Saturday, October 10, 1981

Opening night at Maple Leaf Gardens was always a special evening but this one was even more memorable as it was also the 50^th anniversary of the historic building. My dad and I sat in the end gold seats, Box 38, Row C Seats 1 and 2, 3 rows up from ice level. I was ten years old, and this was my first ever Leaf game.

One of my more prominent memories of the night happened before the game even started. The 48^th Highlanders Pipe and Drum Band marched across the ice playing as they had since the Gardens had opened in 1931. Major Conn Smythe, the architect of the Leafs in those days and builder of this grand yellow bricked edifice had served in the Great War. Having The Highlanders open each Maple Leaf season was one of his ways of bringing to the ordinary masses the majesty and honour of serving for one’s country. 

This being the 50^th season opener at the Gardens, the feeling of ceremony and tradition was extra thick in the air. As any ten-year old would do in my situation I stood wide-eyed under the glare of the television lights that was so much more noticeable near ice level as the beautiful strains of “Maple Leaf Forever” wafted up to the rafters of the grand old arena. I found out in later years the contrast of sitting in the upper Greys which were not quite so brilliant and magical and were actually quite dank and uncomfortable (that of course did not deter me from purchasing one of those same dank grey seats to have in my home many years later).

Due to our seating location, my dad and I were able to walk through the lower “bowels” of the Gardens, areas that most of the paying public did not have access to. As we walked past the Zamboni parked under the stands, who did we cross paths with but the legend Francis “King” Clancy. Even at that age, I recognized the elderly looking man and was aware of who he was. We simply said a quick hello and shook his hand. At this point in his life he was 78 years old and still worked in the Leafs front office. He had starred as one of the NHL’s top defence men until 1937, became a referee in the league and coached the Leafs for three seasons in the mid-1950’s. By 1981 he was pretty much just a figurehead of the team and right-hand-man to owner Harold Ballard. I really do wish my dad or I would have had the presence of mind to get a picture with him, or better yet an autograph. Nevertheless, it was a pretty cool start to my first trip to the Gardens.

I do vividly remember using my little manual crank camera, snapping photos during the pre-game warm-ups. Perhaps the main reason I recall this is that my camera flash prompted the friendly usherette to come over to our seats. Apparently being so low to the ice, it was forbidden to use a flash such as mine for fear of temporarily blinding the players during the course of play, so any picture I snapped after the warm-ups was unfortunately fairly dark. I did however capture a terrific shot from my seat of the 48^th Highlanders on the ice in a nice wide view of the historic building. (pictured at top)

Being this close to the action gave me a real good chance to see my hockey heroes up close. Darryl Sittler was my favourite at this time, even more so than Wayne Gretzky, although The Kid was a close second and gaining steam rapidly. Once Sittler was dealt to Philadelphia a few months later The Great One would however assume the top rung of my idol list. This night though, Sittler was number one in my mind. I even managed to catch a few darker than I would have preferred photos of him in the corner of the rink not 10 feet away from me. This was a time in my life when my burgeoning artistic skills were making themselves known, in the form of drawing hockey players and making my own hockey cards. To capture my own source material was that much more thrilling. 

This was also around the time that I really got into collecting actual hockey cards, not just my own homemade ones. Pretty much any quarter that came into my hands was quickly run up the street to Mac’s Milk for another pack of cards. My friends and I had so many extra cards that we would hold “Scrambles” sessions in the school yard on a regular basis. Every once in a while, someone would bring in a stack of their doubles, triple and quadruples for the sole purpose of giving them away. It usually happened during our normal card trading session at the start of recess, one of the guys would merely take his unwanted cards, gather the rest of the boys around and yell “Scrambles”. The cards were then tossed up in the air in groups of 10 or 20 while the rest of us clamoured over each other to retrieve the cardboard currency. It was somewhat of a status symbol to be able to toss away your refuse and to have it wanted by the others. The thing was, a few of those cards may actually have been very important to your own collections needs. Even if they weren’t the big stars of the sport, if it was a card you needed, it was in great demand. I remember my 1981/82 set coming down to a Hartford Whaler by the name of Don Nachbaur. Indeed, I got the much-desired card in a Scramble. 

Obviously back then we weren’t too concerned about the condition of these cards, more about the fact that we simply had the card we needed in our greasy little hands. We would carefully tear out stickers from our hockey sticker collection books and trade those as well. The new acquisition would simply be expertly taped into place in your own collection.  Many a trade was called off when, while attempting to peel a desired sticker from a book, the school bus we were riding in hit a pothole prompting a clean rip through the sticker. Sure, we didn’t care that much about condition, but we weren’t animals…

Back to Sittler, I distinctly recall making a one-for-one trade of the 1980/81 O-Pee-Chee Super Photo cards to obtain my beloved Darryl. These were a set of 24 oversized cards that measured about 5 by 7 inches and looked really nice on your bedroom bulletin board at home. They were sold in a somewhat unorthodox manner in that they did not come in a wrapper of any sort. The local shop-keep simply opened up the box and the next card available for purchase was sitting right there. Yours for a quarter. Of course, we would root through the opened box in search of our desired selections.  I needed to have the Sittler, and I just could not find him. Living in Newmarket, Ontario a half hour north of Toronto, the Sittler card was in high demand. Finally, one of my friends ended up with two Sittler’s and was willing to trade. The player I traded straight up for him, Wayne Gretzky. 

On this October night at Maple Leaf Gardens, it seemed Darryl Sittler was hard to find as well. Despite the fact the Leafs scored nine goals, my hero collected one measly assist. The Leafs with youngster Vincent Tremblay in net beat the Black Hawks and veteran Tony Esposito by a score of 9-8. Borje Salming scored his first career hat-trick after not scoring in his previous 63 games dating back to the prior season. Salming’s defense partner Bob Manno tallied a goal and four assists and amazingly, the pair were not on the ice for any of Chicago’s  eight goals. Grant Mulvey scored three for the Hawks making it a very rare game, even for back in those high scoring days, when two players notched a hat-trick. The other Leafs to score were Wilf Paiement, Rocky Saginiuk, Laurie Boschman and John Anderson with a pair including the game winner. Indeed, not a bad game to witness for one’s first ever NHL match.

My dad and I filed out of the now fifty-year old building as countless others had previously and  spilled out onto Church street and the chilly night. As we made our way to the car, I recall clutching my camera full of undeveloped, slightly dark photos I remember asking him one thing, “Dad, when can we come back again?”.