Mackell graced cover of Hockey Blueline magazine in 1958

The Hockey Blueline magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1 dated November 1958 with a cover price of 25 cents, was discovered in nearly-mint condition in a Montreal-suburban collectibles and antique store.

It was a steal at $5 just for the four-page spread on future Hall of Fame goalie Terry Sawchuk. But the 34-page Montreal-published magazine -- subscription price $2 for eight issues -- had plenty of great content: features on Fleming Mackell, Billy Harris, Phil Goyette and Dean Prentice; a history of the Montreal Canadiens; a column by legendary broadcaster Danny Gallivan; a breezy profile of Chicago Black Hawks’ rookie defenseman Elmer “Moose” Vasko; and a 10-question quiz.

Among the advertising, mostly for beer, spirits, and tobacco, is a full-age ad on the inside back cover for 9x11 glossy prints of "hockey's top performers" for 50 cents each, nine to choose from, "ideal for rumpus room or your den."

This issue is addressed to a subscriber in Chicago; how it wound up where it did is anyone’s guess, but it was a delightful find.

Boston’s Fleming Mackell and Toronto goalie Ed Chadwick in action on Feb. 23, 1957, at Maple Leaf Gardens

Featured on the cover is a wonderful image of Mackell, created by Montreal portrait painter Tex Coulter, which leads into a broad profile written by Boston journalist Leo Monahan.

Mackell wasn’t the biggest name of his day, but the cover painting was compelling enough to surrender $5 and take a look into the career of a Montreal-born forward who would play 666 NHL games between 1947-60 for the Toronto Maple Leafs then the Bruins, winning the Stanley Cup with Toronto in 1949 and 1951.

The 5-foot-7, 156-pound center would score 149 goals with 220 assists, adding 22 goals and 41 assists in 80 playoff games.

Mackell’s name rang a bell off the magazine cover mostly for the recollection of his having been among three Maple Leafs veterans who rode down Toronto’s Yonge St. on a brisk February morning in 1999, in the first of more than a dozen Mustang convertibles.

Fleming Mackell rushes the puck for Toronto against the visiting Detroit Red Wings in a March 7, 1951, game at Maple Leaf Gardens

The Maple Leafs were ceremoniously moving that day from Maple Leaf Gardens to Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena). Leading the parade were Mackell, Gaye Stewart and Gus Mortson, the combined winners of eight Stanley Cup championships. All are gone now, Mackell the last of the three to leave us on Oct. 19, 2015, at age 86.

Nicknamed “Sparkplug,” Mackell was one of the rare local players the Canadiens let slip through their fingers during the 1940s, a local product who was dynamite in a tidy package.

“Fleming was the best amateur hockey player in Quebec,” Hall of Famer Dickie Moore said in a 1986 Montreal Gazette feature.

Young Mackell played in the day with Moore’s older brother, Jimmy, and Dickie recalled Canadiens general manager Frank Selke Sr. appearing at a game to do some scouting.

Fleming Mackell in a mid-1940s portrait with the Toronto St. Michael’s Majors, and a few years later with the Toronto Maple Leafs

“‘What number is Mackell wearing?’ Selke asked me,” Moore said. “And I told him, ‘Just watch. You won't need to know his number.’”

Mackell came from fine hockey stock -- his father, Jack, was a Stanley Cup winner with the 1920 and 1921 Ottawa Senators.

Jack Mackell quit the game, no money in it, and moved to Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grace district to raise a family and become a lithographer. It was here that his son, Fleming, became such a good player that he suited up at age 15 for a game with the senior-league Montreal Royals.

A minute after midnight on Mackell’s 16th birthday, the Maple Leafs put him on their negotiation list for $100, binding him to Toronto after seeing him start to tear up the juniors while on a scholarship with Toronto St. Michael's. The Canadiens, who also coveted him, dragged their feet and were a few hours late with their paperwork filed to the NHL.

Fleming Mackell (l.) and Ray Timgren pose for a Toronto Maple Leafs portrait in the late 1940s or early 1950s at Maple Leaf Gardens

The Maple Leafs organization spoiled the teen with room, board and $5 a week in spending money, later doubled to $10. An all-around athlete who also starred at quarterback for St. Mike's, the crafty center turned pro in 1947-48 at age 18, signing for $4,000; he gave his mother $1,000, the rest going to the downpayment of a Toronto house.

