Missing Bob Plager On His Birthday

Bob Plager had his No. 5 jersey retired by the St. Louis Blues in February, 2017. As a player, coach, executive, scout, broadcaster and numerous other things, he was with the organization for 54 years. On this day, (March 11), he would have turned 82..

Unfortunately, there’s no hockey game tonight at Enterprise Center. Presumably, the building will be dark - no cheering crowds, no blaring horns, no Blues marching in.

That’s OK. The jersey is there, hanging high in the ceiling, keeping watch. The garment itself weighs less than a pound. Its presence, and the company it keeps, weighs much more. And what it represents, for St. Louis’ hockey franchise, for an irrepressible kid from Kirkland Lake, Ont., breaks the scale.

It should be seen and celebrated on this day, Tuesday, March 11 - Bob Plager’s birthday.

The fabric in that jersey is made from 50 years of respect for what it took to wear it, 50 years of loyalty to a single team and a game never cheated, 50 years of affection and commitment to a city and its Blue-bleeding residents. Make no mistake, this is “Bobby’s Place” - this building, this whole damn town.

It’s been nearly four years since he departed this earth. He would be 82 today, and our hearts are with his daughter Melissa Plager Briggs, his son Bobby Jr., his son-in-law David Briggs and his grandkids. No doubt, they miss him dearly. Don’t we all?

On Feb. 2, 2017, Bob Plager’s No. 5 was the seventh jersey retired by the Blues, one of 172 so honored in 32 NHL cities. How does that happen to a guy who played 645 NHL games and scored only 20 goals, a guy who never played in an All-Star Game, never played on a Stanley Cup champion?

Scotty Bowman, the legendary coach who mentored the Blues through their start-up, who won nine Stanley Cups as a coach, knows exactly how it happened.

“He deserves it,” Bowman said at the time of the jersey retirement. “I’m so glad for him. You know, they use the expression and say someone is ‘true Blue.’ Well, no one could be more true Blue than Bobby.”

Fittingly, Plager arrived in St. Louis by unconventional means. During the 1967 NHL expansion draft, the Blues worked an under-the-table arrangement with New York, to help the Rangers protect veteran defenseman Rod Seiling. The Blues agreed to draft Seiling, take him off the table, then trade him back for four young players. 

We’re not talking Broglio for Brock here, but it was a heckuva hockey trade. 

Of the four, defenseman Gord Kannegiesser was the least prominent, playing only 23 NHL games. But forward Gary Sabourin scored 136 goals in seven Blues seasons, Tim Ecclestone became a valued two-way winger over four Blues seasons and 21-year old Robert Bryant Plager teamed with his brother Barclay and partner Noel Picard to assert the rambunctious and colorful identity of the franchise. 

When you played the Blues in the late-60s and early-70s, you did so at your own risk, with your head up and your insurance card in your socks.

The expression “hard to play against” gets thrown around a lot in today’s hockey parlance. In the formative years of the Blues, NHL teams primarily played two sets of defenseman. In St. Louis the pairs were Al Arbour and Barclay Plager, Noel Picard and Bob Plager. They applied rules of engagement that helped skilled forwards like Red Berenson thrive and helped their team reach Stanley Cup finals during each of their first three seasons. 

They assigned a personality to the note on the front of the sweater that never rubbed off. They weren’t “hard to play against,” they were a shot-blocking, hip-checking, crease-clearing, face-punching nightmare to play against.  

“If anybody had their head down, they took their chances,” Bowman remembered.      

Bob Plager wore his Blues jersey through 11 seasons, 615 regular-season games, 74 playoff games and 957 penalty minutes. But that’s not the half of it - literally. When he arrived in the summer of ‘67, he knew next to nothing about St. Louis. When his playing career ended in the winter of ‘78, he knew he would never leave. 

He went Blue - as an overzealous Brett Hull might say - in every way imaginable. He was a scout, a coach, a broadcaster, an executive, a consultant and the greatest ambassador the franchise has ever known. Chances are, you or someone you know met Bob Plager. There might have been a joke involved, a belly laugh, an autograph, a hug… or all of the above. 

Plager liked to say, “I used to meet people and they would tell me, ‘You were my favorite.’ Then it was, ‘You were my grandfather’s favorite.’  I just hope I’m around another 15 years. Maybe then, it will be the great-grandmothers who remember us.”  

Of course, the observation was always delivered with a snicker. It was Plager’s nature to be self-effacing, to make people laugh, to laugh along with them. Bob Plager never took himself seriously, which invited others to do the same.

But that was a little bit misleading. Plager knew the game of hockey - inside-out, upside-down, intuitively and spiritually. He had done it, seen it, experienced it.    

In 1990-91, the Blues asked him to coach their Peoria team in the International Hockey League, just temporarily while they found a replacement. The Rivermen lost all of their pre-season exhibition games, and then lost opening night 4-2. Afterward, a Peoria sports writer asked Plager if he was concerned about the struggling start.

