Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Peter Robinson

the Stanley Cup twice with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Previous to that, Canadian hockey fans had fond memories of him because he helped set up Mario Lemieux when he scored the Canada Cup–clinching goal in 1987. But there was something not quite right about Murphy; though he was a local Toronto lad, he appeared to have picked up something oddly American, or foreign, playing in places such as Los Angeles and Washington. Even though he replaced a Russian — Dmitri Mironov — in the Leafs lineup, there was a sense that he was an outsider, an intruder, not long for Toronto. Murphy just didn’t seem to fit with his home city and its fans. It likely had something to do with his salary, as players’ paycheques were starting to grow fatter by the mid-1990s and Murphy was making more than $2-million a year. Murphy’s play during his first season in Toronto, statistically speaking, was fine, and he notched 61 points, only marginally behind his numbers in Pittsburgh, a club that had much more offensive firepower headed up by Lemieux. But there was something missing. He had been touted as a puck-moving defenceman, which the Leafs had needed even during their impressive playoff runs to the conference final. Murphy, as the point totals suggested, had done okay in that role, but there was also the worrying sight of him looking helplessly behind him as speedier opposition forwards blew past. That image tended to stick out more than the still-impressive offensive game he brought to the table.

      Worse, on this early spring night when the Leafs needed him to stop up most, Murphy simply wasn’t up to the task, or so it appeared. By the time the Leafs fell behind the Blues, virtually every time he touched the puck, Murphy was booed mightily. I will confess I was not shy in joining in the chorus.

      The Murphy–Toronto marriage was destined to not end well. In the next season the Leafs were spiralling out of the playoff race and on their way to the aforementioned cellar. Players such as Gilmour and Dave Andreychuk had already been dealt away before Murphy headed down to Detroit.

      And now here I was watching the aftermath in an exotic locale that seemed just as foreign as the thought of Murphy becoming a Stanley Cup champion again. Given that the Leafs were never going to win anything that spring, it just seemed, well, annoying that Murphy got the opportunity to leave Toronto unscathed. Worse, the fact he kind of slid into such a good situation in Detroit after failing to prevent such a bad one in Leafs-land was enough to make you want to punch Murphy’s lights out.

      On the other hand, Bob Rouse had joined the Red Wings three years earlier and was long embedded on their blue line, so it was both not surprising and even a bit gratifying to see the dependable former Leaf on the television screen that day in Bangkok.

      A year later, both Murphy and Rouse acquired a third member of the former Leafs club: Jamie Macoun. I was back in Southeast Asia, this time in Bali, watching it all unfold on television again. Like Bangkok, Bali’s charms are extensive, not the least of which are the liberal cultural norms and wide abundance of sports (and other things) available. I was in Kuta Beach in an Irish pub watching the Red Wings take control of the Western Conference final over Dallas. (Four years later the same pub was the site of a “diversion” bomb to the massive one that killed more than two hundred people just up the street at the Sari Club.)

      Larry Murphy (left) and Jamie Macoun both left the Maple Leafs and immediately won a Stanley Cup with Detroit. This picture seemed unimaginable eighteen months before it was taken in 1998.

       Courtesy of Getty Images.

      Watching with me was a Kiwi friend, Mark, a car salesman from Wellington who had never been out of New Zealand before. To say he was caught up in the moment of being on the lash in Southeast Asia was like saying I was gobsmacked that Macoun, whom I honestly believed to be the worst defenceman in the NHL when I left Canada eighteen months earlier, was on the verge of winning the Stanley Cup. During the past year, I had gleaned through agate type in Australian newspapers that Macoun had ended up in Detroit. As much as I disliked Murphy, I positively hated Macoun. As I looked up at the screen, it was surreal he could be playing a key role on a team well on its way to another Stanley Cup win. It was him all right, right down to the cookie duster moustache.

      “That guy looks like my dad’s mate,” said Mark, when I pointed out Macoun and the reason for my disbelief. “And I say his mate because my mom would have never let my dad wear a moustache like that.”

      Back before I had left on my trip, Macoun’s tendency to cross-check the living daylights out of opposing forwards had become even more painful for Leafs fans than it was for the unfortunate players on the receiving end of them. A good stay-at-home defenceman since arriving as part of the Gilmour trade in 1992, Macoun appeared to have made the decision to wear flippers instead of skates — he slowed down almost overnight. His laying the lumber on opponents was no longer oddly endearing. That’s because the cross-checks seemed to be coming more and more frequently just as the soon-to-be-injured opposition forward was scoring a goal.

      The cross-checking just topped it all off. Back in Macoun’s time with the Leafs, a defenceman had to know the black art of using his stick for something other than shooting or passing. Macoun learned the craft perhaps better than any defenceman in the NHL and it was a central feature of his more than 1,100 games. It was an amazing run for a kid who grew up just north of Toronto and didn’t even get drafted by an NHL team.

      By that point in his career, Macoun was so stay-at-home he barely crossed over centre ice into the opposition zone. It was also long before Movember made it acceptable for thirty days a year to adorn your upper lip with hair, especially when it lacked the charm of Lanny McDonald’s legendary ’tache. Despite winning a Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames in 1989, Macoun was not an agreeable sight on the ice either, as his natural skating stride made him look like a disabled car heading for the exits of a demolition derby.

      Your typical hockey fan, especially in Toronto, is generally not interested in the folly of blaming defencemen for all things bad when teams start to slip. That’s especially true when you’re talking about a man who isn’t exactly easy on the eyes. In fact, Macoun had the faint appearance of dressing up for Halloween but being caught equidistant between Tom Selleck and Ned Flanders.

      That Macoun and Murphy became lightning rods for criticism was understandable, because fans tend to want to apportion blame when things aren’t going well. But the fact that so many out-of-favour Leafs moved on and often did very well when they appeared to be on their last legs in Toronto is a phenomenon that has had me screaming Craig Muni’s name since the late 1980s.

      “Jamie Macoun is the worst defenceman in the NHL,” said a young kid of about seventeen beside me during my last game at the Gardens before I left on my trip. It was just one of thousands of comments I’ve heard from people around me in my time attending Leafs games. Most are instantly forgotten, but I’ve always remembered this particular barb because I had attempted to defend Macoun before the young man convinced me otherwise. That sentiment stuck with me and the negative thoughts never left me after watching live that night how much Macoun struggled to keep up with an Ottawa team that wasn’t exactly flush with talent.

      Bali’s famous Arak drink tends to blur the lines between reality and fiction. That afternoon, watching the grainy television pictures of the three former Leafs well on their way to winning the Stanley Cup, I poured back the Arak to keep myself from crying. I was spurred on by the liberal amounts of beverage, the game, and Murphy, Macoun, and Rouse’s presence in it, and so I decided it was time for a mental overview of what had happened to the Leafs over the past two seasons since I had been away.

      Burns’s long-ago firing had confirmed that the jig was up for that wonderful group of Leafs players that had gotten to two conference finals, even if I was still in denial before I left Canada. It’s perhaps logical that a few players are suddenly cast in the role of heel, as Macoun and Murphy were by the frustrated masses. But for one of the game’s greatest coaches, Scotty Bowman, to find a use for them, and then go on to win the Stanley Cup? Had you told the average Maple Leafs fan that night at the Gardens in 1996 that Macoun and Murphy were going to be hoisting hockey’s premier trophy over their heads, you would have been asked where you bought such effective medicinal enhancements, something far more powerful than Arak.

      Holy, shit, this