Maple Leaf Gardens in 1957 was very much a family business. Hugh Smythe was the team doctor, responsible for keeping the players healthy and occasionally stitching up fans along the sideboards, where the lack of glass made flying pucks a regular hazzard.1 As a kid Hugh had served as stickboy, as had his older brother Stafford, Stafford’s son, Tommy, and Hap Day’s son, Kerry. Jack Hoult, who had married Miriam Smythe in 1944, worked in the business office, where he received regular pay rises and generous bonuses. One of his duties was to scout the red seats for patrons who had failed to dress to Smythe’s standards and single them out for a polite but firm letter alerting them to their crime.2 Apart from family, the building was sprinkled with army buddies from both wars. While a prisoner in the First World War Smythe had met a Russian officer named Logvinoff, who gave him a pair of boots when his own fell apart. Smythe soon realized Logvinoff had given him his best boots; his own were in much worse shape. When Logvinoff moved to Canada years later, Smythe hired him at the Gardens, where he amused people by walking on his hands while smoking a cigarette.3 He stayed on the Gardens payroll until his death.
Many of the employees had been around forever. Rink manager Henry Bolton was hired soon after the Gardens opened, when Smythe realized W.A. Hewitt was a better newspaperman than he was an attractions manager. Hewitt remained on staff nonetheless, collecting his salary into the 1950s while politely requesting a six-month leave of absence each spring (which was politely granted) “to perform my duties with the Ontario Racing Commission.”4 King Clancy was a permanent fixture, always around in one job or another, though details of his duties were sometimes imprecise. When Smythe inquired one spring what he did from day to day, Clancy replied, “Nothing.” When Smythe asked if he was available to keep doing it, Clancy said sure.5 His salary for doing nothing by the end of the decade was $6,500 plus a “living allowance” of $1,000, and additional bonuses if the team made the playoffs. In all, it meant he made slightly less than he’d earned as a player twenty years earlier.
The whole Leafs system seemed tailored to draw people in and keep them there. Players would be recruited to Shopsy’s, the peewee team in the Marlboros network, and work their way up to the Weston Dukes, the Junior B team. From there they’d make the leap to the Junior A Marlies and, if they were lucky, the Leafs. In the summer they got jobs at Smythe’s sand and gravel operations. Players didn’t make enough to live on their hockey salaries alone, and a parade of Leafs stars had depended on summer jobs at the pit, from Turk Broda to Tim Horton to Bobby Baun. The pit was managed by Hap Day and located near the cement block firm owned by Joe Primeau. Both men, of course, had coached the Leafs, and Primeau continued to help train players at St. Mike’s, where Smythe asked him to give special attention to Mahovlich, his rising star. Stafford Smythe, meanwhile, was eyeing Turk Broda as coach of the Marlboros.
Although Smythe was more respected and feared than loved and admired by employees, there were plenty of benefits to be had from working for him. Gardens documents show regular pay increases and Christmas bonuses. There was an annual Christmas party put on for the press, an elaborately planned event that consisted mainly of sketches spoofing the Gardens’ all-powerful ruler, which Smythe thoroughly enjoyed. He got on well enough with the press, both sides wary of the other, but locked in mutual need. Like others, reporters had come to respect his accomplishments even if they’d been the target of more than one tongue-lashing. Writer Scott Young, preparing a television profile of him, wrote that Smythe “can treat his assistants so curtly, at a hockey practice or in public, that bystanders wince; yet he never has a loyalty problem.” He added, “There are several reasons for this forbearance on the part of men who would punch on the nose unhesitatingly anybody else who spoke to them as Smythe sometimes does. One is that most people who know Smythe admire him and know that his own loyalty to a friend does not require unswerving politeness, so he doesn’t feel he has to be unswervingly polite in return.”6
It was taken for granted that he was preparing the ground to be succeeded by his oldest boy. Stafford would proclaim he didn’t want the job, and his brother Hugh still insists Stafford was not burning to follow his father. “He did not want the hockey job. He was trained as an engineer, and liked the sand and gravel business. He had many friends in the sand and gravel business. Both my father and my brother made more money in the sand and gravel business than they ever did in the hockey business.… To take over the Gardens with my father still sitting there in the office was a recipe for disaster. My father could run it if he was physically capable. My brother could run it. But there was no way they both could run it.”7
But to anyone looking on from outside, it had long appeared inevitable that Stafford would replace his father. He had renewed his odd friendship with the much-older Harold Ballard, and together they had built the Marlboros into a champion team. There was obvious friction between the Ballard-Smythe duo and the Leafs’ current managers, Hap Day and Howie Meeker. Day stressed an intense, disciplined defensive style that required an all-out team effort. It had produced great success, but Stafford and Ballard muttered loudly that their junior scoring stars were being wasted in Day’s defensive approach. When Day and Meeker brought Ted Kennedy out of retirement for a brief comeback, Stafford thought it was a major blunder – arguing the team was falling back on previous heroes rather than trusting in the kids – and let everyone now it. Day wasn’t deaf or blind to what was coming. As the 1950s wore on and the Leafs’ performance worsened, it appeared the day of reckoning was at hand.
