A Season In Time: Super Mario, Killer, St. Patrick, the Great One, and the Unforgettable 1992-93 NHL Season

By Todd Denault

Twenty years after the fact, the mere mention of the 1992-93 NHL season brings back vivid memories for hockey fans across North America. The last time that the Montreal Canadiens hoisted the Stanley Cup, Wayne Gretzky's last appearance in a playoff final, and Mario Lemieux's most inspirational season; these events mark 1992 and 1993 as some of the greatest years in NHL history. Now, in A Season in Time: Super Mario, Killer, St. Patrick, the Great One, and the Unforgettable 1992-93 NHL Season, acclaimed hockey writer Todd Denault looks back to those heady days that came to be known as "the last great season," A Season in Time is a true trip down memory lane, covering the stories of Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Patrick Roy, and Doug Gilmour, and capturing the frenzy and excitement that hasn't been seen since. A Season in Time is essential reading for hockey lovers of all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781443429573

Todd Denault

Todd Denault is a freelance writer whose work has been featured in numerous online and print publications. He is a member of the Society for International Hockey Research, and the author of two books, Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey, and The Greatest Game: The Montreal Canadiens, the Red Army, and the Night That Saved Hockey.

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Dedication

To the memory of Brian Wallace, a man whose spirit, kindness and generosity live on today in the hearts of all of those fortunate enough to have known him.

Preface

I was eighteen years old and in my last few days of high school when the Montreal Canadiens and the Los Angeles Kings faced off in the 1993 Stanley Cup final. And while all of us seniors were looking forward to graduation and beyond, most of the talk, at least among the male students, revolved around all things hockey. In a world before mobile devices, social networks, and cell phones, we did all of our talking in person, and every day groups of us would gather in the hallways, the cafeteria, in front of our lockers, and in between classes to chat about the sport that had long played such a vital role in our lives.

For those of us growing up in small-town Canada, hockey represented a significant part of our earliest and fondest memories. We played it and we watched it religiously. Like those of most in my age bracket, many of my youthful memories are intertwined with the greatest hockey moments of the 1980s: Gretzky and Lemieux, the Canada Cups, the dynasty Islanders, a rookie named Roy, 10-8 games, a Savardian spinnerama, Wendel, the dynasty Oilers, Hextall, the Battle of Quebec, the whiteout in Winnipeg, Stevie Y, Lanny, the lights going out in Boston Garden, Mess, the drive for five, Pelle, the Battle of Alberta, the Monday Night Miracle, Grapes, Roger and the white towel, the Trade, Hawerchuk, the Easter Epic, Iron Mike, doughnuts and yellow shirted referees, O-Pee-Chee, enforcers and fight tapes, Bourque and Coffey, the Miracle on Manchester, Slats, the Golden Brett, the Good Friday Massacre, the Stastny's, the Hunter's, and the Sutter's.

We had no way of knowing it at the time, but to grow up in the 1980s was to witness hockey at its most thrilling. The sport was exciting. The play was freewheeling. Skill, finesse, and offense ruled the day. In retrospect, the 1992/93 NHL season would be the final act of that glorious era.

What made the 1992/93 NHL season and the ensuing playoffs so special then, and still so memorable now, was the pure drama that played out on the ice and on our television screens every night. And what made that particular year stand out from others was the fact that the story being told wasn't singular. The sheer number of gripping stories that played out over the course of the year was phenomenal.

Consider this:

The sport's two greatest players, Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky, were both forced that season to confront the potential end of their playing days. Not only did both men overcome the odds quicker than anyone expected, but each went on to write another remarkable chapter in their already legendary careers.

It was also a year when hockey's two most storied franchises—the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs—came within a single goal of meeting one another in the Stanley Cup final, and on the prized trophy's one hundredth anniversary to boot. And while that dream encounter didn't come to pass, for two precious, extraordinary months in the spring of 1993, both the Canadiens and the Leafs took turns captivating the country, whether it was Toronto's unforgettable string of twenty-one games in forty-one nights or Montreal's remarkable run of ten straight overtime wins.

It was a season of larger-than-life characters, particularly behind the bench: Pat Burns, the gruff and charismatic ex-cop; Barry Melrose, the new-age positive thinker; and Jacques Demers, the lifelong coach whose every decision suddenly turned up roses. Each of them unexpectedly led their teams to the most unlikely successes in the most surprising of all playoff springs.

And there were superstars aplenty.

Eric Lindros, the teenager hailed as hockey's next great talent, made his long-awaited NHL debut, only to be overshadowed by Finnish rookie Teemu Selanne. Emerging stars such as Pat Lafontaine, Adam Oates, Pierre Turgeon, and Luc Robitaille electrified fans by lighting up score sheets league wide. They were joined by a wave of dynamic stars from Europe, including Pavel Bure, Alexander Mogilny, Jaromir Jagr, and Mats Sundin, who shone alongside the superstars from the decade before, like Mark Messier, Ray Bourque, Paul Coffey, and Steve Yzerman. And then, once the playoffs began, yet another set of players led by Patrick Roy, Doug Gilmour, and Curtis Joseph established themselves as heroes of the spring.

