With the Rangers touring Europe this preseason and opening up in Prague, Evan Weiner at NHL.com sits down with Ranger great Rod Gilbert to discuss playing in Europe for Team Canada in the 1972 Summit Series and the preseason schedule the Rangers had his rookie year, which he had this to say..."We used to use training camp to get into shape, now these guys come in in shape and they go into their season prepared and ready to go," Gilbert said. "We were making only $7,000 for the whole year and then we played 25 extra games so they could pay for their training camp for the expenses of flying all the players. I remember starting in Vancouver and playing all throughout Canada, across Canada and our 25th game was in Moncton, New Brunswick. I played every night, every game because I was a rookie. Our training camp was over a month, like a month and a half, so we played 25 games in about 35 days."
...back then it was all about the love of the game. Could you imagine the protests from today's players if they had to endure a 25 game preseason schedule? Which does seem a bit excessive by the way.
1 comment:
Totally excessive. But they didn't wear helmets. If you don't wear one in today's game you'll become a vegetable.
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