Goalie was proud to be a Leafs legend
Goaltender Johnny Bower, a fourtime Stanley Cup winner who worked to promote the Toronto Maple Leafs long after his playing days, has died at age 93.
A family member at Bower’s home confirmed his death late Tuesday. Bower had recently been hospitalized in the Toronto area.
His rough-hewn face, which took many pucks in an age where goalies did not wear masks, became familiar to both fans of the Original Six NHL and generations afterward. The amiable Bower signed thousands of autographs and made frequent appearances at Maple Leaf Gardens and the Air Canada Centre, never failing to say the Leafs would one day be champions again.
Bower was a four-time all-star who was awarded a Vezina Trophy and inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. He won 220 games — second in franchise history.
Bower was born in Prince Albert, Sask. He spent years in the minors and did not play regularly in the NHL until he was almost 34.
A park in suburban Mississauga, Ont., was named after him and one of the first things he did each morning was walk over to make sure there was no litter. A northwest Toronto street was renamed in his honour and he was among the first to get his statue on the Legends Row team monument outside the Air Canada Centre.
“You people are wonderful,” he said when his statue was unveiled in 2014. “This is the greatest feeling you can have, like winning the Cup.”
He was proud to have maintained his playing weight of 171 pounds into his 90s.
“If I ever slowed down, I’d probably just waste away in front of the television,” he said a few years ago.
Bower played a cat-and-mouse game with Leaf officials and the media about his age. He added a couple of years when he was 15 so he could join the army reserves with his friends in Prince Albert. He shaved off a few years in the 1950s, fearing his new Leafs boss, Punch Imlach, would think him too old after picking him up from the AHL’s Cleveland Barons. When questioned, Bower would insist his birth certificate was lost in the war or in a house fire.
A 29-year-old Bower was deemed ready for the NHL and moved to the New York Rangers in 1953. He won 29 games and learned more moves such as his signature poke check, but was rarely used in the NHL after that big season.
The Leafs, about to re-organize under Imlach, took note of him and got the four-time Calder Cup champ to leave the Barons in 1958.
“Nancy always reminds me I didn’t want to go,” Bower told the Toronto Sun this year. “I said at the time, ‘I’m 33. I’m happy in Cleveland.’ She kept saying this is your big chance. We wound up staying for four Cups.”