It was fifty years ago this month that hockey reached a fever pitch in Kingston. The upstart Kingston Canadians in just their second year in Major Junior Hockey, took the nation’s best team and eventual Memorial Cup champions to the wall in a thrilling eight-game series with the Toronto Marlboros that captivated Kingston hockey fans.

Kingston fired its coach, dapper Jack (Red) Bownass with just four games left in the regular season. A gutsy call that saw General Manager Walter (Punch) Scherer take over. Punch had coached earlier in his career including with the famed Kitchener-Waterloo Flying Dutchmen senior team, but it had been many years.

Kingston’s playoff fate would be determined on the final night of the regular season based on the outcome of a game between London and Kitchener. Scherer had spent fifty years of his hockey career around Kitchener-Waterloo and the last place Rangers did him a solid. Kitchener had only sixteen wins on the season and Don Edwards stood tall in goal as Kitchener shocked London 7-3. London missed the playoffs by a single point and Kingston got into the dance.

That set up an opening round playoff series with the powerhouse Toronto Marlies. David versus Goliath. Toronto was the OHA’s dominant team with forty-eight regular season wins, 105 points, finishing first overall and scoring a league record 469 goals. They had four players with over 100-points, Bruce Boudreau, John Tonelli, Mark Napier and John Anderson. Kingston finished a whopping 45-points behind Toronto in the standings.

It was a wild high-scoring series with huge momentum swings from game to game, even period to period. Like a great heavyweight prized fight it went the distance. The Marlboros played out of Maple Leaf Gardens but because of previous bookings at the Gardens a couple of the games had to shift 100-kilometres to the west to play in the 2,900 seat Brantford, Ontario Civic Centre.

Game One was played in Brantford where as expected Toronto rolled to an easy 5-1 win. On the second shift of the series Kingston suffered a crushing blow when Mike Crombeen went down for the series with a knee injury. Crombeen was their leading scorer coming off a 56-goal, 114-point regular season.

The Marlies were missing five players including the injured Boudreau who had won the league scoring title, and Tonelli rumoured to have a pro contract in hand from WHA’s Houston Aeros, was told by his agent, Gus Badali, not to play in the playoffs and he sat out.

Kingston was buzzing with excitement In anticipation of the first playoff game in franchise history. Fans were lined up for hours before the box office opened to get tickets for the second game of the series.

Not me, I knew a couple of rink attendants from my time at Portsmouth’s Harold Harvey Arena and I got in through the back door of the Zamboni room and watched all four home games without a ticket. It is not friends in high places, it’s friends in the right places.

Officially the Memorial Centre holds 3,350 fans. If the Fire Chief looks the other way you can cram in more than four thousand and that is what happened in all four games at the York Street ice palace. It was reminiscent of the crowds for the Kingston Goodyear’s Senior ‘B’ teams when they won two Ontario titles in the mid 1950’s.

Game Two at the Memorial Centre in front of a packed house got off to a stunning start. Kingston jumped out to a 6-0 first period lead as the local faithful looked on in disbelief. Kingston cruised to a 9-4 shellacking of the Marlies led by seventeen-year-old Greg Hotham, who had three goals. Hotham, a defenseman, was moved up front and played on the top line (replacing Crombeen), with Brad Rhiness and Tony McKegney. Acquired in a mid-season trade, Hotham had scored just one goal in his previous 32-games. Rhiness was also outstanding with a five-point night.

The third game saw the Marlboros back on home ice at Maple Leaf Gardens where they had lost just one game all season. They blasted Kingston 9-1. Canadians goalie Jim Weaver left the game injured in the second period and Mike Freeman took over the Kingston net.

Back to Kingston the 4th game was another high scoring affair. Kingston scored three straight third period goals to break a 6-6 tie and won it 9-7 to even the series. The late Alex Forsyth, drafted in the first round of the NHL draft by Washington that summer, was battling a knee injury, but scored two huge Kingston goals in the final period in front of 4,301 noisy fans.

Only 846 fans found their way to Brantford for game five, including an estimated one-hundred fans making the trip Kingston. In a very quiet arena, Toronto came from behind with four third-period goals to salvage a 6-6 tie with Kingston. No overtime in the playoffs in that era. Brad Rhiness again led the Canadians with a pair of goals to give him five in the series and Barry Scully also notched his fifth of the playoffs. Bruce Boudreau scored with six minutes left to earn the tie for Toronto. Kingston outshot Toronto 52-31.

Mark Napier, who had already signed a pro contract with WHA’s Toronto Toros, had fifteen points in the first five games.

As a result of scheduling issues they played the last three games in 48-hours, Saturday night in Kingston, Sunday afternoon at Maple Leaf Gardens and the last game in Kingston on Monday night. A schedule unheard of in playoff hockey that wasn’t fair to either team.

