The Oilers know a 3-0 lead in June has melted before. Do the Panthers?

The 1942 Leafs won Games 4-5-6-7 to win the Cup. Edmonton can tie the Final on Friday.

Turk Broda

Had there been a Men’s Journal in 1942, Walter “Turk” Broda probably wouldn’t have subscribed. Surely he wouldn’t have made the cover.

He was known as The Fabulous Fat Man, and when Toronto general manager Conn Smythe challenged him to get below 190 pounds or become rooted to the bench, the 5-foot-9 Broda huffed and puffed and made it. The next day Broda held a plate of pancakes in goal and smiled for the cameras. Later he admitted he still hadn’t seen the south side of 190, having fiddled with the scale.

Broda was honored by several Polish organizations, although his ancestry was Ukranian. After 1942 he would serve with Canadian forces in Great Britain. He is still known to some as the best goaltender in the history of the Maple Leafs, and he won two Vezina Trophies and four Stanley Cups. But the first Cup was the deepest. Toronto was down 3-0 to Detroit in the Stanley Cup Final. It won the series, the first and only team to do so in the final round under those circumstances. The star it hung is the one that today’s Edmonton Oilers are chasing.

The Oilers lost Game 3 at home to Florida last Thursday and trailed the Final, 3-0. To win the series, they were facing four 2,450-mile flights. They won Game 4 and took the first of those flights, then won Game 5 in Florida, 5-3. For the second consecutive game, Connor Wolverine Iron Man McDavid put up four points. “We want to drag them back to Alberta,” he said, and on Friday night the drag race indeed resumes in Edmonton.

No team in NBA history has overcome 3-0. In 1998 the Lakers were on the precipice of a sweep by Utah, and Nick Van Exel may or may not have gathered his teammates in the hallway and chanted, “1-2-3…Cancun!” Even if he didn’t, NBA teams usually have one foot on the airplane when it gets to 3-0, although Boston heroically fought back from 0-3 to 3-3 before it lost to Miami in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals.

In baseball, the Red Sox were ignited by Dave Roberts’ famous stolen base and came back to beat the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series.

“Reverse sweeps” are not commonplace in hockey. but it is possible. In 1975, the Islanders were one loss away when coach Al Arbour replaced goalie Billy Smith with Chico Resch. Before Pittsburgh knew it, Resch had sprouted wings and got the Islanders into Game 7, where he was 30-for-30, and Ed Westfall scored with six minutes left to steal the series. That was in the second round.

So was the Philadelphia-Boston series in 2010. The Bruins steamed ahead 3-0, but the Flyers came back and created a Game 7 in Boston. Then the Bruins took a quick 3-0 first period lead, with Milan Lucic scoring the third goal and flexing in front of the Philly bench.

Coach Peter Laviolette called a time out and asked the Flyers to get one goal before intermission. They did. They kept chipping away, got it tied, got a too-many-men penalty from Boston, and got the winner from Simon Gagne’s stick.

And in the 2014 first round, San Jose romped to 6-3 and 7-2 wins over Los Angeles, then won Game 3 in overtime in L.A., on Patrick Marleau’s deflection. Warned Kings’ coach Darryl Sutter, “We will not go quietly.” Instead, you didn’t hear a peep from the Sharks in Games 4-7, with Jonathan Quick zipping up the net and Drew Doughty triggering the offense. The final game was 5-1, and the Kings went on to win the Cup.

Why does it happen in hockey? The goaltender is the one man in sports, even more than Michael Jordan or LeBron James, who can stand above a series. That isn’t necessarily happening in this Final, but the Oilers are no longer befuddled by Sergei Bobrovsky, and Stuart Skinner has made all the emergency saves for Edmonton. It’s McDavid who has put his teammates and most of a Cup-starved country on his back.

Another reason is that puck luck plays an outsized part, in such a low-scoring sport. But one can never discount the ethic that makes playoff hockey so glorious, the thing its people call the “compete level.” Players are enduring graphic injuries to knock each other into these boards. Last year Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk almost got to the end of the Finals before his broken sternum finally became intolerable. His teammate, Aaron Ekblad, played with a broken foot, two shoulder dislocations and a torn oblique. That is why we can’t be too prematurely harsh on Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl, who has been dormant for most of the Final. We haven’t yet gotten his medical printout.

