Doug Gilmour may not have won a Stanley Cup with the Leafs, but he won over an entire city.
Somewhere (I presume) in the building that used to house the Hartford Whalers, is the banner honouring one Rick Ley whose mostly average career with the forever .500 franchise remains immortal even though the team has long been departed.
Out in Edmonton, among the banners that honour Stanley Cups and names like Gretzky, Lowe, Messier, Kurri, Anderson and Fuhr hangs a flag for Al Hamilton, a player who pretty much did little more than help a struggling franchise through a walkover from the old WHA.
Hovering over Alex Ovechkin in Washington is the flag that honours Yvon Labre, who along with scoring the first goal in Capitals history, is best known for being something of a defensive forward and active in community programs and in promoting the franchise in a market that until Ovie arrived never seemed to truly embrace hockey or the National Hockey League.
What's the point of mentioning these men? Well, the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night are going to honour Doug Gilmour, yet another in a series of players who won absolutely nothing in their time with one of hockey's most self-absorbed but, in the last four decades at least, ineffective franchises and I'm perfectly fine with it.
Some of my colleagues detest this type of thing, especially when the win-nothing Leafs do it, but I've come to embrace the fact that teams that retire (or in the case of the Maple Leafs "honour") numbers of players they hold most dear do so for the best of reasons: the fans loved them.
I grew into manhood watching Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin and Rene Robert, the famed French Connection, play for the Buffalo Sabres and though they never won a Cup and only Perreault is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, the trio represents a lifetime of good memories for me and legions of others who became NHL fans for life because of their exploits.
I have friends in Hartford who will tell you that Ley far outpaced the contributions of fellow honoured Whalers Gordie Howe and Johnny (Pie) McKenzie. I know people in Edmonton who remember that Hamilton, a proven NHLer long before he got to Edmonton, gave the franchise respectability and a sense of being "big league" well before the Cup came there.
Did Gilmour play his very best hockey in Toronto? For most of his years there, sure, but even if he couldn't get the Leafs back to the Stanley Cup final it doesn't mean that the fans don't love and respect him for trying.
I know, pros are supposed to try, but Gilmour was special. He tried every night and every shift. He made bad teams better and good teams great simply because night in and night out he refused to lose. Doug Gilmour played the game like Rocket Richard and sure the Rocket won a lot more Cups, but can anyone honestly say Gilmour didn't play the game with the same intensity, the same nothing-else-matters approach?
Packed into that (maybe) five-foot, 10-inch frame and those 175 seriously doubted pounds was a player who insisted on playing beyond his size.
When you looked at Doug Gilmour out of uniform, your first thought was, "No way." When you looked at him on the ice, certainly with St. Louis and Calgary but perhaps even more so with Toronto, your first thought was, "How?"
Like in, "How does he do that night after night, shift after shift, against player after player many of whom were bigger, stronger, maybe even faster?"
"Honestly I think it was just the time," Gilmour said in a conference call Thursday afternoon. "Going into that year (his first with the Leafs) and training camp and not knowing what to expect. Then all of a sudden there were some changes and we were that lunchbox crew, we had that work ethic. It was an awesome time to be a part of it (all) and we thrived. I can honestly say we thrived in that room. There was no animosity on that team and no jealousy. We liked each other and we hung together and we got great input from the coaching staff."
Gilmour credited coach Pat Burns for creating that atmosphere. He says he still keeps in touch with his ailing former coach and the connection the two had just seemed to be the right thing at the right time.
"With Pat, everything seemed to click right at the right time," he said. "I never understood exactly why, but it just did."
Gilmour had stops in St. Louis, Calgary (where he won his one and only Cup), Toronto, New Jersey, Montreal, Chicago and Buffalo. En route, he made himself into a defensive standout, a faceoff man extraordinaire, a goalscorer and an assist machine. He had a major role in Calgary's Cup win and he gave good value in New Jersey and Chicago, perhaps a little less in Buffalo and Montreal, but by then the end was at hand.
Looking back through the prism of time, the Toronto years –- arguably -- were Gilmour's best.
In his six seasons wearing the Blue and White, he put up solid year, few more memorable than a franchise-record 127 points during the 1992-1993 regular season. In that memorable campaign, Gilmour trailed only Mario Lemieux for the Hart Trophy and he won the Selke Trophy for defensive excellence.
In his six Leaf seasons, the franchise made the playoffs four times and Gilmour established a franchise record for playoff points (77 in 52 games). He set a single playoff mark of 10 goals and 35 points in the 1993 playoff run, a run many felt might have advanced the Leafs to the Stanley Cup final had officials shown enough courage to call Wayne Gretzky for a slash across Gilmour's face.
"He was the complete package," Dave Andreychuk once said. Andreychuk, who was always at his best when playing with a good centreman, had two 50-plus goal seasons in Toronto and once cracked the 53-goal mark in a season when Gilmour was his pivot. "He could score, but he was a master of the set-up. You knew if you were in position to score Doug would somehow get you the puck."
Didn't matter how Gilmour did it, but you knew he would get the puck. He would steal it while anchoring the penalty killing unit or win it off a faceoff while centering on the power play. Despite his lack of size you couldn't outwork or outmuscle him. He was superb on faceoffs and his speed, well, not only would Gilmour go where bigger players feared to skate, he often got there ahead of most anyone else. Though he had his share of goals, he was one of the all-time great passers in the game.
Toss in leadership skills (an ability to wear the captain's ‘C’ is one of the reasons then-Toronto GM Cliff Fletcher did a 10-player deal to get him) and Gilmour was one of those players who always seemed to give more and be worth more than whatever you asked or were willing to pay him.
For Gilmour, as is so often the case in hockey and especially in Leafs land, the end didn't come sweetly. The team got old, but Gilmour brought good value in a trade that sent him and defenecman Dave Ellett to the Devils who delivered Alyn McCauley, Jason Smith and Steve Sullivan in their place.
The end may not have gone the way Gilmour or the Leafs would have liked, but the fans never forgot the effort while he was there.
They'll remember it again Saturday night in the Air Canada Centre and while it might seem hokey to some, the view from here is there won't be a dry eye in the house.
"When I retired I wasn't nervous," Gilmour said, "but I will be nervous for this. This is in front of everyone."
Gilmour, like Wendel Clark before him, never won anything for Toronto except the hearts and minds of the fans who loved them and when he steps to centre ice Saturday, like Clark did before him, they will be there for him.
I, and I think several million like me, don't have a problem with that.
