Bower, late bloomer in NHL, relished being part of Hall of Fame fraternity

As delighted as Johnny Bower was to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame a half-century ago this year, the Toronto Maple Leafs legend was probably even happier for the goalies who were enshrined before and after him.

There was something that Bower especially enjoyed about his pads-wearing lodge brothers being joined together in this celebrated fraternity after they’d faced the final shot of their careers.

Bower was the 25th of 44 goalies to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, a number that soon will grow to 46 with the inductions on Monday of Carey Price and Pekka Rinne, respectively of the Montreal Canadiens and Nashville Predators.

Johnny Bower awaits a shot during a game at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

Bower died of pneumonia at age 93 on Dec. 26, 2017, having been a hugely popular presence on the red carpet at Brookfield Place for many years. Unfailingly humble, he was almost embarrassed when he was stopped for a photo or a chat on his way into the induction ceremony, and so modest was he that he sometimes needed to be talked into attending the gala event.

Bower was elected to the shrine 50 years ago as a member of the Class of 1976, inducted with rugged defenseman Bill Quackenbush and members of the Builder category Jack Gibson, Philip Ross and William Wirtz.

“This is really wonderful,” he said upon being elected. “It’s a great honor. It’s nice to know your name will be on the honor roll. I didn’t expect to get in this soon (six years after his final game).”

Boston Bruins defenseman Bill Quackenbush, here in 1955, and Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Johnny Bower, in 1965, were the two players inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Class of 1976.

Quackenbush was a rock-solid player for the Detroit Red Wings and Boston Bruins between 1942-56, named to the First or Second All-Star Team five times and the Lady Byng Trophy winner for his gentlemanly play with Detroit in 1948-49. The Toronto native took only 95 penalty minutes in 775 career games, eight minutes in 80 Stanley Cup Playoff games.

Bower, who won the Stanley Cup with the Maple Leafs three times consecutively from 1962-64 and again in 1967, didn’t feel established as an NHL goalie until joining Toronto at age 33, having long toiled in the minor pros.

The native of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, played 77 games with the New York Rangers between 1953-56, which coincided with him riding the buses for a decade with the Cleveland Barons and Providence Reds of the American Hockey League and the Vancouver Canucks of the Western Hockey League.

Johnny Bower in a publicity shot taken with the AHL’s Cleveland Barons.

Toronto would claim Bower from Cleveland on June 3, 1958, paving his way to becoming one of the most popular players in Maple Leafs history through his final game in 1969 and even to this day.

“I had some security in Cleveland while the NHL was a doubtful quantity, especially for a guy age 33,” Bower said in June 1976, informed of his election to the Hall of Fame that was announced during the NHL’s annual meetings in Montreal.

“I figured I’d get in a season or two, so I took a chance. I never figured an old codger like me would last as long as I did.”

Bower didn’t just last in Toronto, he flourished. In goal for 11 seasons for coach and general manager Punch Imlach, he appeared in 475 games with a record of 219-157-79, a goals-against average of 2.50, a save percentage of .922 and 32 shutouts.

A leaping Johnny Bower watches a puck sail over the crossbar during a game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

He was a money goalie in the playoffs, performing at his best while defying father time with stakes the highest: Bower won 35 games and lost 34 but had sizzling statistics of 2.47, .924 and five shutouts.

Bower and fellow greybeard Terry Sawchuk combined in 1967 to give the Maple Leafs the goaltending they needed to upset the heavily favored Canadiens to win a six-game Stanley Cup Final for Toronto’s most recent championship. Ageless? Bower was 42 years and 175 days old, Sawchuk 37 years and 125 days old on May 2, 1967, the night the Maple Leafs clinched the title.

Imlach once called Bower “the most amazing athlete in the world.”

“Playing goal in the NHL is the toughest job, physically and mentally, in sports,” Imlach said. “Bower was in the front ranks well into his 40s and if that doesn’t make him the world’s most incredible athlete, I don’t know what would. Johnny just hated to lose.

Toronto’s Parker MacDonald (21) watches a puck bulge the mesh behind New York Rangers goalie Johnny Bower during a 1954 game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“I was very fortunate to have him and Sawchuk playing for me at the same time because they were two of the finest goalies hockey’s ever had.”

