Darren Zary
Saskatoon StarPhoenix
George Pesut played hockey in the rough-and-tumble 1970s and lived to write about it.
After globe-trotting around the world as a professional hockey player, the former Saskatoon Blades defenceman decided to pen his first-ever book — The Fourth Period: Between the Ice Sheets; Hockey on Two Continents.
His memoir chronicles a colourful and nomadic hockey career that spanned three decades in North America and Europe.
“(The book) was a few years in the making,” says Pesut, who spent his childhood years in Saskatoon and Laird, where his family bought, and ran, the Laird Hotel.
“I guess I had two things on my bucket list, many years ago, and that was to write a book and to act. I didn’t get the acting part in — I could have in California. (But the hockey escapades) never ended where you’re young and you’re playing all over the place.”
Pesut played hockey for four junior hockey teams and 21 professional teams, across North America and Europe.
He was selected 24th overall in the 1973 National Hockey League entry draft by the St. Louis Blues. He attended training camps, and spent time in the minors, with the Blues and Philadelphia Flyers (Broad Street Bullies) before being dealt to the California Golden Seals, a team with which he played 92 NHL regular-season games.
He also spent time with the fledgling World Hockey Association’s Calgary Cowboys before venturing to Europe.
“I think the ’70s, with the NHL and the advent of the WHA, was the craziest time in hockey,” writes Pesut, who played both defence and forward during his career.
“I might have been a bit of a rebel in my early days in hockey, but I did it my way and have no regrets.”
Pesut — who is of Croatian descent and whose nickname is ‘Zuti’ — says it was one-time Riverside Tennis Club doubles partner Gerry Allbright, a former criminal lawyer turned Court of Kings Bench judge, who told him ‘you should write a book’ about all his hockey tales.
When Pesut retired from playing back in 1994 at age 40, he started putting material together.
“But then I was doing too much, work-wise and family, and you can’t really concentrate properly,” he explains. “And then a few years ago, about five, I packed everything in. I started the core writing for about two years, six hours a day. I finally got everything wrapped up. Being a novice writer, the editing was very painful.
“Finally, you’ve got to put a stop to it, you know. It can’t be perfect. It’s always very gratifying when you finally get that copy in your hand.”
Saskatchewan born and raised
Pesut was born to Croatian immigrants.
His dad survived three years in a Nazi prison camp during World War II before coming to Canada.
Pesut lived in Saskatoon until he was six, learned to skate on the outdoor rink at St. Francis School. His parents bought the hotel in Laird, where Pesut started playing hockey.
At the tender age of 15, he was already playing senior hockey and much more.
Pesut actually played for FIVE different teams during one season. He played senior hockey for the Waldheim Warriors but also played in the high school, midget and juvenile leagues, as well as on a provincial team.
“The law of averages finally caught up to me,” he writes in his book. “I had five games all scheduled on the same night.”
Rather than pick between them, Pesut didn’t play at all that day. He went into Saskatoon to see the Sidney Poitier movie, To Sir With Love.
“I won the rookie of the year in the senior league, MVP in the midget league, MVP in the high school, and MVP in juvenile,” Pesut remembers fondly.
Receiving a trophy from Father Athol Murray was a big deal for the teenager.
A Few Wrong Turns
Pesut had a history of taking wrong turns, both literally and figuratively.
As a prospective junior hockey player, he had been assigned to the Saskatoon Blades’ farm team, the Saskatoon Olympics. They played in the Saskatchewan Junior A Hockey League with teams like the Humboldt Broncos and Prince Albert Raiders.
Yet “through some strange set of circumstances,” he wound up at the wrong training camp — the Saskatoon Macs junior B squad’s practice — by accident.
“I joined in the practice and liked the guys on the team,” he says, “so I remained there for the season.”
Around that same time, Pesut was living on Saskatoon’s east side, a block away from Holy Cross High School. That’s where Pesut, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, planned on attending.
