Bruce Landon prepares to retire after nearly 50 years.
If Bruce Landon's hockey career were being played out on ice, it would be about time for the public address announcer to announce "one minute left in the third period."
"I've been told I would know when it's time. And it's time,'' said Landon, 67, whose final day with the Springfield Thunderbirds will be April 28, barring a miracle late-season playoff run.
If Landon had his way, the sendoff would be low-key, if not ignored altogether. Thunderbirds management isn't letting that happen, and on Friday, March 3, the single most identifiable figure in the history of Springfield hockey - by all reasonable measures, at least on a par with Eddie Shore - will be honored before the game against Lehigh Valley at the MassMutual Center.
Often referring to himself as "an old hockey puck," Landon has always wished minor league pro hockey were marketable simply for the sport he once played as a goalie, well enough to reach major league status with the World Hockey Association.
Instead, his sendoff will feature that ultimate stamp of modern fame: a Bruce Landon bobblehead doll. Welcome to the 21st Century.
"I think it looks a little like Lex Luther,'' Landon said. "But don't get me wrong. I'm very, very grateful.''
Words such as "legend" and "legacy" make Landon visibly uncomfortable. He's proud that the street alongside the MassMutual Center was renamed Bruce Landon Way, but don't wait for him to ever bring it up.
His great hope for Bruce Landon night - beyond a Thunderbirds victory - is for people to understand that this time, when he says he's retiring, he really means it.
Not everyone is so easily convinced. When former owner Charlie Pompea sold the Falcons last spring, Landon wryly said he was "either retired or unemployed, but retirement sounds better.''
But then, unlike now, Landon kept the door open if hockey in Springfield could be saved. That seemed next to impossible at the time, but it was saved, and no one was surprised when the new, broad-based local ownership base made Landon a key member of the transition team.
He says the reason he can retire now is simple: in more than 40 years of hockey management, he's had only one goal, and now it's been filled.
"All I ever wanted was to walk out of here knowing hockey in Springfield was here to stay, forever and ever. From all I can see, we can finally say that,'' he said.
"This thing's not going anywhere. That's why I can leave with no regrets and with all great memories.''
His praise of the new ownership and chief executive Nate Costa goes beyond his appreciation for the way they have treated him. Landon said the new group has the will, patience and resources to invest in success, and understands that what works in a modern market differs greatly from that which greeted his arrival as 19-year-old goaltender in 1969.
Back then, pro hockey was played at the Eastern States Coliseum and the local team was the Kings. They have since been known as the Indians (a throwback to the pre-Landon era), the Falcons (a team created by Landon and former teammate Wayne LaChance) and now the Thunderbirds, whose owners implored Landon to stay on as a consultant after purchasing the Portland franchise and moving it to Springfield in the spring of 2016.
In Landon's first season as Springfield's goalie, his team lost in the 1970 American Hockey League Calder Cup finals. The league had nine teams, not the 30 of today, and the Calder Cup champion was Buffalo, which was still a minor-league hockey city at the time.
That's how long ago it was. Only three cities that had AHL teams in 1970 have maintained an uninterrupted league presence since then - Hershey, Rochester, and thanks to Landon, Springfield.
Often plagued by injuries, Landon retired as a player in 1978 but stayed in hockey in every role imaginable - many handled simultaneously -and raised his family in West Springfield, ignoring opportunities to relocate in his native Canada or elsewhere.
How many times he's pulled Springfield hockey off the ledge is too high to count. Most well-known were the establishment of the Falcons after the Indians moved to Worcester in 1994, a desperate season-ticket drive in 2007, an 11th-hour search for a buyer who would keep the team in the city (which resulted in Pompea's purchase in 2010), and finally last year, when he did not engineer the deal but remained available to help the new team get off the ground.
When Landon stepped down as president and part owner of the Falcons in 2014, it was mistakenly interpreted by some as retirement. Rather, he stayed on as director of hockey operations, but this time will be a total break.
Whenever it looked hopeless to think pro hockey would survive in Springfield - and those moments were common for an entire generation - Landon's friends and family would often tell him to stop taking it so personally. He had done all he could and more than could have been reasonably asked of any one man, they said - and if the city lost its team, his conscience should still be clear.
Regardless of the truth in those words, that response wasn't in Landon's DNA. Only now, as Thunderbirds crowds have dramatically risen 50 percent from the final Falcons season (from 3,108 average to 4,553, despite limited time to organize a promotional campaign last summer can Landon exhale and leave with a smile.
Last season, the Falcons finished last among 30 AHL teams in attendance. The Thunderbirds have passed 11 franchises in their first five months.
Landon is not sure what he'll do next, but it won't be in hockey. He says he's always wanted to take a CPR course, and there is some volunteer work he might do, but he will first give himself time to sit back and think about a future that will offer new chapters in his life, rather than turning back the pages of the past.
"I've had a wonderful career in every aspect. Nate and the staff are doing a great job, and I feel fortunate to be able to walk away,'' he said.
Before that, though, will be a night of accolades and old friends and, of course, bobbleheads. Even an old hockey puck like Landon will accept that no modern icon can get away without that.