MONTREAL — In anticipation of this first playoff series in over four decades between the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs, I was trying to come up with the most seminal moment in the modern day rivalry between both franchises and I nearly drew a blank.
There’s been nothing between them that would cause a current Canadien to up and leave a restaurant, a la John Ferguson, at the very sight of a Maple Leafs player. Stuff like that happened well before 1979 — when the Canadiens swept through a Toronto team that barely belonged in the same rink as them on their way to sealing up their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup — and it was borne of a deep-seated hatred.
They first met in the final in 1947 and played each other four more times for hockey’s ultimate prize from 1951 to 1967, when the Maple Leafs won their last Cup. They were the only two teams in Canada then, playing for the nation’s allegiance on the government’s most popular broadcast, and there was a sense it really mattered.
But it was so long ago that there’s hardly anyone who was involved in any of it still around to tell the tales. Ferguson, the adored Leafs-hating pugilist of the ‘60s Canadiens, died 14 years ago, around the last time anything memorable happened between both teams.
There was Alex Kovalev’s forearm shiver to Darcy Tucker’s chin back in 2006 — an infamous clip that’s good for a laugh, but it was more a heat-of-the-moment retaliation, against a player who played on the edge and often crossed over it, than it was an instance of pure Canadiens-Leafs animosity.
In 2007, both teams lined up against each other in the final game of the season, with both of them needing a win to stay alive at the bottom end of the Eastern Conference playoff race, and we were treated to one of the most entertaining games we’ve ever seen between them — a come-from-behind 6-5 win for Toronto that featured several lead changes and a Michael Ryder hat trick.
Did it really matter? Not in the end. The Leafs were eliminated by a New York Islanders shootout win over the New Jersey Devils a day later, just as the Canadiens would’ve been had they held onto their 5-3 lead in Toronto.
Ho hum, no seminal moment here.
So I arrived at Josh Gorges, a player who played every game in a Canadiens uniform like it could be his last. A player who, shortly after playing his last in their uniform, was traded to the Maple Leafs but refused to go. It was an off-ice event, but at least it symbolized something worthy of the “rivalry” everyone talks about but few people have ever really experienced.
“I couldn’t be the same player that I was in Montreal in Toronto. I just couldn’t,” Gorges said when I caught up with him Wednesday. “The only reason I was ever a half-decent player in the NHL was I had to commit heart and soul. I wasn’t good enough to just rely on skill or talent. And to try to have that same passion and heart for a team that, for eight years, was your most talked about rival — how could anybody do that?
“I talked to (Maple Leafs president) Brendan Shanahan, and I told him, ‘I understand, and I respect everything about you guys as a team and as an organization and where you’re going, but I can’t be that same player. You want me to come in and be the person that I am here, but I can’t be that for your team.’”
Gorges put it all on the line for every one of the 521 games he played with Montreal from 2007-14. He fearlessly dug pucks out of the corners, never shied away from the punishing hits defencemen must absorb and never stepped out of the lane no matter who was shooting in front of him — blocking shots with his hands, his feet, his knees and even with the back of his head one time.
But now, nearly four years into retirement, stiffing the Leafs is still what Gorges is most remembered for around these parts, and that counts for something in the Canadiens-Leafs lexicon.
“Going back to Montreal to do a few different events with the Montreal Canadiens since I retired, a lot of people would come up and tell me how much that meant to them,” Gorges said.
Nothing else that’s happened between both teams since they last met in the playoffs has been quite as representative of true rivalry.
There’s something real between both cities, but what’s between them on the ice doesn’t even come close to measuring up to what we’ve seen between the Canadiens and Boston Bruins, or the Leafs and the Bruins, or either team and the Ottawa Senators.
“It could even be argued Toronto-New Jersey, dating back a few years, has more to it,” said my editor, Rory Boylen, when we were discussing it shortly after I hung up with Gorges.
At the beginning of this unprecedented 56-game season that would see these teams face each other 10 times to headline an all-Canadian division, we both figured Canadiens-Leafs would finally be brought to life.
But the first game in January had more sizzle to it than the last one they played in April, when the chances were as strong as they could be they’d be meeting in the playoffs soon after.
That’s what makes what’s in front of us so appetizing. The feeling that all this is about to change for the better within a matter of hours supersizes the general excitement and anticipation that’s always there before any playoff series.
“I don’t think there’s as much animosity towards Toronto as many other rivalries, but it won’t take long in this series to heat up pretty quick,” said Canadiens forward Paul Byron on Tuesday. “Most playoff series — that’s usually what drives the rivalry between two teams, and I think it’s pretty exciting for Toronto and Montreal right now to have the opportunity to play each other in the playoffs. It doesn’t happen very often, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
It has the potential to be a memory that lasts a lifetime for a generation of fans, but also for the players involved in it. And that matters.
It could be the thing they talk about to future generations of Canadiens players, instilling the level of pride in them a B.C. kid like Gorges adopted early on in his time in Montreal.
“I started to understand when I was walking to the game, and walking through the concourse, and walking in with Mr. Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur and Henri Richard and I was talking to these guys about the game that I was just about to play, talking with these legends of the game who have written this history and given me the reason for why I play the game, and I just thought that was so amazing,” he said. “I started to understand the magnitude of what I was a part of.”
I wonder if Ontario-born Byron, Nick Suzuki, Tyler Toffoli, Josh Anderson, Corey Perry, Eric Staal and Ben Chiarot truly appreciate the magnitude of the opportunity in front of them, beyond focusing on the task at hand of playing their best and trying to advance through the playoffs. If this series lives up to its potential, they can be the ones walking an up-and-coming prospect to their first Canadiens-Leafs game at the Bell Centre, telling them about the time they revived a rivalry that had been virtually dead since long before they were born.
Let’s hope it happens, that this is the first of many series to be played between both franchises and that the rivalry becomes something worth savouring. It’s long overdue.
