[Dion]

Orr devotes a chapter to his relationship with Alan Eagleson, whom he trusted as a friend, mentor, and agent. Such trust, Orr writes, “is a rare and precious thing . . . [and] Alan Eagleson turned even trust as great and rare as that into something foul and regrettable.”

Eagleson betrayed and cheated a lot of people, and eventually went to prison for it, but his victimization of Orr was especially heinous. The ever-faithful Orr defended Eagleson even after many NHL players had recognized him as a fraud, and extricating himself from Eagleson and the mess he’d made of Orr’s finances (“[H]e had left me practically broke”) proved difficult and ruinously expensive.

Orr does include one story about “an encounter I have never disclosed.” A day after he’d been blindsided and knocked unconscious by Pat Quinn of the Toronto Maple Leafs during the playoffs in 1969, Orr was approached in the lobby of the team’s hotel by “a rather tough looking ‘gentleman’ ” who asked, “Do you want me to take care of Pat Quinn?”

Orr passed on the offer and never saw the “tough looking gentleman” again.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/book...7RK/story.html