Awesome! Get any cool insights or stories?
PS: I’m just a couple months behind ya
Yeah. My wife took a video which we are not allowed to share, but considering when she started, the call was actually 10 minutes long, not 8. And apparently I was supposed to get 2 minutes (I didn't know at the time) so either he's super generous, or I am good at keeping the conversation going, or both.
I started by saying it was a surprise and I had not thought about what I'd say if I ever got the chance to talk to him. So I defaulted to The Goal and told him that it was the greatest goal of my life as a Leafs fan. He spent a couple minutes taking me through it from his eyes, to him it was like a quarterback who had no good pass options so decides to scramble instead. He concedes that if he tried it 1000 more times it wouldn't have worked. (I agree, that's part of why it's so special, it was so improbable and to pull it off in double overtime....) He says he frequently does banquets with Cujo and he always starts his speeches with, "ok, first of all ... You all know he scored a lot of other goals, right?"
We talked about the disappointing results of the Leafs (he said something along the lines of "to lose like that, in
that division....), a little about 1994 (he told a story about how Odjick was shadowing him in game 4, not leaving him alone, so Clark went and threatened Bure and suddenly Odjick gave him more space), 1995 (how the lockout affected him and he had a bad season, he got into 12 games in 2 months in switzerland), the Clark trade changing the team too much even though Sundin had an excellent career in Toronto, and we agreed that when we "fixed" it by getting Clark back it was never quite the same.
A scary part came when I was discussing 1996 with him and how I really had a lot of faith in that team. "You've got Gilmour, Clark, Sundin, Muller, Gagner, Gartner, Murphy and Schneider on D, Potvin in net, that's a team with veteran know-how that should go deep. But then you end up against a team built the same way and you're up against Gretzky, Hull, Fuhr, Corson, MacInnis, Pronger..." and he says, "well, I wasn't there by then...." and the look on my face was like, "oh shit, my memory failed me on a phone call with Dougie!!!!" and then I regained my wits and said, "in 96? Yeah, you were there in 96! Just not in 97." I think he might have misheard something, I mentioned Corson, he may have thought I was talking about when the Leafs had Corson.
After that, he mentioned about how they almost got Gretzky in 1996, how he was asked about it and was 100% in favour of it, they had sponsors like Molson ready to pay the salary even (he estimates 4-5M) and Stavros stopped it. I should have asked who would have been the 3rd line center - it probably would have been him! - or if he thought Mats would have moved to the wing. But honestly it was a strange Spring and Summer for the Leafs with them suddenly caring about money, because shortly after picking up Clark they had 7 "star" forwards but decided to pare it down to 6 by dumping off Andreychuk. And it's March and they're a veteran team looking to make a long run. Why not just keep all hands on deck? And then in the offseason Gartner, Gagner and Gill were gone in cost-cutting moves. In the matter of a few months you dump off four quality vets for nothing and decline to get Gretzky.
So for the most part it was classic stuff he would say in charity banquet speeches but I felt he was speaking pretty openly when he talked about how losing Clark for Sundin changed the team's character, and also the way he implied the current Leafs don't have the right character right now. It was well worth it.
