[Dion]

Doug Gilmour explains why Flames traded him to Maple Leafs

“It was Risebrough, whose room was right next to mine,” writes Gilmour of the Flames coach and GM, whose voice quickly dropped him to the carpet.

“He was on the phone. I heard my name. I lay down on the floor beside the door that connected the two rooms and put my ear to the narrow gap at the floor. That’s when I heard it. ‘I’m going to trade Gilmour.’

“I knew then that I was finished with the Calgary Flames.”

A rocky relationship between the two was further strained weeks earlier when a mid-November arbitration ruling – yes, it was held one day after a game – went horribly wrong in the eyes of the small-market organization.

The Flames offered $400,000, Gilmour asked for $700,000 and the arbitrator awarded the feisty forward $625,000.

He then told a handful of teammates like Al MacInnis and Gary Roberts at a team dinner later that night.

“Guys, if I’m not there tomorrow, I’m done,” he said, drawing responses of disbelief from the lads, who urged him to reconsider. He didn’t.

The next morning he went into the Saddledome early, packed up his equipment, put it in his car and walked upstairs to tell Risebrough he was leaving to play for Team Canada.

“Well, if you walk today I’m going to trade you,” was Risebrough’s response to the man who scored Calgary’s only Stanley Cup-clinching goal.

One day later the phone rang with news from the GM he had been moved.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/...gilmour-trade/