Jet Setters ‘70 Club Was Ahead Of Its Time

They were athletes before athletes became a breed apart.

Vince Collins laid carpet.

Seth Martin made the 280-mile round-trip to games from Trail, British Columbia, where he was a firefighter.

Tom Hodges ran a printing business. Gail Holden was in his second year at Gonzaga Law School.

Don Scherza and Brian Strimbiski worked at Goodyear.

Charlie Goodwin and Buddy Bodman punched in at Tubbs Electric.

Ken Gustafson was at Eastern Washington University, a year away from his first teaching job at Whitman Elementary.

They were Spokane Jets - the first U.S.based team to win the Canadian senior amateur hockey championship - and 25 years ago, for a few weeks in April and May, they were the hottest ticket in the 40-year history of the Spokane Coliseum.

When they won everything there was to win - the Savage Cup as British Columbia champions, the Patton Cup as the best in the West and the Allan Cup, emblematic of supremacy in Canadian senior amateur hockey - they roused this city as no team has.

Senior amateur hockey has had its day. Proliferation of professional leagues and the growth of junior hockey wiped out the incredible interest that the senior amateurs sustained here through the 1970s.

Players compare the competency of 1970-vintage senior amateurs to AA baseball. They came down to play and stayed to live.

They were the boys next door.

Using seats on the stage area of the Coliseum, they stuffed 6,000 fans into the building for their first game of the ‘70 Allan Cup series with Orillia, Ontario. The six-game series, won by Spokane 4-2, attracted 36,515, an average of more than 6,000.

Nearly 180,000 paid to see them during their seven-month run.

The Jets will take another bow tonight prior to the Spokane ChiefsPrince George Cougars game in the Coliseum.

Their popularity was successdriven, certainly, but transcended more than the typical love of a winner.

“The guys lived and worked and went to school here,” Don Scherza said. “The people grew on us or we grew on them. It was a working man’s league.”

“We had an identity,” said Gustafson, a goal-scoring forward who settled here after a stint as a pro in the minors. “The people liked the idea that we bought our cars in Spokane, that we shopped in Spokane and a lot of us were working on careers here.”

Goodwin remembers pulling into town after a tough road trip at 3 o’clock on a wintry morning. Three hours later, he was back up and headed for the warehouse.

“Come Monday we’d be dragging but we lived for Saturday nights to play here in front of 5,000 people,” Goodwin said. “Spokane is a Saturday night town. That Coliseum would be roaring.”

There was something to roar about in those days. The Jets would win the Allan Cup again - four times in all - but nothing quickens the pulse like a first.

“I was on three of them and the first was by far the most exciting,” Holden said. “I don’t think anyone on our team had experienced anything like that at any level of hockey.

“Everybody was feeling the same thing. On the later teams we had groups that went here and there, but in the ‘69-70 season everybody went to the same tavern for a beer, or the same house for a party, or out to dinner. We were close.”

The Jets won 51 games, lost only 18 and tied three. They had to eliminate Nelson and Cranbrook in provincial competition, beat Calgary in the inter-provincial series and knocked off St. Boniface, Manitoba, for the western Canada championship.

Only then did they bring home the final series - all six games with Orillia.

“On the way we had to fight Canadian referees,” said Goodwin, who grew up in Saskatoon. “No one wanted to see the Cup go to the U.S. That was unheard of.”

Holden remembers the homecoming.

“We had defeated St. Boniface in Winnipeg and were bringing our gear to the Coliseum from the airport when we saw people all around the Coliseum,” he said. “At first we didn’t realize what was going on and then it hit us that some were camping out, waiting for the ticket office to open.

“I’d never experienced or heard of anything like that before.”

Their talent ran deep. Their goalkeeper, Martin, played with some distinction in the NHL with St. Louis in ‘67-68. A young forward on his way to the big league, Ron Houston, is to many the most skilled forward to play here at any level.

But it wasn’t talent that defined their art. They remember themselves as classic overachievers.

“We were excited about our hockey,” said Ed Clark, a Jets fan who camped outside the Coliseum to be among the first to snap up tickets for the Allan Cup series. “This was rock’em, sock’em, bloody hockey.”

Buddy Bodman was among the Jets who had old-time hockey stamped all over him.

“Bodman was one of the meanest guys when he put on the blades that I ever saw,” Holden said. “He didn’t have a lot of talent but he had the big heart. He’d do anything to win a hockey game, especially a playoff game.”

Scherza saw the same nobackdown quality in Bodman.

“Buddy hated to lose,” Scherza said. “He stood in front of the net with guys pushing him and goalies whacking at the back of his legs.”

“Intimidation is a big part of the game,” added Holden, a Spokane attorney. “Certainly it was back then. I think we scared the (heck) out of them (Orillia). We had seven or eight guys who didn’t care what they had to do to get the job done. They had players who didn’t want to come out on the ice.

“Bodman, Larry Palanio, Scherza - they would’ve fought anybody, run over anybody, to get a puck. That feeling went right through our team. I never played on a team that was quite like that one.”

The stuff that went on in the corners, away from the referee, impacted the 1970 series, Holden said.

They were muckers and grinders, these Jets, but they weren’t without brilliance.

