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On the floor at the 1994 draft, Pat Burns would occasionally look at the reporter asking him questions about the franchise-altering deal the Toronto Maple Leafs had just completed. But for the most part, the coach — sporting a beard that served as a reminder of the team’s recent playoff success — stared straight ahead, using the words “I guess” more than once while providing his take on the trade that sent beloved Toronto captain Wendel Clark to the Quebec Nordiques and young Swede Mats Sundin to Hogtown. No doubt inhibiting Burns’s ability to digest the trade was the fact that the teams had just exchanged such disparate players. Had the clubs been swapping fashion accessories, the Leafs would have given the Nords a steel belt buckle in exchange for high-end cufflinks.
When Burns talked about the new Leaf, it seemed he was trying to rationalize the move in his own mind as much as anything else.
“Mats Sundin is a good, skilled player, don’t forget that,” he said.
Justification for the move may have originally focused on the big centre’s talent, but over time it became blatantly apparent that he brought a host of other attributes to the table that helped him not only succeed, but become an iconic player for an entire generation of Leaf supporters.
“If you were putting together what you would want your best hockey player to look like, play like or act like, he’s right up there,” says former teammate Glenn Healy. “He’s Mark Messier–like in many ways.”
Sundin’s fire burned just as hot as any other Leafs leader, the difference being his embers were contained within, while his predecessors wore an outward snarl. It took time for fans to realize the smooth Swede was giving his all every time out, that he really was pushing that prodigious six-foot-five, 231-lb. frame to its limit.
Sundin used that big body and a wide array of skills to beat opponents in a multitude of ways. He was as dangerous on the fly as he was protecting the puck down low. His one-timer from the half-wall on the power play was just about unstoppable and accounted for a good number of his franchise-record 420 goals. He was also clutch, leading the league with 10 game-winners in 2003–04 and notching 15 overtime goals in his career, tied for second-best in NHL history.
“He was very competitive, like very competitive,” says Healy. “He wouldn’t back down from anyone or anything. There’s nothing he couldn’t do.”
And there wasn’t much that could be done to keep Sundin, Toronto’s all-time points leader with 987, out of the lineup. In six seasons from 1996–97 to 2001–02, Sundin played a full 82-game campaign five times. With the exception of the lockout-shortened 1994–95 season, he never dressed for fewer than 70 contests while a Maple Leaf, including in 2005–06, when he was struck in the face with a puck and fractured his orbital bone on the opening night of the season.
When Sundin fractured his wrist in the first round of the 2002 playoffs against the New York Islanders, it was expected he would miss whatever time the Leafs had left in the post-season. He made it back for game two of the Eastern Conference final and, though the Leafs bowed out to the Carolina Hurricanes, Sundin registered four points in five games upon his return.
That resilience was just one trait that made Sundin, who succeeded Doug Gilmour as team captain in 1997, a tremendous leader. Playing under the crush of intense media scrutiny, Sundin — who left Toronto as the longest-serving European captain in league history — was always willing to answer for the team, regardless of circumstance. And for all the carping fans did about Sundin never being flanked by wingers who matched his abilities, the big pivot never once publicly complained. He knew how to handle himself and other people.
“He cared about everybody — he treated the guy who picked up towels as well as he treated Tie Domi,” says Healy. “There was no pecking order. Mats knew what it took to get everybody on the same page.”
Another former teammate, Gary Roberts, echoes that sentiment.
“He always seemed genuinely happy for the person who was having success and he always cheered his teammates on and made everybody feel part of the team,” Roberts says. “He was a very generous person.”
But not to a fault. Sundin may have been the kind of offensive star who commanded a $9-million salary, but that didn’t mean he was about to go making careless turnovers.
“He lived in the same apartment on Bay Street for $1,000 a month for a decade until he was forced at gunpoint to move out by his girlfriend,” says Healy, happy to take a shot at his old buddy’s frugal ways.
That Sundin didn’t require a splashy spread was perfectly in line with the way he carried himself for 13 sturdy seasons in Toronto. By the time Sundin returned in the winter of 2012 to have his No. 13 raised to the rafters, the guy once traded for the face of the franchise had himself become one of the most celebrated players in team history.
That night, Sundin acknowledged that, while Leafs fans weren’t sure what to make of him initially, he had some ambivalent feelings of his own after being tossed into a hockey hotbed.
Former Leaf and fellow Swede Borje Salming reassured him he was about to experience something special.
“I didn’t know then, but I know now what he meant,” Sundin told the adoring crowd. “The great tradition and the great history of the Maple Leafs that I’m now a part of.”