Leafs Career Capsule: Syl Apps

Apps, whose 10 year NHL career was interrupted by World War II service, helped the Leafs to three Stanley Cups in the 1940's

  Syl Apps combined virtue with exceptional athletic ability, the perfect make-up for a hockey hero for a market that was once known as "Toronto the good".  Although Apps only had a ten season career, he is still regarded by many as the greatest captain the Leafs ever had.  His 56 penalty minutes attest to his sportsmanship, but his chiseled physique, physical strength and slick stick handling, passing and scoring were equally important to the legacy he created.

  Apps helped the Maple Leafs win three Stanley Cups, captained the team after his WWII military service and quit the game while still at his peak.  "I Hope that Apps doesn't retire," Toronto net minder Turk Broda once said. "He's been my meal ticket for 10 years. When things look rugged, Hap [Maple Leafs coach Hap Day] drops him over the boards, and the situation improves instantly."  An all-around athlete who excelled at hockey, football and track, Apps was the 1934 Commonwealth Games Champion for Pole Vault and delayed accepting Conn Smythe's invitation to join the Maple Leafs so that he could compete in the 1934 Olympics in Berlin.  Apps finished sixth at the Olympics, and only then did he turn his full attention to hockey.

  He went on to win the inaugural Calder Trophy in 1937, presented by NHL president Frank Calder to the league's best rookie, but the spring of 1942 provided his greatest excitement.  "Nothing can compare," he said, "with the thrill of winning our fourth in a row over the Detroit Red Wings after they had won three straight."  No other team has ever made such an amazing comeback in the Stanley Cup finals.  "If you want to pin me down to not only my biggest night in hockey, but also my biggest second," he told writer Trent Frayne in 1949, "I'll say it was the last tick of the clock that sounded the final bell.  I'll never forget it."

  Halfway through the 1942-1943 season, Apps broke his leg and shocked owner Smythe when he tried to return half his salary - he felt he hadn't earned his full pay.  Once the leg healed, he volunteered for Canadian Military service, missing two full NHL seasons at the height of his career.  Although he was only 30 years old at the wars conclusion, Apps wasn't certain the Leafs would want him back.  His genuine humility further endeared him to Smythe and to the public.  Apps picked up right where he had left off.  In 1947, Hall of Fame defenseman Bill Quakenbush, a league All-Star for Detroit at the time, claimed that Apps was the hardest player in the league to stop.  "When he hits the defense," said Quakenbush, "he doesn't slow down, he digs in.  That extra burst of speed makes him awful tough."  Apps however believed he'd lost a step.  He wanted to retire before he "slowed the team down," but he set one last target: 200 Career Goals.

  Heading into the final weekend of play in the spring of 1948, Apps needed only three more goals to reach 200.  He scored one on Saturday night.  In Sunday's game against Detroit, he banged in another one on a goal mouth scramble in the second period.  Later in the same period, Harry Watson of the Leafs had an excellent scoring opportunity, but instead of shooting, he slid a neat pass over to Apps, who buried goal number 200 behind netminder Harry Lumley.  "I just blasted it with everything I had," said Apps.  The Detroit crowd gave him a noisy ovation, and Apps put the icing on the cake completing a hat trick in the third period.

  The press commented on how generous Watson had been in setting Apps up for the goal.  "It was nice of him, alright," agreed Apps, "but you should have heard the yelling I was doing at him to pass it!" Apps hoisted the Stanley Cup for the second consecutive year, but when the Leafs "three-peated" the following year, it was without Apps in the line-up.  The 33 year old Captain had retired and joined the business world.  

  "I was always keen on Politics," explained Apps, when he answered another calling years later.  Elected as a member of the governing Progressive Conservative Party in 1963, he later chaired the select committee on youth as it emerged with the rising issue of drugs and youth.

  "He was convinced," fellow committee member (and Opposition Leader) Stephen Lewis once commented, "that the way to keep any boy out of trouble was to get him into a hockey league, preferably once sponsored by a church.  i rather think that's been Syl through all his government career."  

  Apps later served as Minister of Corrections, and his rock-solid image was untarnished by eleven years in Ontario politics.  True to form, he retired on his own terms in 1974.