—Patrice Brisebois,
former Montreal Canadiens defenceman
“Winning is always fun, but the car is more important.”
—Teemu Selanne, on the importance of the All-Star game
“It’s not about the money. It’s about what I believe in.”
—Sergei Fedorov, on holding out for $6.5 million
from the Red Wings in 1998
LOSING WITH PIZZAZZ
Harold Ballard had profit, celebrity and controversy as Maple Leaf owner—doing everything but winning.
Few have had as many adjectives to describe them, both laudatory and pejorative, as Harold Ballard. The longtime owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs was called a promotional genius, funny and warm, a philanthropist. He also was called surly, nasty, small-minded, bigoted, coarse and crude, the ultimate chauvinist, a self-serving publicity seeker, a bully and, most often, a loser and a convicted felon.
MAPLE LAUGHS
Selling out Maple Leaf Gardens for every NHL game and generating fat television revenue during Ballard’s approximately 20 years at the controls, equalled far more than enough money to build a winning team. But the Leafs—especially in the 1980s, the last half of Ballard’s reign—were the league’s laughingstock. The club’s front office operation was a circus, due mainly to Ballard’s endless meddling and his belief that he was a hockey genius. And the on-ice product reflected the management caliber…
WHICH IS WHY THEY HIRED MANAGERS
In Ballard’s more-or-less 20 seasons (1971–1991), the team owned by the man who once said, “I’ve forgotten more about hockey than any of these owners will ever know,” played 1672 games with a 629-817-226 win-loss tie record. It’s frightening to think what that mark would have been if the man in charge didn’t “know everything about hockey.” But through that time, Ballard’s outrageous statements, his often vicious pronouncements and ridiculous ideas on how the NHL Board of Governors should operate kept his name in the media consistently. To Ballard, the stupidity of something he said did not matter; that someone wrote about it in a newspaper did. When he’d exhausted his musings on hockey, he’d earn more notoriety and scorn by turning his attention to politics and feminism.
CAREER KILLER
Ballard’s big mouth and his desire to call the shots prevented an assortment of top hockey executives from working for him. Jim Gregory spent 40 years in the Leaf organization as a manager and coach in junior hockey and minor-pro. He was then granted a front-row seat to see the fruits of his labor when he became team GM in the 1970s. The fine group of young talent that Gregory had collected and developed was ready for show time. That was when Ballard stubbornly refused to match any contract offers from the World Hockey Association, and all that talent was quickly lost. Gregory still managed to counter some of Harold’s interference, coming up with a brilliant reconstruction effort leading to a solid Leafs team from 1973 to 1978.
A JOB WORTH TURNING DOWN
When Ballard sacked Gregory—he never told Gregory or coach Roger Neilson face-to-face that they were fired—he attempted to hire Scotty Bowman, who had just coached the Montreal Canadiens to four consecutive Stanley Cup championships. “The Leaf job had much appeal because of the finances available and I looked at it very closely,” Bowman said. “Harold Ballard promised me complete control but I felt that he would not keep his nose out of the operation, that he would want to be the guy quoted in the press about the team. I just couldn’t see working under those conditions.” Bowman instead became GM-coach in that hockey hotbed of Buffalo.
PUNCH IN BALLARD’S FACE
To fill the hole, Ballard hired Punch Imlach, who was GM-coach of the Leafs in four Stanley Cup titles in the 1960s before being sacked by Ballard and ownership partner Stafford Smythe in 1969. Imlach had built the Sabres from 1970 expansion team to Cup finalist in 1975 but hadn’t taken the team past the quarterfinals the three years since. Of course with Ballard involved, Imlach’s hiring evolved into a fiasco. Punch signed a contract as Leafs GM one evening with a press conference to announce his return scheduled for noon the next day. Next morning, Ballard breezed into Imlach’s office with some suggestions for strengthening the team. “Harold, let’s get one thing straight: I call the shots for the team, I decide what might make them better and I make the statements to the media,” Imlach said. “I’ll tell you what I think you need to know about the operation and if you can’t live with that, then I might as well leave right now.”
YOU WANT TO DO YOUR JOB? YOU’RE FIRED!
