Legendary NHL defenceman Börje Salming, who was a fixture on the Toronto Maple Leafs’ blue line for 16 years, has died. He was 71 years old.
The Maple Leafs announced Salming’s death Thursday afternoon.
“Börje was a pioneer of the game and an icon with an unbreakable spirit and unquestioned toughness,” President and Alternate Governor Brendan Shanahan said in a statement. “He helped open the door for Europeans in the NHL and defined himself through his play on the ice and through his contributions to the community.
“Börje joined the Maple Leafs 50 years ago and will forever be a part of our hockey family. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Pia, his children Theresa, Anders, Rasmus, Bianca, Lisa and Sara, and brother Stieg.”
Salming was diagnosed with the progressive nervous system disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, earlier this year. He had been receiving treatment in his native Sweden.
A pioneering European star from the northern Swedish town of Kiruna, Salming played 1,099 games with the Leafs and ranks fourth among the team’s career scoring leaders with 768 points.
Former Toronto Maple Leafs players and members of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Darryl Sittler, left, Borje Salming, middle and Mats Sundin, right, take part in a pregame ceremony in Toronto, on Nov. 11. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)
In 1997, he was voted one of the 100 greatest players in NHL history by a panel that included former players, coaches, executives and media members.
Salming’s number 21 hangs in the rafters at Scotiabank Arena, after it was retired in 2016 alongside other Leafs greats like Dave Keon, Johnny Bower and Doug Gilmour. He was also the fourth former Maple Leaf to be immortalized with a statue in the team’s Legends Row in Maple Leafs Square, alongside icons like Bower, Darryl Sittler and Ted Kennedy.
Emotional final tributes in Toronto
His importance to the Maple Leafs and the city of Toronto was clear during emotional tributes and standing ovations earlier this month, as he attended games in Toronto for the last time.
Salming, with his family and former teammates by his side, received roars of applause from appreciative crowds at two separate games. In an especially poignant moment before a game between the Leafs and the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins, fellow former Leaf Sittler tearfully raised Salming’s arm to ensure he could wave to the crowd of thousands.
Sittler told CBC News that he knew those games might be the last time he ever got to see his teammate and friend.
“It was a magical moment. People who watched that, and the people who participated in it, they’ll remember that for the rest of their lives,” he said.
Borje Salming gets emotional standing ovation at NHL Hall of Fame Game
The long-time Maple Leafs’ defenceman received a warm welcome from the Toronto crowd as he battles ALS.
Robbed of his speech and some mobility, Salming shook hands with every member of the Maple Leafs as he slowly departed the ice at his final appearance with the team, before a second game against the Vancouver Canucks.
Former teammate and NHL great Lanny McDonald told CBC News that it was “a gift” for Salming’s family to be able to see just how much he was looked up to when he was celebrated in Toronto this month.
“It was such an honour for him to be able to have his family understand how much everyone loved and respected him,” McDonald said.
“More than anything he was such a great teammate, both on and off the ice.”
Salming was the fourth former Maple Leaf to be immortalized with a statue in the team’s Legends Row in Maple Leafs Square. (Michael Wilson/CBC)
Salming’s strong two-way play made him one of hockey’s elite defencemen. He was also one of the most popular players in team history.
“Wearing the Toronto Maple Leaf sweater for 16 seasons was a great honour,” Salming said in part in a statement made upon the announcement of his statue in 2014.
“I always look back on my time in Toronto with fondness and enjoy the chance to visit every chance I get.”
A trailblazer
Former Maple Leafs captain and countryman Mats Sundin previously said that every Swede respects Salming and holds him in high esteem for his wealth of accomplishments.
“For us — Swedish hockey players — he is the man who showed us the right way; he is a trailblazer,” Sundin said.
Though European players are now commonplace in the NHL and among the league’s biggest stars, that wasn’t always the case. Starting back in 1973, Salming helped open doors to North American hockey for his countrymen — who hockey fans once looked down upon with the childish nickname “chicken Swedes” — thanks to stereotypes that they couldn’t keep up with the physicality of the North American game.
