In February of 1966, Hershey Bears forward Bruce Draper was diagnosed with a malignant form of cancer, which he bravely fought until his final breath, as chronicled by Toronto Star reporter Paul Rimstead in 'The goal that Death was watching,' published on March 4, 1967 in newspapers across Canada.
It was 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 11, and in a few minutes the Hershey Bears would skate out on the ice to warm up for their game against the Providence Reds.
They sat there now wailing, shifting uneasily as the tension built. Coach Frank Mathers paced nervously, wondering, perhaps, if he had made the right decision.
The game itself wasn't worrying them. The Bears, storming along in first place in the American Hockey League's Eastern Division, didn't figure to have much trouble with the last-place Reds.
Yet, even the hardest veteran felt soft inside. Some of them said a prayer in the silence.
"Hey, you guys!" boomed Bruce Cline, an assistant captain, "Looks like we got a rookie with us tonight."
Bruce Draper, wearing number 21, smiled, embarrassed, as his teammates laughed with the release of tension.
It was a preview to one of the most dramatic moments I have ever seen in sport - the night Bruce Draper came back. It is a story of courage and a young man's faith in God.
There were only 3,400 fans in the 7,000-seat Hershey Sports Arena that night as number 21 stepped onto the ice, and only a handful realized the significance of the moment.
Bruce had called me in Toronto at noon that day to tell me he would be playing his first game since Feb. 9, 1966 - almost a year.
"I didn't sleep all night," he had said. "But you'd better get here early. I'm not sure how long the legs will hold out. I may have to score on the first shift."
Draper skated easily now in the warmup, his head down as if in deep thought. The game started, and when he skated out to centre between wingers Gary Dornhoefer and Myron Stankiewicz, there was a polite smattering of applause from the couple of dozen fans who knew his story.
What the others didn't know was that underneath his Hershey jersey, Bruce Draper carried an ugly scar from the base of his abdomen to his chest.
The announcement a year ago was brief. It said that Bruce Draper had left the Bears to have an operation for "a glandular condition." It was a routine announcement and received little attention back in Canada, where many fans remembered the famous Draper brothers who played for St. Mikes. Bruce, now 26, played on a line with Dave, his identical twin, when St. Mikes won the Memorial Cup in 1961.
At one point in their career, an older brother, Mike, was on their line and often they were mistaken for triplets. Newspapers kept getting their names wrong in captions under their pictures and sportswriters were always writing stories about how Rev. David Bauer, their coach, couldn't tell them apart.
Anyway, Bruce has been knocking around in the minors, though he played briefly in one game with the Toronto Maple Leafs four seasons ago.
He has played in every minor pro league, first with Rochester, then Sudbury and Denver. Two seasons ago, Bruce and Gene Ubriaco, who had been on the St. Mikes team with him, were traded to Hershey.
This is where Bruce Draper's story begins.
He missed half the season with a cracked kneecap, returned to the lineup and, just before
leaving for his Ottawa home for the summer, noticed a small cyst on his lower abdomen. The team doctor told him to see his doctor in Ottawa to have it removed.
But he kept pulling it off, and finally it was too late to get a hospital bed. His Ottawa doctor however, assured him it wouldn't do him any harm if he continued playing. So he returned to training camp without having the cyst removed.
That was last season and Bruce got off to the best start of his career.
"I was starting to pop a few," he smiles. "Finally I was going to prove to people that I could play pro hockey."
On Feb. 9, 1966, the Cleveland Barons were in town. So were Mrs. Jack Draper, to see her son play for the first time in three years, and Mrs. Ben Villeneuve from Aylmer, Que., near Ottawa, mother of Bruce's pretty wife, Judy.
Bruce didn't disappoint his mother and mother-in-law. He scored two goals and had two assists to bring his total to 14 goals and 21 assists in 41 games.
But he had been having pains in his stomach for about two weeks and he saw the team doctor that night, fearing he might have a hernia or pulled stomach muscle. The doctor had forgotten about the cyst, thinking Bruce had had it removed. It was larger now and he sent Bruce to Dr. Josiah Reed, a urologist at the Polyclinic Hospital in Harrisburg, 22 miles from Hershey.
Dr. Reed admitted Bruce to the hospital the next day, a Thursday, and removed the cyst Friday. Bruce figured he would be away for a week to 10 days.
In medical terms, they call it a testicular tumor and Bruce remembers vividly coming out of the anesthetic briefly when they took him back to his room.
Dr. Reed looked at him and said: "Bruce . . . it was malignant."
