Number 4. It is just about the most common number in hockey, but invoke that number and you can only be talking about one player—the man often referred to as the greatest ever to play the game: Bobby Orr.

From 1966 through the mid-70s, he could change a game just by stepping on the ice. Orr could do things that others simply couldn’t, and while teammates and opponents alike scrambled to keep up, at times they could do little more than stop and watch. Many of his records still stand today, and he remains the gold standard by which all other players are judged. But skill on the ice is only a part of his story. All the trophies, records, and press clippings leave unsaid as much about the man as they reveal. They tell us what Orr did, but don’t tell us what inspired him, who taught him, or what he learned along the way. They don’t tell what it was like for a shy small-town kid to become one of the most celebrated athletes in the history of the game, all the while in the full glare of the media. They don’t tell us what it was like when the agent he regarded as his brother betrayed him and resulted in financial ruin, at the same time his battered knee left him unable to play the game he had redefined only a few seasons earlier. They don’t tell what he thinks of the game of hockey today.

After decades of refusing to speak of his past in articles or in authorized biographies, Orr finally tells his story.