Old Boston Garden. Bobby Orr. Noel Picard. Did you know “The Goal” was scored on May 10, 1970, almost 41 years ago? If I want to think of how old I am but not how old I feel, I remember what it was like at 14 years old, a Bobby Orr fan, if not a Boston Bruins one, that’s another story, to exult as Orr is in the act of scoring, upended by Noel Picard, soaring in flight over the ice as only he would, as only he could, and the shot by Ray Lussier, staff photographer of the bygone Boston Record-American, captures something of that moment but not it all because I close my eyes and I can still see him, as if time stands still, and Orr is suspended there, an angel, not a hockey player, this Orr, from Parry Sound, Ontario, on the other side of Georgian Bay, under the elephant’s tail (see RFYL: Why Run III), a place, home to another boy’s fancy, a Grade Eight speech in 1967, Orr’s rookie year in Boston, and a quote that resonates even now, and why I sit to watch, even the most banal of games, the Rangers vs. the Hurricanes, the Devils against the Wild, Islanders/Coyotes because there on that ice is a piece of home, where as a thesis graduate of Carleton Journalism, I return again, this time to write the script for a radio broadcast on the retirement of Boston’s hockey idol, Bobby Orr, with a memory of his brother, Ron, aboard the Zamboni, cleaning and flooding the rink at the Bobby Orr Community Centre in Parry Sound, and even in these mid-season games, the players show it to me again and again, so that if I can I won’t miss it; the quote: “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” You’ll see what I’m talking about when he shoots and scores. The boy in the sideyard rink that my dad made. Shooting, then leaping as Orr did. Again and again and again. He shoots! He scores!
