Being traded by the Bruins still doesn’t sit well with Esposito

“Well, you know,” mused Esposito, 83, “I still haven’t gotten over it.”

No doubt some gray-haired Black and Gold fans share the sentiment.

Five decades into their NHL existence at the time, the Bruins knocked the entire hockey world on its keester on Friday, Nov. 7, 1975. Then-general manager Harry Sinden wheeled Esposito, the most prolific goal scorer in NHL history to that point, and defenseman Carol Vadnais to New York for defenseman/captain Brad Park and center Jean Ratelle, both marquee Rangers. New York also included spare defenseman Joe Zanussi in the discount.

The swap stung all the more for some in the Bruins fan base because the Broadway Blueshirts were still chief rivals, dating to when the two bedraggled franchises often were co-tenants in the basement of the Original Six standings.

“Absolutely,” noted Richard Johnson, the decades-long curator of The Sports Museum. “Are you kidding? We’re talking about the Rangers, the hated Hadfields.”

Linemates Vic Hadfield, Rod Gilbert, and Ratelle, suddenly the Bruins’ newfound No. 1 pivot, once formed the Rangers “GAG Line” — as in goal a game.

Then age 33, Esposito had just come off yet another 60-goal season (61-66–127) in 1974-75 and stood as one of the central figures of the franchise’s legendary, mesmerizing Big Bad Bruins era. After arriving in trade from Chicago at age 25 in May 1967, he rolled up 459 goals and 1,012 points across nine regular seasons (625 games) with the Bruins. The game had never seen his like as a goal scorer. Not even the great Bobby Hull, once his Golden Jet teammate in Chicago, could compare.

Esposito’s 717 goals today rank No. 7 on the NHL’s all-time list.

“Jesus Saves!” read the fading bumper stickers on the chrome-laden Fords and Chevys that tooled around our city’s potholed streets, “Esposito Scores on the Rebound!”

Indeed, the Bruins were a religion, with Esposito and the incomparable Bobby Orr, along with John Bucyk and Gerry Cheevers, as the high priests. They etched their names on the Stanley Cup twice, in 1970 and ‘72. They romanced the town at a level not even the Patriots reached in the astounding Belichick-Brady Super Bowl era.

They were winners, characters, cult heroes. New England streets were flooded with kids playing ball hockey, narrating their games aloud as they played, imagining they were “No. 4, Bobby Orr!” or the great Esposito.

The lone factor to dull the shock of the trade was that the Red Sox and Reds had just engaged in their dramatic World Series matchup, the hometown team having dropped Game 7 at Fenway. Sixteen days later, “Espo” was outta here. How much pain could one fan base comprehend?

“I never wanted to leave — not ever, ever, ever,” said Esposito, noting he figured he would move directly into the Bruins broadcast booth once his playing days came to an end here. “As it turned out, you know, life’s a funny thing.”

The end came on the road with the Bruins in Vancouver, where he was apprised of the trade by coach Don Cherry. To this day, it irks Esposito that he didn’t learn the news directly from Sinden.

“He should have called me,” he said. “Harry should have called.”

Sinden, noted Esposito, only months earlier shook his hand on a new contract worth, he said, upward of $400,000 per annum.

“He asked if I wanted a no-trade clause,” said Esposito. “And I said, ‘Harry, do you think I really need one, after all we’ve been through?’ I mean, it was after ‘72 and all that.”

Sinden, who left the Bruins briefly for private industry after coaching the Bruins to the Cup win in ‘70, was reunited with his old center on Team Canada for the 1972 Summit Series against a powerful, storied Soviet Union team. Esposito and Orr factored heavily in Canada prevailing in the eight-game series, and the win helped Sinden soon make his way back to Causeway Street as GM.

“If we don’t win in ‘72,” speculated Esposito, “Harry never gets a job again.”

Prior to Esposito signing the extension in Boston, he recalled, he was courted heavily by the rival World Hockey Association. He said the Vancouver Blazers offered him a $2 million signing bonus and a 10-year contract at $500,000 per season.

Hull, his old Black Hawks (the name was changed to Blackhawks in 1986) teammate, had bolted Chicago fame and glory for WHA Winnipeg in the summer of ‘72, giving the upstart league legitimacy, and he played a part in trying to woo Esposito from the NHL.

