One of the greatest stick handlers of his time, Bobby Morrill holds the time record
in Collingwood’s long hockey history for goals scored in a single season.

Fifty-three years ago, while playing centre for the Collingwood Juniors, he scored
ninety-five goals in twenty-one games.

You would almost think he had some kind of a rubber-to-wood magnet on the blade of his stick. He had a supernatural knack of pulling the puck from the back of the
net, pivoting around the post and slipping the puck under the goalie’s skates.

Mike Rodden actually compared Morrill to Howie Morenz when the two centers met in the 1921 O.H.A. Junior semi-finals and by a strange quirk of fate, both players
died only a week apart in 1937. Morenz died after he received a broken leg in
an N.H.L. game at the Montreal Forum and Morrill met a tragic death in an
industrial accident at the International Nickel Plant inPort Colborne.

Rodden was really sweet on Morrill and he induced him to go for a try-out with the
Toronto St. Pats. Bobby turned out for one practice, and according to Mike, he
was a sensation. But he was convinced that he was not fast enough as a skater
to hold his own in the N.H.L. and he never went back.

So Morrill went to Port Colborne where he became the toast of the canal town for many years when the Sailors ruled the roost in the Senior O.H.A. ranks.

We saw a carbon copy of Bobby some thirty years ago when his eldest son, Allan,
spearheaded the Collingwood Greenshirts to four straight O.H.A. Junior “C” championships.

The fading art of stickhandle ran in the blood of the Morills. Four of Bobbie’s
nephews, Barney and Ab Walmsley and Morrill and Ab Kirby left their marks on
the Collingwood hockey scene over the past four decades.