Opinion | Rick Vaive is the goal scorer that Leafs fans — or Leafs history — appears to have forgotten

There have been the overrated players of Maple Leafs history, and the underrated. The surprisingly celebrated, and the surprisingly unpopular.

There are Leafs that very much benefitted through their association with good teams and good players, and others who might not be as highly regarded if they had played for teams on the West Coast, or the southern United States. The team has been around for more than 100 years, so naturally many players have been either forgotten or mythologized. Who’s still around who can tell you how dominant Babe Pratt was during his Hart Trophy season? Or whether Gordie Drillon was as good as modern-day players when he won the NHL scoring championship?

Everyone who identifies as a Leafs fan has their viewpoint on those who have donned the blue and white, and often it depends on what period of hockey they witnessed. But for all the players who have played for the Leafs, you would be hard pressed to find a player more underappreciated than Richard Claude (Rick) Vaive, born in Ottawa on May 14, 1959, and raised after the age of 11 in Charlottetown. Hockey history, and Leafs history, has not been overly kind to Vaive, who has been back in the news of late as Auston Matthews assaulted his record for most goals by a Leafs player in a single NHL season.

Vaive began his pro hockey career in Alabama in 1979, while Matthews began his in Switzerland in 2015. The 37 years that separated their careers might as well have been a century for the difference in the game when Vaive played it, and how it is played in today’s NHL. Vaive was a hard-shooting right winger while Matthews is a goal-scoring centre. Vaive shot right, Matthews shoots left. Vaive served as the team captain. Matthews may be captain one day.

There seems little in common between the two players, and this is not about which player was better, because even Vaive would tell you it is Matthews. Vaive, however, is rarely even included in conversations about the titans of Leafs history. There are players who have had their jerseys retired, or raised to the roof on a banner, and there are those who have been immortalized outside the team’s arena in statue form. The Hockey Hall of Fame is full of players who played all or part of their careers in Leafs colours. Not all were NHL greats.

Vaive may not deserve to be part of any of those honoured groups. But surely he deserves more notice for his contribution to the team and its history than he has received.

In the 1981-82 season, after one season with the WHA’s Birmingham Bulls, a part of a season with the Vancouver Canucks and one full season with the Leafs following a trade, Vaive scored 54 goals, the first Leafs player to hit that mark. The next season he scored 51, and then followed that up with a 52-goal campaign, all while absorbing fearsome punishment in front of the opposition net at a time when the cross check was an NHL defenceman’s primary tool when defending the front of his net.

Vaive accomplished this while playing in Toronto during a time that was arguably the darkest in franchise history, a time when Harold Ballard’s abuse of the legendary Original Six team was perhaps at its most destructive. Ballard’s misguided effort to bring the Leaf back to greatness by bringing back Punch Imlach had blown up in his face and ruined a team that had been close to a contender in the late 1970s. The years when Vaive would roar down the right side and fire slap shot after slap shot past enemy goalies were when the Leafs were derided as the “Laffs,” a national punchline.

During those three seasons when Vaive hit the 50-goal mark, the Leafs missed the playoffs twice, and dropped a best-of-five opening-round series after winning only one game. Before leaving for Chicago in 1987, Vaive had not played for a Leafs team that managed more than 75 points in a season, or made it past the second round of the playoffs.

It was his association with that disgraceful era in Leafs history, quite clearly, that has left him unfairly dismissed by too many. Nobody did more for those editions of the Leafs to try to help them be successful despite Ballard’s ridiculous reign, and despite the frequent incompetence of those he hired to run the hockey club, than Vaive.

He was popular when he played. He never embarrassed the team by his conduct or public comments. He overachieved despite being surrounded with players unable to play at the same level he could. He sacrificed his body. He scored more goals with the Leafs than Frank Mahovlich, George Armstrong and Wendel Clark.

Vaive has been somewhat lost in Leaf history, part of a time most would prefer to forget. During that time, the Edmonton Oilers became the kind of Canadian NHL franchise that captured the imagination of the public in a way the Leafs no longer did, while the Montreal Canadiens created a sizable gap between themselves and the Leafs in terms of history and legacy.

It is fair that Vaive is punished for being part of a forgettable time in Leafs history, and not applauded enough for what he achieved in what was essentially a toxic work environment? No, it isn’t. If Matthews’ extraordinary season creates a greater conversation around Vaive and his rightful place in team history, that would be a very good thing.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin

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