RIP Brooks: Larry Brooks, Post legend and Hall of Fame hockey writer, dies at 75

RIP Brooksie: Larry Brooks, post-Legend and Hall of Fame hockey writer, dies at 75.

The best nights of so many good nights were the ones when Larry Brooks walked the press and locker room floor at Madison Square Garden with his hands in his front pocket and his notebook in his back pocket.The poker face was intact, and that was necessary, because in that notebook was the story.

Of course, it happened.He knew it.The players and the team brass knew it.All knew hundreds of sources to filter the story.about him.

Larry Brooks has often said, "The Washington Post should not just be a first read; it should be a must-read."We are all doing what we can to make this happen.That's my little part of it."

He was right about most things, and then he was wrong, he was a huge part of life, a huge part of all the 38 years, he worked there.

He was 75 years old.He is survived by his son Jordan, daughter-in-law Joanna and two grandchildren: 14-year-old Scott and 12-year-old Reese.His wife Janis died in 2020.

“He was always around," said Dave Maloney, who broadcasts Rangers games for MSG TV and first met Brooks when he was a 19-year-old rookie defenseman for the team. "He was a household name for what he did and often didn't hit it.On the way to the track, he was able to check his body and hit him on the nose, possibly breaking his jaw.But he always goes there."

Most of them are metaphorical.The Hall of Fame part is real.In an eventful career, one of the highlights came in 2018 when he won the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame.

"Over the past three decades, no one has covered sports in this city better than Larry Ranger Editor-in-Chief Chris Shaw said. 'Long before the Hockey Hall of Fame, there was a place that earned a place among the legends who have invested in the city's best sports.'

The people he attended also knew him.

"I think it's the momentum of the game when I'm off the ice," said Garza, a highly touted lefty who played for six seasons."Proxy can do it with a pencil because it has a well-understood relationship with children fighting for a number of people.

James Dollan, Chairman and CEO of MSG sports said:

"Besides Larry's wonderful work of the New York Rangers Screen, which they know in all his columns, but I have seen his advice, but I will keep his advice."

Notably, one of his most high-profile feuds occurred with former Rangers coach John Tortorella, with whom Brooks clashed regularly during much of Tortorella's coaching tenure from 2008-2013.The two have long dated each other, but Tortorella reached out to Brooks this week to apply, a phone call that Jordan Brooks said meant the world to his father.

Brooks was also a happy advocate for the players and issues he cared about most. He fought for years in his column to force the Rangers to take off Brad Park's jersey and hang it in the Garden rafters with Brian Leetch, a No. 2 guy. It was Brooks who dubbed Henrik Lundqvist "King Henrik."

Hockey was his abiding professional love and it is what he will remember best.But with Brooks' initial post first, covering the Yankees in the 1977 Bronx Zoo, "In about five minutes, he got to know the most veteran baseball writers out there," said Steve Jacobson.

A few weeks ago, over the moon for a talk-show shift on the radio, while subbing for a young broadcaster at WMCA named John Sterling, just before midnight he was handed a slip of paper that he at first refused to believe but then shared with all 570-AM listeners: Tom Seaver had just been traded by the Red Mets.

"Over the next hour," Brooks said in 2017, "I had to accuse a scout a mile away of being a liar. After all, I just wanted them."

In 1982, his interest in the inner workings of a hockey team drew Brooks along the Hudson River to become vice president of demonic communications, a job he held for 10 years.Five years later, Lou Lamoriello arrived as general manager and so began a 38-year friendship, often qualified but always based on mutual respect.

"The one thing that never changed from Day 1 was the personal part of our relationship," said Lamoriello, who managed the Devils from 1987 to 2015 and the Islanders from 2018 to last April, and sat at the Brooks family table in Toronto the night Brooks was honored by the Hall of Fame."The thing you always knew about Larry was that he told it like it was."

His colleagues also knew another side of Brooks: the one who grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side as a voracious Rangers and Yankees fan, devouring the New York tabloids like most kids his age devoured cheeseburgers and milkshakes.He held the writers who had come before him in high esteem and was determined to ensure that those who came after carried the baton with similar devotion.

When the Post's current Rangers writer Molly Walker was given the impossible task of following Brooks on the beat, her first call was, cleverly, to Brooks, in hopes that he would clear her mind (and perhaps her phone book) for her.But Brooks placed a surcharge on this valuable information: He first asked Walker to read the NHL labor agreement, cover to cover.

“I wasn’t badass,” he said.“But if you want to cover the game, you better know everything about the game.”

To his luck, a week later Walker called him and said, "Ask me something."He did.He knew every answer.And thus a quintessential advice was born, as well as a close friendship between two writers separated by 50 years but they were accepted by the common commitment to do the work justice and passion for hockey.

"He was the best hockey writer of the last 50 years," said Mark Everson, his fellow hockey writer at the paper for many years and his lifelong friend."He said he was lucky to come to the Post, but the Post was even luckier to have him."

Everson remembered his friend as a strong supporter of reporter access, echoing the mission of one of his newspaper heroes, Dick Young, and recalled the time he and Brooks were covering the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals between the Devils and Ducks.Brooks overheard Ducks/Disney manager Michael Eisner talking about the team's parade route after the Game 7 win in New Jersey.

Brooks, once again, had The Story, as he posted the next morning.The Ducks denied it, accusing Brooks of inciting controversy.But then a kid working at a college radio station played a recording of Eisner saying exactly what Brooks had written.Devils coach Pat Burns put it on the bulletin board.

“Larry wrote,” the twin brushed off, “and Larry is always right.”

The Devils won Game 7. Eisner called off his rally.

The end of its pillars was still alive, still broken;The end of Park's good war is one of his future works.In the end, however, he had another favorite hockey player.Lomaello said, "I told Larry to cancel the program," Lomaello said, laughing because I want to see who Hockey Larry was looking at."

Avery has another wish.

"His grandkids are playing, and I think it's cool. I hope he can read this and understand his grandfather in a lot of games."

In that situation too.

— Additional reporting by Dave Blezow