Ballard immediately contacted his accountant and lawyer to try to find a contract loophole (and quick!) to get out of Punch’s “ink-is-still-wet” contract. Imlach ended up as Leafs “boss,” but apparently neither man was too happy about it. Imlach not only went to war with the owner but with every Leafs player, plummeting a competent team into the league’s basement. Early in the 1980–81 season, Imlach arrived at Maple Leaf Gardens one morning to find his name deleted from his parking place. “I had no idea just how big a roadblock Ballard was in trying to run an NHL team, how his shooting off his mouth to his friends in the press, much of it dead wrong, made it impossible to do the job,” Imlach said.
THE GLORIOUS SEA FLEAS
In his youth, Ballard was a speed skater and powerboat racer, moving into a business owned by his father that built sewing machines for the garment trade and also produced a high-selling ice skate. Ballard became actively involved in the operation of hockey teams as a young man, serving as GM-coach of the Toronto National Sea Fleas when they won the Allan Cup as Canadian senior champs in 1932 and a silver medal at the 1933 World Championship. He was GM of the West Toronto Nationals when that team won the Memorial Cup as Canadian junior champs in 1939.
SHOULDA STUCK TO THE JUNIORS
As president and financial backer of the Toronto Marlboros junior club and a chain of minor teams, Ballard made a strong mark in hockey. Working with his close friend Stafford Smythe, the son of Conn Smythe (who had built Maple Leaf Gardens and the NHL Leafs into one of the great sports franchises in existence), Ballard turned the Marlies into a top junior organization, winning the Memorial Cup six times under his ownership.
When Conn Smythe decided to sell the Leafs in 1961, Stafford and Ballard, with a large bank loan, headed the group of wealthy Toronto businessmen known as the Silver Seven that bought the franchise. With Imlach at the helm, the Leafs went on a great roll, winning four Stanley Cups in five seasons from 1962 to 1967, perhaps giving the owners a notion that they were above and beyond the normal call. They turned the Gardens into a money machine, adding a restaurant and private boxes with advertising in every available space.
TAKEOVER STRATEGY #1: BE A CROOK
In 1971, Ballard and Stafford Smythe were charged with theft and fraud, mostly for using money from Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd., a public company, for personal use, and for tax evasion. The other Gardens directors thought it might be a good time to cash in their assets (and run!), many of them selling the shares they owned in the building to Smythe and Ballard. Before he could go to trial, Stafford Smythe died of a bleeding ulcer and despite his family’s efforts to retain control of the company, Ballard, with the help of a bank, money-whipped them into selling their shares to him.
JAIL NOT BAD COMPARED TO HIS MESS AT MLG
In 1972, after a long trial, Ballard was sentenced to three years in prison, serving a year before being granted parole for good behavior. During a three-day pass, he told reporters that prison was “like living in a good motel: steak for dinner and good service, too.” Of course, when that was reported, Members of Parliament were bombarded with questions about “soft” conditions in Canada’s prison. Ballard could create trouble from anywhere.
AT LEAST HE PUT UP A FIGHT…
When Ballard returned to the Gardens, he embarked on his two decades mediocrity for the Maple Leafs, once a proud NHL team. Accompanied by another old-timer, former Leaf player King Clancy, Ballard was on the scene for all Leaf games, always willing to gi
ve an opinion, especially on subjects about which he knew very little. For the rest of his life his energy was high, his mouth active—conditions that all too often did not apply to his hockey team. Right up to his death in 1991, he fought with his three children, his staff, his fellow NHL governors and any reporter who dared to say that he wasn’t the finest hockey mind in existence.
WILD AT THE WORLD HOCKEY CHAMPIONSHIPS
Win or lose, there’s always excitement for Team Canada at the annual international tournament.
BIG SCORES OF YESTERYEAR
Before other hockey nations started to assemble competitive teams, Canada routinely toyed with its opponents at the World Championship. The Finns, for instance, clearly needed more time on the ice and less in the sauna in the 1950s. They lost 20–1 to Canada in 1954 and 24–0 in 1958. Now, Switzerland has come a long way since dropping a 23–0 decision in 1959, while poor old Belgium may never have recovered from its 33–0 drubbing in 1950. But what was the biggest margin of victory ever for a Canadian squad? Try 47–0 over Denmark in 1949! The Danes would take more than 50 years to climb back up to the top division of the Worlds. But in their return engagement with Canada in 2003, they got a little revenge with a 2–2 tie.
