Nine months earlier, I’d paid a visit bearing a modest gift – three portraits in a single frame, the span of Glenn’s NHL career represented with photos of him in the uniform of the Red Wings, Black Hawks and Blues.
“I’m looking at those photos now and something occurs to me,” he told me. “Those are the three best-looking fellows in my house.”
Our last time together was in February 2020, a month before the COVID-19 pandemic, at a sports celebrity dinner in Saskatoon, 75 miles west of his Humboldt birthplace. It was magical to see the love and affection showered on him by fellow Hall of Fame goaltending legends Martin Brodeur, Grant Fuhr, Bernie Parent and Ed Belfour, Mr. Goalie an idol of them all.
Since last September, we have said goodbye to Hall of Fame goalies Ken Dryden, Ed Giacomin, Parent and now Mr. Goalie.
It was as Pat Hall’s car pulled down the long driveway onto a dark rural road in October 2015, his happy, carefree father waving farewell from the porch, that I scribbled the last words Glenn had for me that day:
“I do nothing better than anybody you ever knew,” he’d said with enormous pride. “I can go out and do nothing all day. And it takes me a long time to do it.”
Top photo: Glenn Hall sits for a September 2018 portrait in front of one of the barns on his sprawling farm in Stony Plain, Alberta, his last game-worn skates slung over his shoulder.