A visit to Church helped my Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup…

Sure, it was nice to see the Leafs win a game on Tuesday night against the Lightning—one of a number of organizations the growing legion of Leaf critics will no doubt say the club could/should use as a model. And hey, Reimer had a very strong game, as did young Rielly, and our prodigal son (Kadri) jumped off the scoresheet.

All good to see.

But the truth is, for me, these games are the definition of meaningless.  The blue and white are long since out of the payoff hunt.  Being a “spoiler” means precious little, at least in my view. 

In truth, there is nothing the team can do right now that interests me.  Win, lose, whatever.  Prospects, potential?  I've heard it all before.

If a player or two has a good game, what does it mean?  It’s by no means a harbinger of things to come. So I have zero interest in talking about the current Leafs. I’m just being honest. 

Maybe I’ll have something to say after the playoffs are over in June and the organization can make trades, draft one or more of the top prospects available and pick off a noteworthy free agent.

But until that time, it’s all just hope—and talk, whether it comes from Shanahan, Nonis, the media or us as followers of the team.

So for now, I’ll write about something I treasure—a memory of when the Leafs were really, really good.

This particular memory stands out because this is, in my religious faith, Holy Week.  And while memories from over fifty years ago can, I admit, be pretty hazy, this particular flashback is not only a fond one but pretty distinct in my memory bank.

In the spring of 1962, the Leafs were embroiled with the previous year’s Stanley Cup Champions, the Chicago Blackhawks (Black Hawks back then, if I’m not mistaken) in the Cup finals.  Chicago had, much to my joy, upset the hated (to me) Habs in 1961 to stop Montreal’s string of five Cups in succession.

Toronto, for its part, was more than a decade removed from their last Stanley Cup—that was the famous Bill Barilko overtime clincher against the Canadiens in Game 5 of the 1951 finals.

But as I have written here before (and a version of this memory is likely recounted in my eBook, The Maple Leafs of My Youth), then General Manager and coach Punch Imlach had been building a contender since he took the reins of the organization in the summer of 1958. The Leafs had come through a rather uninspired period in the middle of the 1950s, as various coaches had not been able to get the team anywhere near the promised land.

Imlach built a roster with veterans like Horton, Armstrong, Bower, Kelly, Stanley, Pulford and others and mixed them with talented youngsters (Duff, Nevin, Keon, Baun, Brewer, Mahovlich, etc.) that changed all that.

After eliminating the underdog but battling New York Rangers in the semi-finals, Toronto took on Chicago.  The Hawk lineup featured an array of future Hall of Famers: Glen Hall, Pierre Pilote, Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull, along with other notables including Moose Vasko, Dollar St. Laurent, Kenny Wharram, Red Hay, ex-Leaf Eric Nesterenko, Reggie Fleming and (if I’m not mistaken) rugged Tex Evans.

The Leafs had former Chicago captain Eddie Litzenberger in their lineup, and he certainly helped the Leafs against his old squad.

Toronto had won the first two games of the series at home, but were physically rattled in their return engagement in Chicago. The Hawks won games 3 and 4 at raucous Chicago Stadium (they would let more than 20,000 people into the loud old building back then, despite local bylaws…).

The momentum in that series had changed dramatically.  Heck, I was only eight years of age at the time, and I knew something had shifted—and not for the better.

The Leaf players at the time talked in the press about having to get traffic in front of Hall, one of the best goalies I’ve ever seen. They felt they had been too docile in Chicago and had allowed themselves to be pushed around.

I remember all this largely because Game 5, back in Toronto, was to start at 8 o’clock on the Thursday of Easter week. In our family, that Thursday meant going to Church on Holy Thursday—a Mass which also started (inconveniently, I should add) at 8 o’clock the night of Game 5 at Maple Leaf Gardens.

It’s not like I had any input on the matter. I was many years the youngest in the family, and I just went where everyone else went.  I do remember fidgeting anxiously throughout Mass, wondering what was going on hundreds of miles away at Maple Leaf Gardens.  (I was raised in a small community outside of Windsor, Ontario, across from Detroit, so the Red Wings were a big local influence as well.)

My parents no doubt convinced me that going to Church and praying would be a good thing, though I’m not sure I was buying that. (To be clear, my Dad was a devoutly religious individual, and I’ve often said his family, his faith and the Montreal Canadiens were the three most important things in his life—I’m just not sure he always got the order right. My Dad was missing the game, too, but hey, the Habs had already been eliminated by Chicago for the second year in a row so he wasn’t missing his team play…)

I remember we sat in front of a family we were friendly with, and I was good friends with one of their children, Gerard.  He could no doubt see that I looked distracted.  He leaned over the pew at one point and whispered to me, “You’re not the only one that’s missing the game…”.

When Mass ended, I probably ran to the car faster than I ever had before after Church.  When we got home, the game was (and I believe I remember this correctly) late into the second period, and the Leafs were ahead by a score of something like 6-2.

I wouldn’t bet on it for sure, but I seem to recall the final score was 8-4 for Toronto.

So while I had missed the offensive outburst by Toronto (they must have crashed the crease, as they had stressed that they needed to), I was relieved that the Leafs had answered the bell.

Did going to Church help?  Well, I won’t make that claim. But it didn't hurt.  I’m glad the Leafs won Game 5.

Don Simmons was in goal for Toronto that night because Bower had been injured in Game 4 in Chicago.  Simmons was brilliant in Game 6 back in Chicago (I’m guessing Game 6 must have been on Sunday night in Chicago, a customary home night for the Blackhawks back then), since Game 5 was on a Thursday.

The Leafs won that night, 2-1, coming from behind late in the game after Bobby Hull had put the Hawks in front 1-0 in the third period. (Dickie Duff scored the winner, as I recall, for the Leafs. Duff is one of the Leafs in the old newspaper photo above, along with Simmons who is on the far left, as they celebrate their championship after the game.)

It is still a great memory all these years later—my “first” Cup as a Leaf fan.