“VEE” IS FOR VICTORY
On March 7, 1954, the Soviet Union shocked the hockey world by winning its first ever World Championship with a 7–2 shellacking of the East York Lyndhursts, a Senior B amateur team representing Canada. Who would defend the pride of the true north, strong and free against the recently rampant Red Machine? The answer came in the form of the Penticton Vees, the hard-nosed 1955 Allan Cup champions from British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Led by the three Warwick brothers and goalie Ivan McLelland, the Vees blitzed through seven straight wins at the 1955 Worlds in West Germany before facing the Russians in the decisive match. Early in the first period, defenceman Hal Tarala set the tone with a huge open-ice hit on Russian star Vsevolod Bobrov. The Vees completely dominated in a 5–0 gold medal triumph and then took the World Championship trophy home to Canada with them. Rumor has it that they kept the original, made a replica and sent that one over to Europe the following year.
THE MAGIC OF MARTIN
Terry Sawchuk. Glenn Hall. Jacques Plante. Seth Martin. Most Canadian NHL fans would say it’s the latter name that doesn’t fit in this group of all-time great goaltenders. But to European fans, who never saw NHL games in the 1960s, Martin was a certified legend. He backstopped the Trail Smoke Eaters to a World Championship in 1961, the very last time Canada won the tournament with an amateur squad. The International Ice Hockey Federation also named him the top goalie in each of the four World Championships he played. Martin said he performed well against the Soviets because he’d adapted to their complex passing style: “I had to play goal the wrong way, as far as I was concerned. They just would not shoot the puck from where they should have shot from.” The Soviets were so impressed by his consistency that when they arrived in Canada to start the 1972 Summit Series versus NHL pros, they wanted to know if Canada’s netminders, Ken Dryden and Tony Esposito, were as good as Martin.
SILENCE OF THE 1970s
Canada doesn’t win the World Championship every year, but it didn’t even come close to the podium from 1970 to 1976. The reason was politics, not puckmanship. For years, Canada had complained about not being able to use its top NHL players at the tournament, while so-called “amateurs” from the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia regularly reaped medals for their countries. When the 1970 World Championship was awarded to Winnipeg, Hockey Canada believed it had a deal worked out with the Europeans that would permit Team Canada’s use of nine non-NHL pros. But International Ice Hockey Federation president Bunny Ahearne reneged on the deal weeks before the tournament was slated to begin, claiming that competing against pros would compromise other players’ Olympic eligibility. Winnipeg lost its chance to become the first Canadian host city ever for the Worlds. The tournament was reassigned to Stockholm after Canada pulled out amid angry recriminations. Only in 1977, when the rules changed to allow using NHL pros, did Canada return to participating.
TO HELMET WITH YOU!
Phil Esposito was a proudly bareheaded star of the 1970s, but when the legendary NHL center joined Team Canada in Vienna in 1977, he was shocked to discover he’d have to cover up his dark locks and sideburns with a helmet due to international rules. Canada’s performance was as spotty as Esposito’s, with the team suffering 11–1 and 8–1 losses to the Soviets and finishing fourth. When the tournament-closing buzzer sounded in an 8–2 Canadian win over the Czechs, Esposito could restrain himself no longer. He skated past the IIHF directors’ box, ripped off his protective headgear, and hurled it at IIHF president Gunther Sabetzki, shouting: “You can keep your !$#!$!@ helmet!”
COURAGEOUS CAPTAIN CANADA
Ryan Smyth of the Edmonton Oilers is an honest, hard-working player on the ice and one of the NHL’s nicest guys to deal with away from the rink. But the veteran winger must have gotten testy when he considered his poor fortune at the first four World Championships where he played from 1999 to 2002. Not only was Smyth getting bounced out of the NHL playoffs in April, but he was also being “rewarded” with fourth, fifth, and sixth-place finishes in international hockey. Finally, it all came together for “Captain Canada” in 2003. Smyth became Canada’s all-time leader in Worlds games played, passing James Patrick (40), and claimed his first gold medal at the tournament thanks to Anson Carter’s dramatic overtime winner against Sweden.
* * * * *
TIT FOR TAT
“When I came to the Rangers, I wanted to be a defenceman, but nobody would chip in for an operation to have half my brain removed!”
—former New York Rangers goaltender Bob Froese
“It takes brains. It’s not like a forward, where you can get away with scoring and not play defence. On defence you have to be thinking.”
