NHLGilmour led Maple Leafs with killer instinct

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Doug Gilmour combined skill and stamina with boyish charm and a killer instinct. Brian Sutter didn't nickname him "Killer" for nothing.

Now the hockey icon has a new monicker: Hall of Famer.

Also inducted Monday into the Hall are former teammates Ed Belfour and Joe Nieuwendyk as well as Mark Howe, whose father, Gordie Howe, remains one of its most revered members. 

Interesting is the parallel path taken by Gilmour and Nieuwendyk as both sipped from the Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames in 1989, helped to restore the Toronto Maple Leafs to post-season prominence in the 1990s and now raise the on-ice fortunes of the Kingston Frontenacs and Dallas Stars as their respective general managers.

But I digress.

Gilmour was listed at 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds soaking wet -- scrawny by NHL standards. But leaders come in all shapes and sizes and, in his prime, he competed with a ferocity unseen in Toronto hockey circles since Canada's centennial.

"There were a lot of naysayers who said I was too small," he told Hockey Night In Canada. "But you just keep going and prove them wrong."

It was a winding road to stardom for Gilmour, who went undrafted in his first year of eligibility and, despite piling up 128 goals and 331 points in 186 OHL games, was overlooked until the St. Louis Blues took a stab at the smallish prospect in the seventh round.

He entered the NHL undersized and underestimated, armed only with a combative spirit and a quote shown him by a junior teammate: "A man shows what he is by what he does with what he has."
 
What Gilmour did was exceed all expectations, compiling 450 goals and 1,414 points in 1,474 games over 20 NHL seasons until a torn ACL -- suffered on the first shift of his second stint with the Maple Leafs -- abruptly ended his career.

Looking back, Gilmour's legacy is defined by neither his numbers nor his Cup-clinching goal for Calgary. Rather, he is  best remembered for a burning rage to win which stoked Toronto in two unforgettable playoff runs.

The Leafs were chock full of veteran talent -- Dave Andreychuk, Wendel Clark, Felix Potvin to name three -- yet not until Gilmour hoisted the team on his diminutive frame did it truly contend. 

Gilmour wasn't just competitive. He was, to quote Nieuwendyk, "ultra competitive."

To watch the Leafs then was to watch Gilmour at the top of his game -- fearless, relentless -- and his tireless efforts helped sustain the team's belief in itself and in the possibility of ending Toronto's Stanley Cup drought.

Gilmour's inspired leadership whipped Toronto's Cup-starved fans into a frenzy and they began believing too, until the juggernaut was derailed in the conference finals by none other than Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings in 1993 and ran out of gas against the Vancouver Canucks in 1994.

Regardless of the outcomes, the lasting impression of Gilmour come playoffs was of Superman on skates, something the late Pat Burns once confirmed when he told reporters that Gilmour skipped an optional skate because he had to "go back to his planet and rest."

The post-season stories emerging from the dressing room read like warrior's tales with an exhausted Gilmour, reduced to 150 pounds, replenishing lost fluids intravenously and receiving injections to dull the pain in his feet.

Dogged. Determined. That was Dougie.

And why Leaf Nation loved him.

Gilmour's stature soared in Toronto, so much so that he once disguised himself as a wacky-looking Leafs fan to avoid being mobbed as he entered Maple Leaf Gardens.

It was likely the one and only time he went unnoticed wearing a No. 93 hockey sweater.

'You want to have a bit of fun' 

I first met Gilmour at a street hockey tournament of all things. I recall how comfortably he wore his fame, hiding under a sloppy grey hoodie and the brim of a sweat-stained ball cap pulled down low. He spoke earnestly and modestly, each breath whistling up his nostrils as he peered down at the pavement.

At the rink, he was no different -- approachable, likeable -- whether it was offering up a quick sound bite as he left the ice at the end of practice, sitting down for an in-depth interview in the Gardens stands or answering questions as he sifted through the stacks of mail piled high in the executive offices upstairs.

Gilmour was popular with the media. And he was embraced by teammates, both current and former, as a fun-loving yuckster who kept the room guessing with a bottomless bag of pranks that he rarely, if ever, owned up to.

Jelly doughnuts filled with Vaseline, anyone?

"You want to have a bit of fun," Gilmour said. "But once the warmup is over with, the game face is on."

Was it ever.

Few athletes compete with such focus and intensity, such inner fire that you see smoke billowing out of their ears at game's end. In Toronto, in the nineties, there were three: Doug Flutie, Roger Clemens -- and Doug Gilmour.

He had that killer instinct.

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