Overdue Orrgy For The Bruins

In his 25th-floor luxury apartment in downtown Boston, Bobby Orr is boiling shrimp for lunch, answering the two telephones that keep ringing and talking with a visitor.

What's the telescope on the terrace for?

"I'm not a peeping Bobby, if that's what you mean."

How bad is your left knee, anyway?

"It's as good as any knee that has been operated on three times. I never had any trouble after the first two operations, but then last March—a few days before the start of the playoffs—I got hit in a game in Detroit and the ligaments came undone again. The knee was terribly sore all during the playoffs and kept swelling up. I lived with an ice pack taped to the knee. In June the doctors cut the knee open and tightened up the ligaments. At the same time they cleaned up the insides and smoothed out the rough surfaces around the cartilage area. People keep saying that bone rubs against bone in my knee, that I creak when I walk, but they're all wrong. The doctors tell me there's some lubrication in there that makes the joints slide smoothly."

Bobby Hull has a bad knee but refuses to let the doctors cut it open. Do you regret having your operations?

"If I hadn't let them open the knee, I know I wouldn't be playing today. I played for a long time when the knee was sore, and it was unbearable. I couldn't play the game the way I wanted. In fact, I could hardly play at all. I had to have the operations. They were my only hope."

This time, though, the knee did not respond the way the doctors expected, did it?

"No. And I worried. Did I worry. Hockey is my life, you know, and you can't survive for long with a bad knee. I wanted to play against the Russians, and I was sure that the knee would be strong enough for me to play at least the games in Moscow. Instead it got worse. I'd skate during Team Canada practices, and then afterward the knee would swell up. One time the doctors even had to drain fluid from it. I called Dr. [Carter] Rowe in Boston and he just told me not to worry about it, that it would get better in time. But I worried. One day in Stockholm the knee locked on me while I was walking down the street, and I almost fell over."

Maybe you should have stayed home and worked out with the Bruins instead of going overseas with Team Canada?