Editor’s note: In the Colorado Classics series, The Denver Post takes a weekly look at individuals who made their mark on the Colorado sports landscape and what they are doing now.
Anyone who knows Ralph Backstrom’s history in hockey wouldn’t be surprised at the one aspect of the sport that he wouldn’t include on an otherwise superb and complete résumé.
As a player, he was on six Stanley Cup championship teams with the fabled Montreal Canadiens. He went into coaching at the University of Denver and his 1985-86 Pioneers won 34 games, the most of any team in DU’s storied history.
Backstrom has been an entrepreneur in roller hockey and in-line skating. He has scouted for NHL teams and currently is owner, president and general manager of the Loveland-based Colorado Eagles of the Central Hockey League.
But Backstrom never has put on a striped shirt and tried his hand at being an official.
“I never was too crazy about officials, anyway, and I didn’t want to be one,” Backstrom said. “I still get upset at them. When I coached at DU, I was voted the most vocal coach in the league nine years in a row. It was a secret vote among the officials, but I heard I won it every year.”
Putting his thoughts on officials aside, Backstrom looks back on his 51 years in hockey only with high regard. The memories flow freely and clearly in the quiet of his Eagles’ office.
In their second season, the Eagles won the President’s Cup as league champions in 2005 and finished this season with the best regular-season record before getting knocked out of the playoffs in the semifinals.
At 68, Backstrom looks the part of an executive who put the Eagles franchise together in 2002 and started playing in 2003. The organization was fostered out of the 2001 merger of the Western and Central hockey leagues.
“We were the first pro sports franchise to come to northern Colorado,” Backstrom said. “It’s a really good brand of hockey. We’ve tried to copy a lot of things the Colorado Avalanche has done in Denver.”
Backstrom’s days as a player weren’t as tranquil.
“I left home in 1954 when I was 17 years old to make my livelihood in hockey,” Backstrom said. “Every school yard where I lived had an outdoor ice rink. I don’t think I played my first indoor game until I was 12 or 13 years old.”
Kirkland Lake, Ontario, is a small mining community about 400 miles north of Toronto. It also was a hotbed for hockey players.
“We had more than 150 players come out of that town and play in the NHL,” Backstrom said.
Backstrom’s path took him to the Canadiens and to an illustrious 12 1/2-year career in the NHL. He scored 278 goals and finished with 639 points, was the 1959 Calder Trophy winner as the rookie of the year and also played in six All-Star Games.
The year before joining the big- league team, Backstrom’s Ottawa-Hull Junior Canadiens won Canada’s junior league championship. His first two seasons with the Canadiens produced Stanley Cups.
“That was three years in a row and I thought it was going to be a snap in pro hockey,” Backstrom said. Backstrom’s name was inscribed on the Stanley Cup again in 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969.
“When you know how hard it is to win the Stanley Cup, that is a high point,” Backstrom said.
Backstrom’s Montreal teammates were the who’s who of hockey, including Maurice “The Rocket” Richard and Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion.
“I was there when goalie Jacques Plante wore a mask for the first time,” Backstrom said.
“Our coach, Toe Blake, was screaming at him that he couldn’t see the puck through the mask.”
Backstrom learned his hockey on the outdoor rinks and the importance of stick handling, an art he thinks is missing today.
“You don’t see a lot of the little skills today,” Backstrom said. “It’s a north-south power game. The east-west part has been taken out of the game.”
Backstrom’s tenacity as a player carried through to his days as a coach and there were benefits other than being voted the most vocal from the bench.
Once on a recruiting trip for DU, Backstrom and several other scouts were faced with a departure out of Regina, Saskatchewan, on a small airplane in winter weather conditions.
Only Backstrom got on the plane and the flight took him to securing Dallas Gaume. Gaume came to DU from Innisfail, Alberta, and played from 1983-86, scoring a school-record 266 points and 188 assists. Both records still stand.
Backstrom was selected national college coach of the year in 1986.
But there was one experience in Denver that wasn’t so upbeat. Backstrom was a member of the Denver Spurs in 1975-76 when the team played in the World Hockey Association. But after the team didn’t draw good attendance in the first half of the season, owner Ivan Mullenix moved the team to Ottawa, but it folded after only two games.
“I’ve seen the game from all sides,” Backstrom said. “You’ve got to know the game to understand what it takes to be successful not only on the ice but off the ice as well. As a player you go as far as your legs take you, but in coaching and administration, you look at the other end of your body for how much desire is left.”
What would he do if he retired?
“Watch hockey,” Backstrom said.
Irv Moss can be reached at 303-820-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
