Bear-Arms
Mentor
It's true, Dudley a two-sport star
Long before Bo Jackson was playing in Major League Baseball and the National Football League in the 1980s and long before Deion Sanders was playing two major league sports, baseball and football, at the same time in the 1990s, Rick Dudley was playing two major league sports. Dudley, who is now the assistant general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks, was playing left wing for the Buffalo Sabres and spent his summer of 1974 performing as a box lacrosse player with the Rochester Golden Griffins of the National Lacrosse League.
Dudley was pretty much under the radar screen, getting almost no attention playing both sports until the producers of an American television game show in New York contacted him and invited him to appear on To Tell the Truth as a contestant. The idea was that Dudley and two other men, the imposters, would appear on the program as the two-sport, major league athlete. The four panelists had to guess which one was the "real" Rick Dudley -- NHL and NLL player.
And if truth be told to the panelist and others, Dudley would have rather have been a fulltime box lacrosse player, but box lacrosse was not as lucrative as the NHL, so Dudley did the next best thing. He played both sports until a knee injury ended his box lacrosse career.
"I think I was the only person at that time who played two professional sports at that time," Dudley said. "They had me on there and I was actually the guy they were trying to guess. The guys I was on with, I can't even remember their names, but we had lunch together and we spent quite a bit of the afternoon together and we stumped them -- all four guessed wrong on the show and it was something to stump them."
Dudley had to explain the nuisances of both hockey and lacrosse to his fellow contestants. One of the contestants was a New York Rangers fan, so Dudley didn't have to go into great detail about hockey, but he did have to explain box lacrosse to the two men.
"It was and still is, I think, a very violent game," Dudley said of lacrosse. "For me, it was the game I was probably born to play. I was much more gifted at lacrosse. In that game, I was a star and in hockey, I was a guy who worked pretty hard and got some things accomplished. But lacrosse, I was born to play that game and for me it was a lot of fun."
Dudley felt at ease in both box lacrosse and hockey. For one thing, both sports utilized the hockey rink set-up, whether it was the standard 200 x 85 foot ice rink or the slightly smaller venues that were used in the 1970s. And the games were somewhat similar.
"It's basically the same surface as a hockey rink and you run up and down and try to beat the hell out of each other," Dudley laughed. "That's about the way it is, you just try to score goals. I was (a good goal scorer), I think we played something like a 48-game season and I missed 16 games and still ended up second in scoring. I did OK."
Dudley actually finished sixth in scoring in the National Lacrosse League, despite missing time because the Sabres were involved in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
"I think lacrosse enabled me to be a pro hockey player," Dudley said. "I didn't play that much hockey as a kid and when I went to my first pro camp, I only played 21 games of junior. I was brought in because I was relatively tough and I got invited to a pro camp (the Minnesota North Stars in 1970). The next year, I went in as a junior (lacrosse) player with Mississauga. We had gone to the eastern Canada finals and I was in great shape. Back then, you got in shape in camp, so I was so far ahead of everybody else. That's the reason I got a pro contract in the first place."
Dudley ended up with Buffalo in 1971 partly because Sabres GM/coach Punch Imlach was a lacrosse fan who happened to be friendly with Dudley's lacrosse coach.
"Buffalo was a couple years later. I didn't do too much my first complete years as pro, but Punch was a real lacrosse fan and he was a friend of my coach, Morley Kells, and they had talked. Morley told him I was worth a tryout and from there things happened well for me. I just getting chances and Punch liked me enough to put me on the Sabres," Dudley said.
The Sabres assigned Dudley to the team's AHL affiliate, the Cincinnati Swords. In his second year in Cincinnati, Dudley scored 40 goals and assisted on 44 others and earned a spot with Buffalo in 1973-74. That's when he became a two-sport major league athlete.
Dudley is pretty sure that someone from the Rochester Golden Griffins publicity department contacted the Goodson-Todman production company to get him on To Tell The Truth.
"They just called one day, I think it was probably the lacrosse people that told tell them I was the only person that was playing two sports. I guess to them it seemed like a novel thing, so they decided to make me the guest they were trying to figure out."
The Golden Griffins publicity department also wanted some national attention for the team and the NLL.
