MUSKEGON – Moose Lallo helped usher in a new era of hockey in Muskegon when he arrived in 1960.
The Timmins, Ontario, native brought an intensity, toughness and unique sense of humor, and he was instrumental in Muskegon’s first professional sports championship in the 1961-62 season as player-coach for the Zephyrs, an International Hockey League expansion club.
Morris G. “Moose” Lallo died Tuesday at the age of 95 in Pompano Beach, Fla., where he had retired 22 years ago. He was a fighter until the end, according to son Jerry Lallo, who moved to Florida four years ago to help care for his father. Jerry Lallo said his dad’s dementia progressively worsened but that he was otherwise strong and healthy, bowling twice a week as recently as two years ago.
“Moose was a great guy. It was a lot of fun. We had some good teams. We won two Turner Cups, which basically we put Muskegon on the map,” said fellow Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Famer Bryan McLay, who still resides in Muskegon after joining Lallo here in 1960.
“We came here in ’60 and the second year we win everything – that doesn’t happen too often. I think he was just a great guy and he was good for Muskegon and he had a lot of good players underneath him. He ran a tight ship.”
Morris "Moose" Lallo played for and coached the Muskegon Zephyrs, leading them to two Turner Cup titles in the International Hockey League. He died Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, in Pompano Beach, Fla., at the age of 95.
Lallo was inducted in the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1993, following a minor-league hockey career that spanned 20 years as a player and 24 seasons as a coach, including 17 on the bench in Muskegon.
As a player, Lallo came through in an era when guys did not wear helmets or shoulder pads. He logged 1,086 career games, highlighted by 78 playoff contests in which he tallied 34 points and piled up 129 penalty minutes.
The gritty 5-foot-10, 200-pound defenseman played for several teams prior to his arrival in Muskegon, starting with the Eastern Hockey League’s Boston Olympics in 1944. One of his stops was a five-year stint with the IHL’s Grand Rapids Rockets, with whom he earned all-star accolades in the 1954-55 season.
Lallo played for five seasons in Muskegon, where he wrapped up his career on the ice in 1965. With the Zephyrs, he amassed 73 goals and 202 assists while he also racked up 571 penalty minutes in 351 career games covering the regular season and playoffs.
Lallo’s reputation as a hard-nosed player followed him to Muskegon, as did nickname “Moose,” which was given to him during his days in Boston. He believed the moniker stuck because of the way he moved the puck up the ice like a bull moose, leading fans to bellowing, “Moose!”
Scott Lallo remembers his father as a “drill sergeant,” who was “all about hockey” but also showed his son a playful side.
“You want me to tell you what he told me (about how he got his nickname)?” Scott Lallo asked an MLive reporter during a phone interview Wednesday. “What he told me, when he was a young man, he was chased up a tree by a moose and he was hanging off of this limb and he couldn’t hang on anymore so he had to let go and drops down right in front of this moose. Punches it one time and kills it.
“That’s what he told me. I mean, he’s full of (it),” Scott said with a laugh before he added that his dad joked about dating Shania Twain, who was from the same Timmins hometown.
On a serious note, Scott Lallo considers his father “a pioneer” for hockey in Muskegon.
A Muskegon Chronicle newspaper clipping shows Muskegon Zephyrs player-coach Morris "Moose" Lallo instructing his squad during training camp entering the 1961-62 season in Muskegon, Mich. (Courtesy of Jerry Lallo)
In 1959, ground broke for the new L.C. Walker Arena, which recently has been renamed Mercy Health Arena. In 1960, a different brand of hockey came to Muskegon with the arrival of Moose. Lallo worked for Jerry DeLise as a coach and player in New Haven, Conn., and DeLise brought him to Muskegon to become the first coach of the Zephyrs.
Lallo’s and McLay’s paths had crossed during their half-year playing together with the Eastern League’s Philadelphia Ramblers in the 1959-60 season. Lallo eventually lured McLay to Muskegon, where he too became a legend.
“I was having trouble with my contract in Philadelphia, so Moose called me and said, ‘Hey, do you want to come play in Muskegon? I’ll have an airplane ticket waiting for you,’” recalled McLay, who took the Muskegon coaching reins from Lallo in 1978. “I told him I’d let him know. I let him know and ended up here in Muskegon.”
Under Lallo’s direction as coach, the Zephyrs and later Mohawks made the playoffs 13 times. His teams won two Turner Cup titles (1961-62, 1967-68 seasons) and reached the finals six times, plus they captured the regular-season points championship seven times. In Muskegon, Lallo amassed a 600-443-93 regular-season record as coach plus a 50-50-2 mark in the postseason.
After Muskegon, Lallo’s coaching career continued for seven more seasons, including stops with the Fort Wayne Komets, Baltimore Skipjacks and Troy Sabres, the latter of which he led to a Continental Hockey League championship (1982-83).
McLay said that Lallo was a funny guy, who had a way of explaining things with his many “Moose-isms.” McLay laughed when he remembered Moose’s “half-finger,” which he always pointed at people.
“He’d put that short finger up to his nose and it’d look like his finger was all the way up to his forehead,” McLay said with a hearty chuckle. “He’d do that for a kick.”
Said Scott Lallo: “I can’t recall exactly how he got it cut off, but he had like a stump on his (index) finger. We’d be at the dinner table or whatever and he’d get upset, he’d take that finger and pound it on the dinner table, shaking everything.”
Morris "Moose" Lallo is pictured on the pier in Pompano Beach, Fla., in 2017. (Courtesy of Jerry Lallo)
Moose Lallo is survived by five sons (John, Jerry, Scott and Gary Lallo; Greg VanderKooi) and five daughters (Maureen “Mae” Beauvais, Pat Sauve, Lucia Taylor, Gina Lallo and Kristi Link), as well as many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Jerry Lallo said his father was married three times, but that he was single when he passed away.
Jerry Lallo said there will not be any kind of memorial service for his dad, whose wishes were to be cremated, but he is hoping that something can be done in Muskegon at the arena at some point.
Jerry Lallo characterizes his father as a generous man with a big heart, who helped many people. Among them is well-known NHL on NBC announcer Mike “Doc” Emrick, whom according to Jerry, claims he never would have reached his status without Moose giving him his start.
“He touched a lot of (people). I always heard from guys that said he was the best coach they ever had. I remember Chico Resch, when he played in Muskegon for a short time, said, ‘Your dad was the best coach I ever had.’ So that meant a lot to me, and I think you’d hear that from a lot of guys if you ever talked to them,” Jerry Lallo said.
“As far as a hockey player, boy, he was tough. Never backed down from anybody. It showed in the way he lived his life, too. Never backed down, always fought for everything, even as a kid growing up. He told us stories about how his mom and dad left him at a boarding school and he kind of grew up on his own, he taught himself how to skate, grew up in Timmins and he learned how to skate by himself and just chose hockey.”
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