Riding his bike to Maple Leaf Gardens before and after the snow flew, Mackell won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 1949 and captured his second two years later, working his way full-time into the NHL from Pittsburgh in the American Hockey League.

The famous 1951 championship series against the Canadiens went five games, every one decided in overtime, and was most famous for the airborne, Cup-winning goal of Bill Barilko, who four months later perished in a plane crash while on a fishing trip.

Boston’s Fleming Mackell iin tight on Toronto goalie Ed Chadwick, without the puck, during a mid-1950s game at Maple Leaf Gardens

With the Maple Leafs, Mackell worked summers to make ends meet as a laborer and a deliveryman for Lake Simcoe Ice and Fuel. He recalled in a 2013 interview with the Vankleek Hill, Ontario newspaper The Review that shouldering 100-pound blocks of ice up flights of stairs was great for off-season conditioning.

Mackell was traded by Toronto to Boston for defenseman Jim Morrison on Jan. 9, 1952, playing another eight seasons for the Bruins. From 1952, they would face his hometown Canadiens in the playoffs six times in seven years, losing all three final series, three others in the semis.

Mackell was named to the NHL’s first All-Star team in 1952-53, the last Bruins first-team selection until a defenseman named Bobby Orr was chosen 15 years later.

Boston Bruins’ Fleming Mackell and goalie Don Keenan defense against Toronto’s Billy Harris and Gerry Ehman during a March 7, 1959, game at Maple Leaf Gardens

And how they loved the rough-edged “Sparkplug” in Boston.

“I was an awful cocky and surly guy," Mackell joked in an interview, fitting in perfectly with the blue-collar style Bruins fans loved.

His NHL-leading output in the 1958 playoffs -- 19 points (five goals, 14 assists) in 12 games -- earned him the cover of Hockey Blueline as he headed into his second-last season.

Not on the same page as Bruins management, Mackell quit the NHL at the end of the 1959-60 season, in hindsight sorry that he didn’t approve a trade to the New York Rangers or Detroit Red Wings. He would instead knock around the minor pros, a popular player and coach in the Maritimes until he retired in the late 1960s.

Mackell would return to Montreal to operate his own gas station, pumping fuel and installing tires until he cleaned the grease off his palms and got into auto sales in suburban Dorval, hired on the spot by the dealership owner he knew.

From left, Fleming Mackell, Turk Broda and Sid Smith of the Toronto Maple Leafs pose on April 10, 1949, at Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Smith scored a hat trick in Game 2 of the 1949 Stanley Cup Final, Mackell with an assist on another Toronto goal

Five times, General Motors named him a Grandmaster Salesman, a prestigious honor accorded for volume sales.

“For me, getting someone into the right car -- boy, it was like scoring a goal,” Mackell told author Brian McFalone in his 1999 book “Over The Glass Into the Crowd: Life After Hockey.”

In the summer of 1951, having just won his second Stanley Cup title, Mackell had returned to the Hudson area, off the western tip of Montreal island, to where his parents moved. Mayor George Runnells paid a call and hired him for $50 a week to help organize a summer parks program for idle youth in the area.

With a friend, Mackell sketched out a popular program centered on softball but with plenty of field trips around Montreal.

From left, Toronto Maple Leafs’ Fleming Mackell, Danny Lewicki and Ray Timgren pose for 1951-52 training camp photo at Garden City Arena in St. Catharines, Ontario

Having secured enough bats and balls and sufficient playground monitors to run the show, he assembled all at a Montreal delicatessen to select teams and draw up the schedule.

Mackell enjoyed the summer immensely, slipping back that fall into an NHL career that twice saw his name engraved on the Stanley Cup, a most worthy cover feature on Hockey Blueline in November 1958.

Nearly a decade after his passing, Mackell somehow found his way back into the suburbs of his hometown, a $5 collectibles-store discovery turning back the pages into his memorable life.

Top photos: Fleming Mackell on the cover of the November 1958 Hockey Blueline magazine, featured in a painting by Tex Coulter, and in a Boston Bruins portrait taken during the 1954-55 season.