669

Book preview

The Hot Line

Copyright © 2016 Geoff Kirbyson

Great Plains Publications

233 Garfield Street

Winnipeg,

MB

R3G 2M1

www.greatplains.mb.ca

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Great Plains Publications, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,

M5E 1E5.

Great Plains Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing program by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program; and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Design & Typography by Relish New Brand Experience

Printed in Canada by Friesens

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Kirbyson, Geoff, 1968-, author

The Hot Line : how the legendary trio of Hull, Hedberg

and Nilsson transformed hockey and led the Winnipeg Jets to

greatness / Geoff Kirbyson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-927855-65-2 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-927855-67-6 (mobi).--ISBN 978-1-927855-66-9 (epub)

1. Hull, Bobby, 1939-. 2. Hedberg, Anders, 1951-. 3. Nilsson,

Ulf, 1950-. 4. Hockey players--Manitoba--Winnipeg--Biography.

5. Winnipeg Jets (Hockey team : 1972-1996)--History. I. Title.

GV848.W56K57 2016 796.962092’2712743 C2016-905994-4

C2016-905995-2

Dedications and Acknowledgements

In July, 2012, my editor at the Winnipeg Free Press, Margo Goodhand, asked me if I’d like to go to Sweden to write a few stories from Älmhult, home to IKEA, before the furniture giant opened its first store in Winnipeg a few months later. I said ‘yes!’ before she’d finished her sentence.

Sure, my assignment was to inform our readers about IKEA’s philosophy, business strategy, quality control and how they came up with the crazy names for their furniture, but somehow the ongoing theme during my trip became the Winnipeg Jets.

On my first day there, I was asked by a trio of Swedes where I was from. When I replied, Winnipeg, the first guy responded with, Ah, Anders Hedberg.

What?

The guy beside him then said, Ulf Nilsson and then the third guy said, Bobby Hull, Lars-Erik Sjoberg.

Hang on a second, I interjected. These guys haven’t played hockey in Winnipeg in more than three decades. What are you talking about?

Well, that’s how we know Winnipeg, from the Swedes who played there, the first Swede answered. The trio proceeded to rhyme off every Swede who ever suited up for the Winnipeg Jets 1.0 and 2.0.

Coincidentally, I was reading The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association by Ed Willes (for the second time) during the plane ride over. When I got back to my hotel room after chatting with the three Swedes, I flipped through to the chapter on the wave of Europeans who signed with the Jets in the fall of 1974. Willes described them as forming the nucleus of the best WHA team ever. He also said, You can argue whether the Hull-Hedberg-Nilsson line—the Hot Line—was the best line in the game’s history, but they were inarguably the most influential.

He cited their on-ice magic, the marrying of the best of the North American and European games with an emphasis on puck possession, not dumping and chasing, and interchanging lanes, plus their off-ice impact of blowing open the pipeline of Swedes and Finns, and later eastern Europeans, to come to North America.

When I got back from my trip, I called up Gregg Shilliday, publisher of Great Plains Publications, told him I’d just read the book on the WHA and now I’d like to read the book on the Hot Line, you know, what with them being the most influential line in the history of hockey.

Um, far as I know, it hasn’t been written yet. Do you want to write it? he asked me. I said ‘yes’ before he’d finished his sentence.

The logical place to start was with Don Baizley, the Winnipeg-based lawyer who represented Hedberg and Nilsson and so many of the Europeans who played here, including Teemu Selanne.

He was skeptical about my ability to finish such a project so long after it had all taken place, particularly since a number of the key participants, including Dr. Gerry Wilson, the Jets team doctor and executive, Billy Robinson, the team’s director of player personnel, Rudy Pilous, the general manager, and Bobby Kromm, one of the head coaches, had all died in the previous few years.

I persisted and Baiz, who I knew better as the father of Marnie, three-time Canadian squash champion—who I insisted my kids, Mia and Alex, both members of the provincial squash team, watch play whenever they could—relented and agreed to help me get started. He wasn’t feeling great, as he was battling non-smoker’s lung cancer, but he invited me to his office at Thompson Dorfman Sweatman to have a chat—if you can call a 90-minute conversation covering the most minute details of Hedberg and Nilsson’s time in Winnipeg a chat.