Stafford, like his father, wasn’t easy to love, and had the added burden that, while Conn attracted respect for his accomplishments, Stafford was viewed as the snotty kid with the silver spoon in his mouth. It had always been that way. Nothing Stafford did, or could do, would ever be enough to equal his old man. He would always be the man who got to run the hockey team because he inherited it from his father. The knowledge of that made him shy and defensive, which was interpreted as aloof and arrogant. He often gave the impression he wasn’t paying attention when someone was speaking to him.8 He didn’t smile easily, was awkward with people, and kept his feelings to himself. He was, like his father, brusque and demanding, but where people would take it from Conn they wouldn’t take it from him.
Stafford’s life had never been easy. He’d grown up the son of a wealthy and well-known man and subject to all the baiting and taunting that brought with it. He learned to defend himself and won his father’s praise for his courage, but might have been happier if he’d never had to. Hugh Smythe came to realize the key to maintaining cordial relations with Conn was to find a career outside his immediate sphere of influence. Hugh became a doctor and noted expert in rheumatology; though a regular presence at the Gardens, he wasn’t directly subject to Conn’s daily demands and unpredictable temperament. Stafford wasn’t so lucky. Although he made an early effort to maintain his independence, resisting Conn’s determination to bring him into the hockey business was more than he could manage. “The issue with Stafford was trying to live up to Conn,” said Frank Selke’s son, Frank Jr., who knew both Conn’s sons as boys. “Staff put himself in a position where he was constantly competing with his father or his father’s image. That’s a tough thing to do.”9
He didn’t handle it particularly well and rarely got credit for his obvious hockey skills. “My father could go on the radio or be on television and be an instant entertainer and hold an audience,” said Hugh Smythe. “But my brother did not come across as a likeable person, even though he won as many Stanley Cups as my father did, or almost, certainly in a shorter period of time.”
Sportswriters, always quick and merciless in their judgments, were unsympathetic. Columnist Dick Beddoes, an admirer of Conn, wrote: “[Stafford] aped his father, the same raspy voice, the same go-to-hell swagger, a similar arrogance. He exhibited a rudeness which is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”10
The Star’s Milt Dunnell, dean of sports reporters, said, “Staff decided to be like his old man. He was going to be a dictatorial little son of a bitch. But he wasn’t really like Conn. He couldn’t pull it off.”11
Such harsh opinions weren’t universal. Bob Baun admired Stafford and felt he was ill treated. Jim Gregory, whom Stafford hired away from St. Michael’s, put a lot of Stafford’s problems down to the impact his constant struggles with asthma had on his personality. “He seemed snarly and didn’t respond … [but] I know that anybody who had time to be with him or get to know him, you very rarely heard them say things that weren’t good. Especially hockey people. He treated me unbelievably well, and the people who worked for me he treated the same way.”12
One person who felt differently was Howie Meeker. The former right winger had been ecstatic when Day called to offer him the Leafs coaching job. He’d coached two years in Pittsburgh and had an attractive offer from the minor-league Hershey Bears, but turned it down to accept the riskier job with the Leafs. “To be selected and given the opportunity to coach your hockey club and to be associated with the many wonderful men that you have in your organization is an honour and a privilege far beyond my wildest dreams of a few years ago,” he wrote to Smythe. “It is now my ambition to prove to your associates, the Leaf players and the thousands of Leaf fans that Mr. Smythe and Mr. Day have picked the right man for the job.”13
But he came to despise Stafford and distrust Conn. “[Conn’s] handshake wasn’t worth a pinch of coon shit,” he says now.14
Meeker was in a hopeless position from the start. The Leafs were perilously weak, with few authentic NHL-calibre players. He got off on the wrong foot when he and Day jointly suggested naming veteran defenceman Jimmy Thomson to replace the retiring Sid Smith as captain. Smythe didn’t even want to invite Thomson to training camp, but acquiesced and Thomson was made captain. Soon, however, Smythe began to feel he was being ignored and kept a record of ideas he’d put forward that hadn’t been acted on.
