1942 Maple Leafs make the plucky Oilers hard to follow

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Their names are usually only used in desperation in the playoffs.

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Yet the perfect mix of Hall of Famers and hard workers of the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs is in the news again.

While all the Stanley Cup winners assure each other that they will “be together forever.” this group – including Sweeney Schriner, Wally Stanowski, Bingo Kampman, Pete Langelle and the more recognized Syl Apps, Turk Broda and coach Hap Day – stands slightly taller as the only team in professional sports to emerge from an 0-3 hole in the competition manages to collect a best-of-seven series championship.

“They came out of the series as the most fighting group in the history of hockey,” Day said of his players at the team victory banquet at the Royal York Hotel.

The latest club to join them is also Canadian: the no-quit Edmonton Oilers.

Eighty-two years after Toronto stunned the Detroit Red Wings, as Postmedia’s Rob Tychkowski wrote in Tuesday night’s Game 5 euphoria, Edmonton is halfway to the impossible.

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NHL teams have come back from 0-3 deficits before: the 1975 New York Islanders vs. Pittsburgh, the 2010 Flyers vs. Boston and, most recently, Los Angeles vs. San Jose a decade ago.

An Isles fan put up a homemade sign that read “Remember the ’42 Leafs” during their ’75 playoffs, when New York won nine elimination games, beating the Rangers in a best-of-three preliminary round and the Flyers almost erased 0-3. lose game 7.

But none of those Lazerus-like revivals were on the big stage with the Cup constantly in the house, only to be packed away again. After Tuesday, the Oilers joined the 1945 Wings and 2012 New Jersey Devils as the only teams to force at least a Game 6 in the finals — Friday in front of their increasingly confident and intimidating fan base at Rogers Place.

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But like the Oilers and ’42 Leafs, every great comeback must start in a grave. That’s where the Leafs were knee deep in April ’42, losing 3-2 and 4-2 at home and then 5-2 in Game 3 at the Detroit Olympia. The Wings killed Toronto with an effective dump-and-chase style.

Day and Leafs management resorted to tactical and motivational magic.

Day ruffled feathers before Game 4 with controversial lineup changes, including benching Gordie Drillon (who remains the last Leaf to win a points title) and fellow forward Bucko McDonald, opting for healthy scratches Don Metz and Hank Goldup.

One of the team’s executives posted a story to Detroit reporters calling for the Leafs to gold-brick, knowing it would increase Wings overconfidence.

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In the locker room before the game, Day read a letter from a teenage girl, a Leafs fan who was teased mercilessly by Detroit fans at school but urged her team not to fold. Schriner reportedly jumped to his feet when he heard her words and yelled at Day, “Tell that kid not to worry,” before getting an assist in the 4-3 season-saving win.

Just like that, the momentum changed as the Leafs started firing the puck right back to avoid Detroit’s forerunners. Detroit manager Jack Adams took out post-game frustrations on referee Mel Harwood and was ejected from the series, while two other Wings were fined.

Someone at the Olympia made another big mistake by jumping their gun onto a large floral display to congratulate the incoming Cup champions as the Leafs arrived at the rink in full view. The Wings led twice in the last four games and were unable to hold it as Toronto won 9-3 at home and shutout Broda 3-0 in Detroit.

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“I know they talked about taking my dad out (after Game 3),” Broda’s daughter, Barb Tushingham, told the BBC. Toronto Sun last year. “(Manager) Conn Smythe said, ‘No, I brought him in, he’s staying.’

“I remember my dad saying, ‘You have to hang in there and just play with your heart.’ My father didn’t have a goalkeeper coach, didn’t wear a mask and at the end of every year he had lost his toenails and a few teeth and had a black eye.”

His shutout set up Game 7 in front of what would be the largest crowd to watch a hockey game at the time: 16,218 at Maple Leaf Gardens. Radio legend Foster Hewitt’s excitement level also rose with every Toronto win and big goal.

The Leafs had not won a Cup since their first season at Carlton Street a decade earlier and at a bleak moment in the Second World War, with bad news on most fronts, their rally against the Wings lifted spirits across English Canada opposite sides of the battle. The Quebec border. Calls poured in through the Gardens switchboard to wish the team good luck or to get a ticket.

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“I couldn’t get a line to my wife to save my husband’s neck,” Smythe’s assistant, Frank Selke, joked to a reporter.

Still, it was a nail-biter, with the Leafs trailing 1-0 after two periods. Smythe, who was training his artillery regiment and unable to attend the series so far, burst into the locker room with the intention of rousing his troops, but the laconic Schriner assured him that the Leafs would prevail and evened the game against Detroit goalie Johnny Mowers.

“A blind shot,” Schriner said after the game. “I didn’t know I had scored until I heard the crowd shouting and then saw the (goal) light come on. It was the greatest light I have ever seen in my life.”

Langelle would get the eventual winner, while Schriner would add another for insurance.

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“I’ll never forget the last minute of the game, scrambling around with a two-goal lead and the knowledge that Detroit couldn’t win it,” Apps told writer Stan Fischler years later.

Presented with the cup, which was then cylindrical with the bowl on top and nicknamed “the elephant’s foot,” Captain Apps immediately called Smythe to hold it, telling him, “You’ve waited long enough, come and get it.”

The time and technology of the era, ten years earlier Hockey night in Canada televised the Leafs and Montreal Canadiens, meaning little footage remains of the ’42 team. Langelle and teammates with raised sticks after his goal and the reacting crowd are considered one of the best black-and-white sports photos of the time.

Stanowski was the last survivor of the ’42 team and stayed until the age of 96 in 2015.

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“There wasn’t much money when I signed,” he said in an earlier interview with the Sun. “I made about $1,500 at Syracuse and about $3,000 with the Leafs (in 1939, with $30 deducted for his team jersey). But it didn’t matter, I just wanted to play.”

The ‘Whirling Dervish’ was one of the few defensemen to rush the puck in his day, but clashed with the stern Smythe because he was sleeping at home with his own wife during training camp. Stanowski cunningly orchestrated a newspaper article criticizing Smythe that he knew would enrage the boss enough to trade him to Rangers.

The Wings shook off and blew the 0-3 lead to win the Cup a year later, beating the Leafs in six along the way. But there was no escaping their role of shame.

“Somebody had to lose that series,” Detroit defenseman Jimmy Orlando said. “We just happened to be the unlucky ones.”

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