“Being the farm boy that I was, and not knowing the city very well, I walked right past Holy Cross and enrolled at Walter Murray Collegiate by mistake,” he writes, adding that, on his first day of school, he got lost and couldn’t find his classroom.
“I was so embarrassed that I walked home and didn’t return until the next day.”
Later, while playing in Europe, Pesut tells of the time he and a teammate drove from West Germany into East Germany, a restricted area, by mistake. Pulled over by the police, they were told they had to “pay a fine or face jail time.” The cop wanted 400 German marks, but Pesut bravely bartered him down to 100 marks.
Pesut tells some pretty incredible, almost unbelievable stories, in his book — some that “would knock your socks off.” He insists all are true yet wouldn’t happen in today’s world.
“There were so many crazy things I went through back then in hockey,” he says.
While in Germany, Pesut played on a team, Iserlohn ECD, sponsored by the infamous Muammar Gaddafi, former Libyan strongman who was considered a terrorist.
Gaddafi was “pumping 10-million marks” into the Bundesliga team, Pesut says.
“It was, like, 1986-87, and it was quite a bit of money in those days and we made world headlines,” recalls Pesut.
“I think every television company in the world was there when we stepped on the ice with Muammar Gaddafi’s name on our jerseys … I said to the Canadian guys on our team at the time, ‘We haven’t met Muammar yet, but I don’t think we should go on a losing streak with that guy!’”
The team owner, Heinz Weifenbach, was considered the “Robin Hood of German hockey,” Pesut says, “a kind of steal-from-the-rich-and-give-to-the-poor kind of guy.
“It was this small place of about 5,000, and he wanted to win the championship so badly … He was desperate for money, which happens a lot of times, looking for a new sponsor. We thought it was going to be this big cement company but it turned out to be Gaddafi.
“We actually were supposed to go see him at Christmas, at his house, during the break. He was guarded by these 200 women. They were hand-trained and everything. It got so crazy with this sponsorship that the German government stepped in before Christmas and just said, ‘this can’t go on.’ He hadn’t turned himself in to the West yet. He was a terrorist at the time. They shut things down, and the team. We all had to find new teams at Christmas time — we were all free agents.”
Antics never stopped
While in the minors, the antics never stopped.
Pesut tells how he spent one off-season gallivanting around Cape Cod before making his way back to Saskatoon.
“It was a smooth flight to Winnipeg, except now I was under the gun to catch my Northwest Orient flight to Boston,” he writes. “We were taxiing into the Winnipeg Airport when I spotted my Northwest Orient plane. I asked our pilot to wheel up as close as possible to my plane and I would be on my way. I’m sure what we were doing was quite illegal.
“I jumped out of the little Cesna, grabbed my bags and raced up the stairs to check in, then rushed down the tunnel to the gate. The passengers were already boarding the flight. I explained to the (airline) employees at the gate how I happened to get there from the tarmac.
“I received some peculiar looks, but, because there was an airline strike, they did have a little empathy for me. I guess, in post 9-11 times, this would never have happened or I would have been arrested on the spot!”
While playing in North America earlier in his career, Pesut wasn’t happy with his minor-league situation as a member of the Erie Blades. He began scheming a way to get suspended on purpose so he could fulfill an invitation to attend the 1977 Super Bowl in Los Angeles.
“I body-checked the referee, choked him until he almost passed out, harpooned him in the chest and I only got a two-game suspension,” Pesut writes. “What has a guy got to do, kill a ref, to get a five-game suspension?”
Pesut never made it to the Super Bowl but somehow did stay out of jail.
It wasn’t the first time Pesut went a little nuts on the ice. While playing junior hockey for the Flin Flon Bombers, Pesut had a confrontation with the fans and coach Pat (Paddy) Ginnell.
