Timmins expecting some 'legendary' mail from Maple Leafs?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are celebrating their 100th season in 2016-17.  As such, the centennial celebration will be full of memorable moments, and the Timmins area may be playing a part of the festivities.

According to the Maple Leafs website, the team will be replacing the retired/honoured numbers at the Air Canada Centre.

And the ones that are hanging at the ACC now?

“Beginning this summer and throughout the season, the 18 original Air Canada Centre banners will be delivered to the hometowns that produced these players, the greatest in our franchise’s history,” the article read.

The Timmins area is well known for producing players that had success with the Maple Leafs in their heyday.

And out of it all, the faces of locals Frank Mahovlich and the late Bill Barilko are on banners at what some—okay, this author might be the only one who does—refer to as “Leafs Nation Headquarters”.

Barilko is one of only two players to have their number fully retired by the team.  The four-time Stanley Cup Champion scored the Cup-winner in OT in 1951, but died in a plane crash that August with dentist Dr. Henry Hudson.

It became Canadian lore.  Especially after his body was found in 1962, when Toronto won their first Cup since Barilko’s iconic goal.

His #5 sits right beside the other retired number, #6 and Ace Bailey.

On that note, we count up to #7, and another area connection.  Cochrane’s Tim Horton had his lucky number for his 20-year career patrolling the Leafs’ blue line and winning four Cups of his own.

Horton will also be immortalised as a statue on Legend’s Row, to be revealed in October.

His teammate on those 1962-64 and 1967 teams was Mahovlich, who won two more with Montreal in 1971 and 1973 for a total of six.  He was no slouch on the ice either, playing in almost 1,200 regular season games and putting up over 1,100 NHL points.

His #27 was put up in one of the more memorable of ceremonies, but for all the wrong reasons in 2001.

It was supposed to be a dual ceremony for the “Big M” and former captain Darryl Sittler, who both wore the same number.  However, as the Maple Leafs website wrote, “Sittler cancelled to be with his wife, Wendy, who was dying of colorectal cancer.”

Sadly, Wendy passed away a year later.

Wendy’s name was inscribed on Sittler’s banner, which would go up in a ceremony in February 2003.

With so much to go through this year, not much is known at this point as the announcement is fresh.  Be sure, you haven’t heard the last of this story, as more details come out from the Maple Leafs organization in the months ahead.