The Rocket 9

This past weekend I watched the movie called “The Rocket 9”. It was about a hockey player back in the 1940’s and 50’s. It was a very interesting movie. He was somewhat of an underdog that was invited to tryout for the Canadian hockey team. Most people at first thought he wouldn’t make it. Then he showed everybody what he was made of and made the team. The movie reminded me a lot of the movie “Rudy”. It basically had the same story, only it was hockey instead of football. He got to be so good that his coach called him the Babe Ruth of hockey along with many others during the season in the mid 50’s.
Anyway. He married this girl when he was in his twenties and she was even younger. Her father worried about them because they were somewhat of a poor family living in a small apartment. It didn’t seem like anything good would happen to them anytime soon. Then he tried out for the Canadian hockey team and made it. He became the first player to score more than 45 goals in a season. He became known as the Rocket 9 for his superb ability to crash the net, and his number was 9. His coach said that he’d never seen anyone who crashed the net like he did. However, in a season in the early 1950’s he got suspended from the last four games of the regular season and all of the play off games because of a fight that he defended himself in because he got slashed in the head (they didn’t have helmets back in those days). He also earlier attacked the president of the NHL because he thought their wasn’t enough control in the games, which was truly proved after he got slashed in the head. He was thinking about quitting the NHL, but he should by a few more seasons and helped things change for the good of it. The way the game is controlled today is defiantly partly because of him, and for that I thank him, Maurice Richard.