George Armstrong, captain of the Maple Leafs during their 1960s dynasty, piled on the praise for his friend.

“Bower shamed the entire team into working hard in practice,” he said. “He gave so much effort that we just couldn’t allow the old fellow to show us up.”

Universally respected and admired by teammates and opponents alike, Bower was beloved by fans.

Johnny Bower in a publicity shot taken at Maple Leaf Gardens and in a team portrait.

“If you don’t like Johnny Bower, there’s not much hope for you,” St. Louis Blues vice president Lynn Patrick said upon the goalie’s Hall of Fame election.

Bower twice added the Vezina Trophy to his laurels, in 1960-61 and 1964-65, the latter shared with Sawchuk, and in 2017 was voted among the 100 Greatest NHL Players for the League’s Centennial celebration. A panel chose him No. 7 among the Maple Leafs’ 100 greatest players for the team’s 2016-17 Centennial season.

Maple Leafs legend Dave Keon, Bower’s teammate on Toronto’s four Stanley Cup-winning teams in the 1960s, remembered the goalie during the latter’s January 2018 memorial service.

“John is a huge reason for all those Stanley Cups,” Keon said. “Winning the Cup takes heart. John was our soul.”

Johnny Bower and his dear friend Gordie Howe interviewed by Frank Selke Jr. following the Maple Leafs’ 1963 Stanley Cup win against the Detroit Red Wings, and Bower at the 1993 opening of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s new location at Brookfield Place.

Bower waged some incredible battles with other goalies during the NHL’s so-called Original Six era, as much as those in net can battle with 180 feet of ice between them.

One of his best friends in the game was Chicago Black Hawks star Glenn Hall, the two men seeing each other in the minor pros, then the NHL.

Upon Bower’s death, Hall flashed back to 1951-52, to a night when the two unmasked goalies were at opposite ends of an AHL rink, Hall with the Indianapolis Capitals, Bower with the Barons.

A rising shot struck Bower flush in the mouth, and he went down in a heap, bleeding profusely, spitting an assortment of teeth into the goal crease.

Johnny Bower (r.) with former Maple Leafs teammate Bob Baun at the NHL Alumni Gala in Toronto in October 2016.

“I remember skating down the ice to see Johnny before he skated away for repairs, and he was a mess,” Hall recalled, mourning the death of a man he’d held dear for more than six decades.

“Years later, I said to John, ‘I think you lost seven teeth that night,’ and John’s wife, Nancy, piped up, ‘It was nine!’ I told John, ‘Well no wonder it took you so long to get back out there.’

"And then I said, ‘But if there were nine teeth laying on the ice, John, I’m glad they were in your end.’”

Dentures in place, Bower made his final visit to the Hall of Fame a decade ago this week for the Class of 2016 inductions, Canadiens goalie Rogie Vachon among those being honored. Vachon and Gump Worsley, a fellow Hall of Famer, had dueled with Bower and the Sawchuk in 1967, Vachon still wet behind the ears as a late-season addition to Montreal coach Toe Blake’s roster.

“I always liked Rogie, though not so much when we had our troubles with him in 1967,” Bower joked on the red carpet 10 years ago this week. “He and The Gumper gave us all we could handle.”

A pair of goalie pads that Johnny Bower wore during his run of the three consecutive Stanley Cup victories with the Maple Leafs from 1962-64.

Quackenbush, who died in 1999 at age 77, might have said the same of his fellow Class of 1976 inductee, having played 11 games for Boston from 1953-55 against Bower, then of the Rangers, with no goals and two assists.

“Bill might have been the only player who didn’t score on me,” Bower said with a grin, Quackenbush’s zero goals 99 fewer than Gordie Howe managed.

This week, the newly enshrined Price and Rinne will surely have a look around the Esso Great Hall, their plaques freshly displayed among hockey’s immortals, Nos. 45 and 46 in the goaltending fraternity.

The two newcomers will be in very good company indeed, the glass-plate smile of 50-year member Johnny Bower welcoming two more goalies to the family.

Top photo: Johnny Bower stretches for a puck in a publicity photo taken for the Maple Leafs.