The Toronto Maple Leafs‘ young guns are making for an exciting start to the 2016-2017 season.
Seven bona fide NHL rookies are all getting serious ice time and have caught the eye of Leafs fans as well.
The group of new kids on the block consists of Auston Matthews (19), Mitch Marner (19), William Nylander (20), Connor Brown (22), Nikita Soshnikov (23), Nikita Zaitsev (24) and Zach Hyman (24). Those seven players have contributed to the Leafs management’s decision to go “all in” on the youth movement and even move the likes of veterans Brooks Laich and Milan Michalek from the NHL roster.
Many Leafs fans are wondering when the last time such a wealth of young talent was infused in a Toronto lineup in a single season.
The 1980s are a logical place to start, with the likes of Wendel Clark, Gary Leeman, Russ Courtnall, Al Iafrate, Steve Thomas, Todd Gill, Ken Wregget and Vincent Damphousse beginning their solid — and in some cases, great — NHL careers.
But upon further review, that group of players began their respective NHL careers over a four-year span from 1983 to 1986.
The best comparable to this season, then, goes way back to the 1973-74 season.
The previous year (1972-73) had been a horrible campaign for a Leafs team that had been decimated by signings from the new World Hockey Association. (Star goaltender Bernie Parent and solid young centre Jim Harrison led the defections.) The new ownership of Harold Ballard in charge — and incarcerated in Millhaven Institution for that year — would also see the miserable 1972-73 season be the last for Leafs stars Dave Keon, Ron Ellis, and Paul Henderson. (Ellis would come out of retirement a few seasons later to begin a second chapter as a Leaf.)
What could have been a continuous disastrous slide for the Leafs the following year was averted by the excellent work by general manager Jim Gregory.
Through trades with Boston and Philadelphia, Gregory landed three first-round picks for the Leafs in the 1973 draft. All three would play their rookie seasons that year as 20-year-olds, as the underage draft was still a few years away.
The three were Lanny McDonald, Ian Turnbull and Bob Neely.
In addition, Gregory had dispatched scout Gerry McNamara to Sweden to try to break the European barrier and entice a couple of elite Swedish players to give the NHL a try. McNamara landed two big fish from the stocked Swedish hockey waters in Inge Hammarstrom (24) and Borje Salming (22). They would also be rookies in 1973.
That group of five would join an emerging young Leafs roster that included Darryl Sittler entering his fourth year of what would be a Hall of Fame career; Errol Thompson would be in his second year while the goaltender of the near future, Mike Palmateer, would be playing his last year of junior hockey with the Toronto Marlboros.
A year later, all-time NHL character, Dave “Tiger” Williams, would be drafted and became part of the Leafs’ nucleus shortly after.
Leafs fans in 2016 will be pleased to know that this influx of youth back in 1973 saw the team’s record improve from 64 points to 86 points in just one season — an incredible 22-point improvement.
Two of the five-player group (McDonald, Turnbull, Neely, Hammarstrom Salming) mentioned above would enjoy Hall of Fame careers: McDonald and Salming.
Salming is still the last Toronto Maple Leaf to make the Official NHL First All-Star team (1976-77).
McDonald would start slowly as a Leaf, but then break out to have three consecutive 40-goal seasons before being traded to Colorado in December 1979. He scored a phenomenal 20 goals in his final 38 playoff games in the blue and white.
Hammarstrom would score 20 goals in his rookie season and would actually have three 20-goal seasons as a Leaf before being traded to St. Louis in 1977.
Turnbull would evolve into a front-line Toronto defenceman for almost a decade. He racked up strong offensive numbers, especially in 1976-77 when he recorded 22 goals and 57 assists for 79 points — that’s still a franchise record for most points by a defenceman in a single season.
Neely would be a decent journeyman defenceman on the Leafs’ blue line for over four seasons. He flourished offensively in 1976-77 with 17 goals.
In the “farewell to veterans” category, the 1973-74 season would be the second last NHL campaign for Norm Ullman, capping a Hall of Fame career in 1974-75.
The influx of the “Fabulous Five” in 1973 did what was needed to move the Leafs up from a non-playoff team to sitting among the top five in the NHL by the end of the decade.
Hopefully for Leafs fans, that’s a precursor of better things to come — and possibly great things to come by the end of this decade.
