ORR, Robert Gordon ("Bobby")

(b. 20 March 1948 in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada), hockey player whose offensive skills led the Boston Bruins to two Stanley Cup championships in 1970 and 1972, in the process altering the role of the defenseman and revolutionizing professional hockey.

Orr was the third child born to Doug Orr, an explosives packer, and Arva Orr. He started skating at the age of four when a family friend bought him a pair of skates. They were too large, but his father filled the toes with paper to make them fit. While still in kindergarten Orr began playing in the Parry Sound Minor Squirt Hockey League, which he dominated by the time he was nine years old. Although shorter and thinner than many of the older boys against whom he competed, Orr exhibited a singular resolve to improve his strength, conditioning, and skill, practicing alone every day after school until dark. His work ethic, combined with his natural ability, gave Orr a critical advantage over his rivals. The Boston Bruins scouts discovered Orr in 1960 when he was playing midget hockey for the Parry Sound Bantam All-Stars. When he was thirteen he signed a junior amateur contract with Boston, agreeing to play for the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey Association. He never graduated from high school.

Orr played thirty-four games for the Generals in 1962, scoring twenty-one points on six goals and fifteen assists. Against older, more experienced, and more physically mature players (Orr weighed only 125 pounds when he joined the team), he still managed to control the pace and action of the game every time he skated onto the ice. During his three years with Oshawa, Orr averaged nearly thirty-four goals per season—excellent totals for a forward, extraordinary for a defenseman. In 1966 Bruins officials thought Orr ready to make his NHL debut. They signed him to a two-year, $50,000 contract with a $25,000 signing bonus, at the time the largest sum a rookie had ever commanded. It was the best investment in the history of the franchise.

Contrary to prevailing assumptions, Orr did not revolutionize hockey during his rookie season in which he tallied thirteen goals and twenty-eight assists in sixty-one games. He could not even propel the Bruins into the playoffs; the team finished in last place for the sixth time in seven seasons. Yet as the Rookie of the Year and a Second-Team All-Star, Orr's exploits hinted at future glory. Among defensemen, only Pierre Pilote of the Chicago Blackhawks (six goals, forty-six assists) had scored more points than Orr. Bruins coach Harry Sinden pronounced Orr "a star from the moment they played the National Anthem in his first NHL game." No one refuted Sinden's judgment.

Regrettably, Orr's rookie season was not auspicious in all respects. Toward the end of the campaign he sustained the first in a series of knee injuries that ultimately shortened his career. Rehabilitation was long, slow, and painful, limiting Orr to only forty-six of seventy-four regular season games in 1967–1968. He nonetheless earned a berth as a First-Team All-Star, won the Norris Trophy, and led the Bruins to the playoffs for the first time since 1959. The following season Orr scored sixty-four points (twenty-one goals, forty-three assists) in sixty-seven games, establishing a new NHL record for scoring by a defensemen.

Orr nearly doubled his output in the 1969–1970 season, netting 33 goals and registering 87 assists for an incredible 120 points. He became the first defenseman and only the fourth player in NHL history, along with Phil Esposito, Gordie Howe, and Bobby Hull, to accumulate 100 points in a season. But Orr was only beginning. Between 1969 and 1975 he averaged more than 30 goals and 122 points, becoming the only defenseman ever to lead the NHL in scoring, a feat he accomplished in 1970 and again in 1975.

Statistically, Orr's finest season was 1970–1971 when, finishing second to Esposito in the scoring race, he amassed 139 points on 37 goals and 102 assists. No defenseman has ever exceeded Orr's point total, and only two other players, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, have recorded more than 100 assists in a single season. Orr's incomparable displays of offensive prowess struck fear into the hearts of Bruins opponents. "Well, the first thing [I did] when I saw Orr coming down on me," confessed Hall of Fame goalie Johnny Bower of the Toronto Maple Leafs, "was to say a little prayer, if I had time."

Orr's offensive wizardry never compromised his defensive play. During the years in which he was rewriting the record books and transforming the nature of hockey, Orr averaged 101 penalty minutes per season and earned accolades for his rugged performance in the defensive zone. He excelled at intercepting passes, blocking shots, and stripping onrushing players of the puck. At times he could be a one-man penalty-killing unit by taking control of the puck and refusing to surrender it. Nor was Orr timid about dropping the gloves, especially early in his career. As a rookie, for instance, he twice felled veteran scrapper Ted Harris of the Montreal Canadiens in the same fight. Harry Sinden insisted that this unique combination of skill and toughness made Orr the best player in the history of the NHL. "Howe could do everything," Sinden said, "but not at top speed. Hull went at top speed but couldn't do everything. The physical aspect was absent from Gretzky's game. Orr would do everything, and do it at top speed. He's the perfect hockey player."