That was the first of more than 125 interviews I did with former teammates and opponents of Hedberg, Nilsson and Hull, coaches, executives and referees from around the WHA, journalists, current NHL players and even a few of their Winnipeg friends, to find out what made them so influential.

Only one person who I got in touch with refused to talk about them. Curiously, it was Curt Larsson, the Swedish goaltender who joined Hedberg, Nilsson and Lars-Erik Sjoberg in Winnipeg in 1974, who hung up on me.

Baiz never got to see even a draft of The Hot Line: How the Legendary Trio of Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson Transformed Hockey and Led the Winnipeg Jets to Greatness because he passed away the following summer.

So, he’s the first person I’d like to dedicate this book to. (Considering the crucial role he played with Hedberg and Nilsson coming here in the first place and then leaving four years later, he probably deserved his own chapter but I’m sure he would have been embarrassed if I’d suggested it. Instead, I’ve sprinkled stories from and about Baiz throughout the book.)

I’d also like to dedicate this book to Mia and Alex, who have given me countless hours of pride and enjoyment watching them on the field of play, whether it’s squash, tennis, hockey or baseball, and in life as they’ve grown into the two fine young people they’ve become today.

Finally, to my mom, Dawn, my dad, Ron, and my late grandparents, Bill and Jean Kirbyson, who taught me right from wrong, how to tie my own skates and tape a stick, the importance of good sportsmanship, and who took me to all those Jets games, including a bunch of international ones, when I was a kid. I don’t remember any specific plays by the Hot Line, just the excitement level that filled the Winnipeg Arena every time they hopped over the boards.

Thanks also to Ted Foreman for his invaluable Rolodex, Jason Bell, a long-time editor of mine at the Free Press, who edited my raw copy and to Alan MacInnes, the Jets lawyer in the 1970s, and his son, Doug, for proofing the book for factual errors.

Thanks also to Rick Brownlee from the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame for behind-the-scenes access to 1970s artifacts and pictures.

It was my mom who suggested I mail three cherished photographs that I had of Hedberg and Nilsson to the Jets when I asked how I could get their autographs. (I already had Bobby Hull’s autograph from attending a Jets practice with a few of my school buddies. I think it was, um, a field trip. As he signed the 8-by-11 glossy, he asked me why I had ducked when he flipped a puck up at me after I had called out his name. Because you’re Bobby Hull! I told him.)

Every day that week, I would run in the door and ask my mom if I’d gotten any mail. You know, because nine-year-olds get a lot of mail, right? Finally, after what seemed like an eternity—it was probably a week—I arrived home to find a big envelope waiting for me. I peeled it open with the kind of precision usually reserved for open-heart surgery and diffusing bombs and inside, much to my delight, I found all three pictures had been autographed.

Dear Geoff, Best Wishes from the Winnipeg Jets 1978 and Anders Hedberg and Dear Geoff, All the best, Ulf Nilsson.

During much of the writing of this book, I was taken back to being that nine-year-old kid. I hope it can be a sort of time-machine for you, too.

Contents

Dedications and Acknowledgements

Foreword

The Real Greatest Game

Genesis

From Stockholm to Winnipeg

Summer Sizzle

Transition

First Cup

Ups and Downs

Another Nilsson and Kimbel Gerald Clackson

Can We Keep Them?

Second AVCO Cup

The Hot Line Hangover

The Backup Singers

The Ones That Got Away

In The Crease

Zebras

Swedes Redux

Broadway Beckons

Anders

Ulf

Bobby

Oilers’ Blueprint

The Descendants

Legacy

Hall of Fame?

Photographs

Index

Foreword

Bobby Hull, Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg were the most exciting line I ever saw. They were so creative and fundamentally, there weren’t any flaws in their game. They moved the puck with precision, continually got in the open and anticipated where the puck was going to end up.

It was hard for teams at that time to play against them because they hadn’t seen anything like that before.

As a left winger with the Edmonton Oilers in 1976-77, I think I was like everybody else. I was mesmerized by how they played. They whizzed by us. They could all skate and they could all pick up the puck with either hand. They were terrific to watch. They were all great thinkers, too. They were all very cerebral.

The way they could play as a five-man unit, with Lars-Erik Sjoberg leading the back end, is what impressed me the most. Nobody played like that in the NHL. The NHL was still in the dark ages back then. It was really fun to play against them.

