Jerry Rollins is aware he’s not a household name in the hockey world. If he’s remembered at all, it’s probably as the son of Al Rollins, the underappreciated Maple Leafs goaltender who won a Stanley Cup and a Vezina Trophy in Toronto in 1951 — the year Bill Barilko became a mythic figure for scoring the winning goal and embarking on the ill-fated fishing trip that inspired the much-loved song by the Tragically Hip.
But in a modest four-year professional career of his own, Jerry Rollins, son of a great, carved out a niche as a tough s.o.b.
In the tinfoil-knuckled chaos of hockey’s “Slap Shot” 1970s, the back of a Jerry Rollins hockey card gleefully pointed out a statistic that can still drop a jaw. As a 19-year-old junior defenceman playing in the Western Canadian Hockey League in 1974-75, he earned the billing as “the most penalized player in hockey.” And the claim was no joke. Playing for the Flin Flon Bombers and the Winnipeg Clubs, Rollins bare-knuckled and bludgeoned his way to an astounding 473 minutes in the box — mostly the fruit of, by his count, 83 fighting majors in 63 games.
Four hundred and seventy-three minutes. Consider for a moment that in that same year in the NHL, Dave (The Hammer) Schultz, the ringleader of Philadelphia’s Broad Street Bullies, set the never-to-be-broken big-league record by serving 472.
Knowing what we know about the not-always-sunny fates that have befallen so many enforcers, you might hesitate to ask the question: Where is he now?
To which Rollins happily replies: Living what sounds like a good life in San Diego, where, he boasted in a recent phone interview, he hasn’t worn pants in seven months.
“I wear shorts and a T-shirt every day,” he said.
At age 65, he’s been retired for most of the past two decades after a successful career building and running businesses in a variety of fields. Now a consultant to other entrepreneurs and not-for-profit enterprises, he’s written a book — “Enforcer to Entrepreneur: Achieving Hockey Stick Growth in Life, Business and Sports” — in which he passes along tips gleaned from his life’s journey. It’s a hardcore business book, to be sure; if you’re endeavouring to maximize sales or motivate a staff, Jerry Rollins has thoughts for you.
But it’s readable because it’s rooted in Rollins’s unpretentious, hockey-tinged beginnings. He’s the ruffian high school dropout whose pro hockey career lasted a mere four years because, as Rollins acknowledges, “I stopped practising” — and because he had “a lot of fun” in ports of call like Toronto, where he made a hefty (for the era) $75,000 punching faces for the Toros in the mid-1970s.
And while he describes himself as a hard-partying player who refused to listen to the wisdom of teammates such as Frank Mahovlich and Paul Henderson — “The great players ate, slept and drank the game,” he says, and he mostly preferred to drink beer — he did find productive time playing a kids’ sport. He says he’s thankful he seems to have avoided any lingering effects of his bare-knuckled trade, speculating that his brain was spared lasting damage thanks to a relatively short career in which he was knocked unconscious in a fight precisely once. (It was Jeff Carlson of the Carlson brothers, the real-life inspiration for the Hanson Brothers of “Slap Shot” fame, who got the best of Rollins, after Rollins tore his rotator cuff.)
“I fought all the toughest guys in the world, and probably none of them knew who I was,” Rollins said. “But I did just fine.”
While teammates whiled away days playing cards, he skipped the gambling for reading three books a road trip. And while he watched a variety of 1970s franchise owners sometimes succeed and often fail — and while he watched money he’d been promised “disappear” in the midst of that financially sketchy era — he paid attention.
“I got my MBA playing the game,” he has said.
Now, he says, he’s hoping his book will help young people — and young athletes — understand the landscape before they “make the same mistakes I made.”
“I’m not a billionaire. I’m not the most successful person in the world. I’m an average guy who was able to retire in his 40s and live a great life,” he said. “And I wish I knew about business before I went into sports. I would have made twice as much money. I would have had a lot fewer contracts. I would have made all my own decisions instead of putting them in the hands of someone else.”
While Rollins isn’t a household name, he’s crossed paths with his share. He’s one of the few people on the planet who knew Gordie Howe as a family friend before becoming acquainted with the business end of Mr. Hockey’s not-so-friendly blade, this after Rollins made the mistake of spending part of a World Hockey Association game angering Howe, who was more than 20 years Rollins’s senior at the time.
“Gordie was a surgeon with his stick. I still wear that scar with pride on the left side of my nose right under my eye,” Rollins said. “I’ll never forget the blood pouring into my eye and Gordie skating by, and looking down at me and smiling. And I could hear my father saying, ‘Don’t ever mess with Gordie. He might be our friend. But if you ever mess with his team he’ll take you down.’ And he took me down. And I stayed down.”
And speaking of hockey royalty, Rollins once stood up for Wayne Gretzky during a brief role as enforcer for the Great One’s first pro team, the Indianapolis Racers of the WHA, this back when Rollins recalls Gretzky “leaving early from practice to go to high school.” After Rollins stepped away from the game in 1979 and began his business career in San Diego, he remembers getting a call from a coach in Edmonton named Glen Sather who was looking for a hard-nosed defenceman to help keep the flies off a team stacked with young skill.
“I guess Gretzky spoke highly of me,” Rollins said. “I could have been (Dave) Semenko and (Marty) McSorley all in one. But not really … I thought, ‘I could go to Edmonton. It’s really cold there.’ But I’ve got shorts on down here. And I thought, ‘I want control of my own destiny.’”
As much as any of us can, Rollins does. He says he’s earned the financial freedom to only work with people and projects that stoke his passion. He hints, too, that he’s keen to embark on a pet project: to push for his late father’s consideration for the Hockey Hall of Fame. And the case is compelling. Al Rollins, who died in 1996 at age 69, is one of just three goaltenders to win a Stanley Cup, a Vezina Trophy and a Hart Trophy. The other two, Dominik Hasek and Jacques Plante, have already been inducted.
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Still, there’s a line between honouring the past and dwelling on it. And for Jerry Rollins, son of a great and still pumped for what’s next, it’s important to stay on the right side.
“I have discussions with former hockey players, and you know how the discussion goes … ‘Well, I would have been a superstar, but I got injured’ or ‘This coach screwed me.’ And to me, that’s how to fail in business, as well. Thinking the reason I can’t succeed is because I don’t have the right degree from Harvard, or I don’t have enough money, or I don’t live in the right neighbourhood,” Rollins said.
“I just never wanted to be that person who made an excuse for why I wasn’t great as a player. The reason I wasn’t great is, I wasn’t dedicated. I got to the major leagues and then I quit doing what got me there. I quit practising. But I had fun. Boy, I had fun.”
