Damien Cox - The Last Good Year: Seven Games That Ended an Era

STARRING

MARTY McSORLEY

HEIGHT: 6 2

WEIGHT: 235 lb

HOME TOWN: Cayuga, ON

POSITION: D

SHOOTS: Right

GOALS:

ASSISTS:

GAME POINTS:

PIM:

GAMES PLAYED:

STARRING

DOUG GILMOUR

HEIGHT: 5 11

WEIGHT: 177 lb

HOME TOWN: Kingston, ON

POSITION: C

SHOOTS: Left

GOALS:

ASSISTS:

GAME POINTS:

PIM:

GAMES PLAYED:

STARRING

BRUCE McNALL

POSITION: Owner, LA Kings; Chairman, NHL Board of Governors

NUMBER OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS FRANCHISES OWNED:

COUNTS OF CONSPIRACY AND FRAUD FOUND GUILTY OF:

STARRING

BILL BERG

HEIGHT: 6 1

WEIGHT: 205 lb

HOME TOWN: St. Catharines, ON

POSITION: LW

SHOOTS: Left

GOALS:

ASSISTS:

GAME POINTS:

PIM:

GAMES PLAYED:

STARRING

KELLY HRUDEY

HEIGHT: 5 10

WEIGHT: 190 lb

HOME TOWN: Edmonton, ON

POSITION: g

CATCHES: Left

GAA: 3.37

GAMES PLAYED:

STARRING

KERRY FRASER

REGULAR SEASON GAMES REFFED LIFETIME: 1,904

NHL PLAYOFF GAMES REFFED LIFETIME:

RANK AMONG REFEREES

A QUARTER CENTURY AGO , the NHL was chaotic and lively. A beautiful mess. An absence of order defined the league, combined with a charming informality. It was a gold mine for a newspaper reporter with ambition and curiosity. For me, it was my fourth year covering the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs as a beat reporter for Canadas largest newspaper, the Toronto Star. At that time, being with the Leafs on a daily basis was to be in the middle of an intensely competitive newspaper battle for stories and scoops, and the Leafs were never far from controversy and headlines. Some editors insisted it was the most important beat at the paper. It was old-style, kick-the-other-guys butt journalism. You woke up every day wondering what the competition had, and you went to sleep every night hoping against hope you had something they didnt. News wasnt tightly managed or controlled. It could come from any angle and a multitude of sources. Everybody was willing to talk, and there were no repercussions for talking out of turn. Reporters and media members mingled with players and coaches at airports, taxi stands, bars and hotels. We flew on the same flights they did, sometimes sitting beside them. We had their home phone numbers. We met their families. The Leafs hadnt been very good for a long time, but they were wonderfully rich copy and they were still at the epicentre of the hockey world, despite years of losing. The self-destructive Harold Ballard era was over, and the arrival of Cliff Fletcher, Pat Burns and Doug Gilmour created excitement and intrigue around the team. There were a lot of people involved with the team that were easy to like and interesting to cover. The 9293 Leafs were, in many ways, an open book.

They were a reflection of a league that was in many ways anything but sophisticated. Or even well managed. Some teams were rich in history and success, others were disorganized and poorly run. There was an unevenness to the NHLs structure, and sometimes there was no structure at all. The players, once almost exclusively Canadian, were coming from the US and Europe in steadily increasing numbers, bringing new ideas and sensibilities about how the game should be played, coached and organized. At the same time, traditional forces dominated, insisting that certain elements of the game, particularly the most violent, needed to be retained at all costs. This produced a clashing and blending of hockey styles, and a variety of different competitive approaches by different teams.

No two players skated the same. Arenas smelled different from one another, and felt different. The lights might go out in the middle of the Stanley Cup final. The league president might go AWOL in the middle of the playoffs, sparking a wildcat officials strike. Teams went broke, owners transgressed unwritten rules (and written ones). Players were exploited, important problems were swept under the rug in infuriating fashion. The game was filled with secret deals and hush-hush agreements. The owners lied about the size of their profits, unwilling to see the players as anything more than employees. Or pawns.

Wide-open offensive hockey ruled and goalies were normal-sized men wearing normal-sized gear. The 199293 season was the last NHL campaign with an average of more than seven goals per game. News filtered slowly from outpost to outpost in the last days before the World Wide Web. The barriers between players and reporters were paper-thin. A player like Al Iafrate would chat while working on his sticks, lighting cigarettes with a blowtorch as he sought the perfect curve. You didnt need an appointment for an interview, or to go through public relations staff. Just pull up a chair, and hope you dont mind the smoke. The biggest name in the game, Wayne Gretzky, would conduct interviews in his car outside his teams practice facility. The game oozed characters, and those characters were easily accessible.

The NHL was a confusing and compelling cornucopia of stars, goons, goals, fights, corruption, rumours, egos, tradition, scoundrels, fierce competition, raw ambition, intrigue, blood, brilliance and greed.

Was the 199293 NHL better than the NHL of today? It was a better story, for damn sure.

For fourteen days in May, 1993, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Los Angeles Kings, two teams oozing personality and style, captivated the hockey world. The memories of that playoff series remain vivid and lasting. It still breathes, almost as if there is something more to give, answers yet to be unearthed.