The first time I was on the ice against those three guys was October 15 at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton. It wasn’t even close. The Jets beat us 6-1. They could play through all the hooking, holding, interference and dirty play. They just played the game the way it should be played.

Everybody tried to intimidate them but you couldn’t. They weren’t going to be intimidated. That was impressive, too. But it wasn’t just Hedberg, Nilsson and Hull, it was also Willy Lindstrom, Dan Labraaten, Veli-Pekka Ketola, Thommie Bergman, Mats Lindh and Hexi Riihiranta, not to mention Peter Sullivan.

My first game as the Oilers’ player-coach was March 3, 1977, also in Edmonton. We beat the Jets 5-4. (I like to say it’s because we had superior coaching.) I also scored the opening goal that night. But even though we won, I wanted our team to play like the Jets.

The Jets beat us in the last AVCO Cup finals in 1979. Even though Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson weren’t there any more, that whole system had been incorporated by Winnipeg to play like that.

The Oilers didn’t start to play like the Jets until we were in the NHL but they built the blueprint for us. It’s one thing to have a plan to play like that but it’s another to get players who can actually play in that style. When we started to draft players, like Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri and Glenn Anderson, we had four or five years to train them to play like that. It didn’t just happen over night, but it did happen.

When I was with the Minnesota North Stars the year before, I read a lot about what was going on in the WHA. I thought at the time that I’d end up in the league. Minnesota offered me a one-year deal but I wanted a two-year deal so I said ‘no’ to them. I thought I could make more money, have a two-year deal and live in Alberta.

If you look at the way the Pittsburgh Penguins played in winning the Stanley Cup in 2016, they played like the WHA Jets, too. I think you’ll see more teams in the NHL play like that. The New York Rangers are like that, the Detroit Red Wings are like that. Teams are gradually going to change. It’s an exciting game when it’s played like that.

Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson and the WHA Jets made the biggest impression on how the game should be played today. They showed the Edmonton Oilers how to play. We won five Stanley cups with that system.

—Glen Sather, President, New York Rangers, 2016

Anders Hedberg glided into position and sized up his opponent just prior to the opening face-off.

Across from his right wing spot on January 5, 1978, was Valeri Kharlamov, legendary left winger for the Soviet national team and arguably the best player in the world at the time. At centre was Vladimir Petrov and beside him was right winger Boris Mikhailov. Rounding out the Soviet starters were defencemen Alexander Gusev and Valeri Vasiliev.

Together, they formed what was widely considered to be the best five-man unit in hockey. Behind the quintet was Alexander Sidelnikov, the back-up to all-world goalie Vladislav Tretiak, but still the second-best net minder in the Soviet system.

Along with the rest of their teammates, most of whom played for the Central Red Army squad back home, the Russians had so utterly dominated international hockey over the past decade-and-a-half that most of their games were like men playing boys. You know, like peewees. Gold medals from the 1972 and 1976 Olympics had been hung around their necks, along with another seven from the World Championships during the 1970s. They were, quite simply, the best. Ultimately, they would rank among the greatest in the history of the game.

But none of that mattered to Hedberg, the 27-year-old Swede, that night at the Winnipeg Arena. I thought we were going to win, he says. He was, to say the least, in a very distinct minority.

After playing three games against the same Soviet squad in Japan the previous week on the bigger international ice—losing all three by scores of 7-5, 4-2 and 5-1—there were few, if any, indications, the result would be any different that bitterly cold evening in the Manitoba capital.

Sure, not everything was the same. This game was being played on a North American rink, which was 200 feet by 85 feet, instead of the larger international size of 200 feet by 100 feet, providing less space for the smooth-skating Soviets to curl into their vaunted five-man attack. Still, virtually all of the Soviets, especially Kharlamov, could stick handle in a phone booth, so how much did the size of the rink really matter?

Secondly, the Jets had the sell-out crowd of 10,315 at the Winnipeg Arena behind them, and they were far more boisterous than the merely curious Japanese fans. Would that matter to the stone-faced Soviets, who seemed to enjoy obliterating their opponents with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for a trip to the dentist? In Siberia?

Once the puck was dropped, however, it was clear that something was different this time. Hedberg and his fellow members of the Hot Line, centre Ulf Nilsson and left winger, Bobby Hull, owned the puck. They weren’t intimidated by the Soviets, or if they were, they had a funny way of showing it.