‘He would do anything for you’: Leafs legend Lanny McDonald on Börje Salming
Toronto Maple Leafs legend Lanny McDonald paid tribute to his late teammate Börje Salming as ‘one of the greatest to ever play the game.’ McDonald said he was grateful to be with Salming and his family recently at an emotional Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Toronto.
Salming helped annihilate that stereotype by not just surviving but thriving in the NHL, earning the nickname “King.” In 16 seasons with the team before a final season in the league with the Detroit Red Wings, Salming accumulated a team-record 620 assists, alongside 148 goals.
“When Borje came [to the NHL], he was a target. The game was different back then,” Sittler said. In the shower after games, it was obvious how much abuse Salming took, he said, from the numbers of welts and scars all over his body.
“The next night he’d just go back out and do it again,” Sittler said.
“He had a love and a passion for the game like no other.”
Salming was also named to the league’s first all-star team once and five times on the second all-star team, which was similarly a team record. He came just shy of enough votes for the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenceman in 1980.
In a statement Thursday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman called Salming the first Swedish star to play in the league, and as “physically and mentally tough as he was skillfully gifted.
“He blazed the trail that many of the greatest players in NHL history followed while shattering all of the stereotypes about European players that had been prevalent in a League populated almost entirely by North Americans before his arrival in 1973,” Bettman said.
CALGARY – The Calgary Flames have re-signed defenceman Ilya Solovyov and centre Cole Schwindt, the NHL club announced Wednesday.
Solovyov signed a two-year deal which is a two-way contract in year one and a one-way deal in year two and carries an average annual value of US$775,000 at the NHL level.
Schwindt signed a one-year, two-way contract with an average annual value of $800,000 at the NHL level.
The 24-year-old Solovyov, from Mogilev, Belarus, made his NHL debut last season and had three assists in 10 games for the Flames. He also had five goals and 10 assists in 51 games with the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers and added one goal in six Calder Cup playoff games.
Schwindt, from Kitchener, Ont., made his Flames debut last season and appeared in four games with the club.
The 23-year-old also had 14 goals and 22 assists in 66 regular-season games with the Wranglers and added a team-leading four goals, including one game-winning goal, in the playoffs.
Schwindt was selected by Florida in the third round, 81st overall, at the 2019 NHL draft. He came to Calgary in July 2022 along with forward Jonathan Huberdeau and defenceman MacKenzie Weegar in the trade that sent star forward Matthew Tkachuk to the Panthers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
KING CITY, Ont. – Oman scored 10 runs in the final over to edge Nepal by one wicket with just one ball remaining in ICC Cricket World Cup League 2 play Wednesday.
Kaleemullah, the No. 11 batsman who goes by one name, hit a four with the penultimate ball as Oman finished at 223 for nine. Nepal had scored 220 for nine in its 50 overs.
Kaleemullah and No. 9 batsman Shakeel Ahmed each scored five in the final over off Sompal Kami. They finished with six and 17 runs, respectively.
Opener Latinder Singh led Oman with 41 runs.
Nepal’s Gulsan Jha was named man of the match after scoring 53 runs and recording a career-best five-wicket haul. The 18-year-old slammed five sixes and three-fours in his 35-ball knock, scoring 23 runs in the 46th over alone when he hit six, six, four, two, four and one off Aqib Ilyas.
Captain Rohit Paudel led Nepal with 60 runs.
The 19th-ranked Canadians, who opened the triangular series Monday with a 103-run win over No. 17 Nepal, face No. 16 Oman on Friday, Nepal on Sunday and Oman again on Sept. 26. All the games are at the Maple Leaf Cricket Ground.
The eight World League 2 teams each play 36 one-day internationals spread across nine triangular series through December 2026. The top four sides will go through to a World Cup qualifier that will decide the last four berths in the expanded 14-team Cricket World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Canada (5-4) stands second in the World League 2 table. The 14th-ranked Dutch top the table at 6-2.
Oman (2-2 with one no-result) stands sixth, ahead of Nepal (1-5).
Canada won all four matches in its opening tri-series in February-March, sweeping No. 11 Scotland and the 20th-ranked host Emirates. But the Canadians lost four in a row to the 18th-ranked U.S. and host Netherlands in August.
