Perhaps the best playoff goaltender in hockey history, Turk Broda was as free spirited off the ice as he was fiercely competitive on it. Called “the Fabulous Fat Man” due to his impressive girth and his prowess between the pipes, Broda backstopped the famed Toronto Maple Leafs teams of the 1940s, winning five Stanley Cups in 12 years and setting the standard to which every subsequent Leafs goalie would aspire.

Fresh off the first of his two Vezina Awards as the league’s top goaltender, Broda’s legend was born during the 1942 Stanley Cup final, when Toronto found itself down three games to none against Detroit. Backed by their stopper’s brilliant play, the Leafs stole Game 4 and then rolled over the Red Wings 9–3 in Game 5. Frustrated Detroit fans pelted Broda with fruit and peanuts in Game 6, but Turk was outstanding, shutting out the Red Wings and then allowing just one goal in Game 7 as the Leafs completed the unprecedented comeback.

Broda spent the next two seasons in the army but returned to lead Toronto to four more championships, including a run of three straight titles from 1947 to 1949 and a nail-biting 1951 final that saw him turn away Rocket Richard’s Canadiens, with every game decided in overtime. Broda’s sparkling playoff resume includes 60 wins, 13 shutouts and a miniscule 1.98 goals-against average in 101 games. He once said that the lure of bonus money outweighed any pressure he felt on the ice—or as Toronto Star humorist Gary Lautens once quipped, “When the playoff bucks were on the line, the Turk could catch lint in a hurricane.”

Like Johnny Bower after him, Broda wore No. 1, a fitting choice for a man with a knack for finding the spotlight. His most publicized off-ice battle was with Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe—and a weigh scale.  Smythe had first happened upon the portly Manitoban in 1936 while the Leafs boss was at a Detroit Olympics International League game scouting a different goaltender. But Broda’s tenacious play caught Smythe’s eye, and he paid the Red Wings $8,000 to transfer the promising young goalie to Toronto. That transaction proved to be a lucky break for Broda and the Leafs, for whom the future star spent his entire 15-year career.

Smythe had no qualms with Broda’s play—“Broda,” he once said, “could tend goal in a tornado and never blink an eye”—but his rotund goalie’s prodigious skill with a knife and fork caused the owner no end of consternation and sparked a short-lived but highly publicized confrontation that became known as “the Battle of the Bulge.”

After missing just one game while he slimmed down to Smythe’s weight target, a jovial Broda called the stunt “a million laughs.”
By the 1951–52 season Broda—then the oldest player in the league—was in the twilight of his long career. In a rare move, Smythe held an appreciation day for a current player, and players and executives from across the league—plus scores of fans—packed Maple Leaf Gardens on December 22, 1951 to celebrate the beloved netminder.

After retiring in 1952, Broda turned to coaching, leading the Toronto Marlboros to back-to-back Memorial Cup championships. The six-time NHL all-star was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1967 and died seven years later at age 58. Still the all-time leader in regular season and playoff wins, shutouts and games played by a Maple Leafs goalie, Turk Broda’s legend looms large in hockey history to this day.