The game was dirtier but not as fast in 1942, and the schedule was far less demanding. Teams played 48 games that war-torn season, not 82, and the playoffs lasted two rounds and were over on April 19. These days, that’s when the Cup drive starts.

The playoff format was strange. The top seeded New York Rangers played second-seeded Toronto in the first round and lost. That meant Toronto could rest while Detroit had to win two best-of-three series, against Montreal and Boston, to reach the Final.

Once there, the Red Wings unfurled a dump-and-chase attack that helped forge a 2-0 Series lead. They came home and won Game 3, 5-2. Smythe ordered Toronto coach Hap Day to bench Gordie Drillon, the Leafs’ leading scorer, and top defenseman Bucko McDonald. Before Game 4, the players noticed a large floral arrangement, commemorating Detroit’s inevitable Cup. Miffed, Toronto took a stand and led, 4-3, going into the closing moments.

A fan at Olympia Stadium tossed a water bag onto the ice and Detroit’s Eddie Wares mockingly gave it to referee Mel Harwood, who gave Wares a misconduct penalty. When Wares refused to leave the ice, Harwood dropped the puck for a faceoff and immediately whistled Detroit for too many men. The clock expired, Toronto won, and Wings’ coach Jack Adams charged onto the ice and whacked Harwood in the face. NHL President Frank Calder quickly kicked Adams out of the series.

If you’ve noticed, there were a lot of future trophies floating around in human form. The Jack Adams Trophy now goes to the best coach. The Calder belongs to the top rookie, as well as the American Hockey League champion. And the Conn Smythe is held by the playoff MVP (not just for performance in the Final). Frank Selke was Smythe’s assistant, and the league’s trophy for best defensive forward bears his name.

The Red Wings had become accustomed to Adams’ tactics. Without him, they weren’t the same. Smythe was in the Canadian Army, teaching gunnery skills to recruits, but flew back to watch the Final play out. The Leafs romped to a 9-3 home win in Game 5.

Strange vibes were taking over. The Wings brought up defenseman Doug McKaig, who promptly had his car stolen. The Leafs’ Bob Goldham got into a brawl with Detroit’s Don Grosso, a sergeant in Canada’s Army reserve. Grosso claimed that he nailed Goldham’s mouth so hard that “he won’t be able to kiss his girlfriend for a long time,” to which Goldham replied, “He hit me on the cheek. I don’t kiss her with my cheek.”

Winning Game 5 meant Toronto could put the rest of the series in Broda’s hands, which were formidable. “When he’s right, he could stop lint in a hurricane,” wrote a Toronto columnist. The Fabulous Fat Man dismissed 27 saves in a 3-0 win, tying the series. Game 7 lured a crowd of 16,218, largest in Canadian sports history, to Maple Leaf Gardens, and Toronto won 3-1, with Pete Langelle scoring the game-winner and Sweeney Schriner scoring twice.

Syl Apps, who was the sixth-place finisher in the 1936 Olympic pole vault and who would represent the Leafs in the Hockey Hall of Fame, exclaimed, “By Jiminy!” Goldham disclosed the lucky charms he’d been carrying in his pocket: a hairpin and a wishbone from a chicken.

And Broda would play until 1952, twice leading the league in wins and goals-against, ducking into the washroom between periods for a cigarette or two. One night he was prowling the clubs of L.A. with an American soldier, who couldn’t hang with Turk and passed out in an orchestra pit. Broda didn’t notice because he was on stage, banging out a piano duet with noted composer Hoagy Carmichael. The sun rose soon afterward, and Broda shut out the Canadiens in an exhibition that night.

Today’s players don’t partake in such public shenanigans. At least not until they win the Cup. Then all bets are off, along with all clothes, filters and restraints. The Oilers aren’t necessarily trying to win one for Turk, but they’ll gladly follow his formula. Just win a one-game series four times.