TORONTO (AP) â Frank Mahovlich canât pick a side. Who can blame him?
The Hall of Famer won four Stanley Cup championships with the Toronto Maple Leafs â including the franchiseâs last title in 1967 â and two more as a member of the Montreal Canadiens in the early 1970s.
So when the Original Six rivals open their first playoff meeting in 42 years on Thursday night, Mahovlich will simply be an interested observer.
âI wonât be cheering for either one of them,â the 83-year-old said with a laugh during a phone interview with The Canadian Press. âI donât want to make anybody upset. Theyâre both great teams and they treated me so well.â
The Leafs and Canadiens used to meet regularly in the playoffs, tussling eight times between 1951 and 1967 before the NHL started to expand.
âIt was electric,â Mahovlich recalled of the atmosphere inside the Montreal Forum or Maple Leaf Gardens. âYou stepped on the ice and people were cheering like crazy ⦠and nothingâs happened yet.â
The rivalry between Canadaâs two biggest cities, of course, goes far beyond sports, with long, complicated threads woven through history, language, culture and economics.
âThere has always been a competitive nature between Toronto and Montreal,â said Brian Conacher, a member of the â67 Leafs. âThereâs always been this competitive spirit both on and off the ice. It was a lot of things. It was a very big deal.â
The final in 1967 â Torontoâs last playoff victory over Montreal came that year â was important for a number of reasons beyond the game.
âIt was the last playoff series of the Original Six, it was Toronto against Montreal, and it was Canadaâs centennial,â Conacher said. âIt was also Expo 67 in Montreal, where the expectation was that the Canadiens would be showing off the Stanley Cup in the Quebec pavilion.â
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There would be just two more postseason matchups since then, with Montreal sweeping Toronto in both 1978 and 1979 on the way to winning the Canadiensâ fifth and sixth championships of the decade.
âItâs historic,â said Scotty Bowman, who won five titles as Montrealâs head coach. âWe had a good rivalry.â
âEveryone sees that we won four straight games and we had nine Hall of Famers,â said former Canadiens defenseman Larry Robinson. âBut as anyone whoâs played knows, no game is easy. The games were a lot closer.â
The fourth and final encounter at the Gardens in 1979 ended controversially when Leafs forward Tiger Williams took a penalty for high-sticking on Robinson in overtime. The blue-liner blasted home the winner on the ensuing power play, but along with some of Torontoâs players, had to restrain an irate Williams from going after the referee.
Part of the reason the Leafs and Canadiens havenât met in the postseason for more than four decades is because they resided in different conferences for much of the 1980s and 1990s.
The teams got close to a dream matchup in the 1993 final, but Wayne Gretzkyâs Los Angeles Kings eliminated Toronto in Game 7 of the conference final before falling to Montreal â Canadaâs last Cup win.
The Maple Leafs havenât won the Cup since trading Mahovlich to the Detroit Red Wings in 1968. A family legend goes that his older sister, Anne, put a curse on Toronto that seems to have stuck.
âShe hasnât taken it off,â joked Mahovlich, who was subsequently dealt to Montreal in 1971. âI donât know whatâs going to happen.â
Fans, while not allowed in either arena because of COVID-19 restrictions, are bubbling with excitement now that the matchup is here. The same goes for some of the gameâs greats.
âThis is long overdue,â former Toronto winger Lanny McDonald said. âIâll be glued to the television set. Canât wait.â
âLong overdueâ: Leafs, Canadiens meet again in playoffs originally appeared on NBCSports.com