And speaking of playoffs, no other spring featured more controversial or memorable moments: the missed high-stick call in the Toronto/Los Angeles series; Marty McSorley's illegal curve; Dale Hunter's record suspension. Nor has any playoff run included more overtimes or more upsets, none greater than the biggest playoff stunner in modern NHL playoff history.

The 1992/93 NHL season had it all: individual and team performances for the ages, the resurrection of once-proud teams and the birth of new franchises, mind-numbing playoff upsets, unforgettable moments, record-breaking achievements, and ultimately a stack of memories to last a lifetime.

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It would never be quite the same after that. On a personal level, I left my high school days and my hometown behind that fall and traveled to Carleton University to begin the next stage of my life. I remember going back to my old high school a couple of months later, but it wasn't the same. Sure, there were still people there who I knew, and the building hadn't changed, but the feeling definitely wasn't the same. The world I had left behind wasn't there waiting for me when I came back; like me, it had moved on.

The NHL was never quite the same either, as the league both on and off the ice went through of a mountain of change, much of which had its roots in the 1992/93 season. The dual appointments of Bruce McNall as the new chairman of the NHL's board of governors and Gary Bettman as the league's first commissioner signaled the beginning of a new era. The coming years would bring rapid expansion, franchise relocations, a precipitous escalation in salaries, new arenas, player strikes, and owner lockouts. On the ice, scoring would plummet as the NHL entered the dead puck era. Never again would we see scoring like we did in 1992/93, as offensive creativity was stifled by new defensive schemes based on clutching, grabbing, and holding that all fell under the umbrella of a word we never had heard before—obstruction.

Within a few years, the game would hardly be recognizable. In 1992/93, the twenty-four NHL teams would combine for 7,311 goals with twenty-one players scoring at least one hundred points and fourteen reaching the fifty-goal mark. A little over a decade later, in 2003/04, the now thirty NHL teams would combine for 6,318 goals, and not a single player scored either one hundred points or fifty goals.

Of course, the real insult for the Canadian hockey fan, in the face of drastic change to a game we regard as our own, was having to endure new expansion franchises in non-traditional hockey markets—like the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Anaheim Ducks—parade around with the Stanley Cup.

Perhaps that helps to explain why, in the end, 1992/93 became even more special as the years went on. Sure, it was the last time that a Canadian-based team won the Stanley Cup, but more than that it feels now like the last season in which the NHL and the game itself belonged to us.

The book you are now holding in your hands is a chronicle of that last great season, as it happened on the ice. What you won't find in the pages to come is the off-ice story of the 1992/93 season. That is a tale left to another place and time. No, this book is intended as a celebration of a year when the story of a sport was primarily told on the ice by the players who played it, the coaches who coached it, and the fans who watched it.

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This has been, by far, the largest and longest undertaking of my writing career to this point. In addition to going through many of the major newspapers of the time, a pile of books, and what seemed to be a never-ending stream of articles in countless magazines, I read through the entire 1992/93 run of The Hockey News. The real joy in the research process, however, came in watching once again, through the magic of videotape, many of the games from that remarkable season.

But without question, the biggest thrill associated with this particular book was getting the opportunity to speak with so many players, coaches, executives, and media people associated with the 1992/93 NHL season. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to each of them for not only taking the time to talk with me, but for being so candid in sharing their memories. They include Francois Allaire, Dave Andreychuk, Al Arbour, Brian Bellows, Howard Berger, Marc Bergevin, Bob Berry, Rob Blake, Luciano Borsato, Laurie Boschman, Les Bowen, Mike Brophy, Jeff Brown, Guy Carbonneau, Wendel Clark, Bob Corkum, Stu Cowan, Terry Crisp, Chris Cuthbert, Vincent Damphousse, Jacques Demers, Pete Demers, Eric Desjardins, Jim Devellano, Gord Donnelly, Eric Duhatschek, Nelson Emerson, Michael Farber, Ray Ferraro, Red Fisher, Cliff Fletcher, Kerry Fraser, Grant Fuhr, Bob Gainey, Stew Gavin, Todd Gill, Tony Granato, Wayne Gretzky, Pat Hickey, Lance Hornby, Mike Hough, Phil Housley, Kelly Hrudey, Charlie Huddy, Brett Hull, Dick Irvin, Jim Jamieson, Dean Kennedy, Derek King, Kris King, Mike Kitchen, Chris Kontos, Dr. Ronald Kvitne, Mark Lamb, Stephan Lebeau, Grant Ledyard, Sylvain Lefebvre, Don Lever, Dave Lewis, Claude Loiselle, Iain MacIntyre, Norm Maciver, Shawn McEachern, Bob McKenzie, Dave McLlwain, Mike McPhee, Marty McSorley, Barry Melrose, Gary Miles, Bob Miller, Rick Moffat, Dave Molinari, Scott Morrison, John Muckler, Kirk Muller, Mike Murphy, Troy Murray, Eddie Olczyk, Mark Osborne, John Paddock, Pierre Page, Dave Poulin, Brian Propp, Luc Robitaille, Ed Ronan, Patrick Roy, Cam Russell, Warren Rychel, Denis Savard, Darrin Shannon, Brad Shaw, David Shoalts, Steve Shutt, Bobby Smith, Steve Smith, Al Strachan, Bob Sweeney, Darryl Sydor, Bob Verdi, Bill Watters, Tim Watters, Ken Wilson, Wendell Young, Alexei Zhitnik, and Rick Zombo.

