Tim Horton gave the Rangers’ blue line a quick jolt

Welcome to another edition of Blueshirts Briefs, a series highlighting individuals who worked a short shift for the New York Rangers.

Many recognize Tim Horton as the founder of  Canada’s version of Dunkin’ and standout defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs for two decades. However, few may know he also had a cup of coffee with the New York Rangers.

Horton, a four-time Stanley Cup champion and six-time all-star for Toronto, was traded to the Rangers on March 3, 1970, for left-wing Denis Dupéré. He made his Blueshirts debut the following night, notching four shots and nearly 40 minutes in a 2-0 loss to the Detroit Red Wings at Madison Square Garden. The match was the first of Horton’s 93 games  for New York.

Horton reportedly planned to retire after the 1970-71 season, so the Rangers left him unprotected for the Intra-League Draft. The Pittsburgh Penguins selected Horton anyway and convinced him to play. He spent one year in the Steel City before being claimed by the Buffalo Sabres, who were coached by his former boss in Toronto, Punch Imlach.

Horton was well into his second season with western New York’s  NHL club when injuries sustained in an automobile accident claimed his life.

Strong, but not dirty

Horton was born in Cochrane, Ontario, which is home to the Canadian Polar Bear Habitat and about a 753-mile drive north from Toronto. On paper, his 5-foot-10, 180-pound frame was hardly imposing for an NHL defenseman. On the ice, however, Horton seemed to have a polar bear’s strength.

Maple Leafs goaltender and teammate Johnny Bower called Horton “Superman.”

Detroit center Alex Delvecchio, who played against Horton in juniors, recalled Horton’s super strength in the “Legends of Hockey” series: “When he hit you, you knew you were hit, so any time he was out there you knew you had to try to keep your head up. …He would take you in the corner and put a bear hug on you and you couldn’t get away. And he’d just say, ‘Stay right where you are.'”

Chicago Blackhawks star Bobby Hull, the most dynamic forward of that era, gushed about Horton’s strength to Frank Orr, author of Remembering Tim Horton.

“I figured I was a pretty strong guy after a summer of work on my farm — then I’d go against Horton,” The Golden Jet told Orr. “Tim would be in my path, nothing dirty, no stickwork, and would stay there, no matter what I did. If I tried to bull between him and the boards, forget it, because he would just close the gate. Cut to the middle of the ice and he’d be there, too, crowding me, forcing me to shoot long-range or pass.”

Derek Sanderson, who starred for the Boston Bruins and played for the Rangers, learned the hard way to avoid cheap shotting Horton. A brash rookie for the Bruins, “Turk” decided to ignore his teammates’ advice to play nice with Horton and slashed the Toronto blueliner.

“He put the bear hug on me and started to squeeze,” Sanderson told Orr. “I heard my ribs groan and thought they were all going to crack. It really started to hurt, and then he let go and tossed me on my back like a towel. I never slashed him or challenged him again.”

Horton could stymie the opposition’s best, but he also could lead the rush the other way. And shoot the puck. Hard.

“He had a great shot at a time when defensemen didn’t have great shots,” said Chicago goalie Glenn Hall, who allowed the Cup-winning goal in the 1962 Finals on a play set up by Horton. “I remember his coming in and you’d start to take it waist-high and it comes up a little higher, a little higher and finally at the end, you’d duck out.”

Horton had three goals and 13 assists in 12 postseason games in 1962, leading the Leafs in scoring and setting a record for most points by a defenseman in one playoff year. It was Toronto’s first Cup in 11 years, and the first of three straight championships. Horton and the Leafs won their fourth Cup together in 1967.

The Leafs haven’t returned to the Finals since.

On to Broadway

Horton’s final stats with Toronto are outstanding. He finished among the top five in voting for the Norris Trophy six times (placing second twice) and notched 109 goals, 349 assists, a plus/minus rating of +151, and 1,389 penalty minutes in 1,184 regular-season games. In 97 playoff contests, he posted 41 points and 135 PIMs.

Following the 1967 championship, Toronto went into a decline and the Leafs traded Horton to New York. Then 40 years old, the veteran blueliner posted six points and 16 PIMs in 15 games at the end of the 1969-70 regular season, plus a goal, an assist, and 28 PIMs in a six-game loss to Boston in the Quarterfinals.

In 1970-71, Horton notched 20 points, a plus-27 rating, and 57 PIMs in 78 games. He added five points and 14 PIMs in 13 playoff contests, helping the Rangers defeat Toronto in the Quarterfinals in six before losing to Chicago in the Semifinals in seven. In that series, Horton had the secondary assist on Pete Stemkowski‘s legendary goal in triple overtime that forced a seventh game.

Perk up

Tim Horton co-founded the Tim Hortons restaurant chain in 1964 with Montreal businessman Jim Charade.

The first Tim Hortons franchise opened in April 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario, as a coffee and doughnut establishment. Since then, the chain has exploded into a multi-million dollar giant, with more than 3,600 franchises that serve sandwiches, soups, and salads in addition to coffee, doughnuts, muffins, and croissants.

As one might guess, more than 3,000 of them are located in Canada — including one in Northern Pond Inlet, Nunavut, an Inuit community of approximately 1,600 people located in northern Baffin Island. The place is around 1,200 miles away from the North Pole and some 2,200 from New York City.

According to the data company ScrapeHero, there were 714 Tim Hortons locations in the United States. New York State had the most with 264, followed by Michigan (236) and Ohio (152). Western New York has over 80 locations, including 34 in Buffalo. At last count, Manhattan had 12, including one inside Penn Station.

The end

Horton died on February 21, 1974, at age 44. By then, he had played a combined 1,445 regular-season and 126 playoff games for three NHL teams. He notched 115 goals, 403 assists, and 1,611 PIMs, and was a plus-191. In the postseason, he recorded 11 markers, 39 helpers, 183 PIMs, and a minus-12 rating.

On the day he died, Horton was driving a 1974 Ford DeTomaso Pantera, the Italian-made sports car he received as a signing bonus from the Sabres. NHL teams traveled together back then, as they do today, but Horton’s veteran status had its perks; among them, driving to and from games in Toronto, about a 90-minute car-ride from Buffalo.

According to a  2014 story by the Ottawa Citizen, marking the 40th anniversary of his death, initial reports attributed Horton’s accident to high-speed driving, citing police notes claiming he was flying at 160 kilometers per hour (or 99 miles per hour). Despite evidence to the contrary, the coroner in St. Catherines, Ontario, at the time ruled that there were no contributing factors. Also, a nurse told at least one newspaper reporter the autopsy showed no signs of alcohol.

However, the Citizen‘s story highlighted an autopsy obtained by the paper in 2005 that showed “Horton was drunk. He had twice the legal limit of booze in his system. There were also indications he had been taking Dexamyl, a then-legal prescription drug that mixed dextro-amphetamine with a barbiturate.” The story also suggests Horton wanted to keep playing and took speed to keep up with players who were younger and faster.

Horton was inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1977.