Craig Palfrey on Sept. 25. He started working for the Toronto Maple Leafs at Maple Leaf Gardens and moved with the team to the Scotiabank Arena.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Craig Palfrey fetched a chair for Guy Lafleur so the Montreal Canadiens legend could chain-smoke between periods at Maple Leaf Gardens. He got Ron Francis out of a jam when the future Hall of Famer, then with the Hartford Whalers, forgot his parents’ tickets at his hotel. Another time Pat LaFontaine autographed a stick for him before a game and then came looking for it after he broke his own.
“Craig, you still have that stick?” asked LaFontaine, then a star with Buffalo.
“The next time the Sabres came to town he took care of me,” Palfrey says.
Palfrey, 77, has been the visiting team’s dressing-room attendant at Maple Leafs home games since Sept. 1, 1973. In all that time, he has missed just three games – in 2018 when he became gravely ill with a septic infection.
“I am lucky I am still here,” Palfrey says. He figures he has staffed his post before, during and after more than 2,000 NHL games in Toronto. The next regular season – his 51st – begins Wednesday when Montreal pays a visit to Scotiabank Arena to renew hostilities with its chief rival.
“I love hockey,” Palfrey says. “If I am not here I watch every night of the week at home. If hockey isn’t on, I don’t watch anything.”
Palfrey has been around so long that the cantankerous Harold Ballard owned the club when he was hired. Dot Imlach, whose husband Punch coached the team on two different occasions, would bake cookies for him and other employees.
The son of an Anglican minister, Palfrey grew up in Millbrook, a small town west of Peterborough, Ont. He played hockey in his youth but confesses he wasn’t too good at it.
“I was a forward when they let me get on the ice,” he says.
Ottawa Senators players chat with Palfrey outside the visiting team dressing room on Sept. 25.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
When he was young, his family did not own a television so on Saturdays he would go to a friend’s house to watch the Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada.
“My father would chase me home because I had to go to church the next morning,” Palfrey says.
When he was a teenager, the Palfreys moved to Toronto and Craig found a position at a printing shop near the corner of Church and Dundas streets – very near Maple Leaf Gardens. The rink served as the Maple Leafs home venue from 1931 to 1999.
“I would walk there during the day and try to get Leafs tickets but never could,” Palfrey says. “They were always sold out.”
Eventually, he applied for a job because it would at least get him inside the arena. He was hired and worked in a variety of capacities before landing the position as the opposing team’s locker-room attendant. He also served in a similar capacity for the short-lived Toronto Toros of the World Hockey Association and in doing so met Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty when all three lined up for the Houston Aeros.
And he served as an usher during concerts as well, including a visit by Mick Jagger & Co. on June 17, 1975.
“I loved the Rolling Stones,” Palfrey says. “I was as crazy as they were.”
He and the Maple Leafs moved to the Air Canada Centre – now Scotiabank Arena – in February of 1999. While reconfigured, Maple Leaf Gardens is still used by sports teams from Toronto Metropolitan University.
Palfrey treasures the relationships he has built with visiting players over the years. Teemu Selanne, the Finnish Flash, was among his favourites.
“He was amazing to everybody,” Palfrey says.
Alexander Ovechkin seeks him out as soon as the Washington Capitals arrive at the arena.
“If I don’t see him when he comes in, he pokes me in the back from behind,” Palfrey says.
Martin St. Louis, now the Canadiens’ coach, makes sure to shake his hand.
“I love the interaction I have with the players and other people,” Palfrey says. “I have met so many good ones. Most are really down-to-earth, friendly guys.”
His favourite visiting teams are the Capitals, Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning.
Before a recent exhibition game, a handful of Ottawa Senators swarmed him. They had not seen one another since last season.
Vladimir Tarasenko gave him a hug. Mathieu Joseph greeted him warmly. Jakob Chychrun asked about Palfrey’s family.
During the off-season he keeps in touch with many of them, including Francis.
In 1981, on his first visit to Maple Leaf Gardens as a rookie, Francis came to him and asked, “Can you help me?”
With help from Palfrey, the tickets he had left at his hotel were delivered in time for the game.
“I have been friends with him ever since,” Palfrey says. “His parents wouldn’t have gotten in.”