Hockey executive Gerry McNamara received a life-changing phone call on Feb. 7, 1988. Toronto Star columnist Milt Dunnell warned the Maple Leafs general manager: “Gerry, you’re going to be fired.”
McNamara had spent 28 years with the Leafs organization, starting as a backup goalie in 1960 before moving into scouting and eventually becoming GM in 1981.
“I was really upset,” says McNamara, now 90. “I knew the players hated the coach and I couldn’t get rid of him. I kept going in to see Mr. Ballard and he said, ‘You better get to like him, he’s the coach.'”
Hours after Dunnell’s call, Leafs owner Harold Ballard contacted McNamara at the team hotel in Hartford to make it official. “Finally, he fired me. He didn’t fire the coach,” McNamara says.
The dismissal hit McNamara hard. Even his dog Puck 2, offspring of Ballard’s dog Puck, noticed the change. “I came home, I sat in my chair and Puck 2 watched me, and he knew I wasn’t myself,” McNamara says.
“The golf course I belonged to saved my life. I would go every day and play for hours,” he says. “They knew I was hurting, and they didn’t add to it. That’s how I got through it.”
McNamara briefly scouted for other teams, earning a Stanley Cup ring with the 1989 Calgary Flames. He then stepped away from hockey almost entirely for decades. “When you lose something, it makes you feel bad,” McNamara says. “I didn’t want to torture myself, so I just forgot about it all.”
European Pioneer
McNamara’s greatest legacy may be helping open the NHL to European players. In 1972, he traveled to Sweden to scout a goalie but instead discovered defenseman Borje Salming and forward Inge Hammarstrom.
“I said to myself, ‘This guy’s got moves I’ve never seen in hockey.’ We didn’t have anybody like that. We had to have him,” McNamara says of Salming.
When Salming was ejected late in the game, McNamara followed him to the dressing room and offered him a contract through Hammarstrom as interpreter. Both players signed with Toronto.
“Gerry knew talent,” says hockey historian Paul Patskou. “The next year the place was crawling with scouts because they then knew what was over there. He opened that door.”
As GM, McNamara also drafted Wendel Clark first overall in 1985, converting him from defense to forward. Clark scored 330 goals in 793 NHL games.
Return to Hockey
Recent years have seen McNamara reconnect with the sport through alumni events and weekly hockey history Zoom calls.
“It completely changed my life,” McNamara says. “I was in hibernation for 20 years, where I hadn’t heard from anybody. All of a sudden, this thing opened up.”
Leafs president Brendan Shanahan has worked to bring McNamara back into the organization, including honoring him with an alumni jacket presented by Clark at center ice last season.
“The contributions that he made – you’re talking about two of the most iconic Maple Leafs ever,” Shanahan says. “It’s pretty remarkable that he was able to see those things and get them done.”
For McNamara, the reconciliation feels complete: “It feels like I have a team again.”