The Kingston Memorial Centre was electric for Game Six on Saturday night April 05. Again on home ice the Canadians erupted for three third-period goals to win 5-3 and take the series lead 7-points-to-five. Greg Hotham snapped a 2-2 tie in the final frame and Tony McKegney got the eventual game winner. Jim Weaver was back in goal for Kingston facing 38-shots as a crowd of 4,246 cheered on the home side.

They were back at it the next afternoon, a Sunday matinee 7th game at the Gardens. A tie would give Kingston the series win and a monumental upset. But it was not to be, Toronto scored  the final four goals and beat Kingston 5-2 to even the series at seven points apiece and set up the deciding eighth game in Kingston the next night.

Mark Napier has a pair of goals for the fifth straight game. He would become the central figure in game eight and part of Kingston hockey history.

It all came down to Monday night, Game Eight in Kingston.

Kingston had home ice advantage despite finishing 45-points behind the Marlies. Fans camped out all night at the Memorial Centre to get tickets, while scalpers hawked tickets outside prior to puck drop.

It was a game for the age’s etched in the memories of the 4,335 lucky souls who got inside the jammed arena. Thousands more glued to their radios to hear Max Jackson’s epic call on CKWS radio. Today, hundreds more swear they were there that night.

You could feel the tension in the air and with the game tied 1-1 and just under three minutes left in the opening period, the critical moment in the series happened on a controversial, disputed goal by Toronto’s Mark Napier. It is vividly remembered to this day and in the moment sent the Canadians players off the rails.

As Whig Standard reporter Art Wright recounted the next day,  “The score was tied 1-1 when Napier fled down the right side on one of his patented breaks and fired a backhand along the ice which appeared to hit the post and bounce straight out. The red light went on, but the play went on for a few more seconds before referee Bob Nadin whistled the play dead and awarded the goal to the Marlies after consulting with the goal judge.”

For Kingston hockey fans fifty years later, the puck still has not gone in.

Kingston goalie Jim Weaver told the Whig, “Even Napier knew it wasn’t in, he never even started to raise his stick, he just kept going after the puck.“ The Canadians lost their composure and let the game get away.

Thirty-eight seconds later Boudreau scored to stretch the lead to 3-1 after twenty minutes. Early in the second period, the Marlies got two more and now it’s 5-1.

Kingston never fully recovered.

Mike Freeman replaced Jim Weaver in the second period, and by that point it was 6-3 Toronto.

“You can’t blame the whole game on that Napier goal,” said a dejected Kingston defenseman Mike O’Connell. Adding, “but something like that has to have an effect on a team.”

Toronto General Manager Frank Bonello when asked about Napier’s goal replied, “If I were in Punch Scherer’s shoes, I would have been fuming too. It was not in.”

Kingston trailed by four goals twice in the deciding game. Toronto led 8-4 in the third period, but Kingston scored three straight to get to within one. The impossible seemed once again within reach.

The dream died when John Anderson’s empty net goal iced it, his third of the night making it a 9-7 Toronto final.

Bruce Boudreau who had just two goals in the series entering the deciding game, had three goals and five points in the clincher.

Napier finished the series with twelve goals and twenty-four points.

Years later, I interviewed Napier at the Limestone Classic at Kingston’s Feb Fest, and asked him if the ‘Phantom Goal’ went in, he smiled and replied, “I’ll never tell” and skated away.

The series was one for the ages in junior hockey circles. Kingston coach and GM Punch Scherer said afterwards, “I have never been so proud of a group of players as I am of this one. And I have been around a lot of them.”

Marlboros coach and former Leaf’s great George Armstrong called it a “great series”, comparing it to a seven-game Stanley Cup final he played in for Toronto versus Detroit in the 1964 final. “It was a similar series,” said Armstrong, “Dog-eat-dog right to the end.”

Scherer summed up the series this way, “It is no disgrace to lose to that team, they have beaten a lot of good teams all season.”

Two days later Mike O’Connell, who missed twenty regular season games with a knee injury, was named the league’s best defenseman. He had 73-points in fifty games. He was on his way to a 12-year NHL playing career.

The Marlboros, they went on to beat Sudbury and Hamilton (both 7-game series) to win the OHA title and knocked off New Westminster at the Memorial Cup final.

For Kingston fans it was a case of what might have been. Coming so close to knocking off the eventual Memorial Cup champions. Fifty years later the chase continues for Kingston, in the city where the Memorial Cup was born.

Mark Potter is an honoured member of the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame. Covered the OHL for thirty years as a broadcaster and never paid for a ticket in the 1975 playoffs.