Is any Maple Leaf good enough to win a big-time individual trophy? It feels like it's been a while since we won one....

In modern times, the Maple Leafs have not produced many individual award winners.  I’m referring specifically to the major NHL trophies, like the James Norris (top defenseman), Hart (most valuable player), Calder (best rookie), etc..

Not many of our guys, for that matter, have made the end-of-season NHL All-star team.  I’m not referring to the mid-season All-Star team, which for me, is a popularity contest and has little to do with being a true All-Star.  As with baseball's mid-season "All-Star" game, fans help to vote guys in so it really means little- except for the hoopla.  The really elite guys are the ones named at the end of the season, based on their tremendous work over the full 82-game NHL regular-schedule.  (In fact, I’m trying to remember who the last Leaf was who earned that honor.  I’m thinking it was Borje Salming in the late 70s, but I’m not one hundred per cent sure. Did Doug Gilmour make it one year in the early-mid '90s? I don't think Wendel did in the mid '80s...I know Bryan McCable was a second-team end-of-season All-Star here once, when he played his best hockey for Pat Quinn in the early 2000s.)                                                                                                                                         

When it comes to individual awards, I recall that Gilmour won the Selke in the early '90s, but I think we have to go all the way back to the 1965-’66 season to come up with a Leaf who won a major NHL award.

That season, Brit Selby was named rookie of the year.

Selby was a young winger who burst onto the scene that year with a big-time impact.  I remember, because I was a rabid Leaf fan at the time, all of 12 years old that season.  Here’s what I remember:  Selby was a young guy, pretty speedy, not that fancy.  In a fairly veteran line-up (they had brought up Ronnie Ellis the year before, but overall it was a pretty experienced squad) he gained notoriety early on by scoring 11 goals in the first half of the season.  Now, you have to keep in mind that, in those pre-1967 expansion days, the schedule was only 70 games long, and scoring 20 goals in a season was a big number. Now, for a rookie—on a fairly defensive team like the Leafs were in those days—to score 11 goals in the first half of the season was a fairly stunning thing to accomplish.  To put things further into context, Selby, who had come up through the junior Marlborough ranks like so many other young Leaf stars of that era, was only 20 years old that season.

It's noteworthy to recall that, in those days, voting for these individual awards was done twice—once at the mid-way point in the season, then a separate vote was held to take into consideration only the second half of the season.  The league totaled up the ballots from both halves and the winner was declared.  That’s very different, of course, from how things are done today, when there is just the one vote conducted at the end of the regular-season.

Selby ‘won’ the first half vote by such an overwhelming amount, that, though he slumped offensively in the second half, netting only three goals, I think it was, he still managed to earn the Calder Trophy. (Ron Ellis had come close the season prior, but I believe Roger Crozier, the fine young goalie with the Red Wings, edged him out for the honour…) I've included a great photo of Harold Barkley's on the left of a young Selby in action against the Habs at the Gardens.  That's Selby (#11) with Ellis just behind him and Tim Horton a little further back.  Montreal's rugged John Ferguson is in the picture as well on the left.

Had the modern method of voting been in place, Selby would likely not have won the award, based on his overall play that season.  His second half “numbers” would probably have done him in.  But he still stands as the last Maple Leaf to win one of the traditional big-time awards (the Selke, as we know,  was not introduced until relatively recently).

To me, the interesting thing about Selby was that, in my mind, at least, he actually played better when he returned to the Leafs after spending two seasons with the expansion Philadelphia Flyers.  (The Leafs lost him in the original expansion draft in the summer of ’67.  He had been hurt, as I recall, through much of the Cup-winning ’66-’67 season, and didn’t play in the playoffs for the Leafs that spring.) What I thought I noticed when he came back to the Leafs, in the post-Punch Imlach era, was that he seemed more relaxed.  He always had a lot of speed and could score a bit, but he  maybe lacked the confidence needed to  have as good a career as he might have otherwise had.

Selby spent some time with the St. Louis Blues, before completing his professional career in the WHA with a few different clubs, including the old Toronto Toros before they moved to Birmingham.  He retired in 1975.

I still hand fond memories of Selby, but I’m sure some other 12 year-old Leaf fan out there now, as I was back in 1965, would like to see some young Maple Leaf (heck, any Leaf) capture one of those end-season awards, like Selby did more than 45 years ago.  Dion...Phil...Joffrey....anyone listening?


For fun, why not throw in a name from today's Leaf roster that you think has the potential to be a legitimate end-of-season All-Star, or might some day be able to win one of the individual league awards...