“Our philosophies didn’t mix too well,” Pesut says. “We were playing a game in Swift Current. I threw my stick and harpooned a fan. Paddy was barking at me to go on the ice for my shift. I told him to f-off, that it wasn’t my shift, and then I took my stick and I was going to swing at him. He dove down to the bench and covered his head and, after the game, Blaine Stoughton, who was our captain and a good friend of mine, said, ‘I think we need to go for drinks.’ I said, ‘Why’s that?’ And he said, ‘because you’re not going to be here in the morning.’
“Sure enough, first thing in the morning, I get a call from Paddy. I get into the room there and I know what’s up. I just asked him and I think they got four players for me, so my stock was up. I asked ‘where am I going?’ and he said “Victoria, they’re an expansion team.’”
The very next day, the Bombers were headed to Saskatoon to play the Blades.
“My folks had come from out of town, but I didn’t even have time to see them because I had to get on the plane to go to Victoria,” Pesut recalls.
Prior to getting traded to Victoria, Pesut had been traded by the Blades to Flin Flon.
“It was kind of a funny story,” Pesut says. “It was actually kind of stupid, but when you’re young, you’re stupid a lot of the time. I thought a girl I was dating in high school might have been pregnant. I don’t think that was the case, but I panicked. I thought my troubles would go away if I left town.”
The Prince Albert Raiders (then a member of the Saskatchewan Junior A Hockey League) were offering him “a ton of money at the time,” to come play.
“So, I left a note on (Blades coach) Shakey McLeod’s desk, that I was leaving for P.A. It kind of shocked him. He didn’t know the real reason. I skated around there for a week, pretending to be a big wheel, and then Shaky called me — I think I left on a Monday, and by Thursday he called me — ‘Hi Zuti, you’re going to be playing in Flin Flon on Friday night and our bus will be coming in and you’ll be on it, because you got traded to Flin Flon.’”
Pesut travelled with the Blades up to Flin Flon, where he got off the bus only to suit up with his new Bombers team and play against those very same Blades.
Double-shifted in Flin Flon
Pesut — who in Europe would go on to play an entire hockey game, without leaving the ice — would more than get double-shifted in Flin Flon.
He worked at the town’s mine, Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company, from 6 a.m. to 12 noon, and then hit the ice to attend Ginnell’s punishing practices from 12-2 p.m. in the afternoon.
“Paddy Ginnell and Ernie (Punch) McLean were the two tough-guy coaches in Western Canada,” Pesut says. “In Saskatoon, I might have got $250 a month, but in Flin Flon, it was like $750 because of the mine. Paddy said ‘you’ll get 750 bucks but the beard has to come off and the moustache.’ I went to the barbershop. I got the full brush-haircut, basically. I wore a toque for about three weeks.”
Pesut says it was “big money for a junior hockey player in the early 1970s to work some frivolous job” underground.
“We all had fruitless jobs, although I did find a way to entertain myself,” Pesut recalls. “I got steel pucks made, and I got them rubberized down there in the mine, and snuck them into our practices with our goaltender, Herm Hordal. I knew Herm pretty good but I don’t think he ever knew he was the benefactor of these pucks. They used to hurt. In shooting drills, I’d try to slip the odd one in there every couple weeks and he’d have a big welt on his chest.”
Full circle with the Saskatoon Blades
Pesut had two stints with the Blades.
When he showed up at the 1971 training camp, he certainly stood out — maybe not for the right reasons.
He says he “tipped the Toledos at 222 pounds,” had a moustache and long greasy black hair.
“My moustache resembled a soccer team, 11 hairs on each side,” he writes. “I was a sight for sore eyes on the blueline. I looked like an Oriental rug salesman on skates.”
He was traded from Saskatoon to Flin Flon, on to the Victoria Cougars and then back again to the Blades for his final season of junior hockey.
He says his biggest regret is not winning a championship with the Blades.
“Maybe I’m bragging but my last year’s team, ’72-73, we only lost 11 games. Our record was 46-11-11. I think it was one of the best teams ever. We should have won the Memorial Cup or at least got there. We got upset in the final by Medicine Hat, which was a real bummer. We beat everybody up in the season.”
