Stanley’s cup broke Habs’ string
Hall of Famer link to Leafs’ last title
The plan was perfect: The Canadiens would win the 1967 Stanley Cup, which would be their third consecutive and 15th in franchise history, then park the sterling trophy in Montreal for display that summer in the Quebec pavilion at the Expo 67 World’s Fair.
And then something went terribly wrong against their geriatric final-round opponent.
The Toronto Maple Leafs would upset the Canadiens in six games to win the Cup, their most recent, in what still is romantically viewed by some as hockey’s greatest season — the final campaign before the NHL expanded from six teams to 12.
And if you saw the Stanley Cup at Expo 67, it’s because you toured the Ontario pavilion.
The Canadiens would win the Cup in 1968 and again in ’69; had the decade played out as it did, a win in ’67 would have given the Habs five consecutive championships, equalling their own NHL record from 1956-60 that probably will stand forever.
The final nail in the Habs’ coffin that Canadian centennial year was driven by a rangy, well-travelled defenceman from Timmins, Ont., named Allan Stanley, a future Hall of Famer who died on the weekend at age 87.
It was Stanley who was sent out by Toronto coach Punch Imlach for the penultimate Game 6 faceoff at Maple Leaf Gardens on May 2, 1967, assigned to take the draw deep in Leafs ice opposite Canadiens captain Jean Béliveau.
And it was Stanley who bulled into Béliveau almost before the puck had hit the ice. It caromed from their feet to Red Kelly, who fed Bob Pulford, who found Leafs captain George Armstrong in the neutral zone for a 75-foot shot that hit the centre of Montreal’s vacated net with 27 seconds on the clock for the insurance goal in a 3-1 Toronto victory.
Stanley didn’t get an assist on Armstrong’s Cup-clincher — he had two in his dozen playoff games that season — though without him the result might have been different against a six-skater Canadiens rush in the final minute.
Stanley would play another season with the Leafs and then the final 64 games of his 1,244-game career with expansion Philadelphia, a 21-year journey that began with the New York Rangers, moved into Chicago and Boston, then produced his best hockey for a decade in Toronto before ending with the Flyers.
He would be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981, taking with him his nickname “Snowshoes” for his plodding, wholly unspectacular style of play that nevertheless anchored the blue lines of his teams.
Paired with the rugged Tim Horton in Toronto, Stanley was a 6-foot-2, 185-pound pillar for Imlach’s Leafs. But it was his faceoff win against Béliveau that was his most memorable play.
His assignment for the draw wasn’t a stroke of spontaneous genius by Imlach, as it’s recalled by some. The Leafs coach of ten sent a defenceman to the faceoff circle when play began in the Toronto end, and on this occasion, he sent out a crew better hydrated with Geritol than Gatorade.
In front of 37-year-old goalie Terry Sawchuk, he had Stanley, 41; rearguard Tim Horton, 37; Armstrong, 36; Kelly, 39; and Pulford, the 30-year- old baby of the bunch.
In his excellent 2010 book, Toronto Maple Leafs: Diary of A Dynasty 1957-1967, hockey historian Kevin She a reported that Stanley was, in fact, his team’s best faceoff man that night, going 63 per cent on the draw by winning five of eight.
Toronto’s Larry Hillman had iced the puck with 55 seconds remaining in Game 6, the Leafs clinging to a 2-1 lead. Habs coach Toe Blake pulled goaler Gump Worsley for a sixth attacker and for nearly a full minute, with a Gardens worker out to scrape an egg off the ice, skaters milled around the faceoff circle to the left of Sawchuk, several cruising in to Stanley and Béliveau to discuss strategies.
“You know, Béliveau is an expert,” Stanley recalled to Shea. “I go to ut there and (Red) Kelly was standing over to the right of the circle. I think everybody has to put on a little show, so I asked Red to move to the right side of the circle instead of the left. I think I was just trying to waste a little time to figure out what the hell I was going to do.”
Finally the puck hit the ice and Stanley surged forward, knocking Béliveau off balance.
“I was determined I was going to take one half-swipe at the puck, play (Béliveau’s) stick and then run the son of a gun right out of there,” Stanley said. “I was pretty good at anticipating the drop, which I did. I just took one swipe. I got his stick and then I ran him right between the legs and ran him out of there. So, the puck came back a little bit, which meant I got the draw.”
Armstrong’s goal brought the house down, no one in the Gardens that night knowing that nearly a half-century later, Toronto would still be savouring this title as its most recent. The Canadiens have won 10 since that spring.
After 19 seasons i n the NHL, two more to come, Stanley declared his fourth Stanley Cup to be his sweetest.
“We were a third-place team and there were two teams that had a better team than we did — (first-place) Chicago and Montreal,” he said. “Nobody expected us to do anything except us. That’s the finest example of team play that I’ve ever experienced in all my career.”
In the summer of 1951, then a 25-year-old with the New York Rangers, Stanley was among those due to head out on a northern Ontario fishing trip with Leafs’ Bill Barilko, the hero of Toronto’s triple-overtime Cup-clinching defeat of the Canadiens a few months earlier.
But at the last minute Stanley was unable to make the trip and he’d be on the ground when the float plane crashed in the bush on its return leg from the shores of James Bay, killing Barilko and the pilot whose remains were not found for 11 years.
Their discovery came 43 days after the Maple Leafs won their first Cup since the disappearance of a player who by now was a team icon.
The end of the Leafs slump would be Allan Stanley’s first of four Stanley Cups, three of them needing his club to knock off the Canadiens along the way.
But no victory was more stunning or satisfying than the last in 1967, when he outmuscled Jean Béliveau in the faceoff circle for a title that Stanley cherished every day for the rest of his life.