Babando, 1950 champion for Red Wings, among forgotten Stanley Cup heroes

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday.
This week Stan remains in playoff mode with a list of 10 players whose key postseason achievements were important at the time but mostly have been forgotten. The group includes three goalies, six forwards and one defenseman. They are listed in alphabetical order.

1. ANDY AITKENHEAD. After the New York Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in 1928, manager Lester Patrick sought a replacement for his starting goalie, Lorne Chabot, who had been felled with a serious eye injury. Patrick believed that Chabot would never regain top form and sought replacement for four seasons. None pleased the "Silver Fox" until the fall of 1932 when young Andy Aitkenhead passed his audition at Rangers training camp. Although the native of Scotland had never played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, he surprised everyone by leading the Rangers to their second Cup triumph in 1933, finishing off the Toronto Maple Leafs with a 1-0 shutout in Game 4 of the Final. He played all eight postseason games for New York and was regarded as an overnight sensation. Unfortunately, "Handy Andy" didn't last long in the NHL. The Rangers were quickly eliminated from the playoffs a year later. After that, Aitkenhead played only 10 more NHL games and spent the rest of his career a forgotten man in the minors.
   2. PETE BABANDO: Until his heroics in the 1950 Stanley Cup Final, Pete Babando's claim to fame was the fact that he was the only National Hockey League player born in the tiny town of Braeburn, Pennsylvania. But "Pistol Pete" really learned the game of hockey after his family moved to northern Ontario. He reached the NHL at age 22 in 1947-48 with the Boston Bruins, though they let him go after two season and the Detroit Red Wings signed him for the 1949-50 season as a utility forward, when he scored six goals in 65 regular-season games. Red Wings manager Jack Adams decided to use Babando during the Cup Final against the Rangers and he paid back the favor in Game 7. Fresher than most players by the second overtime period, Babando was in the right place when Detroit center George Gee won a face-off deep in the New York zone. "George sent me the pass and I whipped the puck past Charlie Rayner for the Cup-winner," Babando recalled. "The next season Jack Adams traded me to Chicago and I never was in the playoffs again!" Pete did bounce around the minors for a long time and became a hero in the tiny town of Clinton, New York, playing many for years with the Clinton Comets of the Eastern Hockey League.
   3.KEN DORATY: The longest NHL game played up until that time took place on April 3, 1933 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. With the Stanley Cup Semifinals between the Maple Leafs and Bruins tied, Game 5 would be the deciding contest. That helps explain why it was attended by the largest crowd (14,530) in Canadian history at the time. The teams played five overtime periods without any score. By that time there was talk of the two clubs settling the decision with a coin toss but players on both teams rejected the idea. Maple Leafs coach Dick Irvin knew that his best players were the most fatigued because they had played so much. Early in the sixth overtime period, he sent rarely-used -- but very fresh -- Ken Doraty over the boards with Andy Blair. Seeing a very tired Bruins defenseman Eddie Shore in the corner, Blair pursued Shore, who tried a clearing pass. Blair intercepted it and skimmed the puck to Doraty. Iconic Canadian play-by-play broadcaster Foster Hewitt shouted, "Blair passes; Doraty takes it … HE SHOOTS! HE SCORES!!" The time was 4:46 of the sixth overtime. To this day it remains the second-longest game in NHL history (164:46), after the Red Wings' 1-0 win against the Montreal Maroons (176:03) on March 24, 1936 in the Game 1 of the Semifinals.
   4. REG FLEMING: For many followers of the Chicago Black Hawks, Fleming was best known for his rugged play and affinity for fisticuffs. But I remember watching the Montreal native when he stepped out of character and became a Windy City scoring hero. This was in the 1961 Stanley Cup Final when Chicago was shooting for its first championship since 1938. With the Black Hawks leading the series 3-2, Game 6 was played at Olympia Stadium in Detroit. The Red Wings got the crowd going when they took a 1-0 lead and seemed destined to win the game. That's when Fleming took over, outshining such high-profile teammates as Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita. Hockey historian Andrew Podnieks wrote, "Fleming scored a pretty goal to tie the game and ignite a Chicago rally that gave the team the Cup" in a 5-1 victory. Fleming was good enough to play for four Original Six teams and four times scored more than 10 goals in a season. The fact that Fleming ignited the Cup rally was overshadowed by the festivities that followed in Chicago celebrating the Black Hawks winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in 23 years.
   5. PETE LANGELLE: The Landiak Family of Winnipeg was bursting with pride when the Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup in 1942. Toronto was down 3-0 against Detroit and then won four straight games for the championship. There was no "Landiak" on the Maple Leafs roster, but there was a member of their family on the team. It turns out that Pete Langelle, who scored Toronto's Cup-winning goal in 1942, was a Landiak of Polish-Ukrainian parents. His real name was changed by the directors of a French-Canadian team in St. Boniface, a French-Canadian part of Winnipeg. Club owners asked him to change his name to the more French-sounding Langelle to attract more local fans; and so he did. After scoring the championship goal for Toronto, Langelle joined the Canadian Army and served during World War II. But when he returned from active duty in 1945, there was no room for him on the Maple Leafs roster and he never again played in the NHL, neither as a Langelle nor Landiak.
