The spring ’93 playoffs were a heart-stopping thrill ride: twenty-one games in forty-two nights for Toronto—three consecutive seven-game series. No other NHL team had done that before, and Pat Burns burnished his reputation as coaching virtuoso. It would be a dreadful metaphor to say the postseason flight eventually crashed and burned for the Leafs, and all those along for the breathtaking spring whirl. But everyone who was there, up close, will never forget the experience—the hockey, the whole splendiferous and exhilarating adventure.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” That was Gilmour toying with a reporter who’d inquired about the Leafs’ strategy against Detroit, Toronto’s first-round opponent. Pat Burns had been equally cagey about what he had in mind as the series opened. Toronto had allowed only 241 goals in 84 games for a 2.87 GAA, the best since 1971–72. Cliff Fletcher had constructed a compelling club out of the wreckage left behind from the ’80s. But this was also the oldest team in the NHL, with an average age of twenty-eight. And now Toronto was going up against the offensively flashy Red Wings and their formidable power play. Hustle and desire had been contagious among the Leafs, but would that be enough to cramp the superior talent and prowess of Steve Yzerman, Chris Chelios and their Motor City crew? “The crack in the door is there for every team,” reminded Burns, noting Toronto and Detroit had split their head-to-head series through the regular season. “I know I believe that, but I don’t know if all the players believe it.” Then, mimicking the traditional Olympics declaration: “Let the games begin!”
Stavro had Maple Leaf Gardens director Terry Kelly hand-deliver a lucky tie to Burns on the eve of the series. He chose not to wear it for game one at the Joe Louis Arena. It might have helped, as things turned out. If the coach did have a game plan, it must have gone unheeded. Leafs turned the puck over in their own end, took bad penalties, failed to contain the Red Wings’ speed, missed passes, blew checking assignments, couldn’t even execute a viable dump-and-chase and got pushed around absurdly. The Leafs looked not only nervous but afraid. At one point, trash-talking thorn-in-the-side Dino Ciccarelli—he’d staked out territory directly in front of Félix Potvin, practically planted a flag, and was left unmolested—screeched insults right in the young goalie’s face, and nobody made a move to dislodge him. “If a guy’s going to put his rear end in our goaltender’s face, we’ve got to do something about it,” Burns complained.
Before the game, Todd Gill paced anxiously in his underwear outside the Leaf dressing room. The teamwide tension could be cut with a knife. The Leafs took the boisterous crowd at the Joe out of the equation by scoring first after killing off a two-man disadvantage, but they were frantic, undisciplined and overwhelmed thereafter, thrashed 6–3. Octopi plopped on the ice in whoop-whoop celebration. Burns had to salvage something from the atrocity to alleviate his players’ despondency. “It was one of those nights. What you don’t want to do is bury your head. You’ve got to stick it up proud and get right back at it.” An invitation to the dance is how Burns had characterized Toronto’s first playoff inclusion after more than a thousand days and nights in the wilderness. But the Leafs had been stomped, staggering in their incompetence. The coach was among those who marvelled at Detroit’s awesomeness. “You should have seen it from ice level. Whoosh—and they were gone. That team can kill your dreams in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes, five shots, four goals: goodbye dreams.
Bad-ass Bob Probert, the NHL’s heavyweight champ, mocked Wendel Clark, practically slapped a white glove across the captain’s face. “You really couldn’t find him out there on the ice,” he sneered. Probert had almost ripped off Potvin’s arm in one drive-by collision and then mugged passive defenceman Dmitri Mironov with nary a shove-back. “Probert was pretty much allowed to do what he wanted,” Burns groused. “But I don’t have a forklift to move him out of there.”
There was more bad news: Toronto right winger Nikolai Borschevsky collided with Vladimir Konstantinov in the third period, striking his head on the lip of the boards. He fractured the orbital bone below his right eye. When Borschevsky tried to blow his nose, his eye puffed up grotesquely because air was forced through the crack in the bone. The injury was expected to keep the not-so-husky Siberian out of the lineup for at least seven days, doctors saying he wouldn’t be able to play with a face shield once the swelling went down because air could leak into the eye and explode the orb. Meanwhile, Todd Gill suffered back spasms after lunging for a puck. The eviscerated lineup had Burns wringing his hands over what might ensue in game two. “Often, you get the smell of blood when you lose players. The other team gets going like wolves.” As personnel adjustment, Burns dressed Mike Foligno, who’d been a game one scratch. “Maybe Foligno might have a couple bounce in off his bum.”
