Fans say farewell to Maple Leafs’ mighty No. 1
Legendary goalie was beloved on and off the ice, winning four Stanley Cups in team’s ’60s heyday
Johnny Bower was a legend. He was a Stanley Cup champion. He had a wicked poke-check. And he was beloved, not just by fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, but by hockey fans everywhere.
And today, the hockey world mourns the passing of Bower, who died Tuesday after a short battle with pneumonia. He was 93.
“There may not be a more loved Toronto Maple Leaf nor a former player who loved them as much back,” Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said in a statement released by the team. “The entire Toronto Maple Leaf organization is deeply saddened.
“Johnny was beloved by so many for much more than his Hall of Fame credentials as a player. It was his generosity of spirit, kindness and passion for people that made him a legend at life.
“The Toronto Maple Leafs, and our fans, are deeply indebted to Johnny for all that he gave to us, and taught us over the years. We will miss him dearly, but we know that his presence will forever be felt by our club and our city.”
The Leafs retired Bower’s No. 1 in a ceremony at the start of the 2016-17 season, at the same time naming him one of the 100 greatest Maple Leafs of all time (he was named seventh greatest). His 219 wins as a Maple Leaf are second all-time behind Turk Broda (302).
Bower was also named one of the 100 greatest NHLers in the league’s 100-year history at a ceremony at the all-star game in Los Angeles last season.
Bower leaves behind his wife of 69 years, Nancy, his three children, John Jr., Cindy and Barbara, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. The family has requested privacy, and said it will release details regarding a memorial service at a later date.
Bower was 93. Or so he believed, because his actual age was always an issue. He lied at 15 to get into the army, then a fire in his hometown cost him his birth certificate.
His actual age — not finally revealed until the latter part of his playing days — had always been a running joke with his teammates.
Bower’s accomplishments were many:
He won the Cup four times in the Maple Leafs’ last great heyday, 1962, ’63, ’64 and ’67. He was a first-team all star in 1961. He won the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goalie in 1961 and ’65.
And when he retired in 1970 at age 45, he went out as the oldest goalie ever to play in the NHL, according to the league.
“There is so much to appreciate in Johnny Bower’s accomplishments on the ice — including the four Stanley Cups and membership in the Hockey Hall of Fame — and yet there was so much more to the man who served his sport, his country, and his community with such distinction,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said.
“Johnny Bower enriched us all by sharing the pure joy he felt for the game he played and for the men who played it, with him and against him. It was a personal privilege to know him.”
Not bad for a kid from Prince Albert, Sask., who grew up so poor he used cut bed mattresses for pads when he started out.
He joined the Leafs in1959 when he was 34, after spending a total of 14 years with several American Hockey League clubs and the New York Rangers. Bower posted 250 wins, 195 losses and 90 ties in 552 NHL games.
His nickname was The China Wall and he was respected by the other greats who played the game, even those on the Montreal Canadiens, their archrivals.
“Johnny was the toughest goalie to deke I ever played against,” the late Jean Béliveau once said. “He wouldn’t go for a fake. Never. He just stood in there and waited for you to make the play.” The China Wall did much more than just stand in there. Another testimony to his ability to stop a puck came from Dick Duff, a longtime Leaf hero who became a Canadien in the 1964-65 season via the New York Rangers.
In a Stanley Cup playoff series against the Leafs, out of gas after three consecutive championships, Bower battled gamely to keep the team alive. In a game at Montreal, he made an extraordinary across-the-net split save to kick away a Béliveau shot and Duff was asked if any other goalie could have stopped the shot.
“Stopped it?” Duff said. “Hell, no other goalie would have even tried for it.”
Those brief assessments supply an appropriate frame for a portrait of Bower, a man who never gave up. He earned a job as an NHL regular when he was 34, turning that opportunity into a glittering career, a major part of the Leafs last period of domination, their four Cup wins in the 1960s.