Canada which debuted in the T20 World Cup this summer in the U.S. and West Indies, is looking to get back to the showcase 50-over Cricket World Cup for the first time since 2011 after failing to qualify for the last three editions. The Canadian men also played in the 1979, 2003 and 2007 tournaments, exiting after the group stage in all four tournament appearances.
The Canadian men regained their one-day international status for the first time in almost a decade by finishing in the top four of the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier Playoff in April 2023 in Bermuda.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024
PENTICTON, B.C. – Rick Tocchet has already warned his Vancouver Canucks players — the looming NHL season won’t be easy.
The team made strides last year, the head coach said Wednesday ahead of training camp. The bar has been raised for this year’s campaign.
“To get to the next plateau, there are higher expectations and it’s going to be hard. We know that,” Tocchet said in Penticton, B.C., where the team will open its camp on Thursday.
“So that’s the next level. It starts day one (on Thursday). My thing is don’t waste a rep out there.”
The Canucks finished atop the Pacific Division with a 50-23-9 record last season, then ousted the Nashville Predators from the playoffs in a gritty, six-game first-round series. Vancouver then fell to the Edmonton Oilers in a seven-game second-round set.
Last fall, Jim Rutherford, the Canucks president of hockey operations, said everything would have to go right for the team to make a playoff push. That doesn’t change this season, he said, despite last year’s success.
“The challenges will be greater, certainly. But I believe the team that we started with last year, we have just as good a team to start the season this year and probably better,” he said.
“As long as the team builds off what they did last year, stick to what the coaches tell them, stick to the system, stick together in good times and bad times, this team has a chance to do pretty well.”
Some key players will be missing as Vancouver’s training camp begins, however.
Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin announced Wednesday that star goalie Thatcher Demko will not be on the ice when the team begins it’s pre-season preparation.
Allvin did not disclose the reason for Demko’s absence, but said the 28-year-old American has been making progress.
“He’s been in working extremely hard and he seems to be in a great mindset,” the GM said.
Demko missed several weeks of the regular season and much of Vancouver’s playoff run last spring with a knee injury.
The six-foot-four, 192-pound goalie has a career 213-116-81 regular-season record with a .912 save percentage, a 2.79 goals-against average and eight shutouts across seven seasons with the Canucks.
Allvin also announced that veteran centre Teddy Blueger and defensive prospect Cole McWard will also miss the start of training camp after each had “minor lower-body surgery.”
Vancouver previously announced winger Dakota Joshua won’t be present for the start of camp as he recovers from surgery for testicular cancer.
Tocchet said he’ll have no problem filling the holes, and plans to switch his lines up a lot in Penticton.
“Nothing’s set in stone,” he said. “I think it’s important that you have different puzzles at different times.”
The coach added that he expects standout centre Elias Pettersson to begin on a line with Canucks newcomer Jake DeBrusk.
Vancouver inked DeBrusk, a former Boston Bruins forward, to a seven-year, US$38.5 million deal when the NHL’s free agent market opened on July 1.
The glare on Pettersson is expected to be bright once again as he enters the first year of a new eight-year, $92.8 million contract. The 25-year-old Swede struggled at times last season and put 89 points (34 goals, 55 assists) in 82 games.
Rutherford said he was impressed with how Pettersson looked when he returned to Vancouver ahead of camp.
“He seems to be a guy that’s more relaxed and more comfortable. And for obvious reasons,” said the president of hockey ops. “This is a guy that I believe has worked really hard this summer. He’s done everything he can to play as a top-line player. … The expectation for him is to be one of the top players on our team.”
A number of Canucks hit milestones last season, including Quinn Hughes, who led all NHL defencemen in scoring with 92 points and won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue liner.
Several players could once again have career-best years for Vancouver, Tocchet said, but they’ll need to be consistent and not allow frustration to creep in when things go wrong.
“You’ve just got to drive yourself every day when you have a great year,” the coach said. “You’ve got to keep creating that environment where they can achieve those goals, whatever they are. And the main goal is winning. That’s really what it comes down to.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