“Nykoluk joined club. Thought his play an improvement on 2 or 3 centremen. Suggested he be kept and one sent down. SUGGESTION IGNORED,” he wrote in a note to himself.
“Suggested that 4 defencemen were better than 5, but if they kept extra one for emergencies he should be understood not to be played unless absolutely necessary. SUGGESTION IGNORED.”
“Suggested records show weakness of certain combinations – especially Pulford and Kennedy and if possible these combinations not be used. SUGGESTION IGNORED.”15
The team started poorly and got worse. By Christmas the Leafs had lost twice as many games as they won. Smythe added to his list of complaints, writing out NO ATTENTION PAID TO THIS or SUGGESTION IGNORED each time his ideas were overlooked.
As the Leafs slid, the internal tensions worsened. The rivalry between his son and Hap Day put Smythe in an excruciating position. The two qualities he admired most, as he had often stated, were “guts and loyalty,” and no one had displayed more of both than Day. He’d been the team’s captain, its coach, and its general manager. Other than a short period at the end of his playing career, he’d been with the Leafs since before they were Leafs, one of only two players Smythe had kept from the St. Patricks. He’d led them to Stanley Cups in each of his capacities, with victories in each of three decades. He had more victories, by far, than any coach in the team’s history, more Cups than any other coach in the league. What’s more, he had the enduring respect of his players, and the admiration of the other teams.
If Stafford was going to advance, however, Day would have to retreat. It would require Smythe to find a way to violate his most cherished principles, the very ones he’d been preaching for thirty years. He had heaped praise on Day, sold him a piece of his company, and vowed to keep him forever by his side. But he was also a family man who owned the team and believed in his right to run it as he wanted, and what he wanted was to turn it over to his son. It didn’t necessarily have to end with Day’s departure, but if Stafford was at odds with Day, a way would have to be found for Day to yield.
Into this troubled cauldron, one cold morning in February, dropped Ted Lindsay. In a letter to Clarence Campbell, signed “Robert B.T. Lindsay, President,” the Red Wings star announced formation of the NHL Players’ Association, “of which 99% of the players in the National Hockey League are members.” It was headed by himself and Canadiens defenceman Doug Harvey, with Chicago’s Gus Mortson, Boston’s Fern Flaman, Toronto’s Jimmy Thomson, and New York’s Bill Gadsby serving as officers.
The purpose of the association, he said, was “to promote, foster and protect the best interests of the National Hockey League players.” He presented Campbell with a series of questions about the league pension plan, which had been launched ten years earlier and was the subject of regular grumbling among players.
Campbell replied two days later, noting that he had no authority to disclose details of the pension without authorization from directors of the Pension Society and that he would seek that authorization. Then he pointed out that most of the information Lindsay sought was contained in the pension manual supplied to all the players, that players who wanted answers to such questions were free to ask the Pension Society, and that both Lindsay and Harvey had been directors of the society for the previous two years. He also pointed out that the pension plan answered to a large group of retired players as well as those currently active.
