Pappin dies at 82, credited with Cup-winning goal for Maple Leafs in 1967
Forward scored in Game 6 that gave Toronto its most recent NHL championship
He is stitched forever into franchise fabric for the 1967 Stanley Cup ring that he gave to his father-in-law, bitter about his 1968 trade to the Chicago Black Hawks, the ring lost in the sands of a Florida beach and missing for nearly four decades before it was found in 2007 by a beachcomber armed with a metal detector.
No matter the recovery, the loss has been enough that many Maple Leafs fans have sewn it into a multipart curse/conspiracy, shouldering it with part of the blame for the team not having won a championship in 55 years.
Pappin, a Stanley Cup champion with Toronto in 1964 and 1967 who played 767 NHL games for four teams between 1963-76, died Wednesday. He was 82.
Jim Pappin watches his shot fly past Boston Bruins defenseman Bobby Orr and goalie Gerry Cheevers during Maple Leaf Gardens action. / Frank Prazak, Hockey Hall of Fame
The native of Sudbury, Ontario had 573 points (278 goals, 295 assists) at right wing over 14 seasons from 1963-76. If he would be most prolific offensively with the Black Hawks, skating on the "MPH Line" with Pit Martin and Dennis Hull, it is his Stanley Cup clincher with the Maple Leafs that forever will be his brightest and most intriguing moment.
"We played against each other in junior -- he was with the Toronto Marlies, I was with St. Mikes," said Maple Leafs legend Dave Keon, profoundly saddened to have lost another teammate. "He was a really good goal-scorer, but he and Punch (coach and general manager Imlach) never really seemed to get along. There was always something happening that was grinding between the two of them.
"Jim was a player who probably should have been a Maple Leaf, but he went to Chicago and he flourished there, fortunately for him but unfortunately for us."
Linemates (from left) Bob Pulford, Jim Pappin and Pete Stemkowski on May 2, 1967 celebrate what is the most recent Maple Leafs' Stanley Cup-winning goal. / Graphic Artists, Hockey Hall of Fame
The legendary 1967 goal, scored May 2 at 19:24 of the second period of Game 6, gave Toronto a 2-0 lead against the heavily favored Montreal Canadiens, the two-time defending champion. On home ice, the Maple Leafs defeated the Canadiens 3-1, sending the Stanley Cup to display at Ontario's pavilion at Montreal's Expo 67 World's fair that summer, not the Quebec pavilion where space had confidently, even smugly been reserved.
Grainy film shows Pappin's shot glancing off the skate of linemate Pete Stemkowski past Canadiens goalie Gump Worsley. Confusion about the play initially gave the goal to Stemkowski, but the latter shuffled credit to Pappin in a clandestine agreement between the two, Pappin in line for bonus should he win the Stanley Cup Playoff goal-scoring race.
Stemkowski apparently was offered unlimited use of a backyard pool that Pappin would build with his bonus, so official scoring credit went to Pappin for what is the Maple Leafs' most recent Cup-winning goal. As Toronto's drought grew, the two men jousted good-naturedly over who actually scored.
But everyone was taking credit/blame for the goal in its immediate aftermath.
The 1966-67 Stanley Cup champion Toronto Maple Leafs. Jim Pappin is in the back row, fourth from left; Pete Stemkowski is one row down, third from left; Bob Pulford is front row, second from right; Dave Keon is second row, second from left. / Macdonald Stewart, Hockey Hall of Fame
"I lobbed the puck across the crease and it hit (defenseman) Jacques Laperriere," Pappin told reporters in a champagne-soaked Maple Leafs dressing room.
Worsley and Canadiens defenseman Terry Harper disagreed, saying the puck had caromed in off Harper.
"It was a lousy goal," grumbled Worsley, who faced 34 shots compared to the 41 the Canadiens fired at Terry Sawchuk. "The puck hit somebody and just dropped. It was in before I could move."
Harper said that Pappin's shot had hit him on the hip, but analysis decades later by Maple Leafs historian and archivist Paul Patskou proves the deflection was Stemkowski's.
Maple Leafs captain George Armstrong offers Jim Pappin a sip from the Stanley Cup after Toronto's 1964 championship win. / Michael Sr. Burns, Hockey Hall of Fame
"I checked the TV footage and the Cup film and slowed it down and the puck did deflect off 'Stemmer,'" Patskou said Thursday. "You can see on the video that the ref (John Ashley) asks him if the puck hit him and for some reason, he said no. Maybe he couldn't feel it. …
"(Public address announcer) Paul Morris announces Stemmer as the goal scorer and in the radio intermission they talk about Stemmer's goal."
