Yours truly was one of the junior members of the 35-person Toronto Sun sports department at the time, primarily covering auto racing and horse racing. The Maple Leafs beat was the top gig at the paper back then, and was just a dream for those of us who were young, aspiring scribes.
But because the Maple Leafs were so bad at the time, a number of the senior writers who covered them were still away on extended Christmas break holidays. As such, the call came to cover practice at Maple Leaf Gardens, one of the first I’d ever done.
When the workout was completed, legendary Toronto Star columnist Frank Orr and I were in the dressing room when coach Tom Watt came out of his office and approached us.
“Pull out your notepads,” he said. “We’ve just made a trade.”
He then proceeded to list the names.
All 10 of them.
At first blush, it seemed like the deal favored the Maple Leafs in a landslide. But a cub reporter covering only the second or third Toronto practice of his career wasn’t about to speak up about it.
Fortunately, Orr was.
Frank looked at the names scribbled on his notepad, looked up at Watt with a cynical look on his face, then looked back at his list.
“Surely Thomas, you must be missing some names who went to Calgary,” he said.
He wasn’t.
Such was the blockbuster win Fletcher had just pulled off.
In the Maple Leafs dressing room, players had heard whispers that a trade had been made. There was no social media at the time, so rumors and innuendo ruled the day.
“As players, we’d heard we’d made a big trade but we didn’t know who was involved,” Wendel Clark, the Maple Leafs captain at the time, said Friday. “We were trying to hide so they couldn’t find us in case one of us was part of the deal.
“Cliff was the nicest man I’ve ever met in hockey. He always had time for you, always made time for you. At the same time, when it came to team building, he knew what he was doing.”
To Clark’s point: Sixteen months after the trade, the Maple Leafs faced Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings in the Campbell Conference Final. Toronto would end up losing 5-4 at the Gardens in Game 7 in a game The Great One, who had a hat trick and an assist, would call the “greatest” of his career.
To this day, it’s the closest the Maple Leafs have come to making the Stanley Cup Final since last winning the championship in 1967. On no other occasion in the past 59 years has the franchise been within one win of reaching the Final. Not with Darryl Sittler. Not with Mats Sundin. Not with Auston Matthews, William Nylander or Mitch Marner.
To this day, the 1992-93 Maple Leafs still hold a special place in the collective hearts of the fans.
“That’s Cliff’s doing,” Gilmour said. “He put together such a good team. It was such a fun run.”
Whether he was at work or enjoying one of his favorite beverages at the famed Madison Avenue Pub in downtown Toronto, the good-natured Fletcher was always willing to talk about pucks, whether you were a writer he knew or a fan he’d just met.
On a number of occasions when I’ve been invited to address journalism classes at Toronto-area colleges or universities, the question comes up as to the most memorable moments in a three-plus decade career that continues to go. Invariably, Jan. 2, 1992, seemingly always makes my top five.
After all, how often do you get to be part of hockey history? Being one of the first outside the organization to find out about the biggest trade the game has ever seen, well, that’s pretty cool.
“Leave it to Cliff to pull it off,” Clark said.
“Such a great man. He’ll be missed,” Gilmour added.
What they said.
RIP Cliff.