—1989 winner of the Norris Trophy
(Best Defenceman) Chris Chelios
LENGTHY STAYS ON THE THRONE
The Canadiens top the list of teams that won the Stanley Cup in streaks to earn the “dynasty” title.
Compared to the great ones of history, say, the Bourbon dynasty which ruled France for 200 years, the hockey teams that have earned that name have had rather short rules. Hockey’s longest run at the top was the five consecutive Stanley Cup championships won by the Montreal Canadiens from 1956 to 1960—the icebound equivalent of the Bourbon run.
BUT WHO SHOT J. R.?
The number of teams earning the dynasty sobriquet is not long, partly because the Cup has been so dominated by the Canadiens’ three lengthy stretches of success. In addition to the five in a row, the Montreal club won four consecutive crowns from 1976 to 1979, and four in five years within a string of six in nine from 1965 to 1973.
The New York Islanders had four Cup triumphs in a row from 1980 to 1982 while the Toronto Maple Leafs were the first to win three consecutive Cups—from 1946 to 1949—making it four in five in 1951, and earned another three in a row in the early 1960s. The Edmonton Oilers collected four titles in five seasons, five in seven from 1984 to 1990. In the early years of Cup competition, two teams—the Ottawa Silver Seven and Montreal Victorias—had lengthy stays in the throne room.
RICHARD’S REIGN (HENRI, THAT IS)
A couple of goals in the right places and the Canadiens’ Cup streak in the 1950s would have been eight in a row. They won in 1953, then lost two seven-game finals to the powerful Detroit Red Wings before launching their record run of five crowns. On that roll, the Canadiens won 40 games and lost only nine, and in only two of ten series did their opponents win two games.
The Canadiens had it all: size, speed, offensive power, defensive acumen, great motivation and spirit—plus tough taskmaster in coach Toe Blake, who kept the team’s ambition at a high level. The best testimonial to the team’s greatness is that 11 members are in the Hockey Hall of Fame: Blake and general manager Frank Selke, goalie Jacques Plant
e, defencemen Doug Harvey and Tom Johnson, forwards Maurice “Rocket” and Henri “Pocket Rocket” Richard, Jean Béliveau, Dickie Moore, Bernie Geoffrion, and Bert Olmstead.
TWO BIG GUNS, TWO BIG RUNS
Béliveau and Henri Richard were holdovers into the 1960s when the Canadiens started another splendid stretch in the 1964–65 season with excellent young players developed in their farm system. They won the Cup in 1965 and 1966, were upset by the Leafs in 1967, then won back-to-back titles in 1968 and 1969. With fantastic young goalie Ken Dryden and a cast of solid veterans, they added victories in 1971 and 1973, the latter with Scotty Bowman as coach.
While the Philadelphia Flyers were bullying their way to two wins, the Canadiens were building an extraordinary team with Dryden, defencemen Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe and Serge Savard, and forwards Guy Lafleur, Steve Shutt, Jacques Lemaire, and Bob Gainey. They ended the Flyers’ reign in 1976, then won three more times with a two-way approach of strong defensive work and an opportunistic offence guided by the brilliant Bowman.
ISLAND STRONGHOLD
Born as a 1972 expansion team, the Islanders built a splendid roster through the amateur draft, under the wise guidance of GM Bill Torrey and coach Al Arbour. After crushing late-1970s playoff losses, the Isles filled the weak spots in their lineup with smart trades and beat the Flyers in the 1980 final on Bob Nystrom’s overtime goal in the deciding game. That launched a four consecutive Cup victory streak in which the Islanders won an astonishing 19 consecutive playoff series before losing the 1984 final to the Oilers.
The Isles were led by goalie Billy Smith, defencemen Denis Potvin, Stefan Persson and Ken Morrow, the forward line of Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy and Clark Gillies plus Butch Goring, John Tonelli, Nystrom, and Duane and Brent Sutter.
ALBERTA GOLD
The Oilers entered the NHL in 1979 as one of four refugees from the defunct World Hockey Association and brought with them a large advantage. One of the players they were allowed to protect was Wayne Gretzky, starting his career as the highest scorer in NHL history. GM-coach Glen Sather and his staff drafted brilliantly over the next four years, adding goalie Grant Fuhr, defencemen Kevin Lowe and Paul Coffey, and forwards Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, and Jari Kurri to form the core of the highest scoring team in NHL history.
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