Ashley clearly knew nothing about a swimming pool when the official scoring change was made.
"I don't think they'll be changing the record book," Keon said with a laugh.
Toronto Maple Leafs captain George Armstrong and Toronto Marlies' Jim Pappin skate at Maple Leaf Gardens; Pappin in a Marlies portrait, both late 1950s. / Turofsky, Hockey Hall of Fame
Born Sept. 10, 1939, Pappin would ascend to the NHL for the 1963-64 season, a product of the major junior Toronto Marlboros, skating stints with minor-pro affiliates in Sudbury and Rochester.
He wasn't atop the Maple Leafs depth chart his rookie season, a member of Toronto's 1964 champions who would fashion himself into a versatile cog in the gears of Imlach's Maple Leafs.
"Jim played left wing with George (Armstrong, on left wing) and myself (at center) in 1964," Keon recalled. "I don't know what happened, Punch got mad at him and took him off the line. He and I and Frank (Mahovlich) played together for a little while in 1965."
Pappin would spend considerable time with Rochester of the American Hockey League from 1964-66 before sticking with the Maple Leafs, one of a handful who was a favorite whipping boy of Imlach. But he persevered, scoring 32 points (21 goals, 11 assists) through 64 games in 1966-67, used mostly as a checking forward.
Jim Pappin in 1967 Maple Leaf Gardens action against the Chicago Black Hawks. / Frank Prazak, Hockey Hall of Fame
He was brilliant in those playoffs, the grizzled Maple Leafs not given much of a chance against the powerhouse Canadiens. His 15 points (seven goals, eight assists) in 12 games led the postseason, his goals total, on which the contract bonus was hinged, edging Canadiens captain Jean Beliveau by one.
With the scoring title came a swimming pool and the years-long debate with Stemkowski.
Feeling ill in early February 1967, Imlach turned coaching over to King Clancy, who carried the Maple Leafs toward the playoffs with a light mood that was a stark contrast to what the players had known.
"King kind of relaxed everything," Keon said. "We came out of our 10-game losing streak and went on a 13-game unbeaten streak. We went into the playoffs and I think Chicago looked past us at the Canadiens."
The Maple Leafs knocked off the Black Hawks in a six-game semifinal before defeating the Canadiens in six for the Stanley Cup.
Jim Pappin tests Chicago Black Hawks goalie Glenn Hall during a 1963-64 game at Maple Leaf Gardens. / Graphic Artists, Hockey Hall of Fame
Among Clancy's greatest moves late that season was putting Pappin on a line with Stemkowski and Bob Pulford.
"'Pully' and I looked at Clancy like, 'Are you insane?'" Stemkowski recalled, quoted by authors Kevin Shea and Jason Wilson in the Maple Leafs' 2016 Centennial album. "But Pappin could skate and he could stay wide. I could give him the puck and he had a great shot. Pulford was a bit of a bulldog. … I was the guy that would go into the corners, knock some people over and get the puck to Pulford. Those three different styles complemented each other."
Pappin played another season for the Maple Leafs before he was traded to Chicago on May 23, 1968 for veteran defenseman Pierre Pilote. The trade didn't sit well with Pappin, hence the Stanley Cup ring giveaway/loss/curse, no matter that his most productive years lay ahead.
Jim Pappin about to set off on the Maple Leafs' 1967 Stanley Cup parade; as a member of the Chicago Black Hawks in 1968-69. / Graphic Artists; Le Studio du hockey, Hockey Hall of Fame
He scored a then-NHL career high 30 goals in 1968-69, with 28, 22 and 27 the next three seasons before he scored 41, 32 and 36 from 1972-75.
Pappin was traded to the California Golden Seals on June 1, 1975 with a third-round pick in the 1977 NHL Draft for forward Joey Johnston, playing a season there before ending his career with 24 games for the Cleveland Barons in 1976-77.
Between seasons, Pappin ran a hockey school that doubled as a horse-riding camp; in retirement for a time, he operated a tennis complex in Sudbury. But he would find his way back into hockey, scouting for several NHL teams.
Until his final days, Pappin had fun with his phantom goal that lifted the Maple Leafs to the 1967 Stanley Cup, hoping that one season soon he no longer would be famous as the player who scored Toronto's most recent championship-clinching goal.
"Jim was a goal-scorer, always looking to be in position to score," Keon said. "He had a great shot. Jim was a really good player and a really good teammate."
