Grange on NHL: The T.O. kid who got away
Posted October 6, 2011 11:36 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
When Michael Cammalleri was growing up in Richmond Hill, Ont., straight north of where his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs played their home games, he dreamed big hockey dreams.
He scored thousands of Stanley Cup-winning goals in his basement, everyone one of them on Hockey Night in Canada and most while imagining himself wearing the blue and white.
No wonder that on Jul. 1, 2009, the first day of free agency, he and his agent made their first order of business a visit to the offices of the Leafs at the Air Canada Centre to discuss the possibility of signing with Toronto.
It never came to pass. He met with Leafs senior vice-president of hockey operations Dave Nonis, as Leafs president Brian Burke was in Sweden trying to sign Jonas Gustavsson. There was mutual interest, sources say, but the Leafs weren’t as avid in their pursuit of Cammalleri — coming off a career-best 82-point season in Calgary — as the Montreal Canadiens were.
The Canadiens came hard and Cammalleri felt he had a quick decision to make and found himself signing for five years and $30 million with his favourite team’s historical rival.
“It’s tough to get into details about it,” Cammalleri said in a telephone interview from Collingwood, the resort town northwest of Toronto where they were finishing up training camp. “I’m of the belief that the details should stay between me and Dave Nonis and my agent. It wasn’t combative in any way or disrespectful … sometimes these things work out and sometimes they don’t. Other teams were swift to act so I had to make a quick decision as well.”
Camalleri has enjoyed his time in Montreal. He played the best hockey of his career during the Habs’ run to the Eastern Conference finals in 2010, leading all playoff scorers with 13 goals in 19 games. He slumped somewhat last year, finishing with 19 goals and 28 assists as the Habs were eliminated in the first round, but feels poised to bounce back this season.
In seeking to play in Toronto, Cammalleri seems almost a rarity: a top-flight skill player eager and able to play in their prime for their hometown team.
Homegrown stars have been rare in Toronto. Polling Leaf fans on Twitter Wednesday night turned up names like Steve Thomas and Peter Zezel, or more recently Matt Stajan. Some — like Eric Lindros and Jeff O’Neill, among others — didn’t play the best years of their career in their hometown.
Cammalleri, for one, knows how much it might mean to Toronto fans to have one of their own playing a major role at the ACC.
“Torontonians do want to see that, but management’s job is to win and to win they need the best players possible and if they win everyone is happy,” he said. “I know as a kid growing up, even watching a guy like Jeff O’Neill, I would have loved to see a guy like that with the Leafs and he did eventually come, but he was scoring 40 goals a year in Carolina.”
Notable is the quality of Toronto-born stars or potential stars who won’t be playing in Toronto at any point in the near future, if ever. Since the 2001 draft, Jason Spezza, Rick Nash, Steve Stamkos, John Tavares and Tyler Seguin have each been taken first or second overall, while Jeff Skinner of Markham — the NHL’s Rookie of the Year last season — was taken No.7 in 2010.
Over that time, Spezza, Nash, Stamkos and Tavares have each opted to sign long-term deals or extensions rather than somehow work their way back home.
There is some irony that the visiting Canadiens have more players who favour Blue Jays hats — P.K. Subban and Chris Campoli are Toronto-born players and Jays fans that will also be on the Habs roster Thursday night — than the Leafs do.
It’s easy to speculate that Toronto players consider the potential fishbowl starring in their hometown might represent and opt to take a pass. Cammalleri craved the experience of playing in a traditional hockey market.
“Everyone looks at that differently. For me, simply put, playing in the NHL is a dream come true; it’s something I wanted to do my whole life,” he said. “And I understand that I have a shelf life and to fulfill that experience to the best of my ability I want to play in a traditional hockey market.”
He’s certainly got every inch of that having signed with the Canadiens, the one city where the passion for the local team my run even deeper than in his hometown.
But playing away from home has forced him to scrub off some of the romance of coming back to Toronto as he will Thursday to kick off the NHL season. After years of treating it like a homecoming when he made rare visits from the Western Conference, he tries to make it like any other game instead of the ones he played in his basement all those years.
“I never played very well in Toronto because there are all kinds of distractions for me,” he said. “I remember talking to my dad and saying enough’s enough: When I come to Toronto I’m not going to worry about getting tickets any more for people. I’m not going to worry about seeing anyone after the game. I’m not even going to come out after the game.
“It’s a business trip now.”