Orr may have saved his best for last. In the 1974–1975 season he coaxed his fragile, aching knees onto the ice for all eighty regular-season games, finishing with forty-six goals and eighty-nine assists. It was, however, the beginning of the end. Five knee operations had begun to take their toll. Orr played in only thirty-six more NHL games, ten for Boston and twenty-six over three seasons for the Chicago Blackhawks, with whom he signed a five-year, $3-million contract on 24 June 1976. Orr might never have left the Bruins had his agent Alan Eagleson informed him that club officials were offering part ownership of the franchise as an incentive to remain in Boston.

Determined to honor his contract with the Blackhawks, Orr underwent surgery for the sixth time on 19 April 1977 in an effort to repair his damaged knees. He missed the entire 1977–1978 season attempting to recuperate, but to no avail. Orr played only six more games for the Hawks before retiring. "My knees can't handle playing any more," he explained to reporters at a tearful news conference on 8 November 1978. He was thirty years old.

Orr won the Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the National Hockey League (NHL) for eight consecutive years from 1968 to 1975. During that remarkable period he also twice won the Art Ross Trophy as the leading scorer in the NHL (1970 and 1975), and was runner-up to teammate Phil Esposito three times (1971, 1972, and 1974). After winning the Calder Memorial Trophy as Rookie of the Year in 1967, Orr took home the Hart Memorial Trophy for most valuable player (MVP) during the regular season for three straight years (1970—1972). He also won the Conn Smythe Trophy for MVP in the 1970 and 1972 playoffs, when he led the Boston Bruins to Stanley Cup championships after a drought of nearly three decades.

Orr finished his career with 270 goals, 645 assists, and 915 points in only 657 games. Later generations of players have emulated his style, but few have matched the rare blend of finesse, courage, toughness, and skill that he displayed. To magnify his already legendary fame, Orr scored what is arguably the most celebrated goal in NHL history. Forty seconds into overtime in game four of the 1970 Stanley Cup Finals, Orr took a centering pass from Derek Sanderson and fired the puck by St. Louis Blues goaltender Glenn Hall. Attempting to prevent the goal, Blues defense-man Noel Picard hooked Orr's skate and sent him sprawling headlong to the ice. The photograph of Orr in flight, arms outstretched, his stick raised in triumph, has become for many the defining image of the modern NHL.

Off the ice Orr's impact was equally great. Although his earnings were modest by contemporary standards, he was the first NHL player to employ an agent to represent him during contract negotiations, thus initiating the rise in salaries that has benefited so many current players.

In his prime Orr stood six feet tall and weighed approximately 197 pounds. With his blond hair, winning smile, and youthful appearance, he was the epitome of the boy next door. Invariably self-effacing, humble, polite, and accommodating with both fans and the media, Orr's popularity and appeal have not diminished in the years since his retirement. Such companies as General Motors, Nabisco, Mastercard, Nynex, Baybank, Callnet Software, and Doubletree Suite Hotels have courted Orr as a spokesperson, desiring to associate their products and services with his wholesome image. Orr also continues to promote the NHL and assist the younger generation of players as a sports agent for Woolf Associates in Boston.

When Orr announced that he was retiring, the Board of Governors of the Hockey Hall of Fame suspended the customary waiting period of three years and made him eligible for immediate induction. Inducted in 1979, Orr became at thirty-one the youngest player ever elected. It was a fitting tribute to the man who, as former teammate Phil Esposito said, changed "the face of hockey all by himself."

Orr's book, Bobby Orr: My Game (1974), written with Mark Mulvoy, details his early life and career. For more information, see Clark Booth, The Boston Bruins: Celebrating 75 Years (1998); Stan Fischler, "Franchise Histories: The Boston Bruins," in Dan Diamond et al., Total Hockey: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League (1998); Stan Fischler, The Greatest Players and Moments of the Boston Bruins (1999); Craig MacInnis, ed., Remembering Bobby Orr: A Celebration (1999); and Brian McFarlane, The Bruins (1999).

Mark G. Malvasi