From Rocky Mountain high to Winnipeg’s deep freeze: Joe Bowen recalls Leafs memories

Completing 44 seasons calling the Maple Leafs on radio and TV, Joe Bowen is retiring this spring.

During this last season for the Hall of Famer, Postmedia will tap into Joe’s vast storybook about select Leafs opponents through the years, many famous players and bygone NHL arenas.

With Toronto visiting Colorado at the start of this trip and concluding Saturday in Winnipeg, a look at two very unique franchises and their original homes:

Excuse Joe if the four stops on this trek doesn’t feel like untangling Christmas lights for summer storage.

Bowen goes back to the Colorado Avalanche as the Quebec Nordiques, when the Utah Mammoth called Arizona home (and before that, played in an old barn in Winnipeg as the original Jets), when the only ice in Vegas was in the Rat Pack’s drinks and today’s Jets were the Atlanta Thrashers.

Bowen first visited Denver with the Leafs in 1995-96 at old McNicols Arena, when the one-time address of Don Cherry’s Colorado Rockies was on its last legs. Lawrence Welk, Elvis and the Grateful Dead helped christen the place 20 years prior, but by the ‘90s it lacked modern conveniences.

Leafs winger Mike Gartner, who played against the Rockies in his early days, was convinced they were the same rickety boards and glass when the Avs moved in. Bowen had to re-tell a half-dozen hockey stories on air one night to kill time after a puck broke a pane of Plexiglass there and no one could properly replace it.

Incredibly, McNichols got to host a Stanley Cup right away when the Avs swept Florida in their first season.

“Aw, that was so nice for those long-suffering fans,” Bowen said in mock-sympathy. “I bet (fans in Quebec) wanted to strangle them.

“But we were all happy for Crow (former Leafs farm team coach Marc Crawford had joined the Avs).”

Pat Burns canned in Colorado

The same season, McNichols was where the late Pat Burns, a great friend of Bowen and the broadcast crew, coached his last game, a 4-0 loss, the Leafs’ eighth straight.

“Sitting on the plane at Denver airport, you knew something was up,” Bowen said. “Pat and (then general manager) Cliff Fletcher kept exchanging written notes a few seats apart, probably working out the dollars for his settlement.”

Bowen has called games involving the old and new Jets, whose first locale was Winnipeg Arena a bit further from downtown than today’s Canada Life Centre. The World Hockey Association Jets were once there, before joining the NHL along with Hartford, Quebec and Edmonton in 1979.

The Arena was famous for its massive 5 by 7-metre portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Mischievous players would try to hit it with pucks in practice, before Her Majesty was sent away for repairs in Toronto during the Jets’ NHL hiatus.

One loud barn

The place was loud like today’s ‘True North’ audience, if not from the cursing and desk pounding of Jets’ long-time GM John Ferguson Sr. At one point, the team put Fergie behind thick, tinted glass to muffle his outbursts.

“He was loud, but not as good as Ron Caron,” laughed Bowen said of the fiery St. Louis GM known for his press box meltdowns at referees and opposing players.

At a Leafs-Jets game in the 1980s, Minnesota North Stars coach Glen Sonmor came up to scout. Sonmor had a glass eye from taking a puck in the face in his playing days years before.

“You had to walk from the press box down a long set of stairs,” Bowen related. “But someone bumped Glen hard and his eye fell out. You heard ‘ping, ping, ping’ all the way down and then Glen shout “hey, somebody kick my eye back, will ya’?”

Bowen, like everyone, has a cold weather story of The Peg.

“The team had a day off there, it was freezing as hell, so Burnsie decides ‘we’re going bowling’ and takes me, (TV analyst) Harry Neale, (director Mark Askin) and Pat’s assistants, Mike Kitchen and Mike Murphy.

“Of course, everyone at the alley recognizes Pat, who is getting loaded with us during trips to the bar. Pat didn’t really have a bowling style, he’s just threw the five-pin balls overhand. He was actually pretty good at getting some spares.

“The manager tried to smile, but as the night went on, he was ready to faint.

“Practice was at 10 a.m. the next day and, by 3 p.m., none of us were a pretty sight.”

lhornby@postmedia.com

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