He tried again the next season with Toronto, but this time his career went downhill.<\/p>\n
“Bathgate never got along with (Maple Leafs coach and general manager) Punch Imlach,” wrote Eric Zweig, author of “The Toronto Maple Leafs: The Complete Oral History.”<\/p>\n
Once their feud went public, Bathgate’s days with the Maple Leafs were numbered. In his autobiography “Hockey Is a Battle,” Imlach wrote: “Bathgate told a reporter that I was doing things all wrong, that I pushed players past their limit physically and mentally. But he won his only championship with me.”<\/p>\n
“After Andy publicly criticized Imlach, Punch decided to trade him to Detroit,” wrote Kevin Shea in “The Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club: Official Centennial Publication.”<\/p>\n
Bathgate was traded to the Stanley Cup-contending Red Wings with forwards Billy Harris and Gary Jarrett for defensemen Marcel Pronovost and Aut Erickson, and forwards Larry Jeffrey, Ed Joyal and Lowell MacDonald on May 20, 1965.<\/p>\n
“At least I had a chance to be on my second Cup team,” Bathgate said. “The Wings were loaded with scorers like Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio and Norm Ullman, not to mention a pretty good, all-round roster.”<\/p>\n
Bathgate’s best opportunity emerged during the 1966 Final between Detroit and Montreal. The Red Wings won the first two games at the Forum to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series.<\/p>\n
“It seemed as if we had the series in hand,” he recalled, “but we let the Canadiens off the hook. They won the next four and the Cup.”<\/p>\n
After two seasons in Detroit, Bathgate was selected by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1967 NHL Expansion Draft. He split two separate, uninspiring seasons (1967-68 and 1970-71) with the Penguins before ending his NHL career.<\/p>\n
As for Perry, he came close, but no cigar, with Dallas, Montreal and Tampa Bay. He scored the game-winning goal in Game 5 of the 2024 Final with the Oilers, who rallied from down 3-0 in the best-of-7 series against the Florida Panthers before losing 2-1 in Game 7.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t do what we wanted to do,” Perry said, “but we’re proud of what we did.”<\/p>\n
Still in mint condition at age 40, Perry scored 10 goals and had four assists in 22 games of the 2025 playoffs.<\/p>\n
“Corey never gets fazed,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper, who had Perry from 2021-23. “He has that ‘been there, done that’ attitude. He’s a fierce competitor and his teammates follow him.”<\/p>\n
Perry’s crusade will resume this season with the Los Angeles Kings after he signed a one-year, $2 million contract July 1. Is he too old to dream of being a two-time Stanley Cup champion?<\/p>\n
No way. Legendary Soviet coach Anatoli Tarasov, a Hall of Famer inducted as a Builder with the Class of 1974, sagely opined in the January 1958 issue of Hockey Pictorial magazine: “Sport and love have no age. It makes no difference how old the player, as long as he has the talent and the will to play well.”<\/p>\n
Sounds like a guy named Corey Perry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He tried again the next season with Toronto, but this time his career went downhill. “Bathgate never got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-83335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}