For me, Saturday night was one of those “Where were you?” moments. I’d spent the day travelling to and from Brantford and made it home just in time to plunk myself down in front of the TV for part of game six of the Leafs-Lightning first-round Stanley Cup playoff.
I caught the end of regulation time with the score tied 1-1. Finally (because I sometimes watch games on CBC and listen to them on radio simultaneously), I heard Joe Bowen’s call as John Tavares’s shot trickled past Tampa netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy at 4:35 of overtime:
“They scored! They scored! Holy Mackinaw, they scored!” he shouted. “The Leafs are going to the second round!”
I know it’s only the first round of the playoffs, but forgive me. I haven’t taken the liberty (or been given the chance) to crow about the Toronto Maple Leafs on these pages in a long time.
I checked my Barris Beat archives; the last time I wrote about the Buds, it was June 1993, the year Gary Bettman became the NHL’s first commissioner, and the year the league expanded to 24 teams (including the Tampa Bay Lightning). Also that year, under new general manager Cliff Fletcher, the Leafs had (the season before) acquired Doug Gilmour, then traded away goalie Grant Fuhr for sniper Dave Andreychuk.
Then, that spring Toronto defeated St. Louis in the divisional final, but were knocked out of contention by the L.A. Kings, led by recently acquired Wayne Gretzky. (Redemption came for Canadians, when the Montreal Canadiens won their 24th Stanley Cup, the year the Cup celebrated its 100th anniversary.)
So, if you allow a column’s worth of indulgence, I’ll share a few of my Maple Leafs moments. When I was a kid, my father wrote for the Toronto Telegram newspaper, which was owned by the Bassett family, who also owned the Toronto Maple Leafs.
For his service as a columnist, covering the TO entertainment scene in the original Barris Beat column, every year Dad was entitled to a pair of tickets to see a Leafs home game at Maple Leaf Gardens. I couldn’t wait for that one night each year when Dad and I went to a Leafs game together, even if it was against the Boston Bruins (then the perennial basement dwellers of the six-team NHL). It was heaven, even up there in the Greys!
Once or twice during those halcyon 1960s seasons, because of his connection to the Bassetts, Dad got me into the Leafs dressing room. I should have been impressed when I saw all my heroes – Dave Keon, Tim Horton, Bob Pulford, and Johnny Bower drinking beer or smoking cigarettes – but the Leaf I remember most was George Armstrong.
You see, I’d brought along my autograph book and when the then captain of the Leafs signed it, he wrote his nickname “the Chief” and then “Your friend, George Armstrong.”
In the spring of 1967, several things were on my radar. First of all, I was preparing for my final year, Grade 13, at Agincourt Collegiate Institute (I hoped) on my way to a career in broadcast journalism. Next, it was Canada’s centennial year and the family planned to go to Montreal for Expo ’67.
I’d heard that the Montreal Canadiens had reserved a spot in the Quebec pavilion at Expo to display what they’d hoped would be their third straight Stanley Cup. The end of that NHL season proved doubly delicious, however, when Leafs coach Punch Imlach turned to his aging veterans and snatched the Cup from the Canadiens in game six of the final.
“Punch had been under a lot of pressure for years to get rid of his old guard,” Leafs defenceman Allan Stanley told author D’Arcy Jenish for his book The Stanley Cup in 1992. “To prove it, he sent his old guard to take the last, most important face-off of the whole goddamned season. The one with the Stanley Cup riding on it.”
Following the victory, on May 2, 1967, as Imlach posed with his club in the Leafs’ dressing room at Maple Leaf Gardens, he commented, “The old-fellows athletic club played pretty well. They’re the best bunch of players I’ve ever had.”
Those who joined the victory parade along College Street a few days later, myself included, couldn’t have agreed more. We celebrated Toronto’s fourth Cup in six years, their 13th in franchise history.
Little did I know I’d be witnessing the beginning of Toronto’s now 56-year drought without winning a single Stanley Cup. So, as a long-suffering Leafs fan, I savour any victory even if it’s just winning the first round.