I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of the following people who helped to arrange the interviews. They include Jeff Alstadter, Adam Auckbaraullee, Chris Bandura, Darren Blake, Nicole Bouchard, Scott Brown, Jennifer Bullano, John Dellapina, Alex Gilchrist, Aaron Gogishvili, Kyle Hanlin, Gord Harris, J.J. Hebert, Zack Hill, Rejean Houle, Sean Kelso, Charlie Larson, Sharon MacDonald, Brendan McNicholas, Jeff Moeller, Chris Moore, Michael Mroziak, Drew Rogers, Adam Rogowin, Renee Rousse, Dominick Saillant, Rob Schichili, Kehley Sloan, Ryan Stanzel, Guido Stapelfeldt, Marshall Starkman, Ryan Stenn, Jeff Stilwell, Dylan Wade, Lindey Willhite, and Kevin Wilson.

This book would not have been possible without the continued help and expertise of my agent, Arnold Gosewich, who has steadfastly believed when others have questioned. I want to personally express my gratitude to him for making this all possible and thank him for his unwavering support and wise counsel.

I would like to also express my gratitude to the team at Wiley for believing in this project and in its author through the long and arduous process from idea to book, and most especially Karen Milner, Elizabeth McCurdy, Brian Will, and Deborah Guichelaar. I would also like to acknowledge my editors on this book, Jonathan Webb and Jenny Govier, whose hard work and expertise helped to shape the final product. Thanks, Jonathan and Jenny, for helping to bring the book and its author to the finish line.

Once again, I was fortunate enough to spend some research time at the Hockey Hall of Fame's Resource Centre. Housed within its walls is the real history of the sport. For all three of my books the archival materials stored within have served as the backbone for the finished product. I would like to extend my personal thanks to Miragh Addis for being, as always, so helpful during my visits, and giving me so much time and latitude, particularly when it came to using the photocopier. I would also like to personally thank Craig Campbell, who from the moment he heard the idea shared his enthusiasm for the book, and went above and beyond to find many of the photographs included within.

As with my first two books, I was once again thrilled to get to spend some time with Frank Orr discussing this particular idea, amid a whole other range of topics. I would like to once again express my gratitude to him for always being a source of support. I also would like to thank him for letting me borrow his collection of The Hockey News issues from the 1992/93 season, in addition to his notes and materials from his 2001 biography of Mario Lemieux.

I am grateful to Bob Duff for sending me his columns from the Windsor Star detailing the Toronto Maple Leafs/Detroit Red Wings first-round playoff series from 1993, in addition to providing unique insight on both that series and the Red Wings' season at large. I would also like to express my gratitude to Jeff Marek, a Hockey Central host on Sportsnet, for being so encouraging and enthusiastic in the early stages of the book.

I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Stephen Brunt to this book. Mr. Brunt, now a Sportsnet magazine columnist and co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN, has always been one of my favorite writers, and his books have long occupied a prominent space on my own bookshelf. I was fortunate to meet him just as I was starting to assemble materials for this book. Later on, in the final stages of my research, we were able to chat over the phone for a couple of hours. Without knowing it, he gave me the burst of confidence I needed to finish this book by expressing his belief in both the idea and what I was trying to accomplish. Thank you.

A researcher's work is only as good as the libraries he or she frequents. The library at Queen's University houses a treasure trove of archived newspapers and was crucial in the creation of this book. Both the Cobourg and Port Hope Public Libraries were also helpful in providing me with some of the books I consulted for this project. I would also like to thank Andrea Gordon at Canadian Press for supplying some of the photographs used in the book.

My fellow members of the Society for International Hockey Research have provided unending support and enthusiasm for this and all of my projects, and for that I am more than thankful. SIHR is a growing assemblage of writers, statisticians, collectors, broadcasters, academics, and everyday people interested in the sport who come together and share their common love for the game—its origins, developments, and fascinating facts and figures—with other like-minded individuals. If you consider yourself a fan of the sport and have an interest in its long and illustrious history, SIHR (www.sihrhockey.org) is an organization more than worth your time.