Playing their unique blend of European and North American hockey, the trio weaved its way through the ice, hitting the head man and moving into open ice and leaving drop passes for the trailer.

It didn’t take long until they hit pay dirt. Hull, one of the most electrifying players in the history of hockey and without whom, the Winnipeg Jets and the World Hockey Association would almost certainly not exist, opened the scoring on the power play at 2:49 of the first period with a low slapshot that beat Sidelnikov. The assists went to the super rookie Kent Nilsson—no relation to Ulf—and fellow Swede and team captain Lars-Erik Sjoberg. Hull doubled the lead before the period was halfway through on another power play, converting a pass from Lynn Powis.

Ulf Nilsson, who got the second assist on Hull’s second goal, never shot all that much because he knew he’d get grief from his two wingers once they got back to the bench. He’d always joke that there were never enough pucks on the ice to keep them both satisfied. But he took two huge shots in the second period that bulged the twine behind Sidelnikov just 41 seconds apart.

Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov had seen enough and tapped Tretiak, the greatest goaltender to ever come from the Soviet Union or Russia—or anywhere else, in some people’s minds—to replace Sidelnikov with 13:03 left in the second. And the comeback was on.

Boris Alexandrov, described by Reyn Davis of the Winnipeg Free Press as a brilliant hotdog, pulled the Soviets back to 4-2 with a pair of goals that beat Winnipeg goalie Joe Daley before the end of the second. Less than three minutes into the final frame, hard-shooting defenceman Vasily Pervukhin made it 4-3 and the party atmosphere that existed just an hour earlier had been replaced by a sense of dread. It was hard not to think that it was only a matter of time until the Big Red Machine did the inevitable.

Kharlamov very nearly tied it with less than three minutes to go in regulation as he had Daley sprawled on the ice, but defenceman Barry Long stepped in behind his goalie and made the save, preserving the one-goal lead.

Perhaps a sign of his overconfidence or arrogance—or both—Tikhonov did not pull Tretiak in the game’s final moments. He did, however, send the Petrov unit over the boards. Jets coach Larry Hillman decided to fight fire with fire and countered with the Hot Line. The Soviets pressed but in the dying seconds, the Jets knocked the puck out of their zone and defenceman Dave Dunn—a man who had a grand total of 72 assists in five professional seasons—stickhandled into the corner to Tretiak’s left before sending a backhand pass to Hull in the slot, who picked the far corner for the hat trick.

When the final horn sounded, the Jets had made history, becoming the first club team to ever defeat the mighty Soviet national squad.

Tonight, the Winnipeg Jets showed how one club can play differently, Tikhonov said after the game.

Hull and Nilsson each finished with four points, while Hedberg picked up two assists.

I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was, beamed the Golden Jet afterwards. He was quick to praise the work of the Jets defence, which was down to just four skaters—Sjoberg, Dunn, Long and Ted Green, all of whom stepped up after Kim Clackson and Thommie Bergman went down with injuries.

Those four guys played every other shift, busting their guts, moving the puck, blocking shots. The whole defence played superbly, Hull said.

Dunn explained that everybody in the Jets dressing room knew the importance of the game in Winnipeg. The Swedes understood the historic end of playing this top-end Russian team. They knew more about them than we did. We were preparing for an awful big game in our hockey careers, he said.

The Russians looked almost shocked that we were that much of a different team than in Tokyo. We were quicker than they were, we moved the puck quickly and our skating speed was faster. They were totally caught off guard. There was no intimidation factor. We weren’t trying to beat them up or run them out of the rink. It was our skill versus their skill. The Hot Line set a threshold. Everybody had to play to that level, Dunn said.

The Moosomin, Saskatchewan native is particularly proud to have assisted on Hull’s third goal of that game, marking the last hat trick of his illustrious career. I remember him being so excited to get that hat trick. He was absolutely outstanding. He had been shunned in 1972 (for the Summit Series) and this was huge redemption. I don’t think Bobby wanted to shove it down anybody’s throat but when he got to that level, nobody else could get to that level, he said.

The Petrov line, meanwhile, failed to score a single point that night. In fact, the five-man unit that had dominated international play for more than a half-decade was kept on the bench for the last half of the game whenever the Hot Line jumped over the boards, except for the last shift.

