Borje Salming

Salming was born in Sweden in 1951, and played in the minor leagues there for six years as a teen and young adult. He was first with Kiruna AIF of the Swedish Second Division, and moved to Brynas IF Gavle in the Swedish Elite League while attending technical college. At the 1972 World Championships, Salming impressed a scout for the Maples Leafs with his toughness on the ice, and he and teammate Inge Hammarstrom were acquired for $50,000 transfer fees to the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation.

Salming's first appearance in the Leafs' jersey came on October 10, 1973, in a game against the Buffalo Sabres before a crowd that included Sweden's ambassador to Canada. Salming and Hammarstrom were not the first Europeans to skate in the NHL—the year before, the Detroit Red Wings had signed a Swede, Thommie Bergman, to their roster—but there was a blatant prejudice against foreign players. The League had been dominated by Canadian-born or Canadian-raised players until the 1960s, and national pride ran high still. In the late 1950s and again in 1964, a few outstanding Swedes had been given tryouts, but they had been treated viciously on the ice. There was still a certain scrappiness to the game in the early 1970s, and the pacifist Swedes were considered too soft to play in the League. "Swedes just don't know how to fight," Salming recalled in an interview with Peter Gammons a few years later in a Sports Illustrated article. "In Canada kids are brought up fighting. In Sweden, never. It is