GILMOUR, SITTLER BELONG ON ALL-TIME LEAFS TEAM
TSN roster cheated two players who set the standard for excellence in Toronto
You can’t put together an alltime Toronto Maple Leafs team, under whatever odd and circumstantial parameters you choose, and not have Doug Gilmour and Darryl Sittler in the lineup.
It’s elementary, really.
Yet TSN did it.
Their all-time Leafs team announced Monday somehow left off the most explosive, most exciting, most franchise-changing player of the past half century in Gilmour, and left off the greatest scoring Maple Leafs player in team history. If I didn’t know some of the people involved in making this choice — and I know them well — I would think this was simply done to create some noise and get some kind of reaction.
But they have too much credibility and hockey acumen to go that way, even when there isn’t much going on. They’re doing what they believe is right here.
So here I am, reacting. To a list that really doesn’t matter. But it matters to me because Gilmour was left off. And I have a long history covering Gilmour.
When I covered the Calgary Flames in the 1980s, they played St. Louis in an NHL semifinal in 1986. Gilmour played for St. Louis. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. That year he became one of the few players in NHL history to lead the playoffs in scoring without getting to the final round.
Then he was traded to Calgary, where he played a significant role as the Flames won their only Cup in 1989.
He was traded to Toronto after a contract dispute, and it was instant magic, like never seen before, nor since.
A Maple Leafs team picked to miss the playoffs got within a game of the Stanley Cup Final in 1993, primarily because the diminutive Gilmour picked them up and carried them. He scored 1.66 points a game in the post-season of 1993. Think about that on any scale of any time. No one in Leafs history is even close to that.
Some 27 years later, the Leafs have never been within one game of the Cup since, and have not enjoyed seasons the likes of which Gilmour played here. Leafs fans have not witnessed a player grab the team and city and fan base and take them all along for the ride since.
Dave Keon’s championship teams boasted 10 or more Hall of Fame players. Some belong, some you can argue don’t, but it was never about one man at any time. They had Johnny Bower and Terry Sawchuk in goal. They had Tim Horton on defence.
They had Red Kelly and Frank Mahovlich and Bob Pulford and George Armstrong up front.
All but Kelly are on the TSN list. And when they won their last Stanley Cup, Jim Pappin led the team in scoring.
The Sittler years, a longer span than Gilmour’s, weren’t that much different. He was homegrown, and once he found his legs, produced a nine-year period of offensive dominance when he averaged 92 points per season. Mats Sundin, by way of comparison, scored over 90 points just once during his time with the Leafs.
Sittler’s career highlight wasn’t the 10-point game, as often as that comes up. It was the 21 points he scored in nine playoff games in 1977.
On his team, he was the only centre opponents had to check.
That’s 2.33 points per game in two rounds of playoffs. You can’t leave someone with Sittler’s numbers off an all-time list. Those numbers also include a 117-point season. Three times he made the top three in Hart Trophy voting, and he was in the top 10 in NHL scoring six times.
Based on the rules of selection, there had to be a current Leafs player on the TSN team. They chose Auston Matthews at centre, the deepest position in team history.
Gilmour, Sittler, Kelly, all deserving, were left off the team. Keon, Syl Apps, Ted Kennedy and Sundin were on the team with Matthews, an honour he may deserve one day. Just not yet.
The historically weakest position in Leaf history is defence. There are two true all-timers in Salming and Horton. After that, it’s a lot of reaching — or going way back in history. Like 90 years back. TSN put King Clancy and Red Horner on the team. The third pair had Allan Stanley and Bob Baun, both from the championship teams of the 1960s.
Stanley is somehow in the Hall of Fame. Almost everybody who was anyone on that Leafs team is in. Baun didn’t make the Hall. That may have been political. But the fact is, he was mostly a middle of the road defenceman.
We don’t know what Morgan Rielly will be yet, but we do know he’s something above middle of the road. Craig Button, one of the TSN selectors of this team, had Rielly on his Canadian Olympic team, if there is an NHL Olympics in China in 2022.
But they left Rielly off this alltime roster. It would have been easy to slide Rielly into a spot on defence, opening up Matthews’ spot at centre, gaining one place for Gilmour.
I would have dropped Kennedy for Sittler.
Does any of this really matter? No. Except in one way. It degrades Gilmour and Sittler. Both deserve better.
What Gilmour accomplished wit the Maple Leafs trumps anything any other Leafs player has done post-expansion. As we sit around waiting for hockey to return, the world to be safer, and for a year in which the Leafs actually win a playoff round again, what Gilmour accomplished should never be lessened, especially from a network that has risen hockey coverage to its highest heights.