They were one of the all-time great super units, says Ulf Nilsson, reflecting back on the game more than 35 years later. It was a great game for us. We had some other good games against international teams, but to beat that unit of five 5-0 was unbelievable. I don’t think they ever experienced anything like that. They didn’t score against us and we scored five against them. It was a little easier to play them on the small rink. It was easier for a lot of our North American players to keep up with the speed of the Russians.

Nilsson continued: The Europeans move the puck much quicker than the North American teams do. When you have the bigger ice surface, it’s a little different game. It was almost impossible to feel that we were going to be able to beat them. That’s why it was so exciting to win that game because we had lost three very close games in Japan, Nilsson says. But then he stopped and added, that game didn’t really mean a lot. It was just a bragging rights game.

Maybe so, but, oh, what bragging rights they were. Still, no member of the Jets let it go to their heads. Jets centre Peter Sullivan thinks the Soviets might have become a little complacent after sweeping the first three games. I think they underestimated us at the start (of the fourth game). They figured they could turn it on at any time. As the game went on, they realized they had a fight on their hands. We kept playing our game, he says, before adding with a laugh, It’s a good thing it was 60 minutes and not 75.

Even though he didn’t have tons of ice time that night, Powis took great pride in setting up Hull for his second goal of the game. That was the big (Soviet) team, they had all the guns on that team. To beat them was pretty amazing. They played the NHL and pretty much swept everybody. They were the Globetrotters of hockey, he says.

Then it’s fitting that Kent Nilsson remembers the Russians toying with the Jets during the first three games in Tokyo. In Winnipeg, Ulf, Bobby and Anders wanted to show how good they were. They were unbelievable. I remember I was minus two and I was happy—just minus two, he says with a laugh.

Kent Nilsson’s linemate, Danny Labraaten, another Swede, says there were no passengers on the Jets that night. Bobby, Ulf and Anders and Sjoberg, those guys had a big, big night. Even if the other guys played fine, they had a big night. If you talk to them, they were really, really proud of that game, he says. I think the whole team played pretty good, that’s for sure. Ulf, Anders and Bobby were the big line, they outplayed Petrov, Kharlmov and Mikhailov. Our line played pretty good, too.

It also helped that the Jets’ Europeans were more experienced on the smaller North American ice surface than their opponents on the Big Red Machine. While the Jets may have hung the loss on Sidelnikov, it wasn’t as if Tretiak had been impenetrable against them. The Jets put five past him in one of the Tokyo games.

We had pretty good confidence at that time, Labraaten says. I didn’t think they could beat us that night. Before the game we were talking and saying, ‘this time we’re going to beat them.’

Despite his confidence that night, Labraaten admits there may have been the occasional late-game prayer whispered on the Jets bench. We were hoping the clock would move faster, he says with a laugh.

While the victory was the first against a team from the USSR for most of the Jets, it was old hat—well, almost—for Sjoberg, the elder statesmen among the Swedes, who had now beaten the Soviet national team three times. And that’s counting an exhibition before the Canada Cup (in 1976) when I don’t think the Russians had their best team together, said Sjoberg, long-time captain of the Swedish national team, who had two assists in the victory, after the game.

That Soviet team, it should be noted, was the best the USSR and Tikanov had to offer. The Red Army squad, which had toured North America during the 1975-76 season, playing against the Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins, was a half-step below the national team, which was able to bolster its lineup with select players from Moscow Dynamo and other teams in the Soviet league.

Ask Winnipeggers about that January, 1978 game and about 500,000 hockey fans will claim to have a ticket stub lying around in an old shoebox somewhere. The sad truth is that one of the greatest games in hockey history was witnessed only by those in the building and the locals who tuned in to CKND-TV’s broadcast that night. Hockey Night in Canada, the standard bearer of broadcasting excellence for the national game, decided against showing the Jets and the Soviet national team in favour of the sad-sack St. Louis Blues and the sixth-place team in the Russian league, Spartak. It’s safe to say shoeboxes in Missouri are not full of memorabilia from that contest, a 3-1 victory by Spartak.

Dunn wasn’t surprised that Hockey Night in Canada opted not to show the game across the country. That’s the hangover of the WHA-NHL relationship. The CBC was in the NHL’s back pocket. They weren’t going to do anything to promote the other league, he says.

Fifty-three weeks earlier, HNIC