"That was the hardest check I ever took," says Bruce. "I was so mad I was going to rip my bed apart, but I fell back and went under again. All I could think of was Murray Balfour."
Balfour, his linemate the previous season and a former Chicago Black Hawk and Boston Bruin, had died eight months before - May 30, 1965 - of lung cancer. Bruce remembered how Balfour coughed so hard on the bench that the other players told him to tell the management he was too ill to play.
Bruce and Gene Ubriaco had a few beers with Balfour, a non-drinker, the night he was to leave for his home in Regina when the season ended.
"So long, Bruce," said Balfour. "Have a good summer, I'll see you at training camp in the fall."
"That was really sad," Bruce recalls. "Both Uby and I knew how serious it was. We knew he wouldn't be there. But little did I know at the time, that I had the same thing."
The difference was that Balfour's condition was too advanced for anything to be done about it. Dr. Reed told Bruce, when he awakened that day, that he felt he could arrest his.
When Bruce went back to sleep that day, Dr Reed phoned his home In Hershey and asked to speak to his mother. Judy was expecting a second child in June and Debra Lynn was one and a half years old at the time.
"He told Mrs. Draper not to tell me what he had found because it might upset me," Bruce's wife remembers. "But when she put the phone down, she started to cry and I made her tell me."
"They were both with me when I woke up that night," says Bruce. "Dr. Reed told me they were going to operate again on Monday. I remember they sent for my dad and told me on Sunday that I could see my little girl if I wanted to. I knew it was serious, but those two things really shook me up."
His father's plane was surrounded by bad weather at Baltimore and he had to continue by bus, arriving at Harrisburg early Monday morning, just in time to see his son being wheeled into the operating room.
"My father is a big, strong man," says Bruce, "And he always made us stronger somehow. I know it did me a lot of good to see him that morning."
"He was on the operating table four and a half hours," says Dr. Reed. "The seed of the disease had spread to the lymph nodes of the retroperitoneal space up as far as the kidneys. We removed this from his abdomen and chest."
Bruce weighed 174 pounds when he entered the hospital and left two weeks later, pale, weak and weighing only 155.
"He would sit on the chesterfield for about five minutes and it would tire him out so much he would have to go and lie down," says Judy. "He looked terrible and his clothes didn't fit him."
"My wife was fantastic through it all," says Bruce. "She stood up like a rock and this was a great inspiration."
But what Judy didn't tell him at the time was that she went to see the Bears play the night after Bruce went into the hospital, and broke down when she met Frank Mathers. On another occasion, she didn't feel as if she could visit him without crying, so she asked his mother to go alone.
"She never let me see her like that," says Bruce. "And my family was tremendous. I know it must have shocked the hell out of them as much as it did out of me. Father Bauer called me from Montreal when the Canadian team came back from the world tournament. I knew I had a lot of good people praying for me.
"It never entered my mind that I wasn't going to make it. I made up my mind that I was going to beat this thing."
"He spent a lot of sleepless nights, though, worrying about his growing family and what would happen if anything did go wrong.
"I think he kept fighting for us," says Judy, who now has a second daughter, Kimberly Ann, eight months old. "If he had been single, I don't know if he would have made it."
Dr. Reed told Judy not to cater to Bruce after he left the hospital and to see that he did a lot of walking. He walked around the house at first, built himself up so that he could make it around the block, and kept extending his walks each day.
After two weeks, they started the cobalt treatments.
Bruce was scheduled to take 10 weeks of treatments, 2½ minutes each day - one day on his stomach, the next on his back.
"We treated his entire lymph drainage area, from the groin to the neck," says Dr. Reed. "We x-rayed the entire spine. These treatments were so powerful that bone marrow would be partially destroyed and he had the chronic weakness of severe anemia to overcome.
"The tissues in the spine would have turned to scar tissue had he not exercised. And I know that exercising sometimes hurt like hell."
With grim determination, Bruce kept working. In April, only two months after his operation, he astounded Dr. Reed by asking if he could play golf.
"I went out and tried to swing a club, but it hurt like hell," he says, "I rested a couple more weeks and tried it again. By June, I was playing 27 holes a day and carrying my own bag."
After eight weeks, his blood count became too low for the cobalt treatments to be continued, so Bruce and his family went back to Ottawa for the summer.
Before they left, however, his teammates surprised him. A couple of them, including Gene Ubriaco, drove him to Harrisburg for his treatment one day, then went back to the Drapers' apartment where their wives had gathered.
"Uby asked me to go upstairs and when we were going through our living room, there was a color television set." Bruce recalls. "I thought they'd rented it for the day for some special program, but the guys on the team had chipped in to buy it for us. It was a nice feeling."
