Paul Hoganson is sitting right in front of me, in the here and now, but all I see is my favorite hockey memory from 40 years ago.
It’s the opening game of the 1977 World Hockey Association playoffs. The Indianapolis Racers, the first major league team I saw as more important than life itself, are on the road. They tied it up with the rival Cincinnati Stingers late in the third period, and now we’re in triple overtime. It’s past 1 a.m. as the game heads into its fifth hour.
I’m just a kid, but I have the distinct impression that this is do-or-die stuff.
Hoganson, already a seasoned veteran at 27 years old, crouches in goal for Indy. He’s fought off yet another flurry of shots and regains his breath. Almost halfway through the third OT, he looks up, and the red goal light is on — at the other end of the rink — behind the opposing Stingers’ goalie.
It’s April 9, 1977, and his Racers have just won the longest game in WHA history.
My time machine sends me forward 40 years, and Paul Hoganson is with me in a Tucson south side Mexican restaurant. He gives me the smile of a winner.
“The memory gets bigger the older you get,” he said. “When there is that much concentration and pressure, the longer it went on, there was no way I was going to lose that game. It would have been devastating.”
Hoganson has no illusions that this 40-year-old memory makes him a legend with anyone other than his former teammates or fans like me. He played major league hockey in the WHA for Michigan, Baltimore, New England, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis, and also with Pittsburgh of the NHL, but adds with a laugh, “I’m not even a household name in my own household.”
Ah, but he will remain forever the winning goaltender in the most important game in Indianapolis hockey history, and the poster boy for that franchise’s high point. Indianapolis led the 1970s major league WHA in attendance, with a rabid fan base and success in two straight playoff runs. It was widely hailed as a prime example of a new major league market that would survive and thrive, and eventually join the rival NHL.
A little more than a year after Hoganson’s landmark game, I watched Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier start their major league careers with those same Indianapolis Racers. Then the team’s finances collapsed, and it was gone, just months before the WHA and NHL merged in 1979.
Hoganson sees it as a cautionary tale for Tucson Roadrunners fans. All seems well with the AHL team right now, but enjoy it while you can. You never know how long a pro hockey team will last.
“Hoagie” knows all about disappearing hockey teams in Tucson, too. He was the starting goaltender for the 1978-79 Tucson Rustlers, the one-season Pacific Hockey League team that played at Tucson Arena.
He retired from hockey after the Rustlers folded, but stayed in Tucson. Marveling at the new Tucson AHL team, he said, “I never thought in my life that I’d see successful pro hockey here.”
Watching the Roadrunners this year, in the same arena he played in, Hoganson had game flashbacks. He was back in the net, making the same saves as this new generation of Tucson pro hockey players. He says that even when watching hockey on TV, he instinctively raises his arms to fend off oncoming pucks.
He waited decades for pro hockey in Tucson, and is delighted with the Roadrunners and their inaugural season.
“The games are first class, they really are,” he said. “The quality of play is great, and I’m like a kid in a candy store. I love every minute of it.”
Hoganson loves hockey today, and he doesn’t live in his past playing days. He only revels in it when prompted by fans like me.
“I was on the ice, in games that mattered, with some tremendous hockey players,” he said. “I played with Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Pat Stalepton, Andre Lacroix, Guy Lafluer — I could go on with great names for half an hour. And you can’t take that away from me.”
The final score of that spring 1977 triple-OT playoff game was Indianapolis 4, Cincinnati 3. In small type, the newspaper box score notes that the winning goaltender was Paul Hoganson.
That fine print really is do-or-die stuff for those of us who cherish hockey players — and the history they make.
