New Leafs

There are connoisseurs who go to hockey games just to exult over a weaving solo dash or delight in a well-coordinated scoring play, but rank-&-file hockey fans would still rather hear a player thud against the boards, or see a good fist fight.

Last year's Toronto Maple Leafs finished next to the cellar, missed the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in 16 years. Also--and fans thought they saw the connection--they were the most even-tempered, law-abiding team in the whole National Hockey League. This fall the Leafs have turned a brighter, more attractive color. Last week they could point with pride to league leadership in 1) games won, 2) time per game in the penalty box.

Manager Conn Smythe, a man who has been known to walk out on the ice and personally "tighten the necktie" of a referee he considered offensive, spent most of last winter recovering from a shrapnel wound he got at Caen. Without the constant goad of Smythe's furious presence, the gentle Leafs finished the season with fewer man-minutes in the penalty box than any other team in the league, ruefully called themselves the "Lady Byng team."*

This fall Conn Smythe replaced his aging once-greats ("Sweeney" Schriner, Lome Carr, "Babe" Pratt) with a bunch of promising youngsters, reducing the average age of his team from over 30 to 24. Then he announced: "There are oneway tickets to the minors for any players who get shoved around and take it numbly." Last week none of his youngsters, most of them ex-servicemen, were playing for Lady Byng. Body-checking their way into the league lead, they had run up 108 penalty-box minutes in eleven games.

* For the Lady Byng trophy, given annually to the "most gentlemanly" player in the National Hockey League. Donated in 1924 by a purist hockey fan from England, it was won last year not by a Leaf but by "Toe" Blake of the Montreal Canadiens.

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