At a players' meeting the next afternoon, Bruce - who is an excellent and witty public speaker - became nervous as he tried to thank his team-mates.
"This is the nicest thing that has happened to me in pro hockey," he said. "You hear of other players having special nights and things, but you don't ever think it will happen to you."
The players ended his embarrassment with applause and wished him the best of luck during the summer.
Soon after returning to Ottawa, Bruce - who had gained a few pounds - discovered a couple of lumps on the left side of his neck. He went to his family doctor, who had his full history from Harrisburg, and had the lumps removed under a local anesthetic.
That was Monday, June 27. On Tuesday, Kimberly Ann was born. On Friday that same week, the doctor called him. Familiar words: "Bruce ... they were malignant."
"It was as if someone had hit me over the head with a hammer," says Bruce. "I really blew up. I thought it was the end of the world."
Three more weeks of cobalt treatments followed at Ottawa's Civic Hospital, where he made quite an impression on Dr. Gordon Edgar Catton, a therapeutic radiologist.
"There is no doubt," says Dr. Catton, "That Bruce is all desire. He showed an unusual response to cobalt treatments. Nine of 10 tumors as advanced as his was when discovered wouldn't have responded to treatment as well."
In August, the professional hockey players around Ottawa, including the Draper brothers, rented the arena at Hull each night to start preparing for their respective training camps. Bruce asked Dr. Catton if he could try skating.
"I encouraged him," says Dr. Catton, "And he encouraged me with his spirit."
Earlier in the summer, Bruce realized that if he ever played hockey again, it would have to be with Hershey. The Bears put him in something called the reverse draft, which means any other team could have claimed him. No team did, though - obviously because nobody wanted to take a chance on his health.
A healthy Bruce Draper, as coach Mathers says, likely would be drafted when the new National Hockey League teams stock up for expansion.
At this time, however, Bruce had a long, long way to go.
"I couldn't skate very well," says Bruce. "So I sort of hung back on the defence."
Some of the players he worked out with each night were Ralph Backstrom and Claude Larose of Montreal Canadiens, minor leaguers Brian Smith and Terry Clancy, and, of course, his brothers - Dave, Mike and Pat.
"I drove my brothers crazy," Bruce says. "I'd keep feeling myself to see if there were any more lumps which, I guess, is natural. Anyway, I'd feel something on my arm and I'd keep going over and feeling their arms to see if they had the same thing."
Twin brother Dave had diagrams of the isometric exercises his teams used at Michigan Tech and he encouraged Bruce to use them regularly.
"I think they helped me more than anything," says Bruce. "We also went to the YMCA each day for steam baths and bike riding and we ran a lot."
Hershey invited him to attend training camp and Bruce, though barely able to skate the length of the ice and back, headed south with his family.
His muscles were beginning to harden again. After his first stay in the hospital in Harrisburg, he'd lost almost all his strength, including the leg muscles.
"But something happened during that car ride to Hershey," Judy says. "Bruce seemed to get new strength and a new outlook."
"That's right," says Bruce. "When I got to camp, I was able to do most of the skating drills and look part in scrimmages. I felt great. But, after a week, I stopped a shot on my ankle and had to miss another five days which put me even farther behind."
It was obvious at the end of training that Bruce was not strong enough to make the starting lineup. But general manager Lloyd Blinco gave him a contract which would run until Nov. 30, giving him two more months to make it.
There were only four days left when I visited him on Nov. 26. Bruce still hadn't been told if he would be kept. He felt he was playing reasonably well in practices, but he hadn't been in a game. He wondered how they would be able to make a decision without seeing him in action. He was in the unfortunate position of trying to crack a lineup that had put the Bears in first place.
Bruce made up his mind to wait until the Friday to see if he would get a pay cheque. The cheque was there, and so were subsequent cheques, though nothing was said.
Bruce continued to work out alone while the team was on the road. Then, in early December, they took him on a road trip. He called me and he was obviously excited. But he didn't dress for any games and still nothing was said.
I kept in touch with Bruce and on Jan. 10, called Frank Mathers.
"It's funny. I was sitting here now thinking about Bruce," said Mathers. "I may play him tomorrow night. But I'm not thinking of it just to give him a chance. He's up to 170 now and he looks good in workouts. He might be able to help us.
"Playing him out of sympathy would prove nothing. It wouldn't be fair to the team and it wouldn't be fair to him."
