43 Years of Maple Leaf Frustration: 1972-73 Season

After Harold Ballard let some of his most valuable assets jump to the WHA (including future Hall of Fame goalie Bernie Parent), the remaining Leafs were undermanned and demoralized.  To be more accurate many of the players gladly jumped to the new league to get away from the Gardens zoo. All the previous shrewd deals by Jim Gregory went for naught as the 1972-73 Leafs turned out to be one of the weakest Leaf teams ever. At least up to that point in Leaf history since there were many more bad years to come. Toronto finished with the fourth-worst record in the entire NHL, even finishing behind the expansion team in Atlanta. With Parent gone and Plante traded to Boston, the Leaf goalie tandem was Gord McRae and Ron Low.

The Leafs needed a miracle now to start its climb back to respectability. But with the intelligent maneuvering by Jim Gregory along with some creative thinking, the Leafs turned around sooner than could have been expected.  McLellan resigned as coach in 1973 to become the Leafs' assistant general manager. He had missed a portion of the previous season because of an ulcer.  Who could blame him working for Ballard.

That summer, with the Leafs first-round choice in the draft (4th overall), the Leafs selected westerner Lanny McDonald who would eventually become a popular star in Toronto. With the 10th overall pick that Gregory had obtained in a trade with Philadelphia, the Leafs chose tough junior defenceman Bob Neely from Peterborough. And finally in the first round, with the 15th overall pick obtained from Boston in a trade for Jacques Plante, the Leafs were fortunate enough to draft defenceman Ian Turnbull from the Ottawa 67’s.

But that wasn’t all. Because of the 1972 Summit series, NHL executives were now aware that there was a potential pool of players on the other side of the Atlantic. The Leaf scouts, in a rather pioneering move, went to Sweden and brought back with them a superbly skilled 26-year-old winger named Inge Hammarstrom as well as a shy by supremely talented 21-year old defenceman named Borje Salming.