The stories behind monthly alumni lunches with some of hockey's greatest players and personalities

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Come for the food and drink, stay for the hockey talk from the game’s greatest generation.

It’s a hook that has brought players, coaches, managers, referees, scouts, authors, musicians and fans together for the monthly NHL Alumni Lunch, to feast on stories you won’t hear in today’s buttoned-down league that’s bereft of candid sound bytes.

The stories in this decades-old tradition get better with age.

“Our events make these older players so happy, brings them back to a sense of importance,” said hockey archivist Paul Patskou, surveying the mid-day sports bar crowd at Scotiabank Pond in Downsview. “It’s so great to listen when they talk about life in the Original Six era and then start making fun of each other.”

Its roots of re-engaging with fans and community began with veterans from the post-war NHL who lived in the Toronto area and started gathering around 1975 after old-timer scrimmages or a charity game. Leafs such as Harry Watson, Gus Bodnar, Sid Smith and Pete Conacher gave way to the next wave of Dick Duff, Frank Mahovlich, Johnny Bower and others.

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“It often included a yearly visit to the war veterans’ wing at Sunnybrook Hospital,” Patskou said. “They just wanted to do some good.

“The Leafs started inviting other Original Six guys, then coaches and scouts. A lot of them were involved in the alumni pension fight with Carl Brewer and Susan Foster (in the late ‘90s against former boss Alan Eagleson) and this served as a meeting to help them grow closer in that cause.”

The lunch was re-organized in the ‘90s when hockey fan Al Shaw, Patskou, Don Joyce and Brian MacFarlane arranged a formal program. McFarlane is now 93 and, when he can drop by, still brings his powder blue Hockey Night in Canada jacket.

There is a guest of honour or theme, such as Bill Barilko’s 1951 Cup-winning overtime goal and his subsequent disappearance, with members of his family in attendance. Reunions sprang up, such as the 1964 and ‘67 Memorial Cup champion Marlboros, the ‘72 Orillia Terrier senior champions or past NHL stars from St. Michael’s College.

Patskou began screening his rare videos, such as a players-only NHL game, maybe a Ward Cornell interview with them on Hockey Night, a minor-league goal, glimpse of a three-star selection or junior hockey clips. Many of the players or their guests bring home-made scrapbooks or vintage game programs.

“The videos are the best because a lot of guys had never seen themselves play in the pre-network era,” Patskou said. “That’s very rewarding for me. We all do it for free and love of the game.”

Patskou did a tribute to Boston Bruins farmhand Bob Beckett’s first fight with Ivan Irwin of the Rangers — nicknamed ‘Ivan The Terrible’ — who was badly cut by Irwin’s stick in an AHL melee. The two 80-somethings had dueling recollections of who won the fight 50 years later that had the crowd roaring.

Shaw was key in finding larger dining premises and keeping the core group informed of ailing brethren as time began thinning their ranks. It was a great loss when Shaw passed a couple of years ago.

“Al was good friends with Watson and Conacher and they used to meet at the Firefighters Club where I worked,” Shaw’s wife Lorraine said. “The restaurant the players had been meeting at wasn’t that great, they were all jammed at a table near the washroom door.

“Al called a guy he knew and eventually got a new place (the former Shopsy’s on Woodbine Ave. In Markham) that could seat around 200 and had good food. I made sure they didn’t forget about the wives and ladies who wanted to come.”

But some female guests were tempted to cover their ears whenever Ron Hurst was let loose as the warm-up act. A colourful player in his day and now the oldest living Leaf at 94 this May, Hurst didn’t hold back on locker-room jokes.

“George Armstrong told me Ron was just as funny as an 18-year–old than he was at 88,” long-time NHL scout and lunch attendee Paul Henry said with a laugh. “He should’ve played a club in Las Vegas.”

Wally Stanowski, who was on the 1942 Cup-winning comeback Leafs, and son Skip also were regulars, Wally confiding to us he had to give back $30 of his $3,000 rookie salary in 1939 to pay manager Conn Smythe for his Leafs sweater.

Not long before he died, Eddie (the Entertainer) Shack broke the boys up when he dropped in to hawk his new book. He and co-author Ken Reid talked about his wild career, the Clear The Track hit single on radio, while Patskou provided a collection of Shack’s Pop Shoppe and Glad garbage bag TV commercials from the ‘70s.

