Each day from now until the Winter Classic, Sportsnet will count down the greatest Toronto Maple Leafs of all time.
Dick Duff loved getting after defencemen—even the ones on his own team. That’s why it was no great surprise when one day, as some of the Toronto Maple Leafs gathered after practice at George’s Spaghetti House, the tenacious Duff was getting his digs in at blueliners Tim Horton and Allan Stanley. Duff was very fond of reminding both men that the only reason the Leafs’ “D” crew was held in such high regard was because the franchise mandated that forwards—even the stars—be ferocious backcheckers. Horton and Stanley took the baiting as an invitation to demonstrate just how capable they were of handling a volatile situation. “They said, ‘Are you finished yet?'” Duff recalls. “I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ They said, ‘Oh yes you are.'” The next thing Duff saw was a bird’s-eye view of Dundas Street as Horton and Stanley hung him by his ankles out a second-floor window.
But even a two-storey drop wouldn’t have been enough to knock the fire out of a guy who—non-stop badgering aside—was loved by teammates for his big personality and clutch performances. Even in his early days with Toronto, it was so apparent Duff was going to make an impact that Conn Smythe hand-picked him to wear the No. 9 sweater Leafs legend Ted Kennedy had previously donned. “When Mr. Smythe gave me Kennedy’s number, I knew they considered me a special player,” says Duff, who joined Toronto in the mid-1950s.
The five-foot-nine, 166-lb. left-winger was a dependable producer, eclipsing the 20-goal plateau three times as a Leaf. But what really stood out about Duff was the way he enthusiastically embraced the methods of his mentor, fellow undersized player Ted Lindsay. Growing up in the hardscrabble northern Ontario mining town of Kirkland Lake, Duff would pal around with Lindsay—who was 11 years Duff’s senior and played his minor hockey in Kirkland Lake—every summer. And when Lindsay’s mom showed Duff the scrapbook she kept, detailing her son’s achievements with the Detroit Red Wings, the youngster’s eyes grew wide and his resolve to follow Lindsay’s lead deepened. “He was the toughest, meanest bugger in the NHL,” says Duff.
Few are more qualified to comment on Duff’s ill-tempered nature than former teammate Bob Baun. The two are the same age and came up through the Leafs system at the same time, Duff with St. Michael’s and Baun with the Toronto Marlboros. When Baun says Duff would drop the gloves with anybody, he’s speaking from personal experience. “I had a fight with him every practice with the Leafs,” Baun chuckles. “And when we played against each other at St. Mike’s and the Marlboros, we had a fight against each other every game.”
The resolve that made Duff a man who would take on anyone also meant he was the kind of player who came through in a pinch. This was never more evident than during the 1962 playoffs, when he finished second in team scoring with 13 points in 12 games. His last point that spring was the Cup-winning goal in game six of the Final versus the Chicago Black Hawks, a win that gave Toronto its first championship in 11 years and another reason to embrace a guy who always played larger than he was. “Lots of big guys are cowards,” Duff says. “They’ve just got size; you don’t know what’s inside them.”
Nobody could say that of Duff.