The team included the likes of Bob Bourne, Pat Price, Ralph Klassen, Dave Lewis, Freddie Williams and Danny Arndt. That Blades team was loaded.
“I mean, it was a great year,” Pesut recalls. “It would have been nice to get to the Cup. I think some people had already bought tickets, I heard, to go to the Cup because they were so sure that we were going to be there.
“I’m actually shocked that Saskatoon has never won the Cup, considering all the good players that have come through.”
Pesut had gone full circle in his major junior career.
California Dreamin’
Pesut, who was named WHL defenceman of the year during his career, says it was a “treat’ playing for the California Golden Seals. All of his 92 NHL games were played with the Seals between 1974 and 1976.
“I was the only rookie to make the (Philadelphia) Flyers’ second Cup team, but Larry Wilson, who coached their farm club, and I didn’t get along too well,” Pesut says. “They got Al McAdam and Larry Wright in a trade with Oakland and (the Flyers) were owed a first-round draft pick and that’s where I came in.
“Philly was basically the penthouse, and now I’m in the country club. It was different. Also being in California at that time, playing hockey, there was a lot of trouble with the ownership, with the team. The league even ran it for a while. There was a lot of instability there.
“Even today, the Seals kind of have a cult following. They still have 5,000 members in their fan club and have annual meetings. Their jerseys, the Pacific blue and all that — at the time, I felt that it was like a rose in my teeth because they were kind of ahead of their time — (but) in today’s day and age, they’d be fine. In fact, they won third place when they had a jersey competition, I think five years ago, in the NHL. But at the time, because we were a West Coast team and everything else, it was kind of like a country club atmosphere.”
New hockey home in Europe
Pesut went on to play for a number of teams in the Swiss Alps and Germany.
After playing professionally in the Western Hockey League, American Hockey League, Southern League, North American Hockey League, Central Hockey League and NHL, Pesut had found his new hockey home.
He tells the story of one night in Switzerland “when everything got out of hand.”
Connie Rohner was the president of the Davos Fan Club.
George Pesut, shown during his playing days in Europe
“The boys went out after the game and drank a few too many pops before returning to the hotel … We found Connie fast asleep in his room. As crazy as we were, we decided to rouse Connie from his deep sleep with a ‘harmless’ practical joke. We proceeded to pick Connie’s bed up. By the time Connie woke up and found out what was happening, he was hanging out the fourth floor of the hotel, staring at the street below. When he realized where he was, he was terrified and hanging onto his mattress for dear life. We eventually pulled him back into the room.”
On a much more serious and sombre note, Pesut points out that he and the late Duncan MacPherson had ties right until his mysterious passing.
MacPherson, a former Blades defenceman, died under mysterious circumstances at a ski resort in Austria.
MacPherson went missing in August of 1989. His body was discovered 14 years later by a Stubai Glacier Resort employee. A glove was sticking out on a melting ski run, where MacPherson’s body had lain frozen.
“We used to work out together and he had borrowed my car when he went missing in Europe,” Pesut says.
Pesut, known as a hockey free spirit, has written an unvarnished memoir of his playing days.
“A lot of time has gone by, but all these stories in my book are true,” said Pesut, who is retired and resides in Victoria.
Pesut’s book is available for sale at Indigo and also on Amazon.
As a hockey player, Pesut had his right knee done eight times and left knee once. He had pins placed in his ankle.
Yet he played until he was 40.
“I was very fortunate,” he says. “I played half a game in Germany with a broken leg, scored the winner in the third period. And I played another half a game with six broken ribs.
“They always say that being an import player in Europe is a picnic, but it’s almost harder because of some of the players you’re playing with and how much you play. One game in Davos, where they have the Spengler Cup, I played the entire game without changing. That was my first year in Europe.”
But it was far from his last.
What a career it was. Two continents. Three decades.
And, oh, so many stories to tell.
