Blackhawks 50-Goal Scorer Al Secord Boxed His Way Into the NHL

Al Secord caught the Boston Bruins' attention and reached the NHL by playing tough. Then once he arrived in Chicago, the eventual American Airlines captain's career took off as a high scorer.

Secord reached 44, then 54 goals. But his calling card was, first and foremost, physical play.

"I knew that if Al were to make it, he had to play aggressively," Secord's father, also named Al, told me in a phone interview in the 1980s. "In one of his first games, I remember Al hit some kid and hurt him. He was really upset and said he wasn't doing to body check any more.

"Well a few games later someone really racked up Alan. After that he learned it was better to give than receive."

Secord, from Espanola, Ontario, was drafted in the first round (16th overall) by Boston in 1978 and muscled his way into the NHL with the Bruins. The Blackhawks acquired him from Boston for defenseman Mike O’Connell in December 1980.

Secord had worked on his fitness since he was a kid, and was one of the strongest, most chiseled players of his era. He also trained as a boxer. A scheduled bout was cancelled by Canadian amateur athletic officials who supposedly feared what Secord might do to his opponent.

“I wasn’t the most skilled guy earlier in my career and I knew what my strengths were,” Secord once said. “They were looking for physical players. That kept me in the game for years then developed in scoring some some goals, getting some assists and contributing in other ways.”

And score he did. In his first full season as a Blackhawk, 1981-82, Secord scored 44 goals and added 31 assists. He also had 303 penalty minutes to become the only player in NHL history to top 40 goals and 300 penalty minutes in a season.

Secord upped his training even more the following summer at a hockey camp, adding plyometrics and other then-new elements to improve core strength and explosiveness. It paid off. 

In 1982-83, Secord skated on a line with Hall-Of Fame center Denis Savard and right winger/Calder Trophy winner Steve Larmer and his offensive number climbed to 54 goals and 86 points. He led the NHL with 20 power-play goals.

He also trimmed his fighting somewhat and reduced his penalty minutes to 180.

Secord retired from the NHL in 1990 after a second stint with the Blackhawks. He returned for a Chicago encore with the IHL Wolves in from 1994 to 1996.

An aviation enthusiast since he was a kid, Secord went on to become a commercial pilot at age 40. He moved up to the left-side captain’s seat on American’s Airlines mainline jets. See this great video from American. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMhSYXtuV4Q

The following story, from The Hockey News in March 1982, covers Secord's boxing and rise as an NHLer. The author, Neil Milbert, is a former longtime Chicago Tribune sports writer.

We pulled it from THN Archive, an exclusive vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 stories for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com

“Chicago’s Secord A Heavyweight As Goal-Scorer”

By Neil Milbert, The Hockey News, March 26, 1982.

In the boxing vernacular, they’d call Al Secord, the hockey player, “a bad dude.”

This doesn’t mean either “bad”, as in below standard, or “bad”, in the sense of being evil and malicious.

It simply means: “Don’t try to tread on this guy or you’ll be in deep trouble.”

And now, just turned 24 and in his fourth season in the National Hockey League, Al Secord has become really “bad”. Unexpectedly, the rough-and-tumble left wing of the Chicago Black Hawks has turned into a remarkable goal-scorer.

No player in the NHL who plays an ultra-physical game, plays it the way Secord does.

Along with 43 goals he had 267 penalty-minutes as this went to press.

Only one Black Hawk ever has scored more goals in a single season. Bobby Hull had 43 or more eight times during his 14 years in Chicago.

Secord is no threat to Hull’s Chicago career high of 58 goals. But, figuratively speaking, he is withing striking distance of Keith Magnuson’s Hawk record of 291 penalty minutes in a season which also was a NHL record until Dave Schultz came along like the bull in the china shop.

To put into perspective the kind of season Secord is having, let’s contrast his goal-scoring feats with those of the three NHL players who have spent more time in the penalty-box this season.

At presstime, Pittsburgh’s Paul Baxter had been incarcerated for 341 minutes and had only eight goals, Penguin teammate Pat Price had done time for 304 minutes and had just six goals, and Philadelphia’s Glen Cochrane had 288 penalty minutes and five goals.

Now, let’s check out the list of 12 players with 40 or more goals and see how much their scoring has been inhibited by their extracurricular activities on ice.

Again, Secord is in a class by himself. Of the other members of the 40-goal club, Toronto’s Rick Vaive (43 goals) is a distant second in penalty minutes with 129.

“I want to be thought of as a hockey player, not a fighter,” says Secord, whose prior highs were 32 goals and 343 penalty-minutes for the St. Catharines Fincups when they were in the Ontario Hockey League in 1976-77.

“Fighting takes a lot out of you. It I didn’t fight, I probably would have more goals. It’s not just the time you spend in the penalty-box; it’s also the physical abuse your body takes. But my game has to be physical.

