MAPLE LEAFS NOTES: Ken Wregget glad to hold playoff mark with Anthony Stolarz
'I was 6-foot-1 in the 1980s and considered big. He’s 6-foot-6, but’s he’s moving well and playing great.'
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Anthony Stolarz seems to fill up the TV screen in the sports bar Ken Wregget runs in suburban Pittsburgh.
So, the former Maple Leafs goalie can just imagine how imposing he must look to the Ottawa Senators.
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MAPLE LEAFS NOTES: Ken Wregget glad to hold playoff mark with Anthony Stolarz Back to video
“I was 6-foot-1 in the 1980s and considered big,” Wregget told the Toronto Sun on Friday morning after watching Game 3. “He’s 6-foot-6. But’s he’s moving well and playing great. From what I’ve heard about him as a person, this is a great moment for him, too.”
Wregget and Stolarz now share a unique Leafs mark, the only two Toronto netminders to have won their first three playoff games. For Wregget, now 61, Stolarz’s play has opened the memory bank to the 1986 best-of-five division semifinal.
After a turtle derby in the very forgiving NHL post-season format of the day (Toronto finished the schedule with a record of 2-7-1 with 57 points, yet still qualified), they stunned the Chicago Blackhawks, who were almost 30 points ahead, in a sweep.
“Oh man, the ‘Snorris’ Division,” Wregget laughed. “That was a special series, but being a best-of-five, they were all important games.
“I think it was my first game at Chicago Stadium, with that pipe organ and the crowd noise from the national anthem. It didn’t stop when the game started. They won the opening faceoff, shot it in our corner and our defencemen and I couldn’t hear each other shouting.”
Unlike Stolarz, who had a role on the 2024 Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers, Wregget’s Leafs hadn’t made the playoffs for three years and he hadn’t yet played a full season.
“It was almost like ignorance was bliss,” he said of 5-3 and 6-4 wins, led by young guns Wendel Clark, Gary Leeman, Steve Thomas and Russ Courtnall, in tandem with Rick Vaive. “I didn’t fully understand the pressure. Then we came home for Game 3 (many corporate subscribers hadn’t used their playoff option on a bad team so ‘real fans’ snapped up tickets) and it was crazy when we won (7-2).
“What is courage? It’s belief in yourself and that can go a long way.”
Wregget’s bid for a fourth straight win was stopped in Game 1 of the Norris final against St. Louis. Still, Toronto forced the Blues to a seventh game, which it lost, 2-1. After being traded to the Flyers in 1989, Wregget joined the Pittsburgh Penguins to back up Tom Barrasso on their ‘92 Cup team.
“That gave me a lot of perspective. I see myself doing what Stolarz probably did for his team this year, as the part-time starter, helping on the bench, carrying sticks, drying equipment. But watching Tom in net, the biggest thing for me was always making sure you were ready to play at a moment’s notice. You never wanted to get thrown in and embarrass yourself.”
Wregget wishes the Penguins were still alive, but the 31 Bar and Grille in Bridgeville, Pa., is doing brisk playoff business.
“I make sure the Leaf games are on,” he said. “I really like the team Craig Berube has put together up there, how tight they play. If Pittsburgh’s not in, the Leafs are in my heart.”
FEAR THE BEARDS
Every NHL team wants the chance to grow bushy beards this time of year and the Leafs are no exception.
Unlike the early Core Four era, they should come in a little thicker given they’re now a very veteran roster.
Steven Lorentz, Stolarz and Oliver Ekman-Larsson went the distance with Florida last year, as did their facial hair.
“It’s not super-easy to grow one for me, like it is for other guys,” Lorentz said before the Ottawa series began. “Hopefully you’ll see mine in a couple of months. It gets going pretty long. But you ask my fiancée and it was way too long for two months.”
For Game 2 at Scotiabank Arena, the game operations crew put four Leafs on the videoboard with moustaches and beards of varying length and took an on-line vote for the best, won by Stolarz.
Others, such as defenceman Simon Benoit, keep a beard going all season.
“I just won’t trim it in playoffs,” Benoit said.
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LOVE THY (CANADIAN) NEIGHBOUR
Perhaps it’s the 32-year gap in a Canadian team winning a Cup or a huge bump from Donald Trump.
But patriotic northern hockey fans seemed to have declared an interprovincial truce in the playoffs. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll lists 71% of respondents are now good with “any” of the seven Canadian teams winning the first league title since the 1993 Montreal Canadiens. That’s a seven per cent increase from last year and 14% rise over 2016. Only eight per cent today would not back a Canadian team, other than their own, based on irreconcilable rivalries.
Of the five Canadian clubs who are in this year’s playoffs, three in 10 surveyed want either Toronto or Montreal to triumph. Two per cent insist the Cup will be dominated by American-based teams indefinitely.
LOOSE LEAFS
Benoit’s overtime goal triggered plenty of trivia talk. There were parallels with Cory Cross’s extra time goal from 24 years ago, also a stay-at-home defenceman, also to give the Leafs a 3-0 series lead, also against Ottawa. Benoit also became the first Quebec-born Leaf to click in OT since Yanic Perreault in 1999 against the Flyers … One of the four defencemen the past 30 years to do it faster than Benoit’s 1:19 was current teammate Chris Tanev at the 11-second mark for Vancouver in 2020 … Matthews’s fifth career go-ahead goal in Thursday’s third period is a Leaf record. Only Alex Ovechkin has more among active players.
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