Tom Henshaw's story from Vol. 40, Issue 21 of The Hockey News on Feb. 20, 1987, focusing on longtime Bruins enforcer Terry O'Reilly's ascension to head coach.
His old coach, Fred Creighton, said it first during the winter of 1979-80.
“I see a player like Terry O’Reilly going out there and playing to the utmost of his ability night after night,” he said. “It must be awfully difficult to sit in that dressing room and not play really hard with Terry O’Reilly around.”
Seven years later, Tom Johnson was saying it again.
“I’ve got to think,” the Bruins’ assistant general manager said, “that any player inclined to take it easy would want to think twice, knowing he’s got to face Terry O’Reilly when he skates back to the bench. That’s a pretty stemlooking kisser.”
The difference is that Terry O’Reilly is now coach of the Bruins and, with the aid of tactical assistant John Cunniff, and playing assistant Mike Milbury, has led them from the doldrums to their familiar place among National Hockey League contenders.
O’Reilly, who retired after the 1984-85 season, replaced Butch Goring as coach on Nov. 6, with the Bruins stumbling along in fourth place at 5-7-1, only a point out of the Adams Division cellar. Back-to-back 7-1 and 8-3 losses to Buffalo sealed Goring’s fate.
It took 11 games (4-4-3) to get a firm hand on the tiller, but the Bruins then ran off seven straight victories, their longest winning streak in four years, to tie the Montreal Canadiens for the division lead.
O’Reilly’s Bruins entered the Rendez-vous break as one of the hottest teams in the NHL. They had gone 7-3 in their previous 10 outings. Under O’Reilly’s tutelage, they had gone 2315-4; overall, the team’s 28-22-5 record was good for second place in the tight Adams Division—tied with Montreal (61 points) but the Bruins had three games in hand on the Habs. The Bruins were only three points behind first-place Hartford and had a game in hand over the Whalers.
“Right now,” said Steve Kasper, “they’ve got everyone motivated. Practices are fun.
“It’s tough to let a guy like Terry down. Everyone knows how hard he played. He coaches the same way. He sweats it out with you from beginning to end. He’s a great motivator. John’s a great tactician. They make a great team. They got our team going in the right direction.”
By making hockey fun again, O’Reilly helped the Bruins pull together as a unit. No longer were veterans made to feel like old war horses who had served their purpose.
“At the start of the year,” said all-star defenseman Raymond Bourque, “the atmosphere wasn’t that good. Terry has brought a lot of the fun back into it. He’s given some of the older guys (especially Kasper and center Ken Linse-man) their roles back. A lot of guys who didn’t before, feel important again.
“As a team, we really didn’t get off to a good start. It wasn’t only me. I just kind of felt there wasn’t any intensity. There wasn’t any excitement. Now, we’re really excited. Now we really believe in ourselves.
How did this transformation take place?
“The first thing was changing the attitude,” said Milbury. “The second was defining roles and responsibility. Everyone’s role is more clearly defined. Everyone knows his responsibilities and, most importantly, we’re executing the plays. No matter what is explained, it takes application. We’re getting that.”
O’Reilly said self-confidence was the key.
“Our whole game has tightened up,” he said. “We’re realizing how well we can play. It’s a contagious thing. When a team starts playing well each individual doesn’t want to be the one who makes a mistake. Each good performance feeds off another.”
But it always goes back to O’Reilly, who was reluctant to coach in the first place. Once he accepted the job, however, he jumped into it with all of the zeal he demonstrated on the ice.
If there was a turning point in the Bruins’ season under O’Reilly, it was Nov. 28 in Buffalo, when the Bruins scored two late goals to turn a rout into a respectable-looking 4-3 loss. They were proud of themselves for it, until O’Reilly reached the dressing room.
“He said, ‘Get those smiles off your faces right now,’” recalled fourth-line winger Jay Miller, “‘because you guys half-assed it out there tonight—and that’s not the way this game is supposed to be played, not if you’re wearing a Boston uniform.’
“No one said a word. You could see he was pretty emotional. He talked about all of the years he wore that uniform, and then he said, ‘We’ve got to re-establish the fact that we’re the Boston Bruins and nobody’s going to push us around.’”
There had been an uneasy feeling around Boston Garden in the past few years that the Bruins could indeed be pushed around. Keith Crowder, a six-year veteran, came as close as a hockey player can to admitting it last spring.
‘IT FEELS LIKE THE LATE ‘70S AND EARLY ‘80S ARE BACK. WHATEVER IT WAS WE HAD BACK THEN SLIPPED AWAY…I THINK THAT FEELING’S BACK.’—MIDDLETON
“I don’t think you can put us in the same class we were in before I got here, the Big Bad Bruins of the past,” he said. “Hockey’s changed, we tried to change with it, I guess. Teams used to be petrified to come into the Garden. But not anymore.”
Under O’Reilly, who holds the Bruin team record for penalty minutes with 2,095, the Bruins are tougher.
“He’s never telling us to go out there and brawl,” said Miller, who has filled the team’s enforcer role once held by O’Reilly himself. “He’s not doing that at all. He’s telling us to throw hard bodychecks, take the man, and win your one-on-ones on the ice. If something happens, fine.”
O’Reilly explained his own hockey philosophy to reporters, after the Nov. 20 brawl with Montreal that spilled into the Boston Garden corridor.
“You look the guy in the eye and say, ‘If you want to go, I want to win this game more than you—and I’m prepared physically to overpower you. You wanna go?’ You look at him and you do it.”
There are other changes in O’Reilly’s Bruins, many of them throwbacks to the days of Don Cherry and the early coaching days of Gerry Cheevers, when the team was riding high.
The forwards are more likely to skate in lanes rather than zones. There’s more dumping of the puck, and less finesse, as the team skates into the opposition’s end. Boston goalies face fewer two-on-ones and three-on-twos. It adds up to more discipline and fewer mistakes.
“It’s hard to put into words,” said Rick Middleton, whose 11 years in black and gold make him the Bruin with the greatest longevity. “It feels like the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s are back. Whatever it was we had back then slipped away. That’s why I’m excited now. I think that feeling’s back.”
Opponents have been noticing, too.
“I watched O’Reilly on their bench,” said Stan Smyl of the Vancouver Canucks, “and I couldn’t help thinking, ‘He’s got them playing the way he used to play.’ That’s not good news for teams coming to Boston.” ■