Team He Shoots....He Scooooores!!!! is proud to call to the podium for their final
centre position,
Syl Apps.
From Legends of Hockey.com:
Perhaps never has a finer man played in the NHL than Syl Apps. A remarkably skilled hockey player, he was big and strong and possessed one of the best shots in the league. He never drank or smoked, never swore and was as loyal to his boss, Conn Smythe, as to his team, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Smythe was alerted to Apps when a friend told the Leafs' owner of a great football player at McMaster University who was studying economics. When he heard the young man's name was Sylvanus Apps, Smythe laughed and said, "Nobody with a name like that could possibly become a pro hockey player." Still, he traveled to Hamilton to watch Apps play football. Smythe was so impressed that he offered Apps a hockey contract right then and there, but Apps declined, saying he still had to compete in the pole vault at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
Apps had previously won the British Empire championship with a jump of 12 and ½ feet. And those were the days when poles were made of bamboo and players landed on their feet in a sand pit.
In his first NHL season with the Leafs, he won the Calder Trophy, the first Leaf so honored, and his career continued to flourish. During that first year, many players thought he was too nice and not tough at all. Flash Hollett discovered this belief was mistaken one night when he high-sticked Apps, knocking out two teeth. Apps dropped his gloves and pummeled Hollett, but he got into only two other skirmishes in his whole career. In 1941-42, he went the whole season without getting a single penalty and was awarded the Lady Byng Trophy for his gentlemanly play. At the end of that season, he led the Leafs to the most improbable Stanley Cup win in NHL history, a series against Detroit that he calls his career highlight. The Leafs lost the first three games of the finals to the Red Wings but somehow won the next four in a row to win the Cup, the only time this has happened.
At the end of the [1942-43] season, while in the prime of his career, he left the team to join the Canadian Army. There he stayed for two years until the war was over. When he resumed his career, he put the captain's "C" back on his sweater and promptly picked up where he left off.
From Wiki:
- Apps was elected to the
Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961.
- In 1975 he was elected to
Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and two years later Apps was made a Member of the
Order of Canada.
- In 1998, he was ranked number 33 on
The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players.
- In 2001,
Canada Post included Apps in a
series of NHL All-Star 47-cent
postage stamps.
- Won the Stanley Cup 1942, 1947, 1948 (as Captain with Toronto)
- Won Calder Trophy 1936-37 (First Leaf to do so)
- Won Lady Byng 1941-42