National Post from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 73

The great debate The There's NBA's really Nash or wrong Nowitzki answer. for Page MVP? S5 SPORTS SI NATIONAL POST, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2007 Nothing short ofa miracle Leafs defied odds to capture that final Stanley Cup WAYNE SCANLAN in Ottawa Today, it is a source of derision as much as pride. The Maple Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967? Tonight, though, the Leafs jokes subside. Tonight, across the nation, goosebumps will run down spines when Dave Keon, the mighty little centre who played his heart out for the Leafs, and had his heart broken by the Leafs, joins his 1967 teammates and steps onto the Air Canada Centre ice to mend a feud that has simmered for three decades. Hardly an imposing figure at 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds, Keon could skate a river, his head up, his posture perfect.

Typical of his style, he scored just three goals and five assists in Toronto's 12 playoff games in 1967, and yet Keon deservedly won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP for his relentless checking and ultimate presence. Months later, Keon had a contract disagreement with Harold Ballard, who was just beginning to wrestle the club ownership from the Smythe family. After he played out his career in the World Hockey Association and with the NHL Hartford Whalers, Keon and the Leafs made attempts at reconciliation, but he couldn't get over the hurt caused when Toronto declined to follow the Montreal Canadiens' example of retiring the sweater numbers of their stars. Ace Bailey (6) and Bill Barilko (5) are the only Leafs with retired numbers. In the recent book '67 by Damien Cox and Gord Stellick, Keon called the Leafs' system of "honouring" numbers "a chickens--- way to do things." Keon said he was embarrassed for legends like Syl Apps and Ted Kennedy who went before him, and had to see their numbers remain in circulation.

"I'm embarrassed for them all," Keon said. "I confronted Leafs Ken Dryden and said, 'Do you think the Montreal Canadiens would just honour the Rocket's Dryden's own No. 29 was recently retired by the Habs. Keon's number has not yet been "honoured" by Toronto. Perhaps tonight's ceremony will be the first step in having No.

14 properly retired. Even though the Leafs roster was creaking with age, the demarcation point wasn't as obvious then as it would soon become that the franchise would so rapidly decline and decay. This was, after all, the Leafs' fourth Stanley Cup of the 1960s, including three straight from 1962-64. The assumption was that there would be plenty more, if not immediately, then soon enough. In the days of the NHL's Original Six teams, the Cup had generally alternated between Toronto and 1 Montreal, in a two-forthe Habs, one-for-the-Leafs kind of way, with an occasional detour to Detroit.

No one knew what to make of this new animal called expansion, a doubling of the league to 12 teams from six, on the horizon for 1967-68. If only Leaf Nation had envisioned how precious an event the 1967 Cup season was to become, it might have celebrated more heartily. See OLD LEAFS on Page S3 TORONTO (080 MAPLE LEAFS MAPLE ON 70 MAPLE LEAFS GRAPHIC ARTISTS HOCKEY HALL OF FAME Nothing not even crutches could keep Larry Jeffrey from celebrating the Cup win in 1967, and nothing will keep him from reuniting with his old team at the ACC tonight. An injury may have sidelined Larry Jeffrey's post-season in 1967, but nothing was going to keep him off the ice once the Leafs won the Cup A crutch player he crutches "I'm says says prompting. it the it in again.

guy And the on without then pic- the ture," says Larry Jeffrey. "I'm the guy on the crutches. People ask me: 'Are you that "And I say: 'Yup. That's me." And then he shows them the 1967 Stanley Cup championship ring he wears on his right hand, a shiny trinket he earned as a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The black and white photograph that the curious still pester Jeffrey, his two grown children and his two grandchildren about was taken at Maple Leaf Gardens moments after the Leafs dispatched the Montreal Canadiens to clinch the 1967 Cup.

In the photo, a dapperly dressed Jeffrey appears with his hands on Leafs captain George Armstrong's shoulders, crutches at his side, torn cartilage in his right knee. "I was disappointed that I wasn't playing," Jeffrey says. "I still got the crutches. They are down in the basement, collecting dust." Close to the crutches, is a medieval looking knee brace the rugged leftwinger once wore to safeguard his ravaged joint. It is a creaky relic from the Dark Ages of sports medicine, an aluminum-hinged reminder that in BY JOE O'CONNOR Jeffrey's day a trip to the doctor would often mean the death of an NHL career.

But Jeffrey was a survivor long before he was a Stanley Cup champion. The Goderich, native had 1 11 knee surgeries in a nine-year span, a cycle of playing, getting hurt, getting operated on and getting healthy that started in his final season of junior with the Hamilton Red Wings. "Our coach was Eddie Bush," Jeffrey says. "He decided he was going to have some goofy play in practice. The idea was our line would have sticks, lowing year for 18 games before teammate Ted Green levelled him in practice.

"It wasn't a clean hit," Jeffrey says. Surgery No. 2 was for torn ligaments. For the next five seasons Jeffrey went to the hospital after every game, where doctors drained the fluid from his right knee, shot him full of painkillers and said, "See you soon." It was during this time that the brace was born. The aluminum contraption featured four wing nuts that Jeffrey tightened, locking his leg in a None of us ever enjoyed coming to the Gardens.

It wasn't a fun place to be' and the other line was going to check us without sticks. "I know the guy's name, and I don't want to say it, but he decided he was going to knee me." So he did, a shot to the thigh that left Jeffrey with a crippling charley horse, and unable to bend at the knee. The Red Wings organization sent their prospect to a specialist. The doctor's solution was to call for a colleague, have the colleague pin the hockey player at the shoulders, and then apply brute force to the leg until it bent. And, after a while, it did.

Jeffrey jumped to the NHL the fol- "He would pick on Pappin and Shaky Walton, and he almost drove Frank to have a nervous breakdown. "None of us enjoyed coming to the Gardens. It wasn't a fun place to be." Jeffrey wanted ont. So he approached assistant general manager King Clancy and asked to be sent somewhere, anywhere. Toronto assigned the forward to its farm club in Rochester.

But after a strong campaign that included winning a Calder Cup with the Americans, Jeffrey was back playing for Imlach in the fall of 1966. He scored a career-high 11-goals in 56 regular-season games for the 1966-67 Leafs. He even added a playoff assist against Chicago in the semifinals, before some bad ice led to the photograph Jeffrey has been talking about for the past 40 years. "It was a nothing play," he says. "I got a long pass from Ellis, and I hit something." He heard a "snap," and just like that his post-season was over.

Jeffrey watched the Cup-clinching game from behind the Toronto bench. He crutched across the snowy ice surface when it was over, placed on his hands on his captain's shoulders, and smiled for the camera. "I'll always be the guy on the crutches," Jeffrey says. And he will always have a Stanley Cup ring on his finger. National Post skating position.

"I played like that for five years," he says. "After practices I'd have a whirlpool. You know what the whirlpool was back then?" It was a two inch-wide hose, four towels and a stream of hot water aimed at a bad right knee. Jeffrey left Detroit for Toronto in May, 1965. He quickly realized that his bum joint was not half as painful as his new coach, Punch Imlach.

"I come to Toronto and, ah, holy, it was a completely different atmosphere," he says. "To Imlach, everybody was the 'worst prick' he ever saw. We were 'sons-of-bitches..