Maple Leaf Gardens was 'Cathedral of Hockey' for Fischler

Legendary hockey reporter and analyst Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as The Hockey Maven, will share his knowledge, brand of humor and insights with readers each week.
Today, Stan begins a series of reminiscences about his first visits to arenas from the NHL's Original Six era, beginning with his initial out-of-town trip in March 1952, when he and his roller hockey pals from New York visited Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

As a Toronto Maple Leafs fan starting at age 10 in 1942, I religiously listened to Foster Hewitt's Saturday night broadcasts and yearned for the day I could visit Toronto and walk into what I considered "The Cathedral of Hockey." Ten years later, my chance arrived when my roller hockey buddy, Carl Glickman, talked his brother into loaning him Marty's spanking new Pontiac for our first drive to Canada.
Along with three other hockey pals, we rolled out of Brooklyn late on a Thursday night to see Game 3 of the 1952 Stanley Cup Semifinals between Toronto and the Detroit Red Wings, who had won Games 1 and 2 at home. In those days before superhighways, we traveled via Binghamton and Niagara Falls (an important stop) before entering Canada.
We stayed at the Ford Hotel, then a hockey hangout in downtown Toronto, got some sleep and headed to the Gardens early Saturday morning. I knew a bit of its history -- how Conn Smythe had it built in record time during the Great Depression -- and I had seen pictures of the arena. But viewing the edifice at the corner of Carlton and Church Streets in person left me breathless. The huge, domed roof was especially impressive, along with the simple but attractive marquee proclaiming the night's playoff game.
Maple Leaf Gardens had a totally different ambience than our hometown arena, Madison Square Garden. "Sedate" might be the best way to describe the feel about the Gardens lobby, where crowds already had gathered to pick up tickets and talk hockey. Every little aspect that I had read or heard about caught my eye, right down to the coffee shop (New York coffee was better) and the Harold Wilson sporting goods store attached to the arena that had some neat table hockey games on display.

We were eager to explore the inner Gardens, so we arrived well before game time and entered as soon as the doors opened. Accustomed as we were to the three seating tiers at Madison Square Garden -- arena, mezzanine and balcony -- my pals and I were impressed with the layout at the Gardens. There was no balcony nor mezzanine, just row after row of seats right up to the last section far up at the top, the gray seats. And there was the other major Canadian landmark, hanging almost perilously from the Gardens' ceiling -- the gondola.
That's where Hewitt did his classic "He shoots! He scores!" play-by-play that turned me into a Maple Leafs fan. As for the gondola: Before Maple Leaf Gardens was built, Foster had personally designed the rectangular broadcast booth so that it boasted the best possible broadcasting view despite its height. Asked one day to visit Hewitt in the gondola, Smythe shot back, "I'd just as soon go up in a plane with no pilot than climb into Foster's gondola." Later in my broadcast life, I worked in that same gondola doing the New York Islanders-Maple Leafs playoff series in 1978.
We knew tickets would be scarce because this was a playoff game, and we wound up in the distant gray seats. But we had a full view of the ice because there were no obstructions. Also, we were comfortably surrounded by friendly fans who, like us, were hoping for a Toronto win. Alas, it didn't happen. Our one joyous moment took place midway through the first period when Toronto's Joe Klukay beat Terry Sawchuk to tie the game 1-1. But after that it was all Detroit.
My most vivid memory was a third-period
Gordie Howe
breakaway against one of my heroes, Maple Leafs goalie
Turk Broda
. The score was 6-1 at the time; the outcome had long since been decided. Howe put a deke on Turk and had a wide-open net, but bounced a shot off the right post. The game ended with
Detroit winning 6-2
-- a total downer except for one last look at Foster Hewitt's gondola and then out to the garage.
While we awaited our car, a fan shouted, "There's
Max Bentley
." I ran over to catch a peek; and. sure enough, there was Bentley, another of my heroes, having stopped his car to sign some autographs through the open window. To this day, I swear that Max had tears in his eyes.
After that, we said farewell to Maple Leaf Gardens and drove back to New York in Marty Glickman's new Pontiac. Summing up my visit to Maple Leaf Gardens, the one word that came to mind was "bittersweet."