![]() Moreover, when the Selke Trophy, for the NHL’s best defensive forward, was first introduced in 1978, Gainey won it in Year 1, and then again in Years 2, 3 and 4. In a career that lasted 16 NHL seasons and 1,160 regular-season games, all for the Canadiens, Gainey never scored more than 23 goals - or 47 points - in a single season, modest totals achieved by many NHL journeymen.Īnd yet, Gainey was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992, in his first year of eligibility - an honor generally bestowed upon only the all-time, sure-thing, can’t-miss greats. 92 on The Athletic’s list of the greatest players of the NHL’s post-expansion era. You had to be at the top of your game every night to play against him.” ![]() People didn’t realize: This guy was so big, skated like the wind for a big man - and he was strong as an ox. We were drafted together, retired the same year and were inducted into the Hall of Fame together. “The connection with Bob went on forever. “Then, in ’89, after we won, they said: ‘If we had to lose, I’m glad it was to you.'” “In the handshake line, when they beat us in ’86, they both said, ‘We’re happy we won, but we feel so badly that you’re the one who lost out of this.’ ![]() “By then, we’d become good friends - Bob Gainey, Larry Robinson and I,” recalled McDonald. ![]() For the latter part of the 1970s and the early 1980s, until McDonald was traded to the Colorado Rockies, they battled, on the ice, every shift, McDonald, the elite scorer for the Maple Leafs, Gainey the dogged checker for the Canadiens.Īnd in the twilight of their respective careers, they met twice in the Stanley Cup Final - once in 1986, when the Canadiens won, and then again in 1989, when the Flames flipped the script and won. ![]()
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