Space does not permit to thank all of the SIHR membership, but there are some who I must recognize. They include Paul Bruno, Lloyd Davis, John Finley, Wayne Geen, Waxy Gregoire, Ross Hayton, D'Arcy Jenish, John Low, Len Kotylo, James Milks, Paul Patskou, Thom Sears, Kevin Shea, Kevin van Steendelaar, Tim Taylor, and Eric Zweig.

I am also wholly indebted to the following people for going out of their way to help me: Philip Abbott, Mike Boone, Matt Gauthier, Andrew Goldfarb, Andre Lessard, Mitch Melnick, John Ovens, Joe Pelletier, Hank Schaeffer, Dave Stubbs, Glen Woodrow, and Mike Wyman.

On a personal note, I would like to single out the following people for their unwavering enthusiasm, patience, and encouragement during the course of writing this book: Michael and Jane Thompson, Lloyd and Fran Jones, Derek and Sandra Eagleson, Nate and Jennifer Jones, Matt and Delta Jones, Nick and Mandy McKinley, Brett Mills, James Jones, Tim Horgan, Michele LaBossiere, Chris Lalande, Nicole Simpson, Rob Davis, James Baxter, and Terry Connors.

I would also like to throw out a special thanks to the entire gang at Kelly's Homelike Inn, especially Gord Kelly Sr., Gord Kelly Jr., and Kris Kelly, for their amazing support and constant encouragement. And to the regulars (you know who you are) who have been wondering when the book will be coming out, I hope that in the end the wait was well worth it.

And then there is my family, who may be near the end of this particular list but have always occupied the number one spot in my heart. To my mother, father, and brother, thanks for putting up with me and this book for so long. Knowing that, no matter what, I'll always have each of you in my corner gives me the strength to conquer any challenge or adversity that can come my way.

Finally, I would like to single out those people with whom I shared that remarkable spring—in particular my fellow students and the staff at CDCI West who, over the course of five years, helped to make my high school experience so memorable.

Until we meet again.

Todd Denault

Cobourg, Ontario

April, 2012

Prologue

The long reign of Harold Ballard over the Toronto Maple Leafs was nothing short of disastrous. The 1960s had borne witness to the last Leafs dynasty and their final Stanley Cup in 1967. The 1970s—Ballard's first decade of ownership—had seen the team for the most part remain a competitive entity. But by the 1980s, the Leafs descended to previously unthinkable depths. The situation grew so pitiful that at a certain point young players, who at one time dreamed of donning the iconic blue-and-white jersey, through their representatives begged the Leafs to not even draft them.

In all those years, there may have been no lower point for the Leafs than the 1987/88 season. Despite an abysmal record—they had won just twenty-one of eighty games in the regular season—their fourth-place standing in the Norris division still merited their inclusion in first round of the playoffs.a Remarkably, they then stunned their opponents, the Detroit Red Wings, with a 6-2 victory in the first game of the series. Detroit, however, came back with decisive wins in games two and three, setting the stage for the calamitous fourth game. The Leafs were encouraged by their coach, John Brophy, to come out fighting, and the two teams combined for fifty-six penalty minutes in the first period. Their truculence backfired in the second period, however, when the Wings took advantage of two power play opportunities to jump to a 2-0 lead. Things just got worse after that as the more talented Detroit team ran up the score remorselessly until, with fifteen minutes remaining in the third period, the score stood at 8-0.

And then it happened.

A fan in the end blues of the Gardens, looking for a way to express his frustration, peeled off his Leafs jersey, tied it into a knot, and hurled it onto the ice. The symbolism of his act was impossible to escape. The blue-and-white jersey, once among the most coveted possessions of every Canadian youngster, now rested amid the debris that quickly covered the ice.¹

Play was stopped on another couple of occasions as more garbage went the way of the jersey. Twenty years of pent-up anger had finally reached boiling point.

The twentieth-place Leafs truly are a disgrace to the National Hockey League's championship tournament, wrote Jim Proudfoot in the Toronto Star the next day.² David Shoalts echoed Proudfoot's feelings in the Globe and Mail: It was possibly the lowest point for the Leafs in their last twenty sorry years in the National Hockey League.³

Four nights later at Maple Leaf Gardens, before a crowd of 15,668 dispirited onlookers, the Red Wings mercifully put an end to the second-worst season in Leafs history with a 5-4 win. The announced attendance meant that 714 tickets had gone unsold.⁴ No one, not even the oldest Leafs watcher or longest-tenured employee, could remember a Toronto Maple Leafs playoff game that wasn't a sellout.

Notes

¹ Rick Matsumoto, Hapless Leafs Embarrassed by Wings, Toronto Star, April 11, 1988.

