Music: {allcanada} When the Leafs were great

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

{allcanada} When the Leafs were great

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Watching again as the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup, Windsor-born Kevin Shea was of two minds.

Excited by the memories, and exhausted by the interminable wait for new ones.

"I'm old enough—barely—to have watched all four Stanley Cup championships in the 1960s," said Shea, 54 talking of his latest book, Toronto Maple Leafs, Diary of a Dynasty, 1957-1967, which looks at the era of Leafs coach-GM Punch Imlach, the architect of Toronto's last four Stanley Cup winners.

Published by Firefly Books and co-authored with Paul Patskou, Paul Bruno—like Shea members of the Society For International Hockey Research - and life-long Leafs fan Roly Harris, this isn't merely another trip down memory lane to wax poetic about a long-gone era of Maple Leafs hockey.

The authors seek not only to tell the story, but in essence, attempt to take the reader back in time and allow them to watch the story unfold.

Through Patskou, likely the foremost collector of historical hockey video on the planet, the authors were able to view every game of Toronto's 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1967 Stanley Cup triumphs.

"We just thought this was a really unique angle to look at that Leaf dynasty through the eyes of the average viewer who would have followed the Leafs through the Hockey Night In Canada Saturday night broadcasts," Shea said.

"It gave it a little more of a humanistic side, a little more of the actual way that we watched the game at the time.

"I remember sitting at home in Windsor and watching the games with family. You hear about—and in your mind you embellish it a little bit about how great Johnny Bower was, and how great Tim Horton was.

"But to actually see the way they played again, it just refreshed all those memories and brought you back."

As he once more studied those grainy, black-and-white images, Shea felt a chill—both from the memories, and from the lengthy cold spell the Leafs have endured since that 1967 Cup victory, a drought that's become even more prevalent now that Chicago has ended its 49-year Cup hiatus, putting Toronto on the clock at 43 years and counting.

"When you go back and watch them, it brings it back into clarity, but it does remind you that it's been a long time since the heyday of (Dave) Keon, (Frank) Mahovlich, Bower, Horton and the gang," Shea said.

"It's an era that's so fondly looked back on for the Leafs, but it's been so long and it keeps coming up year after year, how long it's been since they last won a Cup.

"So much has gone on since 1967—in the world, in the hockey world, in people's lives—it's extraordinary. It was two generations ago.

"It puts things in perspective." The Leafs come to Detroit Friday for a pre-season game at Joe Louis Arena against the Red Wings, and as much as it may gall them to do so, Shea invites Toronto fans to turn to Detroit for inspiration, and perhaps even hope that miracles do happen.

"The Red Wings are a great template," he said. "You can look at both the Red Wings and the (Detroit) Tigers as teams that turned it around." As to if and when the Leafs might stage their own rise from the ashes, Shea is noncommittal.

"It's tough to say," he said.

"They've stumbled and fallen continually, but other teams have shown it can be done and it can be done fairly quickly.

"It just needs to be done now." Before those grainy blackand- white memories fade completely to black.