Penguins pioneer Binkley had Habs roots

An Evel stunt
The night WHA goalie Les Binkley faced future daredevil Knievel

DAVE STUBBS
The Gazette

A 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.

But Knievel wisely decided he’d not make a living as a player and returned to his native Montana, where he founded the semi-pro Butte Bombers and ran the team as owner, general manager and coach while taking a regular shift as a player.

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 any goal he might score. 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.”

The time came for the contest, and Gratton was nowhere to be found.

“I think he was in a pool hall,” Binkley recalled of Gratton, who was flakier than a box of Wheaties. “Jimmy was playing, so they told me I was it. Evel was going to be paid 10 grand come hell or high water.

“So he comes in on me on the first one, tries to deke and loses the puck. But it went in. 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 with my winnings.”

In the mid-1960s, with the American league’s Cleveland Barons, Binkley had become fast friends with future Canadien John Ferguson. Montreal had a working agreement with the Barons, and many Canadiens were shuttled through the organization, on their way up to or down from the NHL.

“Fergy and I would hang around together, and we were the only two on the rink after practice,” Binkley said. “We’d work for hours, and there were a couple things he used to practice: 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, as well, 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,” he said of the roughneck who was the template for Paul Newman’s Reg Dunlop, the off-centre 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.

“We’d get into scraps, me included,” Binkley said. “I’d be down on the bottom, Brophy would look over from his fight, leave his guy and come over, pound this guy off me, I’d get back on top again and he’d go back to his fight.”

The Clippers travelled to their road games by car, often a convoy of four vehicles jammed full, the team unable to afford a bus

“I swear the state troopers had our schedule and the closest city was Johnstown, Ohio, 560 miles away,” Binkley said. “We’d play home Saturday night, then there on Sunday afternoon. We pretty well had to speed and nobody had money in those days.

“Those little tiny places in the Carolinas, the trooper would take his hat off and he’d be the judge. They’d hold the driver and wire back to get money to pay the fine. Some nights we’d start a game with 12 guys because two cars were being held up at a jail someplace.”

Below:

Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Les Binkley goes to the ice to make a save on Philadelphia Flyers' Gary Dornhoefer during an early 1970s game.
Photo courtesy Pittsburgh Penguins Archives

An autographed photo and hockey card of Binkley, and his autographed rookie card.
Graciously courtesy of Sal J. Barry of PuckJunk.com