Before the puck drops on their opening round series, GordStellick breaks down the history between the Leafs and Bruins:
The vivid memories of the Leafs’ last Stanley Cup win over the Montreal Canadiens remain today. But it was their first-round win over the Chicago Black Hawks that was the big upset. Chicago had finished the regular season with 94 points, a healthy 17 points better than the 77 accumulated by second-place Montreal.
But he hadn’t scored in the series against the Leafs and he felt the wrath of GM Tommy Ivan and coach Billy Reay. The bad feelings were mutual. As Esposito chatted with Hull while consuming beverages, he looked at Ivan and Reay and expressed an expletive-laden opinion about how the team could never win with them in charge.
Esposito told me he went to the Hawks’ executive offices the next day hoping to mend fences. Ivan just yelled through his closed office door to his secretary: “Give him his travel money and tell him to get the hell out of here.” Just a few weeks later, Chicago completed a very one-sided trade, sending Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield to Boston in exchange for Gilles Marotte, Pit Martin and Jack Norris. The cast for the Bruins’ two Stanley Cups in the 1970s was now pretty well complete.
There can be no question that this trade was in many ways a product of the disappointment of that first-round upset versus the Leafs. So in a roundabout way, the Leafs provided yet another big boost to the Bruins roster.This is the day that the Punch Imlach era died. The Leafs were not only swept by Boston in their first-round playoff series — they were humiliated by a total margin of 24 goals to five.
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