Barrie has lost one of its finest athletes.
Corby Adams, captain of the Barrie Flyers' 1974 Allan Cup championship team and a star on area ball diamonds, died Saturday.
Adams, who had battled various health issues over the past few years, was 82.
“For me, Corby Adams is the best athlete that has come out of Barrie,” said Mike Laycock, while discussing his own induction in the Barrie Sports Hall of Fame earlier this month, 32 years after Adams had earned the same honour. “He’s the best I’ve seen, anyway.”
Adams, who was inducted in the Barrie Sports Hall of Fame in 1991, grew up in Minesing and was a standout hockey player from an early age. After playing junior hockey locally, and briefly for the Flyers before they left town, he headed to Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.
Adams was unfortunate to come along at a time when there were just six teams in the National Hockey League. It was probably more accurate to say that Adams slipped into blind spots away from the NHL’s collective gaze.
But he soon made his mark in the fledgling college hockey ranks of the 1960s, which were starting to grow in stature in the aftermath of the U.S. triumph at the 1960 Olympics.
Primarily a centre, Adams was named conference all-star in all three seasons he played at Clarkson, also earning All-American honours and helping his team to a national final and a semifinal. Adams also played varsity baseball for the Golden Knights.
“It’s very hard to compare eras,” explained former Clarkson head coach/athletic director, Bill O’Flaherty, "but he was Clarkson’s best player in the 1960s and our best until we got Dave Taylor later.
"We have ended up with a lot of good players, Stanley Cup winners, Willie Mitchell, Todd Marchant and Craig Conroy, now GM of the Calgary Flames. As I say, I don’t like to compare players from different eras, but he was in the top five players we’ve ever had (at Clarkson) and he may even be the second-best, behind only Dave Taylor," he added.
O’Flaherty also fondly recalled Adams presence around small-town Potsdam, often with his young bride, Betty, with whom he later raised three children and enjoyed a gaggle of grandchildren.
“I had a lot of friends who were baby-sat by Corby and Betty,” said O’Flaherty.
Retired NHLer Terry Martin, who also grew up in Minesing about 15 years after Adams, echoed O’Flaherty’s sentiment. Both men worked for NHL clubs – Martin with the Buffalo Sabres and Colorado Avalanche, and O’Flaherty with the Los Angeles Kings – when O’Flaherty tried to make a point that he didn’t realize Martin already knew quite well.
“Billy O’Flaherty said to me, ‘You know, everybody talks about Dave Taylor at Clarkson, but we had a guy before him who was probably just as good, Corby Adams,’” recalled Martin. “I had to (stop O’Flaherty) … not only did I know about Corby, he and I were both from Minesing!”
As it turned out, Martin’s first memories of Adams were of him playing baseball with Martin’s father, Harvey. Adams stood out there as well, first as a teenager playing with men, then at Clarkson, then for more than 30 years in the competitive fastball circuit.
A slew of individual diamond honours followed, but many people of a certain vintage around town best remember Adams by his launching moon shots out of Queen's Park that came to rest near the armoury beyond the outfield fence.
“Corby is one of those natural athletes that can do anything well,” said Clarkson’s baseball coach, Hank Hodge, upon Adams’ induction into that school’s original Hall of Fame class. “Not only is he a natural hitter, he makes some plays in the outfield that would be difficult for an experienced professional.”
After leaving Clarkson, Adams played senior hockey in his hometown for about a decade. That senior career was sandwiched around being selected for the Canadian national team, a lineup made up mostly of young pros and recently graduated junior stars that included future Hall of Famer Ken Dryden.
Fate struck a cruel blow when Hockey Canada pulled them from international competition to protest the International Ice Hockey Federation’s uneven application of its policy regarding professional players.
That move cost Adams a spot in the World Championship that year and any chance of playing in the Olympics, as Canada also declined to send a hockey team in both 1972 and 1976.
Adams was one of Canada’s most effective forwards at the 1969 Izvestia tournament, the famed annual event in Moscow, notching a goal and three assists in five games. Canada (3-1-1) tied the Soviet Union, but an unexpected loss to Czechoslovakia dropped them to second-place behind the hosts.
Adams returned to the Flyers and helped the team win the Eastern Canadian Championship in 1972 and the Allan Cup two years later. In between, they were eliminated in overtime by the Orillia Terriers, who went on to win the national title in 1973, the same season that Adams travelled with the Flyers to the Star Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden.
It was at that tournament that the Flyers played Swedish champs, Brynas, who had a young defenceman named Borje Salming in their lineup.
With his shock of blond hair and distinctive stride – Adams’ teammates used to tease him that he had a similar gait on the dance floor – he was the beating heart of many great senior teams that had the Barrie Arena on Dunlop Street rapt for a large swath of the late-1960s and 1970s.
“He was one of those people,” explained his friend/teammate Jim Thompson, “that didn’t necessarily want it, but the attention always seemed to follow him. And when it did, and if you were lucky to be with him, on his teams or in business together, good things always seemed to happen.
“Really, I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
As Thompson alluded to, and perhaps most of all, Adams had a certain presence about him. He looked like an athlete. That extended into business, where he had put his business degree from Clarkson to work as one of the area’s top Realtors.
An early devotee to fitness and healthy eating, Adams maintained his long, lanky frame well into his 70s.
In fact, it was hard for many who knew Adams to grasp that he was vulnerable. Everyone expected him to beat back whatever fate threw at him because that’s what he always did, either in hockey, on the diamond or in business. Adams lived through his house almost collapsing into a pond and then later a serious car crash.
“We had talked about getting together this summer, it was Corby’s idea, to do something at his house,” remembered his former Flyers teammate, Bob Baird. “I last saw him two summers ago. He looked and sounded great … like he could have still played, he was fantastic, but his health turned and (the planned get-together) never happened.”
In 2018, Adams had grown concerned that another former Flyers teammate, Ron Robinson (this columnist's father) was struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. Setting out to visit his old friend, he wasn’t quite sure of Robinson’s new address and relied too much on his intuition from decades working in real estate. He wandered around until a helpful neighbour pointed him in the right direction.
Having just turned 78, he cut a fine figure that glorious spring day.
Even when lost, Corby Adams always found his way. And he looked great doing it.
