OHL Classics: Marty McSorley

There was something that Larry Mavety liked about the scrappy kid from Cayuga, Ont., who was trying to earn a spot on his expansion Belleville Bulls roster.

The player was a big farm boy named Marty McSorley. He was a training camp invitee that didn’t have any better chance of making the team than the other 70 kids invited to camp, but he did have the right attitude.

“Let’s face it, he was tough,” Mavety recalled about the first time he watched McSorley suit up for an intra-squad game. “But he worked. He was proving to everyone that he belonged.”

McSorley earned himself a temporary spot on the team. He suited up for the Bulls’ first-ever game, but found himself out of the lineup frequently as a rookie. He finished the year with six goals and 19 points in 58 games, but more importantly, he earned a full time job with the Bulls the following season.

“As a kid coming into training camp, you really don’t know how you’re playing or what’s going on,” said McSorley. “I came in and I was just so fired up about being at a Major Jr. A training camp. Then you get on the ice and you feel like ‘I’m doing OK here.’ You don’t know how you’re going to do.

“After the initial excitement, I had a bit of a lull to my own game. I wasn’t good enough to have a lull. I really think that Mav knew that I was going to keep working on trying to get there.”

McSorley blossomed the following season as a solid two-way defenceman. He scored 10 goals and 51 points and piled up 183 penalty minutes. He also gave the team toughness that created room for teammates like Dan Quinn, Dave MacLean and Dunc MacIntyre.

“They needed to know that there are some guys that could protect the other guys,” McSorley said. “Being a farm boy, (Mavety) didn’t have to tell me twice. I really wanted to make the team. It opened the door for me to continue on. I went out there and got into quite a few scraps in that training camp. It was really fun. There was so much excitement in the city that you couldn’t help but get caught up in it.”

In the off-season, Mavety recommended McSorley as a training camp fill-in for the Pittsburgh Penguins. He used his experience in Belleville as a blueprint and worked his way into the NHL lineup.

“My margin for error was not big,” said McSorley, who won the Stanley Cup with the Edmonton Oilers in 1987 and again in 1988 despite never being drafted. “I could be anywhere in Ontario working right now and never have played in the National Hockey League depending on how those first couple of months went.”

Written by Aaron Bell