Dudley remembers a lot of details about the show, except who actually hosted the show. There were two hosting legends on the set, Garry Moore (who not only hosted game shows, but also had a network TV variety show on CBS in the 1950s and 1960s) and did some time as a panelist along with Bill Cullen (the original host of the daytime version of The Price is Right on NBC and numerous other game shows and was a panelist on even more game shows and a national radio announcer as well).
"I think it was Bill Cullen or Garry Moore, one of the two," Dudley said. "They were both there, I think it was Bill Cullen."
It was Garry Moore who hosted To Tell the Truth and Bill Cullen was a regular panelist on that show. Like Dudley, both Moore and Cullen were very versatile performers and could either host or be a panelist on a game show. They were that good.
"We stumped them (the panelist) and we were proud of it," Dudley said. "We actually went out and had lunch and we spent two or three hours together. I told them as much as I could about lacrosse and the one other fellow was a Rangers season ticket hold so he knew a little about hockey. They (the panelists) just asked perfect questions. They asked me a question -- What was the maximum length a lacrosse stick could be -- and I actually didn't know. I knew the minimum, you can only have a stick that was at least 42-inches long, but I didn't know what the maximum length was at that time and I said I don't know."
Because Dudley didn't know the answer, the panelists figured that he could not possibly be the right contestant and chose someone else. Dudley and his mates won the game.
After his game show appearance Dudley, who once was touted as the "World's Best Lacrosse Player," scored 39 goals and assisted on 31 others in 1974-75 with the Sabres and then signed a four-year deal with the World Hockey Association's Cincinnati Stingers. When Cincinnati encountered financial difficulties in 1978-79, the WHA's final season, Dudley was sold back to the Sabres. He was traded by the Sabres in 1980-81 to the Winnipeg Jets and was one of the last NHL players ever to wear No. 99 as he could not get No. 9, his Sabres' number, as it was retired by the Jets to honor Bobby Hull, who wore No. 9 during his Winnipeg WHA days. Dudley ended his career with the AHL's Fredericton Express in 1981-82 and went on to run some minor-league teams and has been both an NHL general manager and assistant general manager. He became a hockey lifer.
Dudley is a member of the Cincinnati Hockey Hall of Fame for his work with the AHL Swords and the WHA Stingers. He also is the only NHL player who was a winning contestant on the long running American TV Game To Tell the Truth because he didn't know the minimum length of a lacrosse stick.
Long before Bo Jackson was playing in Major League Baseball and the National Football League in the 1980s and long before Deion Sanders was playing two major league sports, baseball and football, at the same time in the 1990s, Rick Dudley was playing two major league sports. Dudley, who is now the assistant general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks, was playing left wing for the Buffalo Sabres and spent his summer of 1974 performing as a box lacrosse player with the Rochester Golden Griffins of the National Lacrosse League.
Dudley was pretty much under the radar screen, getting almost no attention playing both sports until the producers of an American television game show in New York contacted him and invited him to appear on To Tell the Truth as a contestant. The idea was that Dudley and two other men, the imposters, would appear on the program as the two-sport, major league athlete. The four panelists had to guess which one was the "real" Rick Dudley -- NHL and NLL player.
And if truth be told to the panelist and others, Dudley would have rather have been a fulltime box lacrosse player, but box lacrosse was not as lucrative as the NHL, so Dudley did the next best thing. He played both sports until a knee injury ended his box lacrosse career.
"I think I was the only person at that time who played two professional sports at that time," Dudley said. "They had me on there and I was actually the guy they were trying to guess. The guys I was on with, I can't even remember their names, but we had lunch together and we spent quite a bit of the afternoon together and we stumped them -- all four guessed wrong on the show and it was something to stump them."
Dudley had to explain the nuisances of both hockey and lacrosse to his fellow contestants. One of the contestants was a New York Rangers fan, so Dudley didn't have to go into great detail about hockey, but he did have to explain box lacrosse to the two men.
"It was and still is, I think, a very violent game," Dudley said of lacrosse. "For me, it was the game I was probably born to play. I was much more gifted at lacrosse. In that game, I was a star and in hockey, I was a guy who worked pretty hard and got some things accomplished. But lacrosse, I was born to play that game and for me it was a lot of fun."
Dudley felt at ease in both box lacrosse and hockey. For one thing, both sports utilized the hockey rink set-up, whether it was the standard 200 x 85 foot ice rink or the slightly smaller venues that were used in the 1970s. And the games were somewhat similar.
