1 The Challenge Cliff Fletcher, in the spring of 1991, was a man looking for a change. Widely regarded as one of the finest hockey executives in the National Hockey League, the man referred to fondly by his colleagues as “Trader Cliff” and “the Silver Fox” had, throughout his thirty-five-year career in professional hockey, perfected a smooth style of management that was the envy of many of his contemporaries. In 1956, the twenty-year-old Fletcher joined the Montreal Canadiens as a scout. Over the next decade, he closely watched the man who hired him, Sam Pollock, all the while gaining an unofficial master’s degree in hockey management from the most successful executive in the NHL. After spendingCOPYRIGHTED four years with the expansion MATERIAL St. Louis Blues, Fletcher was given an NHL team of his own to run—the expansion Atlanta Flames. Fletcher’s nineteen-year tenure as the Flames’ general manager can be neatly divided between the first eight years in Atlanta and the next eleven seasons in Calgary. In Atlanta, despite financial constraints, Fletcher produced a team that qualified for the playoffs in six of their eight seasons. In Calgary, the Flames never finished with a losing record in Fletcher’s eleven years as general manager. Overshadowed by the Edmonton Oilers c01.indd 3 8/2/2012 7:20:20 AM 4 A Season in Time dynasty for most of the 1980s, Fletcher constructed a team that would become the Oilers’ equal by the end of the decade, and eventually a champion in its own right. Fletcher built up the Flames through a combination of keen draft- ing and shrewd trades. Hakan Loob (1980), Al MacInnis (1981), Mike Vernon (1981), Gary Roberts (1984), Gary Suter (1984), Joe Nieuwendyk (1985), and Theoren Fleury (1987) all were selected by the Flames in the NHL’s annual entry draft. Fletcher augmented his draft success with a series of trades, starting with the acquisition of Lanny McDonald in 1981. Joe Mullen (1986), Brad McCrimmon (1987), and, finally, Doug Gilmour (1988) all followed. The trade for Gilmour is a prime example of how Fletcher trans- formed the Flames. The summer months of 1988 would alter the balance of power between the Oilers and the Flames. On August 9, 1988, Edmonton dealt Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings in a trade that stunned the hockey world and deprived the Oilers of the game’s greatest player. Less than a month later, Fletcher completed a significant transaction of his own. It wasn’t on the level of the Gretzky trade, but it played a vital part in the Flames’ future. On September 5, 1988, as part of a seven-player transaction with the St. Louis Blues, Doug Gilmour became a Calgary Flame. The week before had seen Gilmour named as a defendant in a $1-million civil lawsuit launched by the parents of an underage girl who accused him of having sexual relations with her.* The Blues denied that the trade was related to the lawsuit, but the perception remained that Fletcher had taken advan- tage of a team looking to discard a player tainted by an ugly scandal, and that the Blues had received far below market value in return.1 Gilmour joined the Flames in the fall of 1988 with a cloud hovering over his every move. But it was not the first time that the twenty-five- year-old from Kingston, Ontario, had confronted adversity. Only seven years before, Gilmour starred in the OHL where, as a rookie, he was part * On December 27, 1988, a St. Louis grand jury decided not to indict Gilmour on the charges related to the lawsuit. Two months earlier, on October 22, 1988, the lawyer representing the girl’s family was charged by authorities with trying to extort hush money from the St. Louis Blues organization. c01.indd 4 8/2/2012 7:20:21 AM Chapter 1: The Challenge 5 of a Memorial Cup winner in Cornwall. Despite recording 21 points in 19 playoff games, at the time professional scouts were unable to look past his height (Gilmour stood only 5’9”) and weight (barely 150 pounds), or lack thereof. Considered much too small to be a serious NHL prospect, the 1981 entry draft came and went without his name being called. The next season saw Gilmour blossom offensively. His 46 goals and 73 assists gave him a total of 119 points, good enough for a sixth-place finish among all OHL scorers. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the seventh round of the 1982 NHL entry draft that the St. Louis Blues selected him with the 134th pick overall. Unable to crack the Blues lineup in the fall of 1982, Gilmour returned to Cornwall, where he led the OHL in scoring with 177 points (70 goals and 107 assists) and set a then-league record by scoring in 55 consecutive games. At the end of the season, Gilmour was awarded the Red Tilson Trophy as the OHL’s outstanding player. Gilmour finally found a spot on the Blues roster for the 1983/84 NHL season, and became one of the league’s preeminent defensive forwards. By the 1986 playoffs, he was also gaining notice for his playmaking abili- ties and for his intense desire. He led all post-season scorers that spring with 21 points, as the Blues came within a game of playing in the Stanley Cup final. A more confident Gilmour followed that up with a 105-point season in 1986/87, good enough for fifth place among the NHL scoring leaders. That summer he received an invitation to play for Team Canada in the 1987 Canada Cup, and in the unforgettable final, best-of-three series against the Soviet Union, Gilmour proved that he belonged with the greatest players in the world, scoring two goals. One year later, Gilmour would find himself sporting the red and yellow uniform of the Calgary Flames. With Gilmour in their lineup, the 1988/89 Flames set a torrid pace, losing just four of their first twenty- eight games. By December Fletcher proclaimed this version of the Flames “the best he had ever built.”2 The team romped to a second con- secutive President’s Trophy and set new team marks for wins (54) and points (117), while losing only four home games all season. Purging the demons of their playoffs past, the Flames were within a game of claiming their first Stanley Cup championship when they faced the Montreal Canadiens on the evening of May 25, 1989. In their storied history, the Canadiens had never allowed an opposing team to win the c01.indd 5 8/2/2012 7:20:21 AM 6 A Season in Time Cup in their hallowed arena, the Montreal Forum. But behind two goals by Gilmour, including the Cup-clinching goal, the Flames triumphed, by a score of 4-2. After seventeen long years as the team’s general manager, Cliff Fletcher had reached the pinnacle of his hockey career. But the good times wouldn’t last, and the following two years saw the Flames falter. In defense of the Cup in 1989/90, they finished second overall in the NHL regular season standings, but were stunned in the first round of the playoffs by their old nemesis, Wayne Gretzky, and his new team, the Los Angeles Kings. The next season, 1990/91, saw the Flames slip to fourth overall in the NHL standings. Once again they were upset in the first round of the playoffs, this time by their old rivals, the Edmonton Oilers. This loss left Fletcher at a career crossroads. He had no worries about job stability and could have easily carried on in Calgary, but at the age of fifty-five he had admittedly grown stale. “I’d run the same team for nineteen years and I felt that I needed a change,” Fletcher now reflects. “I needed a new challenge.”3 Less than a month after the end of the Flames season on May 13, 1991, Fletcher attended a meeting of the NHL’s finance committee in New York City. While there, he took the opportunity to speak to Donald Giffin, the president of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd., inquiring if Giffin was still seeking candidates for the hockey czar post he had advertised a few weeks earlier. Giffin assured him that he was.4 Just three days later, Fletcher resigned his dual posts as the president and general manager of the Calgary Flames. On June 4, 1991, at a press conference inside Maple Leaf Gardens Hot Stove Lounge, Giffin introduced the new president, general manager, and chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd.* Signed to a five- year contract worth a reported $4 million, Fletcher took over a team and organization that had fallen on hard times. “The club can be turned around,” Fletcher announced to the media. “All of us together promise that we’ll do everything possible to reconfirm the pride and tradition of this great hockey club.5 I’m not understating * Under the terms of the agreement, Giffin relinquished the presidency of the Leafs to the incoming Fletcher and now held the sole position of chairman of the board of directors of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd. c01.indd 6 8/2/2012 7:20:21 AM Chapter 1: The Challenge 7 the job that has to be done here. It’s immense, but it’s not insurmount- able, and it’s a great challenge.6 There’s no miracle cures, though, just a lot of hard work.”7 It soon became clear, however, that rebuilding the Leafs might be the least of his problems.