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Toronto Maple Leafs Greatest Ever Christmas Gifts

By Brian Westland

CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 20: A fan dressed as Santa Claus wtaches a game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the San Jose Sharks at the United Center on December 20, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. The Blackhawks defeated the Sharks 4-3 in overtime.(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 20: A fan dressed as Santa Claus wtaches a game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the San Jose Sharks at the United Center on December 20, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. The Blackhawks defeated the Sharks 4-3 in overtime.(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images) /
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Tim Horton, Toronto Maple Leafs
Tim Horton, Toronto Maple Leafs (Photo by Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios/Getty Images) /

The Toronto Maple Leafs have received many great Christmas gifts throughout the years.

Christmas is a time for giving, and at times NHL general managers play the role of Santa Claus by inadvertently giving away top notch talent for next to nothing in return. The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team has, throughout its history, been the recipient of such unplanned generosity.

In the spirit of the Yuletide season, let’s look at several examples of key players that the Maple Leafs acquired while parting without much at all.

The players on this list made an immediate impact on Maple Leaf fortunes and made the Buds significantly better. In most cases, the players on this list were watershed acquisitions that helped to define an era. All have gone down as among the finest who have ever donned the blue and white.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Best Christmas Gifts

5. Bill Derlago and Rick Vavie

Acquired during the destruction of the highly talented late 70s version of the Toronto Maple Leafs, centre Bill Derlago and right winger Rick Vaive provided Maple Leafs fans with some measure of hope for the future despite the fact that their hockey team was being torn apart before their very eyes.

Following up on the trade of star winger, Lanny McDonald, to the Colorado Rockies,  Leafs general manager Punch Imlach continued his dismantling of the Leafs roster by trading the popular left winger and enforcer, Tiger Williams, along with Jerry Butler, to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for two unknown, yet promising, young Canucks players, Vaive and Derlago.

The youthful pair made an immediate impact with the Toronto Maple Leafs and quickly became bonafide NHL stars. Vaive became an elite power forward before that term was even coined with big hits, fights and plenty of goals. He scored 33 in his first full season and notched over 50 in each of his next three campaigns. Vaive’s mark of 54 goals still stands as an all-time season high for a Maple Leaf.

Vaive’s centerman during those seasons was the much underrated Derlago whose playmaking skills had a significant part to play in Vaive’s scoring success.  Unfortunately for Vaive, Derlago, and Leafs Nation, there was very little else besides the aging Borje Salming in terms of support, and Leafs fans had to endure years and years of losing hockey.

As bad as the Buds were during the 1980s, they would have been downright abysmal without the contributions of Vaive and Derlago.

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