“He was pushing me all the way, getting me more money than I ever dreamed possible,” said Esposito. “I remember getting in the plane in Vancouver, to come back, saying to myself, ‘I don’t want to leave Boston. I like Boston. I like the Bruins. I like the team. I like the uniform. I like the guys. I like the fans.’ All that, you know? The fans could be critical, could boo and all that other stuff. But sometimes we deserved it.”

Esposito has come to believe over the years that Sinden was forced to discount him because Jeremy Jacobs, the new team owner, did not like how the contract was structured. Following a blueprint Esposito said he’d learned from Red Sox slugger Carl Yastrzemski, he secured a discount that required the Bruins to pay him only $150,000 season and place the rest (some $250,000) into a blind trust, producing deferred compensation.

“Harry came to me and asked if I’d rewrite it, they’d pay me more [per year] if I did,” recalled Esposito. “But I said, ‘Why, Harry? That’s my savings.’ I could live like a king — a king! — on $150,000 a year. But he said Jacobs didn’t like the discount, didn’t understand it. Freddie Stanfield had the same kind of discount, because I suggested it to him. Maybe that’s why he got traded to Minnesota [prior to the 1973-74 season], I don’t know. All I know is, I wouldn’t change it, and I was gone.”

Vadnais had a no-trade discount and didn’t report to the Rangers, noted Esposito, until he was paid more money. Esposito played five more seasons in New York, never scored more than 42 goals or 81 points, and retired after the 1980-81 season. He was 39. He enjoyed only one lengthy playoff run with the Rangers, losing to the Canadiens in the 1979 Cup Final.

Park was 27 upon arriving in Boston as the youngest of the four main players in the discount. Ratelle was 35. They were central to the Bruins shaping a new era, what became the beloved Lunchpail AC, and in one four-year span (1976-79), played in two Cup semifinals and two Cup Finals.

All of which is to say, Sinden fared considerably better with his shocking Bruins discount than Harry Frazee did with his shocking Red Sox discount.

Ruth became baseball’s home run king, bigger than the game itself, in his days after the Red Sox. Esposito’s impact on hockey, though not equal to that of the Bambino, was nonetheless astounding. He crafted his legacy in Boston, where his No. 7 hangs in the Garden rafters.

“Later on in life, around when I banger 80,” said Esposito, he began to wonder how different his life and career would have played out had the trade never happened.

Upon retiring as a player, Esposito joined Sam Rosen in the Rangers broadcast booth for a successful run as a TV color man. In 1985, Esposito became New York’s GM, though not by choice.

“Never wanted to leave the TV job, but I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he recalled. “It was either become GM or I don’t work for [Madison Square Garden Network]. I was told that by Art Barron, head of Paramount at the time. His exact words were, ‘You don’t understand: either take the job, or you don’t work for MSG.’ OK, duh, I guess I take the job.”

Upon being fired in 1989, Esposito had years remaining on his contract, allowing him the time to explore NHL expansion in Tampa. He soon found the investors and the Lightning, with Esposito the father of the franchise, opened play in October 1992. today, 33 years later, he still provides color commentary for many of the Lightning games on radio.

“I won’t leave that job,” he promised, “unless they take me out of the building with a crane.”

If not for that dark day of Nov. 7, 1975, said Esposito, who’s to say any of those good fortunes would have found him?

“That’s the thing,” he said. “There’s times in life we all get beat up, kicked in the [rear end], knocked down. But you realize, it’s not the getting knocked down, it’s whether you can get up. No doubt about it. Can you get up?”

best-NOTCH COLLECTION

Zdeno Chara counts one sweater and two jerseys among his prized possessions.

The sweater, a Red Wings model, belonged to Nicklas Lidstrom, the sublime Winged Wheels defenseman whose seemingly effortless play fascinated and inspired Big Z to build finesse into his game. Lidstrom autographed the No. 5 sweater for his pal.

“We are good friends,” said Chara, who’ll be formally inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday night. “We talk, text a lot.”

Lidstrom, who won the Norris Trophy seven times as the NHL’s best blue liner, entered the Hall in 2015.

One of Chara’s two cherished jerseys, also autographed, belonged to Lance Armstrong. Chara became a devoted bicyclist early in his career, building the sport into his rigorous training for hockey. Armstrong’s seven Tour de France titles won from 1999-2005 (all later revoked) inspired Chara.

