Steady as he goes, Ross Lonsberry fights cancer.
The last appointment before I reached five years after colon cancer surgery, when they declare you free and clear, the doctor says We found something in your blood work we need to check out said Lonsberry from his home north of Los Angeles.
They found the cancer had metastasized in my lung. Two rounds of radiation didnt do anything, so I had to go through chemo from April though June.
It was all doom and gloom until I had another scan in July. The tumor had shrunk. Another doctor, a Philly guy it turns out, told me he only had to take out half the lung. Wouldnt need to put a tube in the other.
They still had to cut me from the shoulder down through my chest. Six hours on the table. Ive been home since August 20, twiddling my toes and doing my nails. Starting to drive a little ahead of when Im supposed to, so Im sticking to the back roads for now.
I can talk fine. I can walk the treadmill some. Cant sleep on one side because Im still really sore from the operation and still have some tenderness in the lung area. Cant get the real deep breaths I used to get, but that will come. It is getting better. I cant say enough about the treatment Ive gotten at UCLA (Medical Center).
Really, theres not a whole lot you can do but give into the needs of the treating the disease. Im doing OK.
NHL
Up and down his wing, like in his Flyers days, goes Roscoe, knowing a good game plan when he sees it. The one outlined by Fred Shero helped put Lonsberrys name twice on the Stanley Cup. This one he hopes will save his life.
Lost a ton of weight, one good thing, he laughed.
By age 64, he knows good things can come out of bad things. The two-plus seasons he played for the Kings, Lonsberry had told himself there were two places where he never wanted to get traded: Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. What were the odds he would be dealt to both?
It was so dreary coming into Philly from the airport on a grey Sunday morning, passing that auto graveyard by the (Penrose) Bridge, he recalled. And then you couldnt find a place open to get a cold beer after the game.
A few years later, thanks to a seven-player deal in 1972, then the biggest in NHL history, he was twice drinking champagne in Philadelphia after ultimate games. I remember telling Ed Snider at a fan club party soon after I got there that I had left a better team in Los Angeles, recalled Lonsberry. He said he could understand me feeling that way but the organization had big plans.
Every move Keith Allen made worked. Whos Moose Dupont? Then we see he can play. Next year (Bill) Barber, (Dave) Schultz, (Don) Saleski show up. And Ricky (MacLeish).
About health, about hockey, one never knows. About the latter, Allen still had a better clue than most. In his second bold deal of his Hall of Fame reign, the GM traded a talented bust named Serge Bernier, regular defenseman Larry Brown and a couple of guys with first-line speed but fourth-line hands, Bill Lesuk and Jimmy Johnson, for right wing Bill Flett, center Eddie Joyal, defenseman Jean Potvin and Lonsberry. It was a lot of guys coming and going between two five-year-old teams that seemed to be going nowhere. But Allen was convinced Flett and Lonsberry could score and they did.
At the end of that season, Joyal signed with the WHA to no regret by Allen. Potvin, wanted by the Islanders to keep brother Denisabout to be the first overall pickfrom going to the other league, became bait for Terry Crisp.
Flett scored 43 goals on Bobby Clarkes right wing during the Flyers emergent 1972-73 season, when MacLeish, who had been the object of Allens first big deal (Bernie Parent to Toronto in a three-way with Boston), arrived for good. Suddenly, the team had a second line with grit (Dornhoefer), game-breaking talent (MacLeish), and smarts (Lonsberry).
Before expansion and the universal draft, Lonsberry had been the Western Canada (junior) League scoring champion for the Estevan (Sask.) Bruins. Seriously, the anticipation was that Bobby Orr was going to be the franchise savior from the East and Ross Lonsberry was going to be the one from the West, recalled former Flyer teammate Bobby Taylor. Thats how good a junior he was.
But by the time Lonsberry got to Boston for cups of coffee, it was check or sit.
My year in Oklahoma City, I ended up on the third line behind J.P. Parise and Ted Irvine, he said The Bruins stressed so much watching your winger and I dont think I ever really had that killer, go-to-the-net instinct.
Dorny liked to go there. Ricky had to be free to roam. So OK, Ill be the third guy high and take some pride in it, matched against the big guy on the other team. No one was going to stop (Buffalos) Gil Perreault, so lets shut down the outside, I played against Rene Robert, Dorny against (Rick) Martin and he just terrorized that poor kid.
There would be nights Ricky didnt show up mentally. When Freddie was not happy, he would never pick on just one person. So one time when Ricky wasnt playing well he calls us all in, using Dorny and I to try to get Ricky back on his game.
We walk out of the meeting and Ricky says to Dorny and I, I didnt realize you guys were playing that bad.
Mostly, Ricky was in his own world. You could see in the warmups what kind of a game he was going to have. He was almost in a trance before a big game. You knew he would be there.
Every game, you knew Lonsberry would be there. The hair on his head may have left prematurely, but never Ross Lonsberry from any defensive zone. He never came close again to the 32 goals he scored in the first Cup year, but in the four full seasons he played with the Flyers he averaged 24, pretty good for a guy who hung his helmetbefore most players wore helmetsas a checker.
There were nights we werent very good and Ricky could carry us, too, said Dornhoefer. But Ross and I did a lot of the corner work to get Ricky the puck and then we would go to the net to put in the garbage.
Next to Clarkes overtime goal in Boston in Game 2 and MacLeishs redirection for the only goal in Game 6, the most buoying and critical goal of the Cup era was Dornhoefers in overtime that pivoted the Minnesota series in 1973. But after the Flyers finished off the North Stars two nights later in Bloomington for Philadelphias first-ever series win, it became quickly forgotten Lonsberry had the go-ahead and empty-net goals in the clincher and had been praised by Shero as the best player in the series.