"It's basically the same surface as a hockey rink and you run up and down and try to beat the hell out of each other," Dudley laughed. "That's about the way it is, you just try to score goals. I was (a good goal scorer), I think we played something like a 48-game season and I missed 16 games and still ended up second in scoring. I did OK."
Dudley actually finished sixth in scoring in the National Lacrosse League, despite missing time because the Sabres were involved in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
"I think lacrosse enabled me to be a pro hockey player," Dudley said. "I didn't play that much hockey as a kid and when I went to my first pro camp, I only played 21 games of junior. I was brought in because I was relatively tough and I got invited to a pro camp (the Minnesota North Stars in 1970). The next year, I went in as a junior (lacrosse) player with Mississauga. We had gone to the eastern Canada finals and I was in great shape. Back then, you got in shape in camp, so I was so far ahead of everybody else. That's the reason I got a pro contract in the first place."
Dudley ended up with Buffalo in 1971 partly because Sabres GM/coach Punch Imlach was a lacrosse fan who happened to be friendly with Dudley's lacrosse coach.
"Buffalo was a couple years later. I didn't do too much my first complete years as pro, but Punch was a real lacrosse fan and he was a friend of my coach, Morley Kells, and they had talked. Morley told him I was worth a tryout and from there things happened well for me. I just getting chances and Punch liked me enough to put me on the Sabres," Dudley said.
The Sabres assigned Dudley to the team's AHL affiliate, the Cincinnati Swords. In his second year in Cincinnati, Dudley scored 40 goals and assisted on 44 others and earned a spot with Buffalo in 1973-74. That's when he became a two-sport major league athlete.
Dudley is pretty sure that someone from the Rochester Golden Griffins publicity department contacted the Goodson-Todman production company to get him on To Tell The Truth.
"They just called one day, I think it was probably the lacrosse people that told tell them I was the only person that was playing two sports. I guess to them it seemed like a novel thing, so they decided to make me the guest they were trying to figure out."
The Golden Griffins publicity department also wanted some national attention for the team and the NLL.
Dudley remembers a lot of details about the show, except who actually hosted the show. There were two hosting legends on the set, Garry Moore (who not only hosted game shows, but also had a network TV variety show on CBS in the 1950s and 1960s) and did some time as a panelist along with Bill Cullen (the original host of the daytime version of The Price is Right on NBC and numerous other game shows and was a panelist on even more game shows and a national radio announcer as well).
"I think it was Bill Cullen or Garry Moore, one of the two," Dudley said. "They were both there, I think it was Bill Cullen."
It was Garry Moore who hosted To Tell the Truth and Bill Cullen was a regular panelist on that show. Like Dudley, both Moore and Cullen were very versatile performers and could either host or be a panelist on a game show. They were that good.
"We stumped them (the panelist) and we were proud of it," Dudley said. "We actually went out and had lunch and we spent two or three hours together. I told them as much as I could about lacrosse and the one other fellow was a Rangers season ticket hold so he knew a little about hockey. They (the panelists) just asked perfect questions. They asked me a question -- What was the maximum length a lacrosse stick could be -- and I actually didn't know. I knew the minimum, you can only have a stick that was at least 42-inches long, but I didn't know what the maximum length was at that time and I said I don't know."
Because Dudley didn't know the answer, the panelists figured that he could not possibly be the right contestant and chose someone else. Dudley and his mates won the game.
After his game show appearance Dudley, who once was touted as the "World's Best Lacrosse Player," scored 39 goals and assisted on 31 others in 1974-75 with the Sabres and then signed a four-year deal with the World Hockey Association's Cincinnati Stingers. When Cincinnati encountered financial difficulties in 1978-79, the WHA's final season, Dudley was sold back to the Sabres. He was traded by the Sabres in 1980-81 to the Winnipeg Jets and was one of the last NHL players ever to wear No. 99 as he could not get No. 9, his Sabres' number, as it was retired by the Jets to honor Bobby Hull, who wore No. 9 during his Winnipeg WHA days. Dudley ended his career with the AHL's Fredericton Express in 1981-82 and went on to run some minor-league teams and has been both an NHL general manager and assistant general manager. He became a hockey lifer.
Dudley is a member of the Cincinnati Hockey Hall of Fame for his work with the AHL Swords and the WHA Stingers. He also is the only NHL player who was a winning contestant on the long running American TV Game To Tell the Truth because he didn't know the minimum length of a lacrosse stick.