   6. JACK MCINTYRE: The 1953 playoffs loomed as a disaster for the Bruins. Their first-round opponent, the defending champion Red Wings, had one of the strongest teams in NHL history. Led by goalie Terry Sawchuk, plus forwards Ted Lindsay and Gordie Howe, the Red Wings walloped the Bruins 7-0 in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Semifinals and seemed set on a four-game sweep. But Boston surprisingly won Game 2 at Olympia Stadium in Detroit, 5-3, and then turned the series topsy turvy at home in Game 3 for what turned out to be a turning point at Boston Garden. The score was tied 1-1 after regulation and the game went to overtime. To the astonishment of just about everybody, the winning goal was scored by a previously unheralded forward from Brussels, Ontario, John (Jack) McIntyre. He beat the inimitable Sawchuk at 12:29 of overtime, giving Boston a totally unexpected 2-1 victory on its way to a six-game series win. The Bruins lost in five games to the Montreal Canadiens in the 1953 Stanley Cup Final and McIntyre eventually played his final three seasons in the NHL with the Red Wings from 1957-60.
   7.JOE MILLER: As NHL goalies go, Joe Miller of Morrisburg, Ontario, had a fairly unremarkable career in the NHL. But he did have an intriguing end to his rookie season. It began with a team that didn't make the playoffs, yet Joe wound up winning the Stanley Cup with a different team in the same city. Miller played in 1927-28 with the New York Americans, a colorful club that failed to make the playoffs. Meanwhile, New York's other team, the Rangers, reached the Cup Final against the heavily favored Montreal Maroons. Rangers goalie Lorne Chabot was seriously injured in Game 2, and, unbelievably, replaced by 45-year-old Rangers general manager Lester Patrick, who won the game. With Chabot hospitalized, Patrick needed a regular goalie and obtained Miller on loan from the Americans. Miller allowed only three goals in three games to help the Rangers win the Stanley Cup for the first time. Even more remarkably, hardly anyone remembers Miller's heroics because they were overshadowed by the Patrick gambit.
   8. DON RALEIGH: One afternoon Barney Kremenko, the Rangers' beat writer for the New York Journal-American newspaper went to Belmont Racetrack on Long Island. Noticing a longshot nag named Bag O' Bones, Barney bet -- and won -- handsomely on the filly and found himself loaded with money when he arrived at Madison Square Garden for the evening's NHL game. As it happened that night in the 1949-50 season, skinny Rangers center Don Raleigh was named first star. "I remembered my winning horse -- Bag O' Bones," Kremenko recalled, "and Raleigh's big game on a skinny body. So, I nicknamed my favorite Ranger, 'Bag 'O Bones.' But since the nickname was too long for headline purposes, it was trimmed to just 'Bones'." Raleigh's new handle stuck and twice made headlines during the 1950 Stanley Cup Final between the Rangers and Red Wings. "BONES SCORES OVERTIME WINNER." The banner headline ran a second time because Raleigh scored in overtime in Game 4 and Game 5! Unfortunately for Raleigh, his feat was overshadowed in Game 7 when the Red Wings' Pete Babando scored in the second overtime to win the Cup.
   9.
   LEO REISE, JR.
   : The son of a one-eyed NHL defenseman, the junior Reise had no intentions of turning pro until he joined a Canadian Army team in World War II. His teammate was NHL goalie Charlie Rayner, who was so impressed with Reise's talent that he persuaded him to try out for the Black Hawks after the war; which he did with minimal success. After a couple of mediocre seasons, the defenseman wound up with the Red Wings and his hockey career took off as he became the cornerstone of Detroit's defense. Because Leo was a stay-at-home defenseman, his quietly solid game got him little notice. Then the unlikely happened in the 1950 playoff semifinal against the Maple Leafs. With Toronto leading the series 2-1, Reise scored the game-winner on a power play early in the second overtime in Game 4. Reise repeated his heroics in overtime of Game 7, drilling a screened shot past goalie Turk Broda. "Those were the two goals I'll never forget," said Reise. Yet time and many Detroit championships later dimmed the glow of Reise's red lights.
   10. AL ROLLINS: Arguably no goalie in NHL history had a tougher act to follow than this native of Vanguard, Saskatchewan. When Rollins was signed by Toronto hockey boss Conn Smythe in 1949, the Maple Leafs starter, Broda, was about to win the Stanley Cup for the fourth time. A future Hall of Famer, Broda would win the Cup five times before retiring. "Turk was the best," said Rollins, "But even though I followed a great goalie, I was confident in my abilities." By the 1950-51 season, Rollins became the No. 1 goalie for Toronto and Broda was reduced to a backup role. Rollins had a stellar record of 27-5-8 and won the Vezina Trophy voted as the top goalie in the NHL with a 1.77 goals-against average. His topper was a starring role for the Maple Leafs when they won the Stanley Cup in 1951 on an overtime Cup-winning goal scored by defenseman Bill Barilko. Sadly, during the summer of 1951 Barilko disappeared while on a fishing trip in northern Ontario. It took 10 years before Barilko's body was found in the wreckage of a small plane. Because of the notoriety caused by the defenseman's disappearance, Rollins' fabulous feats were long forgotten.