Ron Ellis, who played over 1,000 NHL games with the Toronto Maple Leafs and was a member of Canada's team at the 1972 Summit Series, has died at 79.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Canadian Press
Ron Ellis, a reliable, two-way forward, skated for the Toronto Maple Leafs for more than 15 seasons, bridging the era of championships through one of futility and front-office shenanigans.
A superb skater and tenacious checker, Mr. Ellis, who has died at 79, also showed good puck sense. He scored 23 goals as a rookie, which would be just under his season average over his National Hockey League career.
Amiable, self-critical, generous with praise for teammates and opponents, Mr. Ellis lacked the pizzazz of Frank Mahovlich, or the crowd-pleasing rambunctiousness of Eddie Shack. He was considered an efficient, honest, textbook forward, who patrolled his wing with the steady precision of a table-hockey player. He never attained superstar status, nor did he win an individual trophy, nor induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame, where he was employed as a publicist for many years after his playing career ended.
Yet, the stocky right winger, who stood 5-foot-9 (175 centimetres) and weighed 195 pounds (88 kilograms), was one of the most beloved players ever to wear the Maple Leafs’ blue-and-white sweater. He was so admired that he wore No. 6, a retired number unused for more than three decades after Irvine (Ace) Bailey suffered a career-ending injury. Mr. Bailey himself urged his old number be worn by a player whose style he admired.
Ellis, the director of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, holds the puck used when Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal in the Vancouver 2010 hockey final before it is placed in a glass display cabinet, on March 17, 2010.CHRIS YOUNG/The Canadian Press
Mr. Ellis skated for three notable championship teams, winning the Memorial Cup with the junior Toronto Marlboros in 1964, the Stanley Cup with the Maple Leafs in 1967, and the Summit Series with Team Canada against the Soviet Union in 1972.
While he failed to score a goal in the unforgettable series against the Soviets, he did manage three assists on a line with Bobby Clarke and Paul Henderson, a Leafs teammate who scored the winning goal in each of the final three games.
If Mr. Henderson was an unlikely hero, Mr. Ellis was an unsung one. As one of only seven Canadians to play in all eight games, he was assigned to kill penalties and shadow the top Soviet scorers. After Valeri Kharlamov scored twice against Team Canada in the series opener in Montreal, coach Harry Sinden ensured Mr. Ellis was on the ice to check the speedy Russian forward in the next game in Toronto. The Soviet forward only scored one more goal in the series, though his abilities were restricted after he suffered a fractured bone in his ankle in Game 6 after being slashed by Mr. Clarke.
While Canadians across the country erupted in joy when Mr. Henderson scored in the final minute of play in the series, the players themselves were too exhausted by the ordeal to celebrate.
“The one thing I remember more than anything else was in the dressing room after we’d won it. It was dead quiet, completely subdued,” Mr. Ellis told Bob McKenzie of The Hockey News in 1985. “No excitement whatsoever. We just didn’t have anything left. I didn’t move for an entire half-hour. I just sat there and it was the strangest feeling in my life.”
Ron and Jan Ellis harmonize on a guitar and portable organ on Dec. 28, 1967.Fred Ross/The Globe and Mail
Ronald John Edward Ellis was born on Jan. 8, 1945, in Lindsay, Ont., to the former Helen Bernice Brown and Randolph (Randy) Smith Ellis.
The elder Mr. Ellis suspended a promising hockey career when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at age 18. After the war, he turned professional, leading the Scottish National League in 1947-48 by scoring 91 goals for the Dunfermline Vikings in just 63 games. He also scored the winning goal in a 2-1 exhibition win in Paris against the RCAF Flyers, who had won the Olympic gold medal in Switzerland the previous month. Randy Ellis, who re-enlisted in the RCAF and had a long career as a pilot, died the day after his 96th birthday in 2019.
Randy Ellis’s hockey career cast a shadow over that of his son. “I wanted to make [the NHL] for him,” Ron Ellis once said of his father, who flooded a backyard rink every winter, coached his teams and drove him to excel. “He was harder on me than [on] the other kids,” he said. At one point, the boy played simultaneously on three teams in the Ottawa area.
His parents signed him with the Maple Leafs organization at age 14 when King Clancy convinced them the boy’s hockey future was in Toronto. At 15, he played for the junior-B Weston Dukes before joining the junior-A Marlboros, where he emerged as a top scorer, netting 46 goals in 54 games in his final campaign, which ended with the Memorial Cup championship after sweeping the Edmonton Oil Kings, a Detroit Red Wings farm club, in four games.
Earlier that season, Mr. Ellis made his NHL debut on March 11, 1964, by suiting up for a single game with the Maple Leafs when he was a Grade 13 student. Taking the roster spot of an injured George Armstrong, he played on a line with future Hall of Famers Red Kelly and Mr. Mahovlich, who scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory over the Montreal Canadiens at Maple Leaf Gardens.
Ellis during NHL hockey action against the Vancouver Canucks, in Toronto, on Dec. 13, 1978.BILL BECKER/The Canadian Press
When Mr. Ellis soon after signed a two-year contract, Leafs coach and general manager Punch Imlach said, “This is the best kid we’ve signed since Dave Keon became a Leaf.”