“Have you ever covered hockey before?” Plager asked in a friendly manner. “Listen, if we play the way we played tonight, we’re going to win a lot of games.”

Peoria won the next 18 games in a row, finished with 58 wins during the regular season and won the Turner Cup. Plager’s “struggling” squad scored 405 goals in 82 games. David Bruce had 64 goals in 60 games, Kelly Chase had 20 goals and 406 penalty minutes, and 5-foot-10, 165-pound winger Nelson Emerson had 115 points.  

Emerson played 11 NHL seasons, including two in St. Louis (1991-93). But, on the occasion of Plager’s jersey retirement, he remembered that championship season in Peoria.

“I had a lot of coaches throughout my career,” said Emerson, who also played in Winnipeg, Hartford, Carolina, Chicago, Ottawa, Atlanta and Los Angeles. “People ask me, ‘Who was the best coach you ever played for?’ And Bobby’s at the top of the list.”

In his own inestimable way, Plager knew which buttons to push and how to push them. 

“He could sense the room and he knew what the room needed,” added Emerson, now an assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Kings. “You talk about funniness and jokes and all of that stuff, but our team was smart enough to look past all of that and know the reason for it.

“Sometimes the smartest people in the room, who have so much to offer, do it in a lot of different ways. Once we won and once we all moved on, we realized, ‘Holy crap! That was one of the smartest hockey people I’ve ever been around in my life.’ 

“It was awesome. We had an incredible team and he used all of the wisdom he had to help so many of us make it to the NHL.”

Emerson can tell lots of stories from that season. But what he remembers most had nothing to do with the room or hockey. What he remembers most is Melissa Plager sitting in the stands.

“She drove down from St. Louis all the time,” Emerson recalled. “It was just something that caught my eye, you know. It was like, Bobby’s with us every day at practice, he’s here riding the bus with us. But every weekend his daughter would be right there by his side. 

“It was something that, as I moved on, it stayed with me. You know, this is a business, it’s a game, but it’s family that really helps us get through important times in our lives. There was something about it that said something about Bobby, something I’ve never forgotten.”

Staff members of the organization came to appreciate that Bob Plager. And there should not be a Blues fan that doesn’t hold him dear. 

“You know, Bob was just a one of a kind person,” Berenson said, upon hearing of Plager’s death in 2021. “He wanted everybody to like him off the ice, but nobody liked him on the ice - unless you were on his team. Then you loved him.

Prominent figures in Bob Plager’s life passed before him. His parents, Edith and Gus and many of his former teammates. Younger brother Billy died at age 70 in 2016. Older brother Barclay, his idol, was taken by cancer at age 46 in 1988. 

The night in Montreal in 1969, when Bowman started the three Plager brothers on a forward line for Hockey Night in Canada, was one of the family's most cherished memories.

After an off day, the Blues will play in Pittsburgh on Thursday. It's a place where the Plagers had many raucous evenings, stories Bob Plager reveled in telling. 

“When we were playing, people in other cities would buy tickets just to come see the Plagers get theirs,” he recalled once. “I remember Barclay and I had a brawl with a dozen Pittsburgh guys in St. Louis, and Barclay got his nose broken. Of course, it took three of them to break it. 

"Then the next time we went into Pittsburgh they had a sellout. It was their first one ever.”

If you’re a St. Louis sports fan, if you ever were around Bob Plager, you miss that. You miss the priceless snapshots of early years, years that included names like Doug Harvey, Glenn Hall, Dickie Moore, Jacques Plante, Frank St. Marseille and Phil Goyette. 

You miss the stories as only Bob Plager could tell them. And to be sure, his birthday would be incomplete without one of those stories.

“In those days, all the players were signed to one-year contracts,” Bowman recalled. “After the first year, I was doing the contracts and there was no real forethought to it. Whoever was around at the time would come in and you would get it done.

“So one day I signed Barclay and then, as it happened, I had Bob in after that. And he floored me because he said, ‘I’ll just leave it up to you. You know what I’m worth, just give me what you want.’ 

“Then, as he was getting ready to leave, he said, ‘But I’ll tell you what, I won’t take a nickel less than Barclay.’ “ Bowman paused to laugh: “Of course, he knew exactly what Barclay’s contract was. I said, ‘OK,’ and we gave him the same as Barclay.”

Unfortunately, you won’t see the jersey today, but think of it. Think of the distance it traveled, from the ponds of Kirkland Lake to the “Barn” on Oakland Ave, to the scaffolding high in the ceiling at 1401 Clark Ave. 

Remember who wore it - the first player to be penalized for the Blues, the first to assist on a Blues goal, the first to go in the stands on that “Slap Shot” night in Philadelphia. 

On Bob Plager’s birthday, let’s think of that jersey hanging in the rafters alongside one worn by his brother - No. 5 in our program, No. 1 in our hearts, and not a nickel less.