DAVE STUBBS, The Gazette
Published: Thursday, May 22A dozen years in hockey's minor professional leagues did little to pad Les Binkley's bank account. But they did provide the man who'd become the Pittsburgh Penguins' first No. 1 goaltender with more than a few priceless memories.
None would be better than facing future motorcycle stuntman Evel Knievel in a bizarre Toronto Toros intermission penalty-shot contest in the early 1970s, a loopy gimmick concocted by John Bassett, owner of the World Hockey Association franchise.
Robert Craig (pre-Evel) Knievel, who died last November, was a decent hockey player in his youth. He even took part in a few exhibition games with the Eastern League's Charlotte Clippers in the late 1950s, a few seasons after Binkley had starred for the team.
Bassett cooked up the scheme of having Knievel take four penalty shots on Toros goalie Gilles Gratton between periods of a game, promising the daredevil $5,000 for each goal. ABC's Wide World of Sports dispatched mustard-blazered Frank Gifford north to cover the event.
Knievel practised a few times with the Toros that week, and Binkley, who shared goaltending duties with Jim Shaw and Gratton, remembers the skating Knievel as "long-haired and in rough shape."
Gratton was nowhere to be found when the contest started, so Binkley got the call.
"So (Knievel) comes in on me on the first one, tries to deke and loses the puck. But it went in," he said. "I made two saves and earned two grand, and he scored on another, on a normal shot. I took the team out for supper and drinks."
In the mid-1960s, with the American league's Cleveland Barons, Binkley had become fast friends with future Canadien John Ferguson.
"Fergy and I would hang around together, and we were the only two on the rink after practice," Binkley said. "He used to practise shooting and deking, and the quickness of dropping his gloves.
"He'd tell me: 'That's the secret of fighting - hit him with one or two right off the bat, stun him, then you pound him.' "
Their friendship brought them together in the NHL, Binkley following Fergy as a goalie coach and scout first to the New York Rangers, then a dozen years with the Winnipeg Jets.
That life was a little more sedate than Binkley's days with the Eastern league's Charlotte Clippers, where he recalls John Muckler and John Brophy as his main defencemen.
"You should have seen Brophy," Binkley said of the roughneck who was the template for Paul Newman's Reg Dunlop, the deranged playing-coach in the film classic Slap Shot.
"He was completely nuts, and I was happy he was nuts on my team. A guy would go around him only once. Then clunk, over the head. Or under the chin. Ever seen a guy lifted up almost like he's been pitchforked? That was Brophy."
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