Gump faced all challenges

In the annals of great sports nicknames, Lorne John Worsley stood right alongside Lawrence Peter Berra. The baseball catcher was known to one and all as “Yogi,” the hockey goalkeeper as “Gump.” And there were other similarities, too.

Like Berra, Worsley had a lovable public image. Short and squat at 5-foot-7 and 180 well-padded pounds, he bore no resemblance to your average pro athlete. As he once told his more physically imposing teammates, “I’ve played 20 years in [the NHL] with a beer belly — let’s see how you guys do.”

That’s another supposed link between Berra and Worsley: Both seemed to have a droll sense of humor that produced memorable one-liners. But Yogi’s often were manufactured by others, while Gump’s emitted straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Worsley, who died Jan. 27 in Beloeil, Quebec, following a heart attack at age 77, played 21 tough seasons in the NHL (1952-1972). Before achieving respectability and championships with the Montreal Canadiens, he spent more than a decade with mostly ghastly New York Rangers teams that provided ample material for jokes if not victories.

Asked once which of the Original Six NHL clubs gave him the most trouble, Gump replied unhesitatingly, “the New York Rangers.” And when he opened a restaurant in Montreal after his retirement from the ice, he dubbed its chicken salad “the Rangers Special.”

Worsley declined to wear a mask for most of his career, which naturally resulted in his facial features being rearranged by a myriad of misplaced pucks. And he left teeth scattered all over assorted rinks.

Why live so dangerously?

“My face is my mask,” he explained. “If goalies were afraid of being hurt, they wouldn’t be out there at all.”

That answer probably was a little too serious for Gump, so he added, “It wouldn’t have been fair not to give the fans a chance to see my beautiful face.”

Scars and all.

For 21 long seasons, hockey hard hitters like Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Bobby Hull took aim — intentionally or otherwise — at Gump’s noggin. He finally tried a mask for the final six games of his final season as he neared his 43rd birthday.

“I didn’t like it,” he said of the belated and brief experiment. “It was too hot, and I couldn’t see the puck beneath my legs.”

Hull, then a megastar for the Chicago Blackhawks, once slugged a shot that ricocheted off Worsley’s face and landed in the second tier of seats at old Chicago Stadium. Gump spent the night in the hospital, but it was no big deal.

Said Howe, a Hall of Famer for the Detroit Red Wings during most of his own long career: “I remember if you shot high on him, he’d get way out the net [to stop it]. Of course everything was high on Gumper.”

Worsley got his singular nickname as a child because of a perceived resemblance to the comic strip character Andy Gump. Somehow, though, it seemed a perfect fit for a guy who looked as if he belonged in the cheap seats rather than the cage.

Story Continues →