Mike Bossy - Montrealer with British roots got snubbed by his hometown team

Mike Bossy, who is now battling advanced lung cancer, would have devoted his awesome hockey skills to his hometown Montreal hockey fans had he not been snubbed by the Canadiens.   

   Mike was born in Montreal in 1957 as one of 10 kids born to WWII vet Borden and Dorothy Mills, a British war bride.

  Borden was serving in the Canadian military during World War II when he met Dorothy. He was serving in the UK as an RCAF navigator when Dorothy arrived in Montreal without him on 27 March 1946, hauling their one-year-old daughter Vivian.

  Dorothy moved to her in-laws' house at 10680 St. Hubert. Borden's dad Walter had immigrated from Poland in 1923. 

 Borden and Dorothy would go on to have nine more kids, including Mike, their sixth child, 11 years later.

 Mike was a shy kid who didn't concentrate much on school, instead devoting his passion to hockey.

  The family was closely associated with the rowing scene and were part of the Cartierville Boating Club and others. 

  Mike was only 12 when he started getting mentioned in sports pages, scoring ample goals for a Pee Wee team that visited France for some exhibition games.

 The Bossy family relocated to Laval as Mike became the star of the Laval Nationals team. Some mention that the junior club paid the family to move to Laval but that was never confirmed. 

  Early newspaper reports attempted to switch Mike's name to Michel but he eventually made it clear that his proper name was Michael or Mike. 

   Bossy spent four years scoring at an elite pace of over a goal-a-game for the Laval team from 1973 to 1977. 

   He would likely have beaten Guy Lafleur's scoring record had he not missed a dozen games with a shoulder injury.

  He was clearly a star ready to be plucked in the 1977 NHL Entry Draft. 

  Montreal held the 10th overall pick in the 1977 draft, so chances were that Bossy would not be available to them. But other teams opted to waste their picks on future journeymen and might-have-beens like Mike Crombeen, Jere Gillis and Scott Campbell.

   Bossy was still available when the Habs choice came but the Canadiens instead opted for Toronto-born forward Mark Napier, who had already played in the World Hockey Association. 

   Montreal Canadiens GM Sam Pollock has long been revered for being able to spot talent but he remained strangely oblivious to the local kid who had been lighting up nets in the Montreal area for years.

  Indeed Pollock had been credited with pulling off a crafty meneuver to bag Lafleur but somehow has not faced any criticism for failing to draft Bossy, who was an obvious choice.

   Pollock had been running the club for 14 years and would go on to retire the next season. The team might have been indifferent to Bossy because - while he was a local kid - they thought he lacked the pure-laine French Canadian background of a Lafleur or Larouche.    

  New York Islanders ended up looking like geniuses by nabbing Bossy 15th overall. 

   Bossy would go on to a career which saw him score well over twice as many goals as any other player in his draft. 

 Other teams declined to pick Bossy supposedly because he wasn't rough and because he had a reputation of not being diligent in his backchecking.   

 And while the Canadiens eventually faded, the Islanders with Bossy went on to win the Stanley Cup in four straight years from 1980 to 1983.

   So why didn't Habs brass covet and pursue Bossy as they had Lafleur?

  Some speculation: Quebec Junior league had a reputation of spawning snipers who were defensive liabilities and party-animals who undermined their teams, including Jacques Richard and Pierre Larouche, a born goal-scorer who the Habs had acquired a few months later after the draft. 

  Also, the Laval Nationals team, which Bossy had starred on, had been at the center of a drug scandal as QMJHL President Raymond Lagace said in March 1975 the team players had been taking amphetamines.

   Dorothy was irate with the accusation and she told the Montreal Star that her son had never touched an amphetamine in his life. 

   "I feel that article was unfair to the team generally. There's one thing I can tell you for certain, Mike Bossy never took any stimulants."   Dorothy said that Mike had been given some pills and brought them to her and she dutifully brought them to be analyzed at her pharmacy, who declared them to be iron supplements.  

  Dorothy wrote to the paper two years later to complain of the barbarity in the league. 

  My son has played four years in this league and most of the games have been interrupted by stick swinging, spitting, scratching, hairpulling and head butting. Eggs, beer, hot coffee, tin cans, bottles, firecrackers and other objects have been thrown at the players and referees. Racial slurs are common. There have also been fights between fans, players and coaches.

  Mike Bossy went on to enjoy a Hall of Fame career and was one of the greatest players in NHL history before retiring due to back issues on 2 May 1987.

  Mike's father Borden died in 1981 and three of his siblings predeceased him, including Vivian and Patrick and Christopher (1951-2021) who lived in Laval and died of a heart attack.

 It's a shame that the Canadiens failed to pick Mike Bossy to be part of the team.