It was the opening shot in the fiercest confrontation between players and management since the Hamilton Tigers had been disbanded over pay demands in 1925. It would rumble on for the next year, with Lindsay struggling to hold the association together against the combined opposition of the six team owners, their ally and chief operative, Campbell, and a well-financed legal operation tasked with breaking the back of Lindsay and his crew. The issue wasn’t new. Most players had a sense they were being taken advantage of by a league that was controlled by a handful of secretive and self-interested owners. The owners were wealthy men, while players still customarily scratched around for summer jobs to help them get by when the hockey season ended. They were particularly annoyed about the pension plan, which required an annual contribution of $900 from each of the players – a hefty sum when $10,000 was still a good salary – and nothing from the owners.
All that was needed to harness the grumbling was a personality strong enough to take on the task despite the likelihood it would enrage the owners. The job demanded someone respected by the other players, despite the fact they had been conditioned by years of training to avoid and despise members of other teams. It also required someone self-confident enough to defy all the traditions of compliance and unquestioning deference to authority that ruled the NHL. That was Ted Lindsay to a T.
Lindsay was the best left winger in the league and was having his best season. Barely an inch taller than Smythe and 160 pounds, he was tough as a rhino’s hide and customarily resided at or near the top of the annual penalty list. At thirty-one he was already in his thirteenth season, all of them with Detroit, and was neck and neck with teammate Gordie Howe in the scoring race. He loved to torment opposing players, the more talented the better. Rocket Richard found him so annoying he identified Lindsay as the only player he honestly hated.16
He had been working on the association for months and had signed almost the entire league without a whisper of his activity reaching the owners. His February letter caught the league by surprise, and the ferocity of its reaction reflected that fact. The letter was addressed to Campbell as president of the NHL, and the association viewed the issue as a league matter. Smythe could have left it to Clarence Campbell to deal with, but he took Lindsay’s actions as a personal affront and immediately immersed himself in the effort to defeat him.
Histories of the ensuing struggle tend to paint it in black-and-white terms, with the valiant but overmatched players being bested by the greedy, self-interested owners. While elements of that are true, the situation wasn’t as simple or straightforward as often presented. The NHL wasn’t the billion-dollar juggernaut it is today. It was six teams, three of which were perennial losers struggling to attract fans. New York, Boston, and Chicago only occasionally made the playoffs and were usually eliminated in the first round, precluding them from the additional playoff revenue enjoyed by the other three teams. Detroit and Chicago were hobbies of the Norris family, which drained money away from other Norris enterprises. They needed the Norrises more than the Norrises needed them. Bad management and financial stress had seen four teams disappear over the years, and there was nothing preventing it from happening again.
Toronto’s success was more the exception than the rule, and Smythe was never the plutocrat he was sometimes portrayed as. Ticket prices at the Gardens had barely budged in thirty years. When the debt was finally retired in 1950, Smythe calculated the average return to investors since 1932 at 5.4 per cent.17 For years his own wealth had come more from sand and gravel than from hockey games. He was proud of the fact that the Gardens had been built by union workers and had a memo compiled showing five unions still held shares, while six additional unions represented current Gardens employees.
But he was unquestionably paternalistic. He knew how easy it was to take advantage of hockey players from blue-collar backgrounds with limited education and few interests outside the next game. He did it himself. He felt he was better suited to protect them than a union, which he believed would inevitably become dominated by a handful of disgruntled players and outside advisers with their own agendas to pursue. The association, as he saw it, was an attempt to reverse the balance of power between management and players and transfer to the players the benefits that came from decades of labour in building a successful league and successful business. At some point he had a secretary type up the definition of communism for him and kept it in his files.
He was especially aggravated to find Jimmy Thomson on the association’s list of vice-presidents. It convinced him he’d been right to oppose making him captain. If he’d had his way, Thomson wouldn’t even be on the team, yet now here he was joining up with that ingrate Lindsay – who had played at St. Michael’s and by all rights should have been a Leaf himself – to challenge the authority of the man who’d been signing his paycheques the past ten years.