Mathers knew, as anyone in hockey knows, that even a man in perfect health, if he's been away from hockey for a year, finds it extremely difficult to come back. You just don't get enough work in a practice to condition you for a game.
Mathers, watching Draper now as referee Bruce Hood prepared to drop the puck, had had to make a big decision.
Above, sitting with other players' wives, Judy Draper bit her fingernails, every muscle tense.
The players on both benches leaned forward, showing sudden interest in number 21.
I sat beside goaltender John Henderson, who was dressed but sitting out tonight, and noticed that we, too, had edged to the front of our rinkside seats.
I looked up to where Judy Draper was sitting, wondering if the young fellows sitting behind her tonight were the same ones who hadn't recognized her as they talked during a game last season.
"Draper?" one said to the other. "Naw, he won't be back. He won't live until he's 26."
Judy had told him about it that same night, after the game.
"I knew then," said Bruce, "That I was going to have to expect these things and learn to live with it."
I looked up to the walkway around the rink, where Bruce had stood, watching, during his absence. Human nature hadn't disappointed him. The word had got around and people stared.
"It got so bad," he said, "That I was going to paint 'I'm fine, thank you' on my forehead."
The puck was dropped and the Bears forged into the Providence zone. Bruce Draper, number 21, made a deft pass. He got the puck again, cut in on goaltender Ross Brooks' left, and shot. Brooks made the save. The whistle blew and a Hershey player was penalized. Draper's first shift lasted less than 10 seconds. The penalty-killers came out.
At the nine-minute mark, still no score and the Dornhoefer-Draper-Stankiewicz line made its second appearance.
Gary Dornhoefer went up the right side and shovelled the puck toward centre as he crossed the blue line. Stankiewicz made a move as if to pick it up, left it instead and charged in. Draper picked it up. He took two strides, hesitated, then fired a hard, true shot to the upper left side to Brooks' right. The puck whipped over Brooks' shoulder into the net and the red light went on.
Bruce stood there for a moment, staring in disbelief.
Every Hershey player on the ice jumped in the air, every man on the bench stood and screamed his approval, including coach Mathers. John Henderson jumped and almost took my toes off when he landed on his skates beside me.
Judy Draper squealed, jumped up and down, and slapped the other wives on the back. His team-mates mobbed Bruce as if he had just won a decisive playoff game in overtime. He smiled shyly and skated back with his head down. The fans wondered what all the fuss was about.
"Get here early," he had quipped at noon that day. "I may have to score on my first shift."
It was, without a doubt, the most dramatic goal I have ever seen.
"Damn it!" I remember John Henderson saying. "I've been around hockey all my life and this is the first time I ever got goose pimples all over when somebody scored a goal."
"No goal ever gave me a nicer feeling," grinned Mathers after the game.
"It was the nicest thing that ever happened to me," said a flushed Mrs. Bruce Draper.
"Me?" grinned Bruce, "I almost went straight up in the air, right out of my uniform."
It would be nice to finish this off by saying Bruce Draper won back his spot on the team and became an all-star in the second half of the season. But this isn't a fairy tale, it's life.
He may be back in the Hershey lineup when this is published, but the fact is that Mathers decided to replace him after two games because he felt Bruce wasn't strong enough to help the team.
"I have to think of winning," he said, almost apologetically.
Bruce, bitterly disappointed, was low in spirits for a couple of days, then said: "This means I have to try harder."
But, if Bruce Draper never plays another game, he made a magnificent comeback on the night of Jan. 11, as far as his friends, teammates and doctors are concerned.
"I knew he'd do it or kill himself trying," said Dr. Reed.
Whatever fate has decided for Bruce Draper, at least he'll take a strong body into his battle against his disease. And the opposition in that game is far greater than anything he faced playing hockey.
"Eighty percent of the people who have malignant testicular tumors die within a two-year period," said Dr. Reed. "Ninety-five percent of those who make it past the two-year period have it beaten. In Bruce's case, we have been making regular checks and so far it looks good. He has a year under his belt now."
Bruce knows the odds and he's realistic. He's also a devout Roman Catholic who feels his fate is in the hands of God.
"Naturally I want to play hockey again," he says, "But more than that, I want to lead a normal life with my wife and two kids.
"Hockey is secondary, I've said it right from the start.
"First, I want to live."
Bruce Draper would not play another game for the Hershey Bears, and would retire from his playing career in the fall of 1967 after briefly participating in training camp with the Baltimore Clippers before returning to Canada. He passed away in an Ottawa hospital on January 26, 1968 after battling cancer for nearly two years. His funeral three days later was attended by the entire Bears team.
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