Darryl Sittler reflects on his banner Toronto Maple Leafs career

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Forty-two years removed from his last playoff run with the Toronto Maple Leafs, former captain Darryl Sittler is never too far from the ice. Still employed by the club as a community ambassador, the 72-year-old is taking part in this weekend’s Scotiabank Pro-Am for Alzheimer’s in Toronto along with 26 other NHL alumni and 400-odd amateur players.

What’s your chief characteristic?

I don’t like to talk about myself too much. I just try to be me and who I am. Nothing more, nothing less. I forget about the accolades of who I was and what I did on the ice. I like to be known as a good dad, a good granddad, a good husband. All the things that everybody should aspire to be, that’s who I am.

Where would you like to live?

Toronto is my home, I work for the Leafs. I was fortunate enough to have a summer home up on Lake Simcoe in Orillia. I bought that as a player with the Maple Leafs in the seventies and that’s home. My kids all grew up in the summer there and are very emotionally attached to it. My late wife Wendy, that was her favourite place to be and my grandkids are spending their summers there so we get to relive that whole cycle again. I love the city of Toronto. I’m fortunate to be able to have a cottage and then we have a place down in Jupiter, Fla. We get the best of three worlds. There’s no reason for me to want my life any different than it is.

What is your favourite occupation?

I’ve always been somewhat of an entrepreneur type. As a kid growing up, we had eight kids, my dad was paycheque to paycheque as a crane operator. We realized at a young age, if we wanted anything, you’d have to earn it. I remember earning money in the summer cutting grass, and working on the farm. Okay, how am I going to earn money in the winter? I bought a snowblower so I could blow snow and I’m 13, 14, 15 at the time. So I’ve always had that in me. I enjoyed playing hockey, made a nice living doing it. But I like getting involved into different things. I sit on a couple of boards in the mining industry. Mining is one of those high-risk, high-reward [activities], so you get the juices flowing a little bit when you got a drill rig going on a target and you could hit or you could miss. That’s kind of who I am.

Any favourite books or authors?

I’m not a book reader. I’ll read business articles. My [current wife Luba] kids me all the time because she likes to read fiction. I say why would you want to read a fiction book because I’m more of a realist and whatever I read has got to be real.

Who are your favourite characters in history?

Growing up with my brothers or my dad watching Hockey Night in Canada, I was a Habs fan, Jean Béliveau was my favourite player. Under the Christmas tree, Santa Claus brought me a No. 4 Canadiens jersey and I’ll always remember that moment, seeing the jersey under the tree and then putting it on and I’d wear it everywhere. Then I get drafted by the Leafs, and one of my first games was in the Montreal Forum, I’m facing off against Jean Béliveau. He’s 41 and I’m 20. So obviously a magical moment, a memory that you’ll always have. I went on and had a successful career, and 1989 I get elected to the Hall of Fame. And I got to meet Jean Béliveau at Hall of Fame events, but I always still had the same feeling being in his presence. My wife died of colon cancer in 2001 and I lived in East Amherst, N.Y., just outside of Buffalo with my family. I always remember the moment my phone rang, it was about 10:30 in the morning, and I pick it up and it’s ‘Hey Darryl, it’s Mr. Jean Béliveau, and I want you to know I’m thinking of you on the most difficult day of your life.’ So there you are, my childhood idol, Jean, even to this day.

It sounds like you were the hero in your own Roch Carrier book.

So The Hockey Sweater was Rocket Richard and I didn’t know much about that. I didn’t have that as a kid. But a few years later, after my career is over, Mike Leonetti, who’s a writer, came to me said ‘we’d like to do a kid’s book called My Leafs Sweater, would you like to do that?’ And the book came out and became a very popular book. But here we are 25, 30 years later and kids come up to me and even today, kids are 8, 9, 10 years old, I’m their favourite player because they read this bedtime story of Darryl Sittler and his 10-point game.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

People talk to me about my 10-point game, the overtime goal at the Canada Cup, all of those things, which are awesome. The moment that stands out most for me was my wife was diagnosed with colon cancer, and she battled the disease for three years and I got a call from Ken Dryden, who was the president of the Maple Leafs at the time, and he said, ‘Darryl, we’re going to honour you and Frank Mahovlich, we’re going to put the two 27s up together’. But I said to Ken, ‘Wendy’s really sick and I don’t know if that weekend is going to work because of her health’ [she died shortly after the original date and Sittler’s ceremony was delayed more than a year.] About two or three weeks before the banner was going up, Ken called me in his office and he showed me this artist’s rendering of what my banner was going to look like and I was looking at the banner and thinking to myself, you know, ‘Ken what would be really meaningful for me, Wendy was such a part of my life, married for 30 years, met her in junior hockey, when I was out there doing all my stuff on the ice, she was the glue and stuff and the support behind me. Would you consider allowing me to put her name on the banner?’ [After much demurring, the Leafs eventually agreed]. So that night, I’m at centre ice with my three kids, and as the banner was going up and I was speaking I said ‘and my wife Wendy is looking down on this here and she’s here in spirit,’ there’s not a dry eye in my place, including myself and everybody else. But that kind of brought it all together, all the years with the Maple Leafs, my family, the fans, the honour of having your banner up. So that was my most, I don’t know, beautiful, accepting, rewarding, appreciative moment of my career.