“Bob Tindall, the late Bruins’ scout, had Don Cherry here,” Patskou said. “Don’s first professional coach was Murray Henderson and the occasion was Murray’s 90th birthday. It was so nice he and Don met again.

“At one of our Christmas lunches, Mahovlich wanted to meet (brief NHLer) Phil Samis. While the Big M was with Montreal, the Canadiens had to send him to their team dentist, who was Samis after he’d left hockey. Frank just had to thank him for his work.

“In 2022, we had Paul Henderson reunite with some of the fans who travelled to the Summit Series in Moscow 50 years ago. It was a chance for Paul to show gratitude to them one more time.

“Gerry Meehan came to talk about the pension-fund fight and we get a lot of help from Mike Palmateer’s brother Jeff, Al Rose (a former Toronto high school hockey coach) Joe Rizzuto, Graham McWatters and photographer Dan Bodanis.

”Kurt Walker, the Leafs enforcer in the 1970s, gave us a great insight to why he protected players,” Patskou said. “His dad was in the U.S. Army in the Battle of the Bulge, the whole Band of Brothers thing, and infused Kurt with the whole credo to always make sure you take care of your mates.”

Even an actor-hockey player was feted. Art Hindle, who portrayed Leafs bad boy Billy Duke in the 1971 Canadian-made movie Face-Off, guested with his NHL body double, Leafs defenceman Jim McKenny. They spun some hilarious inside stories of the filming, Hindle wearing a ‘Duke’ nameplate sweater the Leafs gifted him for the occasion.

The Leafs, who sponsored one Christmas gathering, have used the event to present team alumni with their official blazers.

But in the COVID-19 pandemic, the luncheons had to pivot. Player visits were no longer allowed at Sunnybrook, while the dynasty Leafs lost Bower, Armstrong, Shack, Red Kelly, Bob Nevin and Bob Baun within a few years.

This month saw the passing of Gerry McNamara. The 90-year-old, who had been sensitive to public criticism as general manager of the Leafs in the 1980s, turned out to be a great storyteller of his days at St. Mike’s, as a Leafs goalie and scouting adventures such as discovering Borje Salming in Sweden and springing Miro Ihnacak from the Iron Curtain.

“Gerry was reluctant to come out to this at first,” Patskou said. “When he did, he kind of hid at the back of the room. But I’d found film of him from the NHL he’d never seen. He loved that and got right into the discussions and the Q and A.”

McNamara even went on stage with host Scott Morrison, the author and Hall of Fame Toronto Sun columnist, who had been one of his strongest critics in the day. Each explained their views of the Harold Ballard era to a rapt audience. Morrison and Andrew Applebaum share the emcee’s chair.

“It was Baun who told me before he left us that I had to keep this event going,” Patskou said. “It’s sad people have died off, but now we trying new things, getting the players’ sons, daughters and families to come out, such as Pat Quinn, Herb Carnegie, Joe Primeau, Frank Selke Jr., Harry Howell, Kelly, Brewer, Bower, Danny Lewicki and so many more.

“They often have stories or bring memorabilia that are just as interesting, And the families often use the video from the event at their celebration of life.”

There are contemporary topics at lunch, such as one dedicated to reviewing that wild night at Scotiabank Arena when David Ayres came out of the stands to play net for Carolina. It included a few eye-witnesses and NHL personnel explaining how the EBUG process works.

If there’s a big hockey documentary in the works, it might get a preview here, such as the television series on Borje Salming and the Terry Sawchuk documentary.

Other recent guests included Duncan Fremlin, banjo player for Whiskey Jack, who backed the late Stompin’ Tom Connors. Fremlin spoke warmly of the origins — and sang a few verses — of Connors’ iconic Hockey Song, heard in so many rinks since the early 1970s.

Leafs winger Mark Osborne was on a recent double bill with businessman Graeme Rouston, Osborne recounting Toronto’s 21-game playoff run in 1993.

Roustan’s fingerprints were on a proposed second NHL team for Toronto, the rescue of the Bauer brand as the last Canadian factory-made sticks and, as a friend of Wayne Gretzky, he tried to explain the misconceptions regarding No. 99’s relationship with Donald Trump.

In addition to paying for their meals, guests usually give a $5 cover for the entertainment. To apply for the guest list (no autograph hounds, please), contact paulpatskou@rogers.com.

lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby