Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

67 страница из 85

In the past three decades of World Junior tournaments, Colaiacovo and Swedish defenceman Kenny Jonsson are the only elite World Junior performers whose rights were owned by the Leafs during the competition who remained with the Leafs to start their NHL careers. Jonsson, like Colaiacovo, became a very solid NHL player, but he, too, was traded away, in the move that brought Wendel Clark back to Toronto in 1996.

Two other defencemen whom the Leafs owned the rights to — Finn Janne Gronvall and Swede Pierre Hedin — played well enough to earn World Junior all-star honours at two different tournaments in the 1990s. But neither ended up playing regularly in the NHL. Hedin had his moments, but as a smallish, slick defenceman, he came along at a time when the NHL game, and especially Pat Quinn, the Leafs coach at the time, demanded much bigger players. After a year of playing on the Leafs’ AHL affiliate in St. John’s, no doubt puzzled at the Newfoundlanders’ accents just as much as the Leafs’ indifference at playing him on the big club, Hedin hightailed it back to Sweden. Not exactly the big one that got away, but Hedin’s story could have been different had he come along a few years later.