Infrequent rivals have long shared past
Leafs, Canucks don’t play much, but links are many
While this is Groundhog Day, it’ll feel like the movie of the same name is playing all the next week around Scotiabank Arena.
Not with Bill Murray stuck in a loop covering a prognosticating rodent day after day, but rather three home games for the Maple Leafs on repeat with the Vancouver Canucks. The last of the North Division teams Toronto checks off its schedule, the Canucks usually visit just once a season in NONCOVID times. But there are many ties between the teams, despite their geographical gap. Since they’re staying a spell, let’s review a few:
AHEAD BY A CENTURY
These teams have met 153 times since 1970, but have a Stanley Cup rivalry more than 100 years old.
In 1918, the Arenas won the first ‘NHL championship,’ then accepted the Cup challenge from the Pacific Coast Association victors, the Vancouver Millionaires. The best-of-five final alternated under rules of each league, all played in Toronto as cross-country air travel wasn’t yet a thing.
Under the NHL’S stricter passing laws, the Arenas did better in tight games, including their 2-1 clinching win. Four years later was another Toronto-vancouver final, once more going the distance of five, once more won by the home side (St. Patricks). Vancouver did win the only series since, the 1994 Western Conference final — in five.
THE MIGHTY QUINN
Leading those ’94 Canucks was Pat Quinn, a large figure of lore on both teams.
After starting his playing career with the Leafs and infamously flattening Bobby Orr in the 1969 playoffs, the Canucks claimed the defenceman in the expansion draft. His two years there made a great impression as Quinn laid down roots and returned to serve as president, GM and coach.
He lost Game 7 of the 1994 Cup final to the New York Rangers and starting in ’98, took his box of cigars East and rebooted the Leafs. Quinn took them to their last two appearances in the final four and last playoff win in 2004. His statue is on Pat Quinn Way outside Rogers Arena.
NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET
British Columbians’ mistrust of Toronto and the people running the Leafs isn’t just about being force-fed 4 p.m. games to suit Eastern TV viewers.
Believing the Leafs blocked their bid for an NHL team for years because they didn’t want to share the lucrative national advertising pie, Vancouver fans were livid in 1966 when the league doubled in size and still ignored them. That was largely blamed on nay votes of Leaf execs Harold Ballard and Stafford Smythe, who’d wanted to cash in on erecting a new Vancouver rink project, but were denied in a city plebiscite. The Canucks were eventually granted a franchise in 1970 along with Buffalo, another frequent expansion bridesmaid.
GETTING DOWN TO PACIFICS
Quinn was the first in a list of players to be embraced by fans in both cities.
Tough-as-nails forward Orland Kurtenbach went from Toronto to be first captain of the Canucks and when Punch Imlach broke up the Darryl Sittler Leafs, he sent penalty king Tiger Williams there. Returning to Maple Leaf Gardens to score a big goal, Williams rode his stick like a bronco in a famous photograph.
Rick Vaive, the first 50-goal Leaf, began as a Canuck and that’s where Leaf all-time scorer Mats
Sundin ended his career, albeit awkwardly.
Many goalies also covered the crease East and West: Felix Potvin, Andrew Raycroft, Dunc Wilson and Cesare Maniago.
B.C. BACK BENCHERS
Coaches with a Toronto-vancouver twist? Glad you asked.
The cerebral Roger Neilson got his break in Toronto, but his towel-waving protest in the 1982 playoffs fired up the whole West Coast and got him his own statue. He followed Kurtenbach as a dual club coach, along with Tom Watt, Quinn, former Canuck and Leaf farm team coach Marc Crawford, Quinn’s pal Rick Ley and Mike Murphy. The current Vancouver coach is a one-time Quinn winger in Toronto, Travis Green.
VICTORIA SECRET
A big reason the Leafs won four Cups in the 1960s was a strong junior/minor league system, which included the Victoria Maple Leafs. The Western Hockey League team that sent ’67 Cup winner Milan Marcetta and others East was sold the same year, which many cite in part for Toronto’s inability to re-stock post-expansion or replace talent lost to the incoming World Hockey Association.
THERE IN SPIRIT
Though no one will be in the Scotiabank Arena seats for this series — nor likely at Rogers Arena in March when the Leafs go there — count on plenty of vocal fans in their dens. As the only NHL team people heard about across the West in the early days of radio via Foster Hewitt, the Leafs still boast a large B.C. base of descendants, even though the Canucks have twice been to the Cup final since the Leafs’ last trip in 1967.
There’s even a Leaf-themed bar in Vancouver that’s packed on regular game nights. But a B.C. migration since the 1970s brought along their Kelly green/royal blue sweaters to T.O. and every other variant of the Canucks’ colour schemes through the years.