Smythe knew exactly what that amounted to. With his customary thoroughness he had a report compiled of Thomson’s earnings, going back to the laundry and spending money he’d received as a junior at St. Mike’s (where he’d played at the same time as Lindsay). It amounted to $127,563 over fourteen years. In addition, Smythe had a second report prepared on the pensions due Lindsay and his five cohorts on the association executive; Thomson topped the list, due $3,415 a year at age sixty-five.
Lindsay and the others weren’t communists or anything close to it. They were careful to stipulate that the organization was an association of players, not a union. Many players would have backed away in a hurry if there was any danger of being identified as union members. They were too grounded in the ethos their parents had taught them, of a hard day’s work for a fair day’s pay. The image of well-paid, privileged hockey players marching out on strike wasn’t something they expected the fans to tolerate.
Their demands were moderate. They wanted better compensation for exhibition games, travelling expenses, moving costs and injuries; they wanted the owners to contribute to the pension fund, limits on the owners’ ability to transfer contracts, and on the number of exhibitions they were required to play. They also wanted a copy of their own contracts without having to beg the owners to see one.
There was little mention of pay. Players handled that on their own and were regularly outmanoeuvred. No one had agents, and few players had even rudimentary negotiating skills. Lesser players had suffered for years because stars like Howe and Richard allowed themselves to be underpaid by managers skilled at stoking their egos while exploiting their insecurity. If Howe and Richard were satisfied with a measly $1,000 raise every year, who was anyone else to demand more?
The demands weren’t very radical, but were too much for Smythe. He had already polled the players individually on their concerns. Not surprisingly, none was willing to complain directly to the man who could end their careers overnight. All the players except Kennedy said they had paid the $100 membership fee and attended one big meeting. A couple mentioned the pension fund, but everyone – including Thomson – insisted they had no specific grievances against the team.
Thomson was already suffering the consequences of Smythe’s wrath. For all intents, he’d been kicked off the team. Smythe ordered Day to leave him off the players’ list for a late-season trip to New York. Milton Mound, a New York lawyer hired by the association, wrote Smythe – addressing his letter to “Mr. Cornelius Smythe” – inquiring about reports he had called Thomson a traitor and blamed him for the team’s mediocre season. He insisted Thomson be reinstated and offered a new contract, warning that if the conditions weren’t met, the PA would file charges of unfair labour practices before the U.S. Labor Relations Board.
Smythe ignored the threat and replied briskly to the other accusations: “Any resemblance between the reports you have heard and the truth is only coincidental. However, don’t let that stop you.”18
Over the closing weeks of the season the two crises drifted closer together, like a pair of ships heading for a collision. The festering management situation ate at Smythe as the team sank to the bottom rungs of the standings. Meanwhile, he was being hounded by an organization representing the same players who had dragged his team to fifth place.
In March, the ships finally collided. On March 25, after the Leafs dropped their final game to Detroit, Thomson called a press conference and announced he would never play another game for the Leafs. “There has been a lot said about my loyalty,” he complained. “At no time have I been disloyal to the team. I have given them my best for twelve seasons. When I had a good season I asked for a raise; when I had a poor season I expected a cut. One year I took a cut after making the second all-star team because the club as a whole had a mediocre year.” Although he wanted to remain in the NHL, he insisted he would never again lace on his skates for the only pro team he’d ever played for. “I would refuse a contract for next season if offered one by the Leafs,” he said. “It would be impossible for me to play with a club that questioned my loyalty. After what has happened over the past six weeks, I wouldn’t feel right about playing for the Leafs.”19
Smythe wasn’t on hand to respond because he was too busy dealing with the second crisis. After thirty years as player, coach, and manager, Hap Day had chosen the same morning to abruptly end his career as a Toronto Maple Leaf, in a closed-door session with Smythe that reporters clocked at just three minutes. It was the culmination of events set in motion a week earlier in a conference room at the Commodore Hotel in New York, where reporters had been summoned by Smythe. He was on his way back from Florida and it was clear something big was up: the Gardens even offered to arrange train travel for Toronto scribes wishing to attend. Smythe promised there would be “no executions,”20 but it would take a fine eye to spot the difference. While he didn’t exactly fire Day, he left him badly bloodied.
