Mats Sundin stepped onto the ice as announcer Andy Frost boomed his name over the Air Canada Centre speakers. Sundin raised his arms and applauded in kind toward the 19,338 fans who were standing and applauding him.
It was a rare moment for Toronto Maple Leafs fans, a unanimous outpouring of affection for their captain. No one was holding anything back, as they have at times in his 12 years with Toronto. Sundin seemed to realize it, and he lingered a little, taking an extra circle near the gate to the ice surface.
The 35-year-old captain had just scored his latest overtime winner, a short-handed blast that pulled the Leafs from a near mishap to beat the Calgary Flames 5-4 on Saturday. Not only that, it was his third goal of the game, 50 seconds into overtime, the 500th of his National Hockey League career and his 365th as a Maple Leaf, tying him with Dave Keon for second on the club's career list.
"I realized the applause, the people standing up and everybody stayed in the rink for me," Sundin said later. "That doesn't happen too often. It was a special moment for me."
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What Sundin meant by special moments were those career milestones that call for a standing ovation, a bow to the crowd. But it could easily have been a Freudian slip, as those special moments of unrestrained affection from Toronto fans have not come often for Sundin, either.
There has always been a holdback from some fans, part of it the fact he was traded for Wendel Clark, one of the most popular players in franchise history, on June 28, 1994, and part of it was the reluctance of some fans to accept a Swede from the Stockholm suburb of Bromma as the successor to a revered homegrown captain, Doug Gilmour.
The man who made that trade, former Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher, knew the fans would have difficulty embracing Sundin for those reasons. It was what made him extremely nervous about a trade he knew he could not pass up.
"It bothered me to some degree that it took a long time to finally receive the recognition he was due a lot earlier," Fletcher told The Canadian Press last week. "But it has evolved and I'm just happy for him and the great career he's had. I'm sure he's looking for that elusive thing he hasn't won -- the Stanley Cup. But he has a number of years left in his career and hopefully he'll find that some day."
In the meantime, Leaf fans should consider a few things -- that Saturday's game-winning goal was the 88th of Sundin's career and 73rd as a Maple Leaf, the most in franchise history. Sundin has scored 14 overtime game-winners in the regular season, the most in NHL history.
"I think it was a celebration of Mats," Sundin's linemate Kyle Wellwood said of the ovation. "For myself, it's great just to be on the ice with him and know how much he means to this team. Everybody was happy for him.
"He's the best all-round centre in the game. He would be a first-round draft pick in any league just for all the stuff he does on and off the ice, how much responsibility he carries, how much of a load he carries for this franchise."
Head coach Paul Maurice is in his first few weeks of working with Sundin and like everyone else in the NHL, he heard the whispers: how Sundin liked being captain but didn't always like the leadership responsibility that goes with it, letting others in the dressing room speak with louder voices.
"One of the pleasures of being here is getting to know him a little bit more and seeing the true personality in the locker room," Maurice said. "He is far more involved in the leadership than maybe people might think because he does have that quiet persona as a perception of him.
"But the opposite is true. He's very intense and into the game. It's been a really enjoyable experience."
Sundin, in turn, has embraced Maurice as the coach. He showed up at training camp as one of the three fittest players on the team and says his optimism about the season was not just happy talk.
"Paul Maurice and the coaching staff have us playing a more high-paced game that is the new NHL," Sundin said. "That's the only way we'll have success this year. We're still making mistakes and I think we can do better. But at least the emphasis on our game is more skating, a high-paced game."
