Operation "Blue Chip"

The rough, tough Toronto Maple Leafs seemed to have the game sewed up. Then, with 57 seconds to play, a Montreal forward slipped through the Toronto defenses and fired a goal to tie the score. If the Maple Leafs were ruffled by the turn of events--the game ended 3-3--they hid their chagrin behind the masks of dyed-in-the-wool pros.. So did their boss, Constantine Falkland Karrys Smythe.

"Conny" Smythe, 55, the shrewdest, best-dressed and most volatile club owner in the business, views hockey with a calculating, professional eye. As long as his Leafs are bouncing enemy players around like India-rubber men and the turnstiles keep clicking, he wastes no time worrying about the long, 70-game grind of the regular season. Smythe specializes in outshining the competition when the blue chips are down--in the post-season Stanley Cup playoffs. For the past three years, Smythe's Maple Leafs have skated off with the coveted cup, although they finished the regular season in first place only once. But this season, Smythe has had his troubles.

In November, with his club floundering badly it became necessary for dapper little Conny Smythe to throw his weight (165 Ibs.) around. Like Little Lord Fauntleroy gone amuck, he lit into his blubbery, 197-lb. goalie, Turk Broda, and ordered him to melt down to 190, or else. He benched Broda, threatened to bench four others.

All across Canada, the headlines followed Broda's "Battle of the Bulge" as he dieted, exercised and took steam baths.

After missing one game, Broda skated back into the nets to the greatest ovation ever given an athlete in Maple Leaf Gardens. Injured Ted ("Teeder") Kennedy, captain and star center, swung back into harness and the Leafs roared through their next 19 games with only two defeats, four ties. They were playing the kind of he-man hockey that Smythe and Toronto fans liked. Said he, crisply: "We'll outbump or outskate any team in the league. When other; teams are hitting with 25-lb. sledge hammers, we're hitting with 100-lb. sledge hammers."

By last week the Maple Leafs had hammered their way into second place and all but assured themselves a playoff berth five weeks hence. After tying Montreal, they clipped the league-leading Detroit Red Wings (3-2). Owner Smythe's only worry was that he had built a fire under his Leafs too soon before the cup playoffs. "It's hell to keep a team stirred up," he said.

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