Nitzy's Hockey Den

From the Canadian Press: December 30, 1966 the headline reads "Newest Toronto game is naming the goalie." "Terry Sawchuk is still out with back trouble and Johnny Bower is acting as referee in practices until his broken right hand heals. Punch Imlach says he won't know until later today which of his far-flung goalies will be called up. Bower's replacement could be Gary Smith of Rochecter Red Wings or his teammate, Bobby Perrault. Al Smith of Victoria Maple Leafs is another consideration as is Al Millar of Tulsa Oilers and Bob Whidden of the Toronto Marlboros junior club." Johnny Bower's hand was broken a few days prior when he stopped a Frank Mahovlich slapshot in practice and Sawchuk had been sidelined since Dec. 8. Third goalie, Bruce Gamble was ruled out for the New Year's eve game against Chicago after taking a Jim Pappin shot in the face during practice a day after Bower was injured. Luckily Gamble was wearing a mask. Ultimately it was Al...

Twenty-one years ago today, Leaf call-up Kevin Maguire opened the scoring in Pittsburgh. Maguire, known more for his toughness notched the first goal of the game with an assist to Todd Gill. It was all downhill from there for the Leafs and goalie Grant Fuhr. Pittsburgh scored the next TWELVE goals to win 12-1. Fuhr was aerated for all 12 goals making only 20 saves on 32 shots in the worst game of his career. It was far from his fault alone. Daniel Marois and ex-Pen, Mike Bullard were minus six on the evening and Peter Zezel clocked a minus five. As for Pittsburgh, the usual suspects were doing most of the damage as Mario Lemieux had 2 goals and 7 points. Joe Mullen potted 4 goals for the second consecutive game and also had 2 helpers, Kevin Stevens tallied 2 goals and 6 points as well. Second-year Jaromir Jagr chipped in a pair of goals to the onslaught. The debacle in Pttsburgh may have been the final straw, and the catalyst for a major trade for Toronto. After losses to De...

No NHL hockey until at least mid-January means pumped up rosters for not only the World Juniors, but also the prestigous Spengler Cup tournament. Canada will be sending perhaps it's best sqauad ever to to Davos, Switzerland. The NHL stars that will be wearing the maple leaf starting December 26 are as follows: (current Euro league stats GP-G-A-P) Tyler Seguin (Biel)    27-24-14-38 John Tavares (Bern)    23-16-22-38 Patrice Bergeron (Lugano) 19-11-17-28 Jason Spezza (Rapperswil)   26-9-17-26 Jason Williams (Ambri-Piotta) 29-11-12-23 Jason Demers (Karpat FIN)   30-5-16-21 Matt Duchene (Frolunda FIN)  20-4-10-14 Sam Gagner (Klagenfurter) 18-10-8-18 Cam Barker (Texas AHL) 23-3-5-8 Also playing are Ryan Smyth and Carlo Colaiacovo who have not played anywhere this season. The goaltenders for Canada are Jonathan Bernier who has played 13 games for Heilbronner Falken of the German Seco...

  Sick of waiting for the asses of the NHL and PA to solve their seemingly minuscule differences, I'm going to delve into a topic near and dear to my heart...the Toronto Maple Leafs of the 1980's. Why this time period? The Leafs of the 80's were awful. They never had more than 71 points in a season and won only two playoff series. But, this was my childhood and for some reason I still loved them. In lieu of looking at current NHL hockey, let's look at this day in 1980's Leaf history; a decade of crap. "No Joke-Leafs Now Worst Team" exclaimed the headline by the Canadian Press on December 12, 1984. The Vancouver Canucks had won their second in a row the previous night to climb ahead of Toronto and out of the NHL's basement. The Leafs 4-19-5 record was one point behind the Canucks. In an attempt to break their 10-game winless streak, Toronto called up their second new goaltender of the week. Rick St.Croix was summoned from St.Catherines of the ...

  Recently, in looking at the various seasons of nonsense that my Toronto Maple Leafs put forward during the 1980's, I realized their worst single year didn't actually take place in that decade. The worst season in Maple Leaf history wasn't suffered by a squad known as the Maple Leafs even. It came in 1918/19, the second year of the National Hockey League, when the Toronto franchise was known as the Arenas. Sure the 1980's gave us four of the five worst seasons in club history, but they were all slightly better percentage-wise than the 1918/19 campaign. In this season, Toronto won 5 games, lost 13 and things got so bad for the Arenas that by February of the 18/19 season, they offered to withdraw from the league to enable Ottawa and Montreal to start their playoff earlier. Ultimately, Toronto was so bad that the NHL ended it's season early. The Toronto Arenas of 1918 were coming off a year in which they finished tied atop the newly incorporated National Hockey ...

Sick of waiting for the asses of the NHL and PA to solve their seemingly minscule differences, I'm going to delve into a topic near and dear to my heart...the Toronto Maple Leafs of the 1980's. Why this time period? The Leafs of the 80's were awful. They never had more than 71 points in a season and won only two playoff series. But, this was my childhood and for some reason I still loved them. In lieu of looking at current NHL hockey, let's look at this day in 1980's Leaf history; a decade of crap. Thursday, December 1, 1988; Bernie Nicholls goes off. In front of 11,924 spectators at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, the Kings dismantle the Leafs by a score of 9-3. Bernie Nicholls counts EIGHT points in this cakewalk to assume the leadership in NHL scoring ahead of Mario Lemieux and teammate Wayne Gretzky. Toronto came to the West Coast with a record of 11-13-1 and sat in second place of the Norris Division behind Detroit. The Kings, although they sat...

Check out what I found in this old hockey magazine (Sports Special Hockey, Spring 1980). It was published in the fall of 1979, just as Wayne Gretzky was beginning his NHL career after a season in the WHA. Conventional wisdom was that "The Kid" would have a difficult time adjusting to the rigors of the best league in the world. The Centreman rating chart from this magazine was probably fairly indicative of how many in the hockey world felt about the 18 year-old wunderkind. Very interesting rating system they came up with. I have no issue with Trottier being rated the NHL's best Centreman in the fall of 1979. Sittler, Dionne and Bobby Clarke in the top five work for me too...Ulf Nilsson ranked third though? Sure he'd scored 66 points in 59 games of his first NHL season the year prior after four straight years over 114 points in the WHA, but ranked higher than Dionne? The rankings give perfect 5.0's to Nilsson in Passing, Stick-handling, Back-Checking and S...