² Jim Proudfoot, Leafs Truly Disgrace of Playoffs, Toronto Star, April 11, 1988.

³ David Shoalts, No Sympathy for ‘Stupid Hockey', Globe and Mail, April 11, 1988.

⁴ Maple Leafs Set a Record for Failing to Sell Out, Toronto Star, April 15, 1988.

a The Maple Leafs' fifty-two points in 1987/88 were the lowest of any playoff qualifier since the NHL had gone to a seventy-game schedule for the 1949/50 season.

Chapter 1

The Challenge

Cliff Fletcher, in the spring of 1991, was a man looking for a change.

Widely regarded as one of the finest hockey executives in the National Hockey League, the man referred to fondly by his colleagues as Trader Cliff and the Silver Fox had, throughout his thirty-five-year career in professional hockey, perfected a smooth style of management that was the envy of many of his contemporaries.

In 1956, the twenty-year-old Fletcher joined the Montreal Canadiens as a scout. Over the next decade, he closely watched the man who hired him, Sam Pollock, all the while gaining an unofficial master's degree in hockey management from the most successful executive in the NHL. After spending four years with the expansion St. Louis Blues, Fletcher was given an NHL team of his own to run—the expansion Atlanta Flames.

Fletcher's nineteen-year tenure as the Flames' general manager can be neatly divided between the first eight years in Atlanta and the next eleven seasons in Calgary. In Atlanta, despite financial constraints, Fletcher produced a team that qualified for the playoffs in six of their eight seasons. In Calgary, the Flames never finished with a losing record in Fletcher's eleven years as general manager. Overshadowed by the Edmonton Oilers dynasty for most of the 1980s, Fletcher constructed a team that would become the Oilers' equal by the end of the decade, and eventually a champion in its own right.

Fletcher built up the Flames through a combination of keen drafting and shrewd trades. Hakan Loob (1980), Al MacInnis (1981), Mike Vernon (1981), Gary Roberts (1984), Gary Suter (1984), Joe Nieuwendyk (1985), and Theoren Fleury (1987) all were selected by the Flames in the NHL's annual entry draft. Fletcher augmented his draft success with a series of trades, starting with the acquisition of Lanny McDonald in 1981. Joe Mullen (1986), Brad McCrimmon (1987), and, finally, Doug Gilmour (1988) all followed.

The trade for Gilmour is a prime example of how Fletcher transformed the Flames.

The summer months of 1988 would alter the balance of power between the Oilers and the Flames. On August 9, 1988, Edmonton dealt Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings in a trade that stunned the hockey world and deprived the Oilers of the game's greatest player. Less than a month later, Fletcher completed a significant transaction of his own. It wasn't on the level of the Gretzky trade, but it played a vital part in the Flames' future.

On September 5, 1988, as part of a seven-player transaction with the St. Louis Blues, Doug Gilmour became a Calgary Flame. The week before had seen Gilmour named as a defendant in a $1-million civil lawsuit launched by the parents of an underage girl who accused him of having sexual relations with her.a The Blues denied that the trade was related to the lawsuit, but the perception remained that Fletcher had taken advantage of a team looking to discard a player tainted by an ugly scandal, and that the Blues had received far below market value in return.¹

Gilmour joined the Flames in the fall of 1988 with a cloud hovering over his every move. But it was not the first time that the twenty-five-year-old from Kingston, Ontario, had confronted adversity. Only seven years before, Gilmour starred in the OHL where, as a rookie, he was part of a Memorial Cup winner in Cornwall. Despite recording 21 points in 19 playoff games, at the time professional scouts were unable to look past his height (Gilmour stood only 5'9") and weight (barely 150 pounds), or lack thereof. Considered much too small to be a serious NHL prospect, the 1981 entry draft came and went without his name being called.

The next season saw Gilmour blossom offensively. His 46 goals and 73 assists gave him a total of 119 points, good enough for a sixth-place finish among all OHL scorers. Nevertheless, it wasn't until the seventh round of the 1982 NHL entry draft that the St. Louis Blues selected him with the 134th pick overall. Unable to crack the Blues lineup in the fall of 1982, Gilmour returned to Cornwall, where he led the OHL in scoring with 177 points (70 goals and 107 assists) and set a then-league record by scoring in 55 consecutive games. At the end of the season, Gilmour was awarded the Red Tilson Trophy as the OHL's outstanding player.

Gilmour finally found a spot on the Blues roster for the 1983/84 NHL season, and became one of the league's preeminent defensive forwards. By the 1986 playoffs, he was also gaining notice for his playmaking abilities and for his intense desire. He led all post-season scorers that spring with 21 points, as the Blues came within a game of playing in the Stanley Cup final. A more confident Gilmour followed that up with a 105-point season in 1986/87, good enough for fifth place among the NHL scoring leaders. That summer he received an invitation to play for Team Canada in the 1987 Canada Cup, and in the unforgettable final, best-of-three series against the Soviet Union, Gilmour proved that he belonged with the greatest players in the world, scoring two goals.