Next morning, propped on a stool and balancing on the tip of his skates as he faced reporters, Burns tried to sound philosophical. “When I got up this morning, the sun was still shining,” he said, evoking Pierre Elliott Trudeau after the Night of the Long Thousand Knives. That evening, a bunch of Leafs went to Tiger Stadium to take in the ballgame against Seattle. Handing out ducats, PR director Bob Stellick added, “You also get a coupon for a free hot dog and drink.”
Toronto put in a better effort in game two, showed more zip, but the result was the same: a 6–2 loss. As the score mounted, things got ugly with lots of slashing, spearing and stick swinging. Potvin grew so exasperated with Ciccarelli’s abuse that he laid a two-hander across his irritant’s shins with his goal stick. The Joe crowd, meanwhile, taunted the oddly docile Clark: “WENDY! WENDY!” In the regular season, Clark had outpunched Probert in a memorable title fight, but now he turned the other cheek. Probert was a menacing presence every time he stepped on the ice, while Toronto’s lauded team grit had turned to team silt. Clark had sought calmer waters at the edge of repeated frays, noticeable only for his absence—the absence of malice. He was excoriated by reporters for his meekness. “Pat had told me not to fight Probert,” Clark says now. “But I wasn’t allowed to say that I’d been told not to fight him.”
Perhaps there had been a breakdown in communication between coach and captain. “I told Wendel and the others that they had to create some havoc to get this thing turned around,” said Burns. “Nobody’s asking him to fight Bob Probert—that’s not it at all. Probert’s not the problem. We’ve got to hit their good people and not waste our time and energy on guys who can’t really hurt us.” Burns was livid over Probert questioning Clark’s manhood and stories written about Toronto’s captain. “You can question Wendel’s ability to score. You can question his ability to shoot. But nobody will ever question Wendel’s toughness or his heart. That’s bullshit, pardon the expression. Wendel Clark is not a guy that’s going to skate away from anything. Nobody here will ever question Wendel Clark’s courage.” Steaming, the coach stalked off. Yet later, privately, Burns took aside a columnist who’d been especially merciless in print about “Pretty Boy” Clark. “You’re not entirely wrong,” he confided.
Detroit coach Bryan Murray claimed to be appalled by all the lumberwork. “It was certainly one of the most vicious games I’ve been involved in. There are lots of people who don’t want fighting but, if that’s the result of no fighting in hockey … boy.” For Burns, the only saving grace was leaving Motown behind for a while, with few chroniclers of the Leafs misfortunes—outscored 12–5—expecting the team to return there that spring. “We’re a good club,” Burns said defiantly. “At least we’re going back home. Let’s wait and see. I hope our fans are as vocal as theirs.” He repeated the Leaf gospel preached all season: “Everything this team has accomplished has come from hard work and second effort. It seems to me, we coaches showed them all these films and diagrams and explained matchups at length, and at some point, they said to themselves, ‘Hey, this is going to be easy, as long as we follow those plans.’ Well, it’s never easy. Never has been. Never will be.”
In Toronto, Burns convened a meeting to address leadership, dismi
ssing the idea that Clark was guilty of leaving a void in that area, pointing fingers instead at veterans who’d won the whole enchilada elsewhere. “The guys with Stanley Cup rings have done (bleep). But I’ve talked to them about it and I made them talk a bit too. If we believe we’re beat, then we’re beat.” Team psychologist Max Offenberger was tapped to make a dressing-room house call. Of more direct influence was Burns’s decision to neutralize the distraction of Ciccarelli. Simply put: Ignore him. Let the guy chirp and harass Potvin. Render him invisible. Potvin signed on to the strategy. “I’m not going to touch him. I won’t let him bother me. I’m going to try to see through him.” Potvin says Burns made a point of bucking him up. “He came to me in the room saying, ‘I don’t want you on the ice today for practice. Make sure you rest and are ready for game three.’ Right away, that cleared any doubts I may have had in my head.”
