Memories
Long-time Leafs captain Mats Sundin will be honoured tonight at the ACC. Reflections on his career,
The first time I spoke to Mats Sundin, he was the one asking the questions.
“You came all this way to talk to me?” he said incredulously.
Before I’d really begun to stammer out a response about how he was suddenly a big deal back in Toronto, he repeated the question, changing his inflection and adding a pause to make sure I understood the depth of his disbelief.
“You came all this way to talk to . . . me?” he said, slower, forming each word carefully as if trying to grasp why a Toronto Star reporter had tracked him down in the remote Swedish mining town of Kiruna, north of the Arctic Circle.
It was June of 1994 and we were standing outside of Lombia Hallen, the local arena where Sundin was helping out at Borje Salming’s hockey school. That one Swedish Leaf hockey legend was on hand to, symbolically, pass the torch to a potential successor was a welcome coincidence but that’s not why Dave Perkins, sports editor at the time, had dispatched me to find and interview Sundin.
The big centre, who would become the Maple Leafs’ all-time leading scorer, had just been acquired by Toronto in a massive draft-day trade that included beloved captain Wendel Clark going to the Quebec Nordiques.
Yes, Sundin suddenly was a big deal in Toronto, though judging by his humility that day you’d never have known it.
As a reporter on the Leafs beat dur- ing Sundin’s 13 seasons in blue and white, the two of us talked hundreds of times, both of us doing our jobs.
And what always struck me about Sundin was that he changed very little. He always seemed, even when wearing the captain’s C, a little surprised — almost bemused — that people took so much interest in what he had to say.
Sundin’s modesty never seemed false; his decency always felt genuine.
“I’m really uncomfortable sitting here talking about myself,” he said in Kiruna in 1994. He would remain that way in Toronto, carrying himself with as much grace off the ice as on, always more at ease when the topic turned to the progress of the team or the success of a teammate rather than his own considerable accomplishments.
Sundin asked a lot of questions that day in Kiruna. He wanted to know how the trade was being received back in Toronto. How fans were reacting to Clark leaving. How they might react to him as the guy coming in.
On a flight to Stockholm the next day — he had to hustle home to a wedding — Sundin had a chance to flip through the Toronto newspapers. He repeated the phrase “Oh boy” each time he turned a page and saw the massive coverage the deal, particularly the departure of a tearyeyed Clark, had received.
“When you look at what Toronto gave away, I understand what is happening. I’m starting to understand the attention,” he said.
“Wendel Clark was a star — a legend. He will live forever in the people of Toronto. He was the soul of the team. I’m not looking to replace him, that’s impossible. We’re different types of players. I’ll just try to contribute the best way I can.”
True to his word, Sundin did just that. He didn’t replace Clark but his number is about to join No. 17 in the rafters of the Air Canada Centre.
And it’s virtually guaranteed that Sundin will accept the honour with the same grace and humility he has shown since he became a big deal in Toronto in 1994.