"Pie Face"

The name didn’t register when I read the four-line obit in the Tribune yesterday for ex-NHL player Johnny McKenzie, but then the Sun-Times added “rough-and-tumble” to describe McKenzie, and I remembered.  That was Johnny “Pie Face” McKenzie, holy terror on the ice.

McKenzie had two stints early on in his career with the Black Hawks, the second one coinciding with my hockey infatuation of the mid-1960s.  Then, he moved on to the Rangers, and from there to Boston, where he won two Stanley Cups with the Bruins.  The nickname came from his supposed resemblance to a cartoon figure on a candy-bar wrapper in his native Canada.

McKenzie was definitely old school, apparently with post-career consequences.  Bruins’ great Phil Esposito was quoted in McKenzie’s Boston Globe obituary describing McKenzie as “one mean little SOB who would go through a wall for his teammates.”  Opponents were always welcome to go through with him.

“I like to run at somebody on my first shift,” said McKenzie according to his Globe obit, “to stir things up and plant the idea that if a squirt [in this case, one standing 5’9”] like me can go after ‘em—particularly if my target is a big star—then why not everybody?”  Like I said, old school.

No cause of death was given, though the Globe reported that McKenzie wanted his brain to go to Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center, which studies the effect of repeated blows to the brains of athletes.  In hockey, at least, old school may be something best left in the past for anyone who wants to be in full control of his faculties once he’s hung up his skates.