Bower claimed he was reluctant to join the Leafs, content to wind down his pro career in the American League with the Cleveland Barons, where owner Jim Hendy made it the best place to play outside the NHL.
Bower’s first NHL whirl had been a sour experience. In the 1953-54 season, after an eight-year AHL stay, the 30-year-old grabbed the No. 1 job with the Rangers when Gump Worsley, the NHL’s top rookie the previous season, was sent to the minors. Bower had a solid 2.60 goals against average in 70 games but lost the job to Worsley the next fall.
After falling far behind the Canadiens and Detroit Red Wings through much of the 1950s, the Leafs were showing signs of an upward climb in 1958 when coach Billy Reay and team president, the late Stafford Smythe, acting as general manager, claimed Bower’s NHL rights from the Cleveland Barons in the interleague draft.
“I really had little interest in going to the Leafs because I was close to my 34th birthday,” Bower told the Star a few years ago. “I had a good situation in Cleveland and planned to play a couple more years, then retire.
“But Jim Hendy encouraged me to try the NHL again and gave me the safety net of returning to Cleveland if it didn’t work with the Leafs. Then the Leafs got Punch Imlach and he convinced me to sign.”
Imlach was hired as assistant GM before the 1958-59 season but in November he was named GM. A week later, he fired Reay as coach and added the coaching job to his GM role, starting a highlight era of Leaf history that lasted a dozen seasons.
“My timing was pretty good, eh?” Bower said. “The Leafs had great young players and good experienced guys. Punch picked up a few more veterans like Allan Stanley and we were on our way.
“The deal for Red Kelly (in 1960 from Detroit) really put us over the top. He had been an all-star defenceman but he was such a great player that when Imlach moved him to centre, he was an all-star there, too, the perfect man to go with Frank Mahovlich.
“It was a pretty wonderful time to be a Maple Leaf, a great bunch of guys and players and there never was a dull moment with Imlach. He loved to keep the pot stirred up.’’
Imlach was Bower’s No. 1 booster, often calling the elderly goalie “the most remarkable — and maybe the best — athlete in the world.”
In the Leafs’ Cup run from 1962 to ’64, Bower had a 2.01 goals against average in 34 playoff games. He won the Vezina Trophy and was first allstar in 1960-61.
After sharing the Vezina in 1964-65, Bower, 43, and Sawchuk, 38, were keys in a remarkable Cup win by the Leafs in ‘67, the last one collected by the blue and white. The Leafs were the oldest club in pro sports history to win a title with 10 of the 19 men on the playoff roster 35 or older.
Bower played two more seasons plus one game in 1969-70 before his playing days ended. He stayed with the Leafs as a scout and often as goalie coach before retiring in 1990.
Strong technically and as good with his legs as any goalie ever, Bower was renowned for his “snake tongue” poke-check. Often he would jab with his goal stick to knock the puck off the stick of an attacker before the shot could be unloaded.
“He had very strong arms and his fingers were big, like a bunch of farmer’s sausages,” said Bower’s longtime road roommate and main needler, team captain George Armstrong. “Many times, when he swept out that stick, he not only knocked the puck away but took the shooter’s feet out from under him, too.”
A long-running gag throughout Bower’s career was speculation on his actual age.
“I joked once that the town hall where the births were registered in Prince
Albert (Sask.) burned down and I didn’t know how old I was,’’ Bower said.
“Somebody wrote it and the joke grew from there.
“One time when I was arguing contract with Punch, I said I had found my birth certificate after a long search, I was two years younger than I thought and deserved $1,000 more than he was offering. He said if I showed him the certificate, he would give me the $1,000, not much now but a lot then. I had to tell the truth but he gave me the money, anyway.”
Few players in NHL history were as well-liked by their peers and fans as the warm, gentle, good-natured man from Prince Albert, Sask., who was voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1976.
“If you don’t like Johnny Bower,” longtime NHL team executive Lynn Patrick once said, “there’s not much hope for you.” With files from Curtis Rush