One year later, Gilmour would find himself sporting the red and yellow uniform of the Calgary Flames. With Gilmour in their lineup, the 1988/89 Flames set a torrid pace, losing just four of their first twenty-eight games. By December Fletcher proclaimed this version of the Flames the best he had ever built.² The team romped to a second consecutive President's Trophy and set new team marks for wins (54) and points (117), while losing only four home games all season.

Purging the demons of their playoffs past, the Flames were within a game of claiming their first Stanley Cup championship when they faced the Montreal Canadiens on the evening of May 25, 1989. In their storied history, the Canadiens had never allowed an opposing team to win the Cup in their hallowed arena, the Montreal Forum. But behind two goals by Gilmour, including the Cup-clinching goal, the Flames triumphed, by a score of 4-2.

After seventeen long years as the team's general manager, Cliff Fletcher had reached the pinnacle of his hockey career. But the good times wouldn't last, and the following two years saw the Flames falter. In defense of the Cup in 1989/90, they finished second overall in the NHL regular season standings, but were stunned in the first round of the playoffs by their old nemesis, Wayne Gretzky, and his new team, the Los Angeles Kings. The next season, 1990/91, saw the Flames slip to fourth overall in the NHL standings. Once again they were upset in the first round of the playoffs, this time by their old rivals, the Edmonton Oilers. This loss left Fletcher at a career crossroads. He had no worries about job stability and could have easily carried on in Calgary, but at the age of fifty-five he had admittedly grown stale. I'd run the same team for nineteen years and I felt that I needed a change, Fletcher now reflects. I needed a new challenge.³

Less than a month after the end of the Flames season on May 13, 1991, Fletcher attended a meeting of the NHL's finance committee in New York City. While there, he took the opportunity to speak to Donald Giffin, the president of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd., inquiring if Giffin was still seeking candidates for the hockey czar post he had advertised a few weeks earlier. Giffin assured him that he was.⁴ Just three days later, Fletcher resigned his dual posts as the president and general manager of the Calgary Flames.

On June 4, 1991, at a press conference inside Maple Leaf Gardens Hot Stove Lounge, Giffin introduced the new president, general manager, and chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd.b Signed to a five-year contract worth a reported $4 million, Fletcher took over a team and organization that had fallen on hard times.

The club can be turned around, Fletcher announced to the media. "All of us together promise that we'll do everything possible to reconfirm the pride and tradition of this great hockey club.⁵ I'm not understating the job that has to be done here. It's immense, but it's not insurmountable, and it's a great challenge.⁶ There's no miracle cures, though, just a lot of hard work."⁷

It soon became clear, however, that rebuilding the Leafs might be the least of his problems.

In my negotiations to join the Leafs organization it was laid out to me that I shouldn't have any concerns about the ownership, Fletcher now recalls with a chuckle. That soon changed once I got there.⁸

Notes

¹ Flames Get Scandal-Plagued Gilmour, Toronto Star, September 6, 1988.

² Bob Mummery, Countdown to the Stanley Cup: An Illustrated History of the Calgary Flames (Vancouver: Polestar Book Publishers, 1989), 114.

³ Cliff Fletcher, interview with author, August 23, 2011.

⁴ Al Strachan, Fletcher Would Face Hockey's Greatest Challenge with Leafs, Globe and Mail, May 17, 1991.

⁵ Randy Starkman, Fletcher Sets His Goal: Restoring Leaf ‘Pride’, Toronto Star, June 5, 1991.

⁶ Randy Starkman, Leaf Life a Fantasy for Fletcher So He'll Break One Bad Hab-It, Toronto Star, June 5, 1991.

⁷ Mark Harding, It's D-Day at the Gardens, Toronto Star, June 4, 1991.

⁸ Cliff Fletcher, interview with author, August 23, 2011.

a On December 27, 1988, a St. Louis grand jury decided not to indict Gilmour on the charges related to the lawsuit. Two months earlier, on October 22, 1988, the lawyer representing the girl's family was charged by authorities with trying to extort hush money from the St. Louis Blues organization.

b Under the terms of the agreement, Giffin relinquished the presidency of the Leafs to the incoming Fletcher and now held the sole position of chairman of the board of directors of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd.

Chapter 2

Untangling the Past

Rarely in the long history of Toronto sports had an executive hiring been so widely applauded.