“I can’t forget what got me here. You’ve got to be realistic; you can’t live in fantasyland.

“I’ll never score as many goals as Wayne Gretzky. He’s totally opposite of what I am. I go up and down the wing and work in front of the net and step into the holes and yell for passes.

“Gretzky usually has the puck; he’s the guy they’ve got to make sure has the puck.

“I don’t have his gifts. I’m not the type of guy it comes easily to.”

But Secord has a hearty appetite for hard work and harbors no qualms about wading in when the work gets dirty.

He was considered a poor skater as a Junior so he enrolled in a power-skating course and applied himself diligently prior to making his NHL debut with Boston in the fall of 1978. He decided if he was going to fight, he’d do it right, so he took boxing lessons.

“Boxing teaches you how to control your head, not to get excited, and not to do something stupid,” says the well-built 6-1, 210-pounder, who adheres religiously to his personal workout schedule in the weight-room. “It gave me discipline.”

Secord also engages in self-analysis.

“It’s bad to talk to guys you go up against,” he says. “You don’t want to like them. Then, you couldn’t do what you have to do.

“Because I’m single I have to watch myself. Earlier in the season I found I was tiring fast. 1 stopped and thought about it and discovered what was wrong; I’d stopped eating properly. I’d gotten lazy in preparing my meals and so I’d skip a salad and vegetables. Three or four days after going back to the right way of eating I felt great again.

“Before this season began I decided to go game by game and just concentrate on forgetting about everything else and giving it everything I had for that particular game.

“In looking at it, I saw that in other years I’d play several good games in a row and then there would be a lull and before I knew it I’d be in a slump.

“But at the start of this season I’d have considered it a really good year if I’d have gotten 30 goals. I didn’t envision this.

“I think what has meant the most personally was being selected to play in the All Star Game and going to Washington to meet the President. I never thought I’d be there.”

Secord’s self-esteem had taken a beating early in the 1980-81 season when the Bruins, who’d made him their No. I choice (16th overall) in the 1978 amateur draft, shipped him out to Springfield of the American League.

Then came the Dec. 18 trade in which he went to Chicago for Mike O’Connell, a talented but underrated defenseman.

“Being traded bothered me for a long time,” admits Secord. “But the way my career started going after I came to Chicago has helped me a lot in forgetting.

“It happens to everybody; you just have to readjust.

“The main thing that has benefited me in Chicago is the confidence the people here had in me by giving me a regular job right from the start.

“Somebody can tell you about what you should do in a given situation, but until it’s something involving you in a game it doesn’t really stick.”

The confidence that Keith Magnuson (the Hawks’ coach until his resignation last month) had in Secord manifested itself at training camp last fall. Secord found himself on the No. 1 line with center Denis Savard and right wing Timmy Higgins.

After scoring 13 goals (all for Chicago) in 59 games last season, Secord went on an early season tear, getting 20 in 20 games.

His productivity subsequently has declined but he has remained one of the most consistent players on a team that is the epitome of inconsistency.

During the second half of the season, Secord also has played musical lines, skating first on the line centered by Tom Lysiak and now with center Terry Ruskowski and right wing Grant Mulvey.

“Whichever line I’ve had him with he seems to have gotten it going,” says Bob Pulford, the Hawks’ general manager and now coach through the end of the season.

“I think regardless of who he plays with, he’s now capable of getting 35-40 goals every season. He can skate, he has a good shot, he handles the puck well enough, and on defense he plays his position.

“There’s also the added ingredient that he’s so tough. Some people are going to give him a little room and other times he’s going to go in there and make room for himself.

“He’s always going to get penalties because that’s the way he plays.”

However, Secord admits that his appetite for combat wanes considerably when he meets the Bruins and he says that he’d prefer to let the hockey puck get his message across during these close encounters with his old pals.

“It’s hard,” he confides. “I still have a lot of good friends there. But I’m proud of the way 1 played against them this year. In the first game [an 8-5 Boston victory] I had two assists, the next time I had the first goal and we came from behind and won [4-3] in Boston Garden; and then I got two goals and we won again [5-1 on March 7].”

After the most recent game, Boston coach Gerry Cheevers pondered the difference a year has made in the young man from Espanola, Ont.

“Al has turned into an opportunist,” said Cheevers. “He works very hard. It’s rewarding to see a guy who has 40 goals who works as hard as he does.

“I’m happy we got Mike O’Connell because he has helped our team. But I’m also happy for Al that things are working out the way they are. He has made himself into a fine hockey player.”

Secord plays ultra-rough but he takes no cheap-shots and this season he is making as much of an impact on the scoreboard as he does when he makes contact with an opponent along the boards in pursuit of the puck. ■