YORKTON - When you are a Toronto Maple Leaf fan – yes been one for about six decades since my father was a Montreal fan – you tend to have to look to the past, (far past sadly), for the best stories of success.
Authors John G. Robertson, and Carl T. Madden have been good enough to help Leaf fans with such memories having penned the 2024 release Five Overtimes: The Habs and the Leafs in the 1951 Stanley Cup Finals through McFarland & Company well-known for its sport book releases.
This book takes fans back even farther than my earliest memories of the game, back to the famed days when the National Hockey League was still just six storied franchises and television broadcasts of games were still science fiction.
It is the spring of 1951 and the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens are hooking up in the Stanley Cup final – the sort of final Canadian hockey fans would drool over today.
“You would think everybody would know about it,” offered author Robertson in a recent telephone interview with Yorkton This Week. “But, a lot of people don’t know how close the series was – how dramatic.”
Robertson said it might be in-part because it was still a series that people had to cluster around their radios to follow, or read about in the newspaper.
The lack of TV coverage though was actually a windfall of sorts for the authors.
Robertson said he spent a lot of time at the University of Waterloo researching, and added that old newspapers are now much more likely to be found online than even a decade ago, so there was a lot of material on the series.
With two Canadian rivals set to do battle there was lots of pre series hype in the papers, he said, adding “between games there was reams of articles and opinion pieces.”
It meant a lot of material to draw upon to create a book about just a five-game series.
It was a bag full of riches in terms of source material, said Robertson, adding it was rather easy to find the quotes needed as the story flowed after the resource material had been gathered.
A series to remember
So what made the series so notable Robertson saw it as fodder for an entire book?
Well when it was finally over every one of the five games had required a dramatic sudden-death overtime period to determine a winner.
The “book takes an in-depth look at this exciting conclusion to the 1950-51 NHL season, as well as an examination of the two playoff semifinal series, and a general overview of the goings-on from the 210-game regular season featuring many amusing anecdotes,” notes the publisher page.
As an added bonus, a special chapter discusses the short life, baffling disappearance, and untimely death of Toronto defenseman Bill Barilko just four months after he notched the Cup-winning tally in April.
Robertson said in many ways the Barilko story – which is well-known among longtime hockey fans – simply exceeded the dramatic series, which ended up with the Leafs winning a Cup when they were not favoured to do so.
“Toronto was not the favourites. Detroit were, but they collapsed against the Montreal Canadiens,” explained Robertson.
The Leafs ousted Boston, and the all-Canadian final was set, and Barilko would become an unexpected hero whose death lifted his goal to the level of legend.
Along the way ‘the goal’ ended up overshadowing other accomplishment the authors focus a renewed light on.
For example there was Leaf Todd Sloan who scored twice, including a late effort to send the final game to OT and Barilko’s goal for a 3-2 win.
“Sloan was a very good, very reliable player with very good stats,” said Robertson, adding most TO fans would struggle to recall him.
On the other side of the ice Maurice Richard would score five of Montreal’s 10 goals, and assist on two of the others, but the effort was largely lost to Barilko’s goal.
In net for Montreal Gerry McNeil allowed only 13 goals in five games, but the OT markers overshadowed his rather stellar effort.
Turk Broda was the Leaf netminder.
Interestingly, Robertson said as much as the Barilko story is known it was also his most startling discovery.
It had long been assumed the puck from the OT goal was in the Hockey Hall of Fame but that was not the case, he explained, (we’ll leave the real story of who really possesses the historic puck with which Barilko scored his famous goal as a good reason to seek out this fine book).
And Leafs fans will want to read this one – fans of just a good tale of historic hockey significance too. It’s good to know as a TO fan they have on occasion exceeded expectation to lift the Cup.