This is outstanding for hockey, great for the Toronto hockey club and especially for the fans, said NHL president John Ziegler. Mr. Giffin had called me on several occasions regarding holding discussions with Cliff, just to make sure he wasn't contravening any bylaws. When he first told me he wanted to pursue Cliff, I told him right out that if I were an owner and in his position, Cliff Fletcher would be the first guy I would go after.¹

The Leafs have been like a ship without a rudder for so many years now, said former Leafs captain Darryl Sittler, and it is refreshing to see that they finally went out and hired a man who is not only a classy character but knows his hockey well.²

Yet amid the accolades that came with Fletcher's hiring, a single voice of opposition was lurking in the background, an ominous development that threatened Fletcher's new job before he'd even picked out his new office at the Gardens. The man who had hired Fletcher, Donald Giffin, would not be the chairman of the board much longer. Another member of the board of directors, Steve Stavro, had spent the year since Harold Ballard's death gathering the support, and the voting shares, that would allow him to soon take full control of Maple Leaf Gardens, and by extension the Toronto Maple Leafs.a And Stavro was deeply unhappy about the terms of the contract Giffin had signed with Fletcher.

Stavro did not object to Fletcher running the hockey team, but strongly disagreed with the scope of Fletcher's powers. In Stavro's mind, the running of the Maple Leafs and the running of Maple Leaf Gardens constituted two separate jobs that should be held by two different men. For Fletcher, however, having total control of the operation was essential.³

The two men had attempted to come to an agreement the night before the press conference announcing Fletcher's hiring. Meeting over dinner at the Palace Restaurant on Danforth Avenue, Fletcher pressed his own vision of running the organization to a skeptical Stavro, but was unsuccessful in persuading the soon-to-be owner to relinquish his firmly held ideas on the subject, leaving the issue unresolved.⁴

The task of restoring the Leafs' pride was a daunting one. In essence, Fletcher would have only a few months to prove his worth, to put his vision of the Leafs organization into practice, and to sway a seemingly implacable Stavro. On the day of his unveiling, Fletcher, in his dual role as the chief administrator of Maple Leaf Gardens and its most famous tenant, outlined his three main goals: improving the Leafs' pool of player talent, building the finest off-ice organization in the NHL, and strengthening the team's imprint into the areas of marketing, sales, public relations, corporate and community relations, and charitable work.⁵

On July 1, 1991, Fletcher moved into his new office at Maple Leaf Gardens and went to work revamping the organization. A few months before, the 1990/91 version of the Toronto Maple Leafs had completed yet another dismal season, missing the playoffs for the fifth time in the last ten years and finishing with the second-worst record in the twenty-one-team NHL.

Fletcher initially turned his attention to restructuring the front office. He understood that the on-ice team represented only one component in the construction of a successful franchise. The other components, including an accomplished coaching staff, a support staff of skilled trainers and physicians, a farm team that produced players on a consistent basis, and a solid group of scouts that spanned the hockey globe, would all work together toward the same objective: becoming an elite-level NHL franchise.⁶

Fletcher started by overhauling the Leafs' scouting staff. In the final years of the Ballard regime, the Leafs' staff of scouts had shrunk to as few as two or three men. Rather than seeking young talent, they instead relied on the information provided by the Central Scouting Bureau.b Consequently, the Leafs enjoyed some success in the first few rounds of the draft, but by the end of the third round, the players ranked by the bureau were generally taken, leaving the teams on their own. This would help to explain why, at the time of Fletcher's hiring, no prior Toronto draft selection past the third round was actively playing in the NHL.⁷

Fletcher also expanded his coaching staff. Traditionally, the Leafs had employed a head coach and one assistant, and with their farm team, just a head coach. On July 16, 1991, Mike Murphy was hired as the second Leafs assistant coach, joining Tom Watt, the team's head coach, and longtime assistant Mike Kitchen. Two weeks later, Joel Quenneville was hired to assist head coach Marc Crawford with the Leafs' primary farm team, which Fletcher moved from Newmarket to St. John's.

But in this flurry of moves in the summer of 1991, one resonated with Leafs fans more than any other.

On August 8, 1991, Fletcher announced that Darryl Sittler, the Leafs' thirteenth captain and holder of many a team record, was returning to the organization after an almost decade-long estrangement. Introduced as a special consultant, the hiring was tinged with symbolism. A first-round draft pick for the team in 1970, he was entrusted with the Leafs captaincy in the fall of 1975. In his first season wearing the C, he became the first Leaf to crack the 100-point barrier. The following year was highlighted by his record-breaking 10-point game on February 7, 1976, an NHL record that still stands. The next year, 1977/78, saw Sittler finish third in league scoring with 117 points, a new Leaf team record. The spring that followed saw the Leafs reach the semi-finals, the furthest they would get in the playoffs during the ownership reign of Harold Ballard, only to be swept by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens.

Then things quickly went downhill. The next few seasons would be marred by Sittler's feuds with Ballard, who responded by trading away his best friend on the team, Lanny McDonald, on December 29, 1979. A bitter Sittler tore the captains C off of his jersey in protest, a move that an enraged Ballard compared to burning the Canadian flag.⁸ A little over two years later, on January 5, 1982, Sittler would leave the Leafs for good on the advice of his doctors, who were treating him for depression. Fifteen days later he was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers.

