George Armstrong

Early life

While hockey guidebooks list his birthplace as Skead, George Armstrong was born in the neighbouring community of Bowland’s Bay on Ontario’s Lake Wanapitei, north of Sudbury. He was born to Alice, who was Algonquin, and Fred, a miner of Irish ancestry. At the age of six, Armstrong was afflicted with spinal meningitis. He learned to skate on the outdoor rinks in Falconbridge, where his father worked underground in the nickel mine.

Junior career

George Armstrong signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization at age 16. He got a $100 signing bonus as well as $2.50 weekly spending money. The club also agreed to cover the cost of his room and board while he played for the Copper Cliff Redmen. One of his teenaged teammates was defenceman Tim Horton.

In 1947, he was assigned to the Stratford Kroehlers, where he recorded 73 points in just 36 games to win the Eddie Powers Memorial Trophy as top junior-A scorer in the Ontario Hockey Association. He also won the prestigious Red Tilson Award as the league’s most valuable player.

With the Toronto Marlboros, he set a league record for most goals with 64 in just 45 games in 1949–50. In 1950, he helped the senior Marlboros win the national championship Allan Cup over the Calgary Stampeders.

Professional career

George Armstrong spent most of two seasons with the minor-league Pittsburgh Hornets before earning a permanent job with the parent Maple Leafs. The six-foot-one, 184-pounds (185 cm, 83 kg) forward was not as dominating a scorer in the NHL as he had been in junior and the minor pros. Instead, he became a skilled defensive forward and penalty killer. He was a positional player who did outstanding work in the corners, where grit, strength and body position won important battles for the puck.

Maple Leafs president Conn Smythe named Armstrong as captain from the start of the 1957–58 season. He held this position for 12 seasons.

Armstrong only had four seasons in which he scored 20 or more goals. However, his contribution to the team was greater for the example he set as a diligent player. He believed in taking personal responsibility for poor play and sought to stifle criticism of disciplinarian coach Punch Imlach in the Toronto dressing room.

Under his leadership, Toronto defeated the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Black Hawks in 1962. The series took seven games and ended an 11-season drought. Toronto defeated Detroit Red Wings in the finals in 1963 and again in 1964 to make it three consecutive titles.

The Maple Leafs were underdogs in the 1967 finals. It was the last finals to be held before expansion was to double the size of the NHL from six to 12 teams. Armstrong scored an insurance goal into an empty Montreal Canadiens net late in the third period of the sixth game. Toronto won the game at Maple Leaf Gardens by 3–1. As of 2024, it was the most recent time the Maple Leafs had won the Stanley Cup.

Armstrong retired as a player at the end of the 1970–71 season. In 1,188 regular season NHL games, he scored 296 goals with 417 assists. He scored another 26 goals with 34 assists in 110 playoff games.

Honorary Name and Nickname

When he played in the Allan Cup series in Alberta in 1950, the 19-year-old George Armstrong was invited to the Stoney Plains reserve where he was named “Chief Shoot the Puck” in a ceremony.

Early in his career, Armstrong was nicknamed “Chief.” He accepted friends and teammates addressing him by what today might be regarded as a racist nickname. He did not care to be addressed by that nickname by fans or strangers.

Coach, manager and scout

George Armstrong coached the junior Toronto Marlboros, his former team, to a Memorial Cup national championships against the Quebec Remparts in 1973. He repeated this feat against the New Westminster Bruins in 1975.

After spending nine years as a scout for the Quebec Nordiques, Armstrong returned to the Maple Leafs as a scout and assistant general manager. He served as an interim coach in 1988 after John Brophy was fired. The team went 17–26–4 with Armstrong behind the bench, missing out on a playoff spot.

Humour

George Armstrong, a humble man, had a reputation for dressing-room playfulness which made him popular with teammates. He was also known for a droll, self-deprecating sense of humour. After he retired as a player, he quipped that the Maple Leafs kept him around because he was the only one who remembered the old route of the Stanley Cup victory parades of the 1960s.

When asked how it felt to have his likeness cast in bronze, he noted the popularity of statuary among pigeons.

Personal life

George Armstrong married Betty Ann Shannon of Capreol, Ontario, now part of Greater Sudbury, in 1954. They bought a home in the Toronto neighbourhood of Leaside in 1960, where they raised four children: Brian, Betty-Anne, Fred and Lorne.

Two of Armstrong’s nephews — Dan McCourt, an NHL linesman, and Dale McCourt, the top pick in the 1977 NHL amateur draft — had hockey careers.

Honours

George Armstrong was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1975. He was also inducted into the Greater Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame (1966), the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame (2010), the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame (2015) and the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame (2023).

When the Toronto Maple Leafs marked their centenary in 2016, Armstrong was named no. 12 on a list of One Hundred Greatest Maple Leafs. He has also been cast in bronze in the slightly larger-than-life statues of former players along Legends Row outside the Maple Leafs home arena. Armstrong’s no. 10 sweater was retired in a ceremony in 2016, that also honoured the late Syl Apps, a former captain who had earlier worn that number.