You had to be at the top of your game every night to play against him.” People didn’t realize: This guy was so big, skated like the wind for a big man - and he was strong as an ox. We were drafted together, retired the same year and were inducted into the Hall of Fame together. “The connection with Bob went on forever. “Then, in ’89, after we won, they said: ‘If we had to lose, I’m glad it was to you.'” “In the handshake line, when they beat us in ’86, they both said, ‘We’re happy we won, but we feel so badly that you’re the one who lost out of this.’ “By then, we’d become good friends - Bob Gainey, Larry Robinson and I,” recalled McDonald. For the latter part of the 1970s and the early 1980s, until McDonald was traded to the Colorado Rockies, they battled, on the ice, every shift, McDonald, the elite scorer for the Maple Leafs, Gainey the dogged checker for the Canadiens.Īnd in the twilight of their respective careers, they met twice in the Stanley Cup Final - once in 1986, when the Canadiens won, and then again in 1989, when the Flames flipped the script and won.
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