Following a brisk practice, assistant coach Mike Kitchen booted a garbage can in anger when he saw the media swarming around Clark’s stall. The captain was his usual stoic and straightforward self when queried about whether he still had a leadership role on the club that extended beyond the ice. “I don’t know. I’m not that deep. I’m a farmer, for God’s sake. I show up and play, and that’s the only part that’s in my control.”
The team’s psyche was fragile, and its big guns had gone silent. Gilmour had two goals in two games, one on the power play. Dave Andreychuk, saddled with a reputation as a playoff vanishing act from his years in Buffalo—“Andy-choke”—had yet to score. Gilmour suggested the squad had been too uptight in Detroit. “We’ve been nervous. We’ve been scared out there because we didn’t want to lose.” Crucially, as Burns emphasized, they needed to wise up, avoid being drawn into taking penalties that were killing them. “We have to be smart and keep our energy for when the clock is ticking, not for the scrums and the fights. We can’t worry about out-toughing them.”
In the third game, Toronto came out flying and banging bodies. With a little more room to operate and the advantage of the last line change, Gilmour and Andreychuk cranked up production. Although the Leafs wasted three consecutive first-period power plays, the extra-man situations gave them the momentum needed to jump into a 2–0 lead. But it was Clark who silenced his critics with a commanding, muscular performance. Several Wings were nearly quartered by his bone-crunching Clarkian body slams. He scored the goal that gave Toronto a 3–1 lead—parked at the edge of the crease, taking a pass from Gilmour behind the net and stuffing a backhand between the legs of Tim Cheveldae—and shoved the Leafs back into the series, Toronto winning 4–2. In the locker room afterwards, the unassuming warrior made a press pack wait for twenty minutes while he had a long chat with a young fan in a wheelchair. Then Clark stood in the media circle, braces still latched around both gimpy knees, and offered only a gentle retort. “You know the media is going to throw things at you. I just put my skates on, play the game.”
Burns spread around the praise. “The fans were just great. The guys on the bench were just jumping. It was the first time I’ve seen everybody on the bench just jumping.” A series of tactical coaching moves had contributed significantly. Using last line change to his advantage, Burns deployed ten different line combinations in the first period alone. “And be sure to leave Dino Ciccarelli alone in front of the net. Why get into a wrestling match with him?” The pest was not a factor. “It took us two games to get used to playoff-style hockey, but we’re in control of our emotions now and we still don’t feel like we’ve played our best hockey.”
The yapping between opposing coaches, each trying to secure a psychological edge, was bordering on silly. Murray even whined that Burns had a leg-up because of the eight-inch riser behind the Leaf bench. He complained that it gave Burns a better view and made him more imposing to game officials. Burns sniped right back, noting that the visiting coach’s office in Detroit was in the men’s washroom. “That’s not bad, except when a security guard came in to use it. The place smelled for half an hour.” By the start of game four, Murray had his own riser.
It was another chippy affair. While Gilmour and Andreychuk performed superbly, it was the supporting players who stepped up, Burns issuing kudos in particular to his ferocious checking line of Peter Zezel, Mark Osborne and Bill Berg for containing Detroit’s top troika. Zezel won three crucial faceoffs in the Leaf zone with a minute left in regulation, goalie pulled, Toronto up 3–2. Raised in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood, Zezel spoke reverently about donning the blue and white. “Every time the sweater is put on, there’s a price. As soon as that sweater goes on, guys go for their guns.”
With the series tied at two games apiece, Burns was jubilant. “It could have been the hardest I’ve seen them work. There is a lot of pride on this team.” Andreychuk had potted the winner and was asked if he’d finally shed the “Andy-choke” handle. “Not by any means. I’ve still got a long ways to go.” Little did he know.
Everybody was banged up and bruised, none more than Gilmour, with several stitches threaded to close an inch-long cut below one eye and a crescent-shaped cut above the other eyebrow. That owwie occurred when Steve Chiasson drove Gilmour’s head into the boards in the second period. Later in the game, Mark Howe tomahawked his left wrist, at the base of the thumb, sending Gilmour straight to the Gardens medical clinic cupping the hinge, Dr. Leith Douglas in pursuit. He returned to action a minute later, taped up. “Your heart stops,” said Burns. “But he’s tough. He came back.” No worries, said Gilmour, the wrist wasn’t broken. “I’ve got X-ray eyes, so I can tell you it’s only a bruise.”
