High sticks, Hollywood hijinx top Joe Bowen’s California tales

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Completing 44 season calling the Maple Leafs on radio and TV, Joe Bowen is retiring this month.

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During this final season for the Hall of Famer, Postmedia is tapping into Joe’s vast storybook of select Leaf opponents, many famous players and bygone arenas.

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With Toronto completing its tour of Anaheim, San Jose and Los Angeles, he recalls the teams many adventures in sunny California — and one dark evening at the Great Western Forum:

Bowen will hang up the headset having never called a Stanley Cup final.

But he remembers every detail of the night the Leafs were a high stick away from meeting the Montreal Canadiens in what would’ve been a classic Cup.

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Many bitter fans can tell you where they watched May 27, 1993, when Kerry Fraser ruled Wayne Gretzky had not lifted his lumber into Doug Gilmour’s mush and No. 99 stayed around to score the Game 6 power-play overtime winner. Blood-inducing high sticks were classified as automatic majors at the time.

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Bowen and analyst Gord Stellick had a perfect view in a section of lower bowl seats that formed the media area at the Forum.

“I definitely saw the high stick,” Bowen said of Gilmour’s cut chin and the Leafs arguing with Fraser. “What really pissed me off was we all went out after the game, one of the officials was there and told me ‘the puck hit (Gilmour).’

“I said ‘how? What did he do, dive on it’?’

“L.A. won the series, but that incident prompted a rule change the next year that you didn’t get kicked out for a high stick.”

The league didn’t have today’s video review technology.

“I’ll go to my grave believing that when the three officials got together (Fraser and linesmen Kevin Collins and Ron Finn), one of them had to have said ‘we can’t kick Wayne Gretzky out of the game.’ No bleepin’ way they couldn’t have said it because there would’ve been a bleepin’ riot.”

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Hollywood stars taking in Leafs-Kings games

The Leafs entourage often rubbed shoulders with Hollywood stars through the years in L.A., many of them game-night guests of the Kings.

Bowen’s one-time colour man was Larry Mann, the dour-faced actor from Toronto who was in The Sting, among other movies, TV spots and commercials.

During that series against the Kings, the Leafs stayed ocean-side in Santa Monica at the swank Loews hotel. One night, there was a pool party there featuring members of the Beach Boys and Get Smart/Love Boat actor Bernie Kopell.

Bowen was sitting in the Loews lobby when a contingent of St. John’s Maple Leafs. who had been promoted for playoffs, urged him to come down to the water. Coaches Joel Quennville, Marc Crawford and a few of the Black Aces had come back from practice and noticed the crew from the TV series Baywatch were filming an episode.

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“I’d never seen Baywatch, but down we all go, everyone taking their tarps off, strutting their stuff. And there she was, Pamela Anderson.”

The British Columbia-born former Playboy Playmate didn’t disappoint the live audience.

“She did a running scene and I immediately became a big fan of the show,” Bowen said with a laugh.

Arrival of the Mighty Ducks

The next season was the arrival of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, joining the San Jose Sharks to make California trips more meaningful for the Leafs and other NHL teams. Despite some rough early years, ‘The Pond’ was one of the NHL’s most beautiful arenas, set among the palm trees.

In 2011-12, Joe and son Sean (once part of the travelling broadcast crew) couldn’t resist the lure of their beloved Notre Dame football team playing a short flight away near San Jose.

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“It was a non-game day, we thought we’d see the football, stay overnight and fly back in the morning for Leafs-Ducks,” he said.

“But we get to the airport next morning to return and it’s completely fogged in. They kept telling us ‘you can’t get out.’ I’m panicking and it was getting too late to try the (six-hour) drive back. But around 3 p.m., the fog lifted and we just made the game in time.”

After a couple of years getting established at the historic Cow Palace, San Jose set up at the new noisy Shark Tank, now the SAP Center.

“Maybe that was the loudest building I ever did a playoff game (1994),” Bowen said. “The ceiling was flat and metal and we were so close to it that everything just reverberated.

“That was a great series. Johan Garpenlov almost winning it in Game 6 off the crossbar in overtime at the Gardens (Mike Gartner’s goal rescued the Leafs, who then won in seven). Talk about leading a charmed life.”

lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby

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