Perhaps you’re unaware that prior to his long-running stint as host of TV game show “Let’s Make A Deal”, Monty Hall toiled for two seasons as the NY Rangers’ radio analyst on WINS. Or maybe you already knew — and any time you wanna take over the editor’s chair, just say the word, genius. On the eve of Hall receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Daytime Emmys, Newsday’s Neil Best quizzes the former about his more sensational moments in the MSG booth.
Hall recalled a between-periods interview he did with coach Phil Watson early in the 1959-1960 season during which Watson ripped several players, saying of goalie Gump Worsley, “He drinks so much beer he can’t stand in that cage.”
“When the next period started, I noticed he wasn’t behind the bench,” Hall said. “[GM] Muzz Patrick fired him between periods.”
Upon Watson’s death in 1991, Patrick told The New York Times that he had to fire his old roommate and friend not because he was losing but because he “sometimes talks too much.”
Also that season, Hall was working on Nov. 1, 1959, when Jacques Plante of the Canadiens left a game against the Rangers bleeding profusely after being hit by a shot from Andy Bathgate.
Hall correctly predicted during the break while Plante was stitched up that he would return wearing the mask he had worn in warmups. So he did, and the history of goaltending changed forever as “15,000 people jumped up and booed him.”