Height: 6-3
Weight: 200
Shoot: L
Born: 31 Aug 1941, Toronto ON
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Regular Season & Playoff Scoring Record (key)
| year | team | |||||||||||
| 1972-73 | Ottawa | |||||||||||
| Totals: |
• Member, Canadian Olympic Team, 1964.
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As a Regular, Conacher Shines • by Bob Mellor • The Hockey Spectator • March 9, 1973
Few sons grow up in the image of their fathers, but when the father is famous, they often grow up in the shadow. Brian Conacher's been grown up for some years now, but that shadow's still there and always will be. Lionel Conacher, who was known as the "Big Train," was one of Canada's most famous athletes, an all-round star in his day of hockey, football, and lacrosse, and his name is among those inscribed in hockey's Hall of Fame. Under those circumstances, it's tough to be a hockey player and achieve any credit for whatever you might accomplish on your own. The comparison is always inevitable. Brian Conacher will never be a superstar, but he might have drawn more credit for the hockey skills he does have if his name were Jones. The Ottawa Nationals found themselves wondering aloud if they hadn't allowed themselves to fall into that mental trap too, as they headed into an all-out drive to make the WHA playoffs. What prompted that line of thinking was a performance against the Philadelphia Blazers that was one of the few nights when Conacher has gotten to play a regular shift. The Nats lost it 6-5, in a ding-dong battle that included a disputed goal, but Conacher played an inspired game on a night when the whole club gave a first-class performance. "I look back now," said Coach Billy Harris, "and wonder why I didn't use the guy regularly a month ago. But we were in a stretch where we weren't being outplayed, it was always a case of one or two mistakes costing us the game. I felt the guys where doing an adequate job, so I didn't want to juggle the lineup." "We may have been making a mistake all along," said Buck Houle, the club's GM. "Perhaps we just should have said, Conacher's here, he's on the club, and fit other people in with him, rather than the other way around." Conacher was the last player to join the Nationals because he was tied up as the TV color commentator for the classic Russia-Canada series. By the time he joined the team, they were already into their schedule, they'd sorted out lines, and since his conditioning was behind, he didn't catch a regular spot. It's an odd quirk of fate that one of his assets may have [worked] against him. That asset is versatility. Conacher can play either left wing or center, he's an effective penalty killer, and at some points in his career, he's even played defense. He stands 6-3, and goes about 195 pounds. Because Conacher's so versatile, Harris has used him as a dependable "spot" whenever there's been an injury on the club, and since there's always been an injury or two, Conacher has been moved around so much he's never been able to work into a regular slot. But in a juggle brought about by an injury to Jack Gibson, Harris found one for Conacher and the coach says, "It's going to be hard to get him out of that lineup the rest of the year." Gibson, the left-winger on the Nats' kid line with Gavin Kirk and Steve King, suffered a fracture of the cheekbone. The simplest move would be to insert Conacher in Gibson's spot, but Harris didn't go for that one. He decided to try putting Wayne Carleton on the wing. That proved to be one good move. The line flew. Then he put Conacher into Carleton's old center spot, and left him there for the game. Conacher was a spark plug all night. Not the least of his activity that night was a lot of body action against a club that always plays it tough. Conacher knocked down so many Blazers it became infectious. The whole team took it up. "Maybe we should start calling him The Train," Houle mused. "How about Streetcar" somebody asked. "Why Streetcar?" "There was one called Desire..." |
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