Unidentified Maple Leafs Photo #10, Bob Pulford


Here's a great unidentified photo from Vintage Sports Images. The Maple Leaf #20 is obviously Bob Pulford and he's in all alone on Chicago Black Hawk goaltender Glenn Hall. The players in the background are all fairly easily identified as well. The Maple Leaf is Billy Harris and Hawks #4 is Elmer "Moose" Vasko. The distant Black Hawk is #11 Bill Hay. Next, attempting to decipher the season it took place.
The Leafs added numbers to their sleeves for the 1962/63 campaign so it has to be prior to that. As for the Hawks, their sleeve numbers prior to 1961 were overlapping the elbow stripes. In 1961/62 the number was moved to the position in the photo. This would make the pic from that 61/62 season.
Game was played in Chicago as evidenced by Chicago wearing darks, Toronto their whites.
Leafs finished with 85 points in 70 game in 1961/62, good for second place, 10 points up on third place Chicago. The two teams met in the Stanley Cup final that year, with Toronto winning 4 games to 2. 
Bob Pulford scored 7 goals in 12 playoff games, one behind league leader Bobby Hull. He also recorded the only hat-trick of that playoff season, notching three goals in Toronto's 8-4 win in Game 5 of the final.

Comments

Chris Mayberry said…
Actually, the Leafs added sleeve numbers at the start of the 1961-62 playoffs. Must have been sometime before that.
Cheers!

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