ANTHONY DRANSFELD
Johnny Bower, the Toronto Maple Leaf netminder, was a kind man. Kind enough to spend time visiting with me on the phone these past six months.
My story with Johnny Bower actually began two years ago. The stick boy for the 1957 Vancouver Canucks of the old Western Hockey League was a 13 year old named Harvey Greenwood. Being the kind of fellow he is, Johnny and his wife Nancy would pick up young Harvey in their old Green Ford on their way to the Vancouver Forum.
Bower only played that one season in Vancouver, where he was voted Most Valuable Goalie in the Western Hockey League, then it was onto the New York Rangers for one season.
Fast forward 60 years to the summer of 2017. I was over visiting Harvey Greenwood and said to him, “this is the day we are calling Johnny Bower to say hello.”
I looked up the Toronto phone directory and there it was — John Bower. His wife Nancy answered the phone (Nancy, by the way is as youthful, warm and upbeat as her husband).
Harvey introduced himself on the telephone. The first thing I heard Bower say to Harvey was “I always wondered what happened to you, Kid.”
I got on the phone call later on and mentioned to Johnny that I was friends with Kimberley Dynamiter goalie Earl Betker, who was from Prince Albert himself. Turned out Earl gave John Bower his first set of pads when Earl got new ones. (Bower had been using a set of pads cut out of a bed mattress). Earl Betker could have played pro hockey himself, Bower said, but abstained due to the fact he would not play hockey on the Sabbath.
Earl and Bower stayed in touch for many years after they both departed Prince Albert. I mentioned to Johnny in a phone call a few weeks later if he knew Frank ‘Sully” Sullivan, a phenom in Saskatchewan who played Senior Hockey there at age 16. Sully Sullivan came to the Kimberley Dynamiters from the Montreal Maroons (a better financial offer).
Bower, as it turned out was a hockey historian, especially the Saskatchewan players. He knew all about Sullivan and had seen him play quite a bit.
I told Johnny that Sully Sullivan’s son Sully Jr, was a goalie in Pro Hockey in the Eastern League and Philly in the 1970s. I suggested a visit on the phone in the New Year.
Sadly Johnny passed away just before Christmas, so we could not make that connection.
Johnny Bower played with Bobby Baun on the Toronto Maple Leafs for many seasons. In fact, defenseman Baun scored the winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final playing on a broken ankle.
Baun chummed around with a friend of mine, Jim, who has lived in Toronto for many years. Jim was at a Leaf practice back in the day with his friend Baun. Bower was the undisputed Ping Pong Champ on the Maple Leaf team, a real whiz. Jim remembered Bower playing table tennis ambidextrously.
The late Jean Beliveau once said of Bower “You cannot “deke” him, he just waits you out, he gives me more trouble than any goaltender in the league.”
Nancy Bower mentioned to me recently that when Gordie Howe passed away last year, it hit Johnny really hard. They had been best friends for many decades and spent their summers together in Saskatchewan where John and Nancy ran a restaurant in Prince Albert called Big Boy Burgers.
Now Nancy actually knew Gordie Howe in Saskatoon going to grade school with him, before meeting Johnny at a golf course where he worked.
The current Vice President of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Lou Lamoriello, was a six-year-old boy playing in his parents Pizza restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, when he first met Johnny and Nancy Bower. The eatery was popular with the Pro hockey team, the Providence Reds, that had a goalie named Johnny Bower. 65 years later Lou and Johnny reunited in Toronto at the Air Canada Centre for the hometown Leafs. That is how hockey is — a game of cycles.
Johnny Bower played eight seasons for the Cleveland Barons in the American hockey League where he perfected the poke check, which was to serve him well later on in the NHL. Then George “Punch” Imlach called up the Bower to Leafs training camp.
Johnny was reluctant to go to Toronto.He liked Cleveland, but his Nancy “talked me into it ” as John reflected in our last phone converstation.
When Bower was named one of the three Stars on Hockey Night in Canada, he would wave his blocker glove (a kind of secret wave to his mother-in-law out in Saskatoon). As a boy I remember that glove wave.
Bower never played with a mask.
I would like to say I have greatly enjoyed my phone calls with Nancy Bower as much as I did with her husband John.
Johnny Bower was busy till the end, half of the time I phoned he was just getting back from Leaf practice. Mr. Bower just loved to be at the rink in the Maple Leaf dressing room with the boys.
I wanted to share with you, the readers, my time with Johnny Bower of the Toronto Maple Leafs, a Prince from Prince Albert.
