Bobby Orr

Hockey Player

• Born: March 20, 1948
• Place of Birth: Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada

SPORT: Ice hockey

Early Life

Robert Gordon Orr was born on March 20, 1948, in the small fishing and vacation community of Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada, the third of five children.

Bobby’s father, Doug Orr, had been an outstanding junior hockey player who many felt could have become a professional. The expense of raising a family, however, did not allow his father to keep playing competitive hockey.

Doug Orr built a small ice rink in the family’s backyard, and Orr was on skates soon after he learned to walk. By the time he was four years old, he was skating on the frozen Parry Sound. He began playing hockey at the age of five in the minor squirt division and advanced through the various leagues of amateur boys’ hockey. When Orr was twelve, he was accidentally discovered by two professional scouts who had come to watch two players on a different team. On the night the scouts arrived, the team was playing Orr’s Parry Sound team. The scouts were soon watching Orr play more than the boys they had come to scout.

The Road to Excellence

The two scouts were from the Boston Bruins organization, and the Bruins eventually paid $900 to the Parry Sound team for the rights to Bobby Orr. Before Orr was sixteen, he was assigned by the Bruins to play with the Oshawa Generals, a Junior A team, the highest level in amateur Canadian hockey. Oshawa was 140 miles from Parry Sound, and Bobby received sixty dollars a week to cover his costs.

The incredible thing about Orr’s play with the Generals was that he was competing with eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds and outskating and outshooting them. At this time, Orr’s coach, Bucko McDonald, persuaded him to switch from forward to defense because good defenders were not so plentiful.

At seventeen, Orr was considered Canada’s best amateur hockey player. He briefly considered playing for the Canadian Olympic team, but he eventually got a three-year contract to play with the Boston Bruins; he joined the club when he was eighteen.

The Emerging Champion

It did not take Orr long to adjust to the National Hockey League (NHL). Harry Sinden, Orr’s coach in Boston, said he wished he could take credit for developing Orr’s talent, but that Orr had it by the time the national anthem was played at his first NHL game.

Orr was more modest about his talent. He told a story of a game against the New York Rangers early in his career. He was skating up the ice with the puck, bearing down on two defensive players. He heard the voice of a player behind him call for the puck, saying he had a clear shot. Orr dropped the puck, but that player turned out to be a Ranger, who turned around and went back down the ice to score an easy goal.

Nevertheless, Orr’s play in his rookie season won him the Calder Memorial Trophy for rookie of the year. In the years that followed, he became the league’s premier defenseman and established a virtual monopoly on the Norris Memorial Trophy, given to the best defenseman each year. He won the award for eight years straight, from 1968 to 1975.

Orr was a core member of the Bruins, which won the Stanley Cup twice during Orr’s ten seasons with the team. In the 1970 Stanley Cup series, Boston was leading the St. Louis Blues 3–0 in games in the best-of-seven series. The fourth game was tied at 3–3 when the buzzer sounded, and the game went into overtime. Only forty seconds into the sudden death period, Orr took a pass and snapped the puck past St. Louis goalie Glenn Hall to win Boston’s first Stanley Cup since 1941.

Continuing the Story

Even though he was a defenseman, Orr was known for his offensive style. Most defensemen of the time were big, lumbering men who did not handle the puck well. Orr, at about 6 feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds, was quick and agile. He changed the game for defensemen. He was the first defenseman to accomplish a number of milestones: the first to score more than one hundred points in a single season, the first to score more than thirty goals in a season, and the first to lead the league in scoring for a season, which he did twice. Orr won the NHL’s Most Valuable Player award three times and played in nine all-star games.

Orr skated barefoot, with his skates laced so loosely they were practically falling off his feet. However, he maneuvered his way around the ice so well that he often amazed his coaches and teammates.

Orr’s spectacular career was cut short by knee injuries. He repeatedly had surgery to repair his knees. Eventually, the Bruins felt that Orr would not hold up much longer. Unhappy with the treatment he received after another knee injury and having only played in ten games in the 1975–76 season, Orr left the Bruins and signed with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Orr played one season at Chicago, but his knees still plagued him. He was forced to sit out the entire 1977–78 season. He tried to come back the following year but played only six games before retiring. Even after his retirement, Orr remained one of New England’s most famous sports figures. He became a frequent guest at youth hockey camps and a vocal opponent of violence in youth sports.

Orr married Margaret "Peggy" Wood in September 1973. They had two sons, Darren and Brent.

Through the twenty-first century, Orr remained relevant in the hockey world through his work with the Orr Hockey Group, which provided player representation for NHL players. The agency scouted youth hockey players and helped established professional players navigate their careers as sports and public figures. Orr also participated in public speaking engagements and promoted charity through the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame in Ontario, Canada. 

Summary

Although Bobby Orr was a fierce competitor on the ice—Bobby Hull, who played for the Chicago Blackhawks, Winnipeg Jets, and Hartford Whalers, once said that getting checked by Orr was like getting hit by a pickup truck—off the ice, Orr avoided the limelight and was embarrassed by the attention he received. During his career, Orr visited children at hospitals in Boston without telling anyone. Some consider him to be the greatest hockey player ever, and he was almost certainly the best defenseman ever. However, he broke the normal bounds of defensive play and became a scoring champion. He played in 657 NHL games throughout his career, scoring 270 goals and making 645 assists for 915 points. When he retired, he held NHL records for goals, assists, and points as a defenseman. The NHL waived the three-year retirement rule to induct Orr into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1979, making him the youngest player to be awarded the honor. Also in 1979, the Bruins retired Orr's jersey number (4). In the 1990s and 2000s, Orr represented NHL players as a certified agent, establishing Orr Hockey Group in 2002. Orr published an autobiography titled Orr: My Story in 2013.

Bibliography

“About.” Bobby Orr Hall of Fame, bobbyorrhalloffame.com/about. Accessed 9 June 2024.

Brunt, Stephen. Searching for Bobby Orr. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007.

MacInnis, Craig. Remembering Bobby Orr. Vancouver: Raincoast, 2003.

Mondal, Arnab. “When NHL Legend Bobby Orr Dove Deep into his Memories as a Pro Hockey Player in his Memoir Orr: My Story.” Sportskeeda, 26 Feb. 2023, www.sportskeeda.com/us/nhl/when-nhl-legend-bobby-orr-dove-deep-memories-pro-hockey-player-memoir-orr-my-story. Accessed 9 June 2024.

Orr, Bobby. Orr: My Story. New York: Putnam's Sons, 2013.

Podnieks, Andrew. The Goal: Bobby Orr and the Most Famous Goal in Stanley Cup History. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2003.

Price, S.L. “Bobby Orr: Elusive, Still Incomparable.” Sports Illustrated Vault, 2 Mar. 2009, vault.si.com/vault/2009/03/02/the-ever-elusive-always-inscrutable-and-still-incomparable-bobby-orr. Accessed 9 June 2024.

Roberts, Randy. The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005.