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They say first impressions are everything. And it didn’t get any better than Curtis Joseph’s as a Toronto Maple Leaf. The high-octane Detroit Red Wings, four months removed from winning their second consecutive Stanley Cup, were visiting the sold-out Gardens in the first game of the 1998–99 season. Joseph put on the kind of performance the Leafs would come to expect from the guy they called CuJo, stopping 38 of 39 shots to secure a 2–1 victory for the Buds. “CuJo singlehandedly stole the show,” recalls then-Leafs backup Glenn Healy. “He set the table for what he was going to give any time he played net for the Leafs, and that was: No matter how many shots or scoring chances the other team had, we always had a chance to win.”
When the Leafs signed Joseph from Edmonton in the summer of 1998 it was a major coup for a team that needed an upgrade in goal after finishing dead last in their division the two previous seasons (and being unceremoniously bounced from the first round of the playoffs the two before that). Joseph was established as one of the NHL’s top netminders, and Leafs fans hadn’t forgotten the ’93 playoffs, when he made save after impossible save in round two against the Buds to nearly steal the series for St. Louis. “The only other team I played on where one player had an enormous impact coming in like that was when Gretzky came to L.A.,” says Healy. “CuJo did the same thing. He took us from a nothing team to a 100-point team.”
His first season in Toronto, the Leafs were back in the playoffs, advancing to the conference final. And they found themselves back in the post-season every year Joseph was in net for them. Which is fortunate because, like all greats, that’s where he performed best. Ask any Leafs fan under the age of 30 who their most hated rival is and you’ll unequivocally get the same answer: the Ottawa Senators. It’s fizzled some in recent years, but at the turn of the new millennium, the Battle of Ontario was at its height with the two teams squaring off in the post-season four times in five years–the first three with Joseph tending goal. “Everyone says, ‘Well, you guys always beat Ottawa,'” says Gary Roberts, Joseph’s teammate in Toronto, “But I look at Curtis Joseph really being the difference in those series.” Especially when it mattered most. In elimination games versus the Sens, Joseph boasted a 3-0 record, with a 1.00 GAA, a .967 save percentage and a game-seven shutout in 2002. “Yes, we had a good team,” says Roberts, “but we were very high-risk/high-reward. As a player you always thought, ‘Thank God CuJo’s there.’ He saved our bacon a lot.”
At the beginning of each season, Healy, accustomed to his role as backup, would look at the schedule and find the games he would likely be playing in. “I’d think, ‘OK, four games in six nights, I better be ready'”, he remembers. “But the guy never tired. You would just hear ‘…And the first star: Curtis Joseph!’ Like, how did he do that, again?”
From the bench, Healy had plenty of time to admire Joseph’s game. There, he saw what we all saw: one of the most exciting netminders in history, diving around the net and making the kind of acrobatic saves they don’t teach in goalie school. He was writing his own textbook, seemingly learning–and mastering–the position on the fly. “He relied on instinct and he wasn’t predictable,” says Healy. “That’s what gave shooters the biggest trouble.”
On and off the ice, Joseph’s teammates knew exactly what to expect. He was a calming influence on his teammates, prepared and poised, a consummate pro. “He never seemed too rattled and was always in control, although he looked a little spastic on some of those saves,” Roberts says, laughing.
CuJo played 19 seasons in the NHL. Only five of those included time in a Leafs uniform (counting his 21-game swan song in 2008–09), but the Ontario kid will always be remembered for wearing the blue and white.