In fact, even Lonsberry doesnt remember what he did in that game. But it is not true he was overlooked on a team noted, above all, for its work ethic, however begrudgingly. Always a thoughtful quote, his perspective made his stall a destination of choice for the writers, even though they were covering a team that had bigger stars and was loaded with steadying presences.
The Flyers were dethroned by the Canadiens in the 1976 finals. Barry Ashbee, still a huge presence as an assistant coach even after his career ended with an eye injury in the 1974 semifinals, died of leukemia in 1977. But after consecutive semifinal losses to Boston, the era truly came to a close in the spring of 1978 when Shero left for the Rangers and Orest Kindrachuk, Tom Bladon and Lonsberry were dealt to Pittsburgh for a seventh overall pick.
The Rangers forked over the eighth pick for Shero, who had a year left on his contract. With the consecutive choices, the Flyers began their rebuild by taking Behn Wilson and Ken Linseman. A year later, they were back in the Final, while the Penguins enjoyed one winning seasonand a first-round upset of Buffaloin Lonsberrys and Kindrachuks three years there.
I never knew just how good a player that Orest was until there was no Bob Clarke on the Penguins and O had a lot more responsibility, said Lonsberry.
But Kindrachuk, who centered for Lonsberry and Rick Kehoe on the Penguins best line says he never saw any surprises from Lonsberry in two cities.
You never had to worry about Ross, said Kindrachuk. He was the kind of player who was a great comfort for a coach. You cant take a night off, and he didnt.
It didnt end well in Pittsburgh regardless.
Like a thunderbolt, Lonsberry recalled. I called Baz (GM Bastien) and told him I would like to get my deal straightened out for next year and he said, Ross, were not renewing your contract.
I said You had 26 players in camp last year for the whole organization, how can you do that? I wanted to stay in the game, so I said Why dont you send me to Erie as a playing assistant coach, and you can always bring me up in an emergency situation. Baz said he couldnt do it. But he said he wouldnt ask for anything from another team if I wanted to cut a deal.
I had let my agent Herb Pinder go, used a lawyer, a family friend who didnt really know anything about the game. Herby was a good guy, should have kept him as it turned out, so I called him back and he wasnt too enthused about helping me.
He did get a nibble from Edmonton, which offered me only a two-way contract and I said no. Hindsight, I should have said yes. Glen Sather was a pretty good guy and it would have been fun, the way it turned out, to be with that organization.
Nothing else materialized. I had an offer (to sell insurance) back in LA, so I said, Bleep on hockey and came out here. Found out a year-and-a-half later that Hartford had some interest, but Baz had asked for a first-round draft choice.
By then, Lonsberry had settled into a life of selling commercial insurance and, with his wife Wahnita, and raising three children. Daughter Heather, who lives nearby in Santa Clarita, is married with five kids and works as a claims adjuster. Kyle, born during the 1974 playoffs, is married with a recently-born son and works as a plumber in Blaine, Washington, near the Canadian border. Allison lives in a guesthouse on the Lonsberry property with two children, getting her life together after two bad relationships.
Lonsberrys insurance company changed hands and the commute to downtown LA got long, so hes dabbling part-time with a local company and beginning another five-year wait to be declared cancer free. Its devastating when the finish line keeps moving on you. But he crossed the biggest one in his sport twice with the Flyers, a great comfort to him.
I would have had a good career without the two Cups, he said. But for the role players like myself and Dorny and Bill Clement, who didnt win individual awards or break any records, a Stanley Cup is something you can hang your hat on.
A Marcel Dionne can never say he won a Stanley cup, but he had plenty of other stuff. Guys like me get traded from team to team because of their ability to be a good role player and the Flyers were a team that succeeded because we accepted our roles.
I saw the HBO Broad Street Bullies documentary and didnt like it. I think as time went by we had shaken the negativity of being considered nothing but goons and thugs and that film just brought that all back. I only liked the part where Phil (Esposito) said how much talent we had. Because that was true.
I surprised Ed Snider once when I told him that I hoped the Flyers dont win another Stanley Cup. I told him it would take away from how special we were. Here I was again, having another clash with management laughs but I meant it. The closeness of that team was so special that, other than the actual winning, thats what I remember most.
Its interesting, you make a lot of friends with your teammates and think they are friendships for life, but because of time and people going their own way they kind of fall apart. Im out here in California. August a year ago, I was back in Philly for a card signing, saw Dorny and Moose there and flew out the same day.
Chief (Taylor) is the only one I still speak to regularly. But when I was going through the radiation I heard from Bill Clement, Dorny, Kindrachuk, Bill Barber and Barry Dean, of all people.
Taylor says this is not just an act for a phone interview, that Lonsberrys spirits are good. You know that (Stanley Cup) group of us, were all tough, said Taylor, now a Tampa Bay Lightning broadcaster. I told him at least he didnt have to worry about losing his hair from the chemo and he laughed.
Everybody means to call, everybody gets busy with their own stuff, its too bad somebody has to get sick for guys to reach out. But I know it was a big boost for him when they didnt have to take out the whole lung out and put in the tube. I really think Ross is doing fine.
So he tells, one and all.
Ed (Snider) called, which I thought was nice, said Lonsberry. We played phone tag, finally connected and had a good talk.
You know, when I left the game, if somebody talked about hockey I wanted to leave the room. Now, you cant shut me up about it.
If you see anybody, tell them Im fighting the good fight.
Jay Greenberg covered the Flyers for14 years for the Daily News and Evening Bulletin. His history of theFlyers, Full Spectrum, was published in 1996. He can be reached at jayg616@aol.com.