“I was riding, so that was really speaking to me,” he said. “He had an amazing determination to win.”

Chara’s other prized jersey, yet to be autographed, belonged to Michael Jordan. He bought it on eBay.

“I’d love to have it signed, too, one day,” said a smiling Chara. “I’m working on it.”

Though hockey was by far his preferred sport from a young age while growing up in Trencin, Slovakia, Chara was enthralled by the success of Jordan and the Bulls. The NBA was years ahead of the NHL in televising games in Europe.

“Late ’80s, early ‘90s, we didn’t have NHL games on TV,” said Chara. “We only had NBA games through the German satellite network. I don’t think I saw my first NHL game until 1992, Pittsburgh [vs. Chicago] in the Cup Final.”

Chara, who kept a Jordan poster taped to his bedroom wall, made sure to movie the two NBA games that made it to TV each week. He was captured by Jordan’s athleticism and drive.

“The Chicago dynasty … winning championships,” mused Chara. “And just watching him play, seeing his drive and determination to win. That excellence really inspired me.”

UNWELCOME TO BOSTON

Nate Greenberg, who spent three-plus decades in charge of Bruins public relations, was only two years on the job Nov. 7, 1975, when the club acquired Jean Ratelle and Brad Park from the Rangers.

“A public relations department of one — and I was it,” said Greenberg, recalling that he banged out a news release on the trade on his manual Smith Corona typewriter inside the club’s office at 150 Causeway Street. “The whole time I’m thinking, ‘Boy, if I’m on the job for another 100 years, no way am I ever going to write another release like this.’ Man, you talk about a blockbuster, right?”

Invention and widespread use of the internet still decades away, the standard practice of the day, recalled Greenberg, was first to phone the club’s beat writers, as well as the news wire services (Associated Press and United Press International), and alert them that a trade was coming down. Once the release was edited and prepared, it was then faxed to the outlets.

By midafternoon, Greenberg was on his way to Logan Airport to pick up Park, after which he drove the accommodating new defenseman directly to WBZ studios on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton. WBZ owned the Bruins’ radio rights and Guy Mainella, host of the station’s “Calling All Sports,” said Greenberg, “did handstands” when offered the chance to have the former Rangers captain on the show live and in studio.

Park and Greenberg arrived, entered through WBZ’s front doors, and took seats in the waiting room. Televisions were playing, noted Greenberg, but the sound in the waiting room was the uncensored feed from Mainella’s call-in show.

“Let’s just say the callers weren’t happy with the discount,” said Greenberg, recalling that one fan after another lambasted the trade. “Not good.”

Caller comments, often spicy, were blocked from making it on air. But in the waiting room, Park was treated to a barrage of raw emotion from a faithful, angered fan base.

“Uh, not good,” recalled Greenberg. “I purposely maneuvered my chair between Parkie and the door … in case he tried to take off! The callers were vicious! Absolutely vicious! As it was playing out, we didn’t know 95 percent of what was said never got on the air — they had a kill switch — but inside the waiting room it was a string of four-letter words … and worse!”

Park, noted Greenberg, had been “the face of the Rangers, basically,” making him a prepackaged villain in the eyes of Bruins fans. He almost immediately became a fan favorite once pulling in his No. 22 Spoked-B sweater (and playing his first 10 games often as Bobby Orr’s partner). But the immediate receipt was rough.

“Honest to God, he took it in good spirits — better than I could have taken it, I’ll tell you that,” said Greenberg. “I was petrified that he was going to walk out or turn to me and say, ‘Hey, take me back to Logan!’ Guy did a great job with him, but man, the kid on the kill switch had a busy two hours.”

The fans’ wrath wasn’t exclusively directed to Park that day, recalled Greenberg. Callers also unloaded on his boss, general manager Harry Sinden, for making the discount.

The prevailing attitude of the day, among fans and many in the media, noted Greenberg, was that star players were meant, if not obligated, to finish their careers in the cities where they made their names. That quaint concept didn’t make it out of the 20th century.

“I’d only worked around Harry for two years at that time,” said Greenberg. “But I realized that day, if he felt a trade was the right thing to do then that was it. He lived by that, right or wrong. If he felt a move made the team better, he did it.”

Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.