“It’s a new series now,” Burns crowed. “That’s what happens in the playoffs. Things go from hot to cold and from cold to hot. That’s the fun of the playoffs, what makes it exciting. This could be a long series. We’re an ugly team to play against.” There were smiles of delight, too, when, contrary to predictions, Borschevsky suddenly returned to practice. Gilmour assured inquisitors his wrist wasn’t busted, even joked about doing pushups and lifting weights. Stepping off the ice after practice, he feigned a severe limp. There were serious concerns, however, about what the hard-smashing series was costing Gilmour. Burns was constantly double-shifting his go- to guy and Gilmour’s weight was dropping dramatically, despite all the pasta carbs he was ingesting. “After games, they just laid me down on a table and threw IVs at me,” Gilmour recalls. “With all those electrolytes, I’d walk out of there feeling like I hadn’t even played a game. Then I’d walk home. At the time, I was living right next to the Gardens on Wood Street, so it was a short walk.”
Returning to the mosh pit of the Joe, Toronto purloined a game they probably had no right winning, overcoming a 4–1 deficit. They exploited Detroit’s weak link in goal, beating Cheveldae twice on long shots by Dave Ellett. A fluke goal by Clark midway through the third sent it into overtime. Hero of the night was Mike Foligno, who’d begun his NHL career as a Wing. Clark dug the puck out from a scramble at the left boards and passed to Foligno, who fired a shot through a maze of bodies from between the circles, winning the game 5–4. Then he executed his joyful victory hop, jumping so high in the air his knees almost touched his chin.
“It was jubilation on a number of counts,” says Foligno. “One, obviously, was that I hadn’t even known at the start of the season if I was going to be able to come back and play again. Two, I used to play for Detroit and felt like I had some unfinished business there. And then, to have scored that overtime goal, oh man. I remember Wendel’s work on the wall and Mike Krushelnyski’s screen in front of the net. When I scored, I threw off my gloves. It’s funny; I don’t even know why I did that. Then a whole bunch of other guys threw their gloves in the air, Todd Gill and Peter Zezel. Oh my God, it was like a Stanley Cup championship game. There was so much emotion. Everybody was happy we’d won the game, but I think the guys were happy for me as well. It had been such a tough grind I’d gone through. That win in overtime was so much fun. And you know what? The feeling we had that night, we wanted
to get it again. That’s when we really got a taste of winning, for the feel of winning, and wanted to taste it again.” Burns was thrilled for Foligno. “The old guy bopped one in for us.” In overtime—and there would be many more OTs to come that spring—Burns had unshakeable confidence in his players, harking back to the harsh workouts he’d put them through in practices throughout the year. After one such gruelling session, he’d barked: “There’ll be a night next April, in overtime, when the work we do now will pay off for us.”
The Red Wings were aghast. Toronto had put itself in a position to clinch at home in game six. The city, gaga with hockey fever, welcomed the Leafs back with full-throated gusto at the usually mausoleum-hushed Gardens. But they left the arena in distress. “We got our asses kicked,” says Gilmour. Surrendering five unanswered goals in the second period—two of them shorthanded—Toronto was drubbed 7–3. At the start of the third frame, Burns replaced Potvin with Daren Puppa. “He told me on the bench, ‘Just take a break, because you’re going back in for game seven,’ ” says Potvin. “That showed he still had confidence in me.” Burns could find little that was positive to seize on in the rout. “We can’t be any worse than we were tonight. That’s the only good thing.” A concussed Zezel left the building leaning on his father, Ivan, with instructions that he be awakened every two hours. Reporters took to their computers, chiselling a headstone in advance for the Maple Leafs. Burns shielded his players. “A lot of experts around here said we’d be out in six and we’re still here.” He did reclaim the underdog stance that was always a favourite posture, telling the players: “Nobody believes in us. It’s poor little us against the world. However, you men can show them all how wrong they are. It all comes down to determination and desire.”
Coach Page 19