The National Hockey League now features 32 teams all over North America, in places as disparate as California, Utah, Florida, and Texas. Those clubs are made up of players who come from 20 different countries around the world. All of that would have been unimaginable when Dick Duff debuted for the Toronto Maple Leafs nearly 70 years ago.
Back then, 95 per cent of the players were Canadian, and there were only six teams in the NHL. The hockey world was just a lot smaller then, and there’s no better example of that than in Duff’s own life. He was born in 1936 at his aunt’s home in Kirkland Lake, at a time when few people in northern Ontario were born in hospitals. Duff figures he was born in his maternal aunt’s home because she was a nurse, and he guesses his mother wanted some medical expertise on the job. He was one of 13 siblings.
But you want to talk about a small world? Duff lived at 40 Main Street in Kirkland Lake. Just down the road at 33 Main Street lived Ralph Backstrom, who made his NHL debut two years after Duff. When the Duffs moved to 126 Taylor Avenue in Kirkland Lake, a guy named Larry Hillman (who, like Duff, made his NHL debut in ’55) lived down the street at 8 Taylor Avenue. What did Duff, Backstrom, and Hillman all have in common?
They each won the Stanley Cup six times. Six times!
Now that’s a small world.
Dick Duff (left) with hockey researcher Paul Patskou. (Steve Paikin)
I paid a little visit to Duff at his modest home in Mississauga a few months back with a good friend, Paul Patskou, one of this country’s foremost hockey researchers. We were welcomed by a diminutive man (Duff was only 5’10” and 163 pounds when he played) who delighted us with his reminiscences about his playing days. Photos and memorabilia adorn his walls.
The left-winger’s first big highlight with the Leafs came on October 26, 1955, when he scored both goals in a 2-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens. He was only 19 years old.
Dick Duff as a young kid and as a Maple Leaf. (Steve Paikin)
Duff had the misfortune to be joining the Leafs when the Canadiens were assembling one of the greatest dynasties ever. The Habs won five straight Stanley Cups between 1956 and 1960. Duff well remembers playing in the old Montreal Forum: “And when Rocket Richard put his leg over the boards [to go on the ice], the roof went up five feet. I thought, ‘No wonder these guys are tough to beat.’” Duff lost the final with the Leafs in 1959 and 1960 and was starting to wonder whether his time would ever come.
It would. Duff would perform the heroics that led his team to its first Cup victory in 11 years. In Game Six of the 1962 final, with the Leafs and defending champion Chicago Black Hawks tied at one late in the third period, Duff took a pass from Tim Horton and buried the Cup-winning goal with just a few minutes to play.
“The pass was actually behind me,” Duff recalls, smiling. “We could hardly wait for that clock to count down.”
From left to right: Dick Duff (right) with PM Pierre Trudeau; Duff with former Habs teammate Yvan Cournoyer. (Steve Paikin)
That Leaf team was stacked with 11 future Hall of Famers, including Duff, who was inducted 18 years ago this month. Duff and the Leafs won the Cup again in 1963, and Patskou reminded his friend of his exploits in that series, too.
“You scored two goals in the 1963 finals in Game One,” Patskou says of that series against the Detroit Red Wings. “Two goals within one and a half minutes!” The Leafs dispatched the Wings in five games that year.
From left to right: Dick Duff with Canadiens teammate John Ferguson; Duff with former Maple Leaf captain Dave Keon when the 1967 Stanley Cup Champs were feted in Toronto on the 50th anniversary of that event. (Steve Paikin)
But midway through the 1964 season, after a decade playing for the blue and white, Duff was traded to the New York Rangers for Andy Bathgate, thereby missing his chance for a third straight Cup, which the Leafs won in 1964. He didn’t want to leave the Leafs, but on the other hand, he didn’t mind being away from the team’s tyrannical coach George “Punch” Imlach.
“Punch wasn’t an easy guy,” Duff tells us. “He was such a demanding coach.”
And the way Duff was informed of the trade wasn’t what you’d call classy.
“I had a meeting at Maple Leaf Gardens,” he recalls. “They told me to go home and when I came back to the rink [for the game that night], to go to the other team’s dressing room. They didn’t care.”
Duff’s tenure on Broadway lasted only parts of two seasons before he was on the move again. This time, he was thrilled to be joining the Canadiens, led by coach Toe Blake, and playing alongside the likes of Jean Beliveau, Henri Richard, Yvan Cournoyer, John Ferguson, and his old friend Ralph Backstrom from Kirkland Lake.
Duff won four Cups with the Habs in 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1969, before he found himself on the move again, this time to the expansion Los Angeles Kings.
“I should have retired with Montreal,” Duff now says. “I didn’t want to go to Los Angeles.”
From left to right: Dick Duff and former Leaf captain Darryl Sittler emerging from former Leaf “Red” Kelly’s funeral.; former Leafs Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Duff, and Eddie Shack at Kelly’s funeral in May 2019. (Steve Paikin)
After two seasons in California, Duff found himself reunited with Imlach, who was now coaching Buffalo’s new entry, the Sabres.
“Punch could have been way better to the guys who brought him the Cup,” Duff says. “Those guys made him. The guys who won the Cup gave him his record. But that’s the way he was.”
Duff spent parts of two seasons in Buffalo, eventually retiring in 1971 after 1,030 NHL games (and another 114 in the playoffs) and 572 points. He had five 20-goal seasons during an era when goals were hard to come by. When I suggest to him that, if he were playing today, he’d likely be paid millions of dollars a year, he says, “The first year I won the Cup in Montreal, I think I made $38,000.” Even with the huge salaries now, he adds, “they’re not giving money away today. They never did.”
The author (left) with Dick Duff and Paul Patskou. (Steve Paikin)
Finally, we get to the most sensitive matter at hand. The Leafs currently have the longest Stanley Cup losing streak in the NHL — no championships since 1967. Duff has views on this.
“I know what’s at stake,” he says. “These guys have got to find a way to win. When it gets down to the end of the year, some guys get better. And some guys can’t play as good. The pressure affects lots of guys.”
There aren’t many guys left from the last Cup-winning Leaf team Duff played for. Besides him, there’s Dave Keon, Frank Mahovlich, and Bob Pulford. And if there’s one other thing these four have in common, it’s that they’d certainly like to see the Leafs break their streak of ignominy while they’re still here.
Go Leafs Go.
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