“First of all,” he began, “I am making it again doubly clear that what has happened to the team this year, which I consider a year of failure, is my complete responsibility. However there are factors which I would like to discuss with you, and I am not going to debate them.” He spelled out five reasons for the team’s “failure.” First was his own position, as president of the team. Referring to himself in the third person, he suggested reporters evaluate “whether he has contributed too much or too little – make it clear as to whether the team has been run right or not.”
Second on the list were Meeker and Day. “They will be able to explain their position as they have the freedom of speech. Thank God we still have it in our country. They will probably give out the right answers and when we get through listening to them the next few weeks, probably we’ll have had a successful failure.”
Third was the Players’ Association and Thomson’s alleged treason, especially the decision to launch the PA in the middle of the season. “I find it very difficult to feel that there is time during a hockey season for the Captain of my club to go around and influence young players to join an Association, which has, so far as I can find out, no specific plans or ideas of how they can benefit hockey. I also feel that anything spawned in secrecy, as this Association was, certainly has to have some sort of odour with it. Whoever signs my men next year will have to know whether they are going to understand that they have to give 100% hockey loyalty to the Maple Leaf association and also that they know they are going to have to play when, how and where our organization tells them.”
Fourth was the quality of the club’s talent. Smythe was optimistic on that front. Despite the poor season, he believed there was plenty of potential in the team’s young legs, and on various farm teams and junior affiliates beholden to Toronto, to bode well for the future.
And last was “our system of operation of our club,” the first hint at what was to come. “We have a very spartan way of operating our club. Perhaps it is out of date. We prefer the body against the puck. Perhaps that too has gone by the boards. We have stressed at great length the defensive and we have, perhaps, overlooked the offensive. At least the figures show that. I would think that in our practices there might be room for argument as to how we operate that way.” It was a convoluted sentence, but the implication was clear to the assembled press. Defence was Hap Day’s way of doing business, always had been. Offence was what Staff Smythe wanted to replace it with.
He wrapped up his remarks by suggesting his job as president was “just as vulnerable as anybody else’s.” Boston had replaced its president, coach, and manager, and “have made great strides,” he noted. Then he opened it for questions. Milt Dunnell asked whether “the President has given any thought that there might be a change in President?”
Playing along, President Smythe conceded there had indeed. As to who might replace him, he suggested, “There are, in Toronto, dozens of young men of the ability and liking of hockey that could make a success of Maple Leaf Gardens.” After a brief response to the next query, he suggested someone ask him the question he wanted to answer: “Any questions about the manager and coach?”
Dunnell obliged. “Do you want to make a decision as to when they will be rehired?”
Thus prompted, Smythe conspicuously failed to pledge his support to either Day or Meeker. “I think any disposition of these positions would be at the full consent of the Directors,” he responded, fooling no one. Everyone knew Smythe called the shots. Similarly, nobody missed the fact Smythe kept referring to the man he’d called the finest coach on earth as “Mr. Day.” There was a clear sense of overkill when he insisted, once again, that he took full blame for the team’s failure. “These are my appointees. Everything was done with my cognizance, whether I wanted it done that way or not, I could have stopped it if I had wanted to.”
Day and Meeker were both on hand to hear their boss’s less-than-ringing evaluation, as were Stafford Smythe and Harold Ballard, and King Clancy, dressed “like the top of a pool table” in honour of St. Patrick’s Day.21
“Not even a fleck of blood soiled the thick carpets as Conn Smythe, the little pistol of Maple Leaf Gardens, fired what sounded like lethal shots into the breasts of his crew-cut lieutenant, Howie Meeker, and the practically thatchless second-in-command, Hap Day, a hockey associate of 30 years,” recounted Dunnell the next day.22 The two had sat through the event grim-faced, he noted, and Smythe made it clear he didn’t want them questioned. “Any decision I reach will be given directly to Mr. Smythe,” was all Day would say. “The press will not get it first.”