“Houston was the best forward who ever played here,” Scherza said. “He played for Oakland in the NHL for three or four years and later for Phoenix in the world league. He was an effortless skater with a terrific shot.

“When Ray Whitney (now of the San Jose Sharks) was here (with the Chiefs (from ‘88-91) he had to pump hard, work hard. Houston floated on skates. You didn’t realize how fast he was going.”

Senior amateurs were athletically senior, but amateur in name only. Hockey provided a second income.

“It basically paid the bar tab,” Collins said.

The monthly salaries of $500 to $700 helped, but money wasn’t what it was all about.

Hodges hurt when he lost and celebrated unabashedly when he won. When he captained Spokane’s second Allan Cup championship team in 1972, the defenseman that Scherza calls “The Warrior” retired at 42.

“You took it personally if you lost,” said Hodges, who didn’t wear a helmet until rules gave him no choice. “It was important. That’s hard to duplicate now with players banging all over, changing teams.”

Clark, the Jets fan, remembers how devotedly he followed Hodges’ career.

“When I was a little kid I drew a picture of him and sent it to the newspaper,” he said. “I think I entitled it Defensive Ace. The paper ran it. I met Hodges a few times years later. He was a retired hockey player, but even as an adult I got a real thrill out of meeting him, knowing what kind of player he was.”

Hodges’ career predates the Coliseum, which in a few weeks comes down to make room for the new Veterans Memorial Arena.

“When you’re part of a community you feel more responsibility for winning,” Hodges said. “When you’re part of a team for 21 years you begin to take it seriously.”

President of the Jets was Spokane dentist Frank Jurdy.

“Jurdy was a big part of our club,” Scherza said. “When the fan base was low he kept things together.”

“We were in Canada one night for a game in Kimberley,” Jurdy said, “when it came over the public address that a special guest was in attendance.

“The president of the Spokane Jets …

“Booooo!

.. .”And his wife Donna.

“BOOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Geez,” Jurdy says 25 years later. “I wasn’t surprised when they booed me but boo my wife? That was a rough crowd but they treated us like royalty after the game. Those Canadians really know how to party.”

Al Rollins, the Jets coach who now lives in Calgary, brought an organizational sense and a focus.

He also brought an eye for talent. Rollins beefed up for the ‘70 playoffs by adding Houston from Cranbrook, John Thompson from Trail and Peter Vipond from Nelson, British Columbia. All played key roles.

Rollins, who had a knack for keeping a club loose, assembled three goal-scoring lines, two able netminders - Martin and Dave Cox - and a tough back end that included Hodges, Palanio, Collins and George Talotti. All settled in the area.

So did centers Holden, Gordie Turlik - by all accounts the ace of the faceoff circle - and Tom Rendall.

Likewise wingers Bodman, Goodwin, Gustafson and Scherza.

“Of all the years I played I never got to be a first all-star or a second all-star,” Collins said, “but I got something from the players that year I’ll never forget.

“MVP. Al (Rollins) did a lot of arm-twisting on my behalf and it still cost me a lot of beers.”

Collins laughed.

“When you’re playing with guys who excel and you just do your job you can look pretty good,” he said.

Collins treasures the laughs.

“Palanio was a young guy then,” he said. “I remember he ordered a French Dip sandwich and commented about how good it was in the states because you got soup with your sandwich.”

Two hip replacements and back surgery haven’t dulled Collins’ wit. His right arm was shattered in the ‘72 Allan Cup series. A metal rod was put in place. When it came out Collins used it to stir drinks.

The Jets still hang out on the ice with other ex-players in the Spokane Old-Timers Association.

“You wonder where all the years went,” Scherza said, “but the great thing about hockey is that you get together and still play. We’ve got guys in their 60s and 70s who still come out twice a week.”

Holden explained.

“It’s amazing, the closeness you develop after you’ve gone into a foreign rink where fans are throwing coffee and spitting and you wind up in a brawl and everybody is off the bench,” he said. “It wasn’t a lot of fun on the road, especially in the places that didn’t have plexiglass (above the boards).

“People could lean over the boards. It wasn’t unusual for a fan to punch a player going by. It’s different now - you can’t get to the players. Back then, it happened. The fan element could get physically involved.”

There’s a kick from long range that comes from looking back at a 25-year-old phenomenon.

“I didn’t realize at the time that it was such a big accomplishment,” Goodwin said. “When I look back I can say we did something together that was pretty special.”

MEMO: This is a sidebar that appeared with the story: Jets playoff stats Scoring G A PTS PIM Tom Rendall 14 18 32 16 Ken Gustafson 16 15 31 18 Ron Huston 19 9 28 4 Gail Holden 7 18 25 38 Don Scherza 7 18 25 13 Dave Toner 8 13 21 23 Tom Hodges 7 11 18 23 Peter Vipond 2 15 17 19 Bud Bodman 9 7 16 28 Charlie Goodwin 4 11 15 7 Brian Strimbiski 7 7 14 12 Jim Little 3 11 14 22 Gordon Turlik 6 5 11 4 Larry Palanio 2 7 9 78 Vince Collins 2 6 8 18 John Thompson 2 3 5 50 Jim Chow 0 5 5 6 George Talotti 0 1 1 24

Goaltending GP GA Svs GAA Seth Martin 18 33 514 1.83 Dave Cox 4 16 81 4.00