My tickets to the Hockey Hall of Fame Induction ceremonies
Jim Gregory has his game plan.
"I'm trying to handle it all like a big game," he explained this week in an interview as he prepared for his induction on Monday into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
"You want to have the adrenalin going, but you don't want to be so emotional you can't function."
The problem in treating his induction like a "big game," however, is that he hasn't had to prepare for one of those in a while.
Not since Maple Leaf owner Harold Ballard made the ill-advised – and ultimately disastrous – move of deposing Gregory as the team's general manager in the spring of 1979 has Gregory worked for an NHL club. Soon after being fired by Ballard, he signed on with the NHL Central Scouting department and has worked for the league in one valuable capacity or another ever since.His decade at the helm of the Leafs – he succeeded Punch Imlach in 1969, and then was himself succeeded by Imlach 10 years later – was a tumultuous time, the first part of the franchise's long walk through the wilderness that is still continuing after 40 years.
Others, including Ballard and NHL president Clarence Campbell, advised the young Gregory in the early 1970s not to bother worrying too much about the upstart World Hockey Association, and Gregory ended up overseeing a large, destructive exodus of hockey talent from the Leafs.
But it was what happened in the late 1970s as the WHA was disintegrating, however, that may have proved more pivotal in the history of the club.With the WHA Winnipeg Jets looking to join the NHL, Swedish forwards Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson became available to the highest bidder in the spring of 1978, and Gregory pushed hard to get them.
The Leafs had blazed a trail years earlier by hiring Borje Salming and Inge Hammarstrom, and Hedberg had been on their negotiation list at one point."We were already a hard team to play against," said Gregory. "I believe those guys would have made a difference to us."
As it was, the Rangers won the day, paying between $2.4 million and $2.7 million for the Swedish forwards. Gregory now says he didn't want to upset the Leafs' salary structure, but others believe that he prefers to protect the memory of Ballard, who stubbornly declined to cut the necessary cheques.
The Leafs beat the Islanders in the '78 playoffs but lost to Montreal, and in the ensuing months the unemployed Imlach, canned by Buffalo in December 1978, gained Ballard's ear with the help of King Clancy.
When the Leafs lost to Montreal again in the '79 playoffs, with the Habs then beating the Rangers with Hedberg and Nilsson in the Stanley Cup final, Gregory and coach Roger Neilson were out and Imlach was back in charge."I felt like we were doing a painting," said Gregory. "But three-quarters of the way through we were told we weren't going to paint anymore."
Had Gregory successfully lured Hedberg and Nilsson, Leaf history might have been very different. Two explosive offensive players would have added a new dimension to the Leafs, Gregory might have been able to fend off Imlach's return and the Leafs should have been able to be competitive with the Habs, Islanders and Flyers as the 1980s began.
Instead, Gregory found his path elsewhere, and on Monday it will take him into the Hockey Hall of Fame where he'll join another from his birthplace of Port Colborne, Ont.
"I was born across the street from Ted Kennedy," said Gregory. "He was my idol."
Gregory, then, missed finding immortality as the hockey boss of the Leafs.
But he made it just the same.