The prospect turned down a $10,000 scholarship to play hockey for Michigan State University, as well as abandoning his hope of playing for Canada’s amateur team at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
“I’ve decided to give it two years,” he told The Hockey News. “I can attend college in the summers and after two seasons, I’ll assess the situation. If I think I’m making progress in hockey, I’ll continue. I can quit then, and I’ll only be 21 with lots of time to get any university degree I want.”
In his rookie campaign with the Leafs, Mr. Ellis was placed on a line with Mr. Mahovlich and Andy Bathgate. He led all rookies in scoring with 23 goals and 16 assists. He finished second in voting for the Calder Memorial Trophy as rookie of the year, losing 155 to 107 to Detroit goaltender Roger Crozier in voting by sportswriters and broadcasters in the six NHL cities. As runner-up, he took a $500 prize. The pair were followed in voting by Chicago goaltender Denis DeJordy, New York defenceman Rod Seiling, and Chicago centre Fred Stanfield.
In his third full season, Mr. Ellis won a Stanley Cup championship, as the aged and underdog Maple Leafs defeated the Canadiens in six games.
In the decisive sixth game, Mr. Ellis opened the scoring in the second period by pouncing on a rebound and flicking a shot high into the Montreal net off the right shoulder of a flopping Gump Worsley. The Leafs went on to win 3-1 at the Montreal Forum with the winning goal scored by Jim Pappin and an insurance marker popped into an empty net by Mr. Armstrong. For 11 of his teammates, the Centennial Year championship was their fourth Stanley Cup win in six seasons. As well, 10 of his 1967 teammates, as well as Mr. Imlach, have been named to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Toronto has not won a Stanley Cup since.
Before the 1968-69 season, Mr. Ellis was asked to replace his No. 8 sweater when Mr. Bailey personally selected him to wear his old No. 6, which had not been worn by a Maple Leaf since he suffered a career-ending head injury when attacked by Eddie Shore of Boston in one of the most notorious incidents in hockey history.
“This one is two numbers lighter than yours,” Mr. Bailey, 65, said in a ceremony at the Gardens. “So you should go faster.”
Mr. Ellis, who was 23 at the time, said: “I promise I’ll wear this sweater with a great deal of pride.”
Mr. Ellis’s diligence on the ice contrasted with chaos in the club’s board room. Team owner Harold Ballard, who was convicted of fraud, had a mercurial temperament. His refusal to pay escalating player salaries led to the roster being raided by teams in the rival World Hockey Association. He squabbled with star players such as Mr. Keon and Darryl Sittler, even going so far as to trade Mr. Sittler’s ally, Lanny McDonald, to the sad-sack Colorado Rockies.
In 1975, at age 30, Mr. Ellis shocked the hockey world by announcing his retirement. He had tired of a sport in which teams such as the Big Bad Bruins and the Broad Street Bullies (Philadelphia Flyers) relied on violence and intimidation to achieve success. With two young children settled into a home in the suburban neighbourhood of Woodbridge, now part of Vaughan, the church-going Ellis family lived with constant anxiety about the possibility of Mr. Ellis being traded. He stepped away from a four-year contract worth more than $400,000.
Two years later, Mr. Ellis returned to competitive hockey by joining Team Canada at the International Ice Hockey Federation’s world championship in Vienna, Austria. Canada was returning to international play after an eight-year absence as professionals were allowed to compete. On a team composed of NHL players whose teams had missed the playoffs, Mr. Ellis surprised many by showing a solid return to form. He scored five goals and four assists in 10 games, though the Canadians missed a medal by finishing the tournament in fourth place.
Mr. Ellis returned to the Leafs that fall, scoring 26 goals. He was midway through his fourth season after returning to the club when Toronto management forced him out, buying off the remaining 18 months of his contract. The forward pronounced himself puzzled and disappointed, but not bitter, about the decision. It was an ignoble end to a storied career, but one only too typical of the Ballard era.
In 1,034 NHL games, all with the Leafs, Mr. Ellis scored 332 goals with 308 assists. He had 18 goals and eight assists in 70 playoff games.
On his forced retirement, he was the third-highest goal scorer in Maple Leafs history and remains No. 5 on the team’s all-time list behind Mats Sundin, Mr. Sittler, Auston Matthews, and Mr. Keon.
Away from the rink, Mr. Ellis worked a variety of jobs, including assisting on his father’s Sandhurst Vacationland resort on Sand Lake in Ontario. He was also a recreational director for a realty development company and owned a sporting goods store in Brampton. Mr. Ellis was on the staff of the Hockey Hall of Fame from 1992 until 2019, including a stint as publicity director.
In a 2002 memoir, titled Over the Boards: The Ron Ellis Story, written with Kevin Shea, the former player shared candid details of a decade-long depression he experienced after leaving hockey, including three hospitalizations. He became an advocate for mental health and received a Courage to Come Back Award from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation.
He was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.
Mr. Ellis died on May 11. He leaves the former Janis Evelene Greenlaw, his wife of 58 years, whom he had known since they were Grade 4 students. He also leaves a son and a daughter. A full list of survivors was not available.
His death leaves only six living members of the last Maple Leafs team to win the Stanley Cup: Mr. Mahovlich, Mr. Keon, Mr. Pulford, Mike Walton, Peter Stemkowski, and Brian Conacher.
While Mr. Ellis may have been more journeyman than superstar, hockey experts appreciated what his presence meant to the Leafs. As Mr. Imlach once said, “If every player I had was an Ellis, we wouldn’t lose a game.”
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