The Toronto Maple Leafs are on a hot streak in the absence of star centre Auston Matthews—let’s forget about Wednesday—who has been out the past three weeks with an upper-body injury. The Buds have won seven of nine games without Matthews and currently sit atop the Atlantic Division.
The Leafs seem to have turned a corner this season and look like they could be a true contender come playoff time, or perhaps, even challenge for the Stanley Cup. That may be a bit far-fetched, but it would make them the first Leafs team to do so since the 1966–67 Leafs squad won it all.
While many know about the 1967 Leafs, mainly due to the jabs the team and fans get about the now 57 years since the last Leafs Cup win and finals appearance, what was that team like and what allowed them to do what so many Toronto squads have failed to do since then?
Let’s take a look back at the 1967 Maple Leafs team and their journey that ultimately led to Stanley Cup glory.
The Buds that got it done
Entering the franchise’s 50th season (40th under the Maple Leafs name), the 1966–67 Leafs had a highly skilled roster at forward, on defence and between the pipes. Starting with the forwards, the team was led by longtime captain George Armstrong who was in the veteran stage of his career at 36 years old during the Cup-winning season. Despite the winger’s age, Armstrong still put up 33 points in 70 games for the team. It was future captain Dave Keon, though, who was the true lead gun for the Leafs, putting up 52 points in 66 games. Just behind him was winger Frank Mahovlich with 46 points and then Ron Ellis with 45 points including a team-leading 22 goals.
On the defensive end, the team had an elite blueliner leading the charge. The commander of the Leafs’ defense corps was none other than the coffee and doughnut man himself, Tim Horton, who contributed a solid 25 points during the season while also being named to the all-star team during the season.
Red Kelly—the 39-year-old former Norris Trophy-winning defenceman—put up 38 points in 68 games for the team in what would ultimately be his final NHL season. While Kelly had played and thrived as a defenceman in all of his nearly 13 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, he was shifted to centre during his time with the Leafs. Head coach Punch Imlach felt that Kelly could provide some substantial toughness at the position against elite centres like the rival Canadiens’ Jean Beliveau.
Between the pipes, the Leafs had a two-headed monster. The first head on that beast was Johnny Bower, a two-time Vezina winner who had also previously defended the crease during a Leafs Cup three-peat between 1961 and 1964. The other netminding weapon at their disposal was none other than four-time Vezina winner Terry Sawchuk who had already won three Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings before joining the Leafs in 1964.
The road to Cup glory
The 1966–67 Leafs didn’t have the incredible season that you might associate with an eventual Cup-winner. The team had a very back-and-forth season, with a strong mix of wins, losses and ties strewn throughout. One polarizing example of the up-and-down nature of their season came when the team went on a 10-game losing streak between Jan. 15 and Feb. 8, then following a tie on Feb. 11, the team rattled off seven straight wins.
The Leafs finished the season with a 32–27–11 record, good enough for third in the league which at the time only had six clubs. Nonetheless, the top-four teams advanced to the post-season where Leafs met the first-place Chicago Blackhawks in the opening round. And as if the standing difference wasn’t enough of a hurdle, the Leafs had gone 4–8–2 against the Blackhawks during the regular season.
The Leafs dropped Game 1 in Chicago 5–1, but took the second game with a 3–1 victory that saw Dave Keon and George Armstrong both put up a goal and an assist during the contest. The Leafs would then go on to win three of their next four games to take the series in six games, pulling off an amazing upset over the top team. The series also saw an amazing performance by Mahovlich who netted a team-high eight points.
Then like true poetry, the Leafs went on to face their rivals, the Montreal Canadiens–who had finished second in the regular season–in the Stanley Cup final. This series was a back-and-forth affair that saw Montreal take Game 1 and then Toronto take Game 2. The most intense game of the series was Game 3 which ended up going into double overtime, with Leafs winger Bob Pulford eventually snagging the 3–2 winner for Toronto.
Toronto would drop the next game, tying the series at two games apiece.
It was through the last three games of the series that some controversy emerged with the Leafs goaltending. Johnny Bower was out of the lineup with a pulled hamstring prior to Game 4 and remained out the rest of the series, meaning Sawchuk started instead. While that was not an odd move in the slightest, the controversy came in who was on the bench as backup. Rather than having the more proven commodity in Bruce Gamble, the team opted to put Al Smith on the bench.
Smith was a second-year goaltender who had only played a single game for the team during the regular season, making it a very risky move if Sawchuk happened to get injured. As it turned out, then Leafs head coach Imlach was a part owner of the AHL’s Rochester Americans, who were currently in their own postseason. Gamble was playing for Rochester at the time, so many theorize Imlach chose Smith over Gamble in order to protect Rochesters roster for the playoffs.
Controversy aside, the Maple Leafs prevailed in the series and beat the Canadiens 3–1 in Game 6 to seal the victory. Captain Armstrong even put in the empty net insurance goal to secure the win for the franchise’s 13th Stanley Cup and fourth of that decade. Keon—who would go on to become the Leafs’ captain in the 1969–70 season—was given the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, putting up eight points in 12 games.
So, that was it. Fast forward 57 years and that Cup winning season still stands as the last time the Leafs even reached the Cup final. It’s odd to think that there was a time when the discourse around the Leafs wasn’t their lack of postseason success but rather their abundance of it.
Anything can happen, and with the group the team has right now—and with how good they’ve looked as of late—perhaps they cam capture some of that ‘67 magic and bring another one home to hockey’s biggest market.
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