Each day from now until the Winter Classic, Sportsnet will count down the greatest Toronto Maple Leafs of all time.
Turk Broda managed to be arguably the best goalie ever to wear a Maple Leafs uniform and his team’s unofficial mascot at the same time. He had a reliable, square-featured lunch pail of a face, and his natural expression was an ecstatic grin. “The Leafs pay me for my work in practices and I throw in the games for free,” he’d claim. The media might have loved him even more than the fans—and the fans adored him.
Broda spent his entire NHL career as a Leaf, with two lost seasons between 1943 and ’45 for military duty. He was revered as the ultimate clutch goalie, carving his regular-season career GAA of 2.53 down to 1.98 in the playoffs, and racking up 62 regular-season and 13 playoff shutouts. “The bonus money for winning wasn’t much, but I always needed it,” he explained. “Or maybe I was just too dumb to know the situation was serious.”
Broda was born in Brandon, Man., in 1914. Questionable skating skills and a physique later described as “pudgy” by most of those who wrote about him got him parked in the net. One day in school, a teacher told his class about a king called “Turkey Egg” because of his freckled face; a classmate pointed out Broda’s freckles, and Walter became “Turk” from that day on.
It may have been his Prairie-boy innocence that led indirectly to his NHL career. The Red Wings did an exhibition tour of Western Canada in 1934 and Broda tracked down coach Jack Adams’s hotel and, dragging his friend Mud Bruneteau along, showed up at Adams’s door, just a star-struck kid hoping to meet his idols. Adams gave the pair tickets to that night’s game and was so taken by their enthusiasm that he invited them to Detroit’s training camp.
Broda impressed enough to stay, starting out with the Olympics of the International Hockey League. That’s where Conn Smythe saw him in 1936 and promptly paid Detroit $7,500 to acquire him. Hockey observers thought Detroit had ripped off Toronto in a big way. Smythe disagreed. “Broda could tend goal in a tornado and never blink an eye,” he said. “And you can blame any carelessness on youth. He’ll outgrow that in a hurry.” He did, quickly establishing himself as one of the NHL’s best netminders and winning the Vezina Trophy in 1940–41.
In 1942, the Leafs reached the Stanley Cup Final only to be stunned by Detroit, who ran off with the first three games of the series. Then, with Broda in the crease, Toronto staged a comeback that has never been duplicated. The Leafs narrowly won game four and a newspaper headline trumpeted, “Broda’s brilliant goaling sparks Leafs to victory in great comeback fight.” The Leafs demolished Detroit 9–3 in game five and then Broda slammed the door in game six, staging a 3–0 shutout as frustrated Detroit fans pitched fruit, peanuts and eggs at him. The victory brought the series back to Toronto for the first game seven in Final history, and Broda stood on his head once again, holding the score to 3–1 to take the Cup.
He backstopped Toronto to four more Cups in 1947, ’48, ’49 and ’51. In spite of his incredible performance, Smythe became convinced Broda’s extra padding was slowing him down and ordered him to lose a few pounds in 1949, sparking a public “Battle of the Bulge.” Broda vamped shamelessly, posing for photos on the scale and telling reporters all about his diet, but on the deadline, he showed up as “a stylish 189-pounder,” according to the New York Times, and shut out the Rangers.
Broda died of a heart attack in 1972, at just 58 years old. He was the first goalie in NHL history to reach 300 wins, and though he’s been gone 40 years, he still has a lock on most Leafs goaltending records—games played (629), minutes (38,167), wins (302) and shutouts (62).
Turk Broda—small-town Prairie boy, genius in the crease, amiable smartass—made it easy to believe him when he said, “I’m just a fellow who loves to play hockey.”