The house sits on a corner lot at 2 Yale Road in Arlington, a pleasant, leafy suburb just north of Boston. It’s a cozy little house with a big backyard, a driveway on the side and an oversized Norway spruce out front that looks like it’s been there forever.
And yet when Johnny “The Chief” Bucyk talks about the place, you’d think he was describing a laboratory, or maybe a prep school where the only course that’s taught is Advanced Hockey Communications. For it was in that house, for a few years in the late 1950s, that a young Bucyk, having been acquired by the Boston Bruins from the Detroit Red Wings for goaltender Terry Sawchuk, did a deep dive into the finer points of the game, the result being that he added knowhow and savvy to God-given skills.
John Paul Bucyk, No. 9 in your program and No. 96 in The Athletic’s rundown of the 100 greatest players in modern NHL history, has been described by Harry Sinden, the Hall of Fame coach, general manager and president of the Bruins, as the most dangerous winger he’s ever seen when in front of the net. And the late Tony Esposito, the Hall of Fame Chicago goaltender, often quipped that Bucyk was like the scary butler Lurch from “The Addams Family” television series of the 1960s because he’d suddenly appear in the slot, seemingly from out of nowhere.
And to hear Bucyk speak, it all came together during those couple of years he shared the little house on Yale Road in Arlington with linemates Bronco Horvath and Vic Stasiuk. All three had signed their first pro contracts with the Red Wings. All three had been teammates for a while on the Edmonton Flyers, a Detroit farm team in the Western Hockey League. All three had been acquired by the Bruins in separate transactions. And all three were Canadian-born NHL players with Ukrainian DNA, which is why Horvath-Bucyk-Stasiuk came to be known as the “Uke Line.”
“We used to come home after a game, sit down, the three of us, and discuss what we did wrong, what worked, what we needed to do, all of that,” said Bucyk, who turned 87 in May. “I think the reason we became such a good line was because the communication the three of us guys had was great.
“And because we were living together it taught us how to work together and discuss things.”
The house on Yale Road was actually owned by Pat Egan, a gritty, talented defenseman who played 11 seasons in the NHL, six of them with the Bruins. But by 1957 he was off coaching in the minor leagues — he later guided the AHL Springfield Indians to three straight Calder Cup titles — so he rented the place to the Uke Line. Other players came and went as well. Bucyk likes to joke that you could tell NHL players lived there because of the towels that had been spirited away from various hotels.
NHL99: Johnny Bucyk and the house that helped forge one of the most dangerous wingers ever
Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new...
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