The return of Sittler to the Leafs organization not only closed the chapter on one of the darkest times in the franchise's history, but it also pointed the way forward.

Standing at the podium, decked out once again in a Maple Leafs jersey with the captain's C restored and his name emblazoned on the back above his trademark number 27, Sittler introduced the sixteenth captain in the franchise's history, Wendel Clark. As well as being promoted to the captaincy, Clark signed what was up until then the richest contract in team history: $600,000 for the 1991/92 season with an option for the following year.

The first overall pick of the 1985 NHL entry draft, Clark immediately endeared himself to Toronto fans. From the moment he stepped onto the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens, Clark infused the moribund Leafs with his gung-ho spirit, playing with a reckless disregard for the opposition, and most often for himself. The native of Kelvington, Saskatchewan (population 1,200), had that rarest of abilities: the capacity to change the course of a game in a single shift, with a crunching body check, by confronting the opposition's toughest player, or by scoring a goal with what was arguably the best wrist shot in hockey.⁹

He was a throwback, the living embodiment of Leaf founder Conn Smythe's maxim, If you can't beat ‘em in the alley, you can't beat ‘em on the ice.¹⁰ Clark, on a nightly basis, brought a level of ferocity rarely seen in the NHL. Standing only 5'11" and weighing barely 200 pounds Clark played as if he were a foot taller and 50 pounds heavier. At the same time Clark also produced offensively, leading the Leafs in goals in each of his first two seasons, thirty-four in his rookie year, and another thirty-seven goals in his sophomore year. Clark's rare blend of skill and toughness saw him rewarded with a tryout with Team Canada in the summer of 1987 in anticipation of that fall's Canada Cup tournament.

Unfortunately, his rugged style of play soon began to take a serious physical toll. Chronic back pain at one point cost him 116 straight games, and recurring shoulder, rib, and knee injuries contributed to Clark spending more time on the sidelines than on the ice. But his constant struggle with injuries only served to add to the legend he had become in the eyes of Leafs fans. The fact that he stubbornly played the same style despite the consequences only made him more loved. On a pure hockey level, signing Clark in the summer of 1991 to a lucrative contract and naming him captain was a puzzling decision. But Fletcher gambled on Clark's popularity, knowing that the contract and the captaincy would be greeted enthusiastically by the team's fans.

After a frantic summer, and with his first season at the helm of the team fast approaching, Fletcher now turned his attentions toward improving what would become the 1991/92 version of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Surprisingly, his first big trade came with his oldest rival. Glen Sather had been the president and general manager of the Edmonton Oilers since 1980. Over the course of the ensuing decade, he and Fletcher ran the NHL's two Alberta entries to considerable success—a combined six Stanley Cup championships and an eight-year run in which either the Oilers or the Flames represented the Campbell Conference in the Stanley Cup final. Born out of that shared success came one of the greatest rivalries in NHL history—the famed Battle of Alberta. As the respective heads of each other's greatest competition, the idea of Sather and Fletcher consummating a trade was unthinkable.

But Fletcher desperately needed a goaltender for the Leafs, and by chance Sather had one available: Grant Fuhr.

In Edmonton, Fuhr had been the backbone of the dynastic Oilers team that won four Stanley Cups in five years, and had also backstopped Team Canada to victory in the 1987 Canada Cup. His penchant for winning the most crucial of games had given him the reputation as the sport's preeminent money goaltender.

However, the last two seasons had been difficult ones for Fuhr. In 1989/90 he played in only twenty-one games as he battled shoulder injuries. That spring he could only watch as his back-up Bill Ranford led the Oilers to an unexpected Stanley Cup, the team's fifth in seven years. The summer that followed saw Fuhr's personal life spiral downwards. After spending two weeks in a Florida counseling center, he admitted that he had abused a substance for the last seven years. His ex-wife supplied the media with the tawdry details of his, up until then, secret cocaine addiction. In response, John Ziegler, president of the NHL, took the unprecedented step of suspending Fuhr on September 27, 1990, for the entire 1990/91 NHL season for conduct dishonorable and against the welfare of the league.¹¹

Fuhr was reinstated in February 1991, and promptly led the surprising Oilers past the Calgary Flames and the Los Angeles Kings in that spring's playoffs, leaving Sather with the dilemma of having two world-class goaltenders on his roster when he could afford only one. Ultimately, the Edmonton general manager chose to keep the younger Ranford. The trade, consummated on September 21, 1991, saw the Leafs also acquire Glenn Anderson—himself a five-time Stanley Cup champion—in exchange for some of the team's younger talent, most notably Vincent Damphousse. Fletcher admitted that in