But there could be little question, Dunnell wrote, that Smythe wanted to remove Day and clear the way for his son to take over. The dilemma was finding a way to do it without being targeted by accusations of disloyalty like the ones he was flinging at the team’s captain. By insisting his own head might be on the chopping block, Dunnell noted, Smythe could absolve himself of blame and pretend it was all a decision for the board. Since Stafford would likely refuse to take on Day’s job while his father remained in charge, some tricky footwork remained. But the bottom line was clear: “The fate of Day and Meeker will depend on what Smythe advises the board to do. If you judge by what happened here on the day of St. Patrick you are forced to conclude – no matter how much you like and admire Day and Meeker – that it’s the end of the line.”
Angry and offended, Day took several days to ponder his situation. He had much at stake. His shares in C. Smythe Ltd. paid him much more than his job as general manger of the Leafs. He ran the pit, rising early to put in hours at the Jane Street site before heading to the Gardens. Including salary, bonus, dividends, and directors’ fees he’d earned almost $24,000 from sand and gravel in 1956, compared to $13,600 to manage the Leafs. Disentangling the two would be difficult, if not impossible, so a breach with the Leafs carried heavy financial implications.
While Day thought it over, Smythe, under siege by the press, insisted there’d been no hidden message in any of his remarks. But a week after the New York press conference he agreed to a coast-to-coast radio interview and gave his general manager another nudge. He said he’d named George Armstrong captain in place of Jim Thomson and would “recommend” to the board that both Meeker and Clancy be kept on. As for the status of Hap Day, he was waiting for Day to let him know whether he was “available” for the next season. “I can’t do anything until Hap lets me know if he’s available. If he tells me he is available, then we’ll sit down and talk it over from there.” He expected an answer the next day.23
As a hint, it was even less subtle than the one he’d offered in New York. Why should Day, after three decades, be required to indicate whether he was “available”? That was certainly the question Day had in mind, and the next morning he put it to Smythe in a brief, heated confrontation in his office. “I asked what he meant by asking me if the job was open would I be available,” he told reporters who had huddled outside the office door in anticipation. “I told him I didn’t understand that. He told me there was no use discussing next year’s plans if I weren’t available. I said if that’s the case then I’m not available.” He said he was pleased Meeker was being kept on, then cut short the questioning and headed to his own office. “In his typical whirlwind ‘go-go-go’ fashion, Day wrapped up his parting interview, cleared his desk, posed for pictures and was gone, all in about 10 minutes,” recounted the Globe and Mail.
Smythe appeared at his door and confirmed the outcome: “Mr. Day says he’s not available for next season. That’s that.” The reporters thought he looked crestfallen. “This has put a crimp in my plans,” he allowed. “I thought Hap and King and Howie and myself could do a good job next season.”24
One further surprise was to come. The next morning Day, who usually steered clear of reporters, called his own press conference. “This looks like the dawn of a new Day,” joked one scribe.25 Although Day had hinted at more fireworks, he disappointed the sportswriters. Smythe, he insisted, was “the smartest man in hockey,” adding, “at least, he is now that I’m out of it.” He had never resented his boss’s interference in his coaching or managing. He thought the team had a bright future and plenty of young talent. And he wasn’t going home mad.
“I would like to emphasize that I feel no bitterness or rancor to Maple Leaf Gardens. I resigned or became unavailable on my own volition. I might have just beaten the gun, but I beat it.” He realized changes were in the offing and he might as well accept it. It had become impossible to ignore after the events in New York. “The inference I took from that press conference was that I had been publicly dismembered … that I was walking the plank.”26
He defended his emphasis on defensive hockey and made a cautionary reference to the hovering shadow of Stafford Smythe: “I understand the new system is to play 100% offensive hockey. All I hope is that players like Gordie Howe will let you do it.”
It’s possible Smythe was honestly surprised by the turn of events. Much as he was determined to ensure his son succeeded him, he almost certainly hoped to avoid making a man like Hap Day “walk the plank.” He was accustomed to people being compliant with his needs. King Clancy was more than willing to stick around and do whatever job was needed. Joe Primeau had come and gone without a fuss, willing to help out when needed and return to his concrete block business when he wasn’t. Howie Meeker had agreed to return and had been named general manager. Even at the peak of his conflict with Selke he’d never actually fired the man, he’d just made life unbearable to the point that Selke made the decision for himself.
Given Day’s appreciation that Stafford was the heir apparent, Smythe may have assumed he would bow out gracefully with a new title – “vice-president in charge of something.” If so, he had badly misjudged Day’s temperament. Rather than publicly embarrass him at a press conference in a New York hotel, he could have spoken privately to Day and worked out something they could both live with. But he didn’t.
Just weeks before the blow-up, Stafford was still insisting he had no interest in running the Leafs. “I’ve got too many of my old man’s characteristics,” he said. “I’d have to fight him.”27 But shortly after Day’s departure, Smythe informed Gardens directors he intended to create a “Hockey Committee” headed by Stafford and consisting of his son and six associates “to operate the hockey part of the Maple Leaf Gardens business with respect to personnel, organization, operation and policy.” The board would retain authority over financial matters, but otherwise Smythe would hand hockey affairs to the new committee “on or before Sept. 1, 1957.”28
In his memoirs, Smythe said Stafford had been pushing for more authority for some time. In a heated confrontation, he wrote, Stafford exploded at him: “You’re going to have to retire! I should be running this place.” He even complained to his mother that he was being taken advantage of, precipitating one of the few serious quarrels between Conn and Irene, which ended when Conn showed her the books indicating Stafford was being amply paid.29
The committee was quickly dubbed the “Silver Seven” and became known as much for its late-night partying and generous expense accounts as for its hockey acumen. Ballard wasn’t among the initial seven, but soon replaced one of the originals. Among the others were a jewellery manufacturer who owned the cottage next to the Smythes at Lake Simcoe; George Gardiner, son of the stockbroker who had sold Smythe his Gardens shares at half price; a food executive; and George Mara, a UCC graduate and skilled amateur player whose family owned a liquor distribution business.30 Most notable was John Bassett Jr., owner of the Toronto Telegram and Toronto’s CFTO television station, who had been looking for a place on the Gardens board for several years.
It didn’t take long for the committee to clash with the remnants of the old guard. They felt Day’s defensive “system” had run its course, but Meeker was a proponent of a similar approach. Over the summer of 1957, Stafford largely ignored letters, memos, and suggestions from Meeker aimed at preparing the team for the new campaign.31 Soon after training camp began they got into an argument, Meeker producing documents detailing his efforts to get Stafford’s attention and Stafford brushing him off. When Stafford put his hands on Meeker’s chest to push him away, Meeker recounted; he slugged the Silver Seven chairman between the eyes and walked out.32
Among the powers Stafford still didn’t have was the ability to fire Meeker, so he wrote a memo to his father requesting the new general manager be discharged “for obvious reasons of inexperience and incompatibility with the new set-up.” Conn met with Meeker the same morning; two days later they signed a document attesting that “the Maple Leaf Gardens and Howie Meeker have agreed to disagree” and that Meeker would give up his duties but receive a full year’s salary.33 There was to be no replacement; new coach Billy Reay would be given added duties and King Clancy would carry on as an “assistant” to the GM, who didn’t exist.
As if the situation wasn’t sad enough already, in May that summer Dick Irvin succumbed to bone cancer, which had stricken him around the time he left the Canadiens in 1955 to coach the Black Hawks. Smythe arranged for six members of the 1932 Leafs to carry the casket from the hearse to the gravesite. Dick Irvin Jr., who had never met Smythe, was walking from the grave when he heard Smythe call his name. “He said, ‘Dick!’ And the way he spoke you came to attention. “He said, ‘Don’t you forget your father saved hockey in Montreal.’ And that’s the only time the man ever spoke to me.”34 Two nights before Irvin died, his son had asked him who had been the smartest hockey man he ever met.
“Without hesitation, he replied, ‘Conn Smythe.’ ”35
In all, the events of that season obviously weren’t what Smythe had anticipated. But it was done and Smythe was sticking to it. He was determined to let Stafford run his show and to stay out of his way as much as possible. He would let him succeed or fail on his own.