The Rivalry: Canadiens vs Leafs

Raymond B. Blake is a history professor at York University.

With this account of the Leafs and the Canadiens, Fischler, one of
today’s most prolific sports writers, has latched onto an interesting
subject. Until recently, most Canadian hockey fans grew up cheering for
either Montreal or Toronto. Young boys dreamed of lacing their skates
and playing alongside Morenz, Richard, Beliveau, Keon, Brewer, or
Lafleur, with Foster Hewitt describing their heroics to fans across the
land.

This is a typical hockey book. Although Fischler promises analysis of
the longest rivalry in professional hockey, he merely provides yet
another litany of hockey anecdotes from 1917 to 1969. Because he chose
to cover each team separately during the five decades, the book is
unnecessarily repetitious and tedious. Nevertheless, in this awkward
presentation, Frank Selke Sr. emerges as a hockey genius for producing
winners in both Toronto and Montreal. Selke developed a farm system in
Toronto that paid dividends with five Stanley Cups between 1946 and
1952. The Toronto system failed after Conn Smythe forced Selke to resign
for stealing future star Ted Kennedy in a trade with Montreal while he
was away fighting in Europe. Fischler portrays Smythe, a legend of
hockey management, as petty for his treatment of Selke, who became the
Canadiens’ general manager in 1946. In Montreal, he cultivated another
farm system, which produced five consecutive Stanley Cups in the late
1950s. The farm system worked extremely well for both Toronto and
Montreal and Fischler gives the credit in both cases to Selke. By the
mid-1950s, Smythe’s interest had turned to horse racing and away from
Maple Leaf Gardens.

Fischler attempts to portray the Leafs-Canadiens rivalry as a rivalry
between French- and English-speaking Canadians. He suggests that there
was tremendous pressure to have Québécois stars on the Canadiens. This
was certainly true, but the Maple Leafs also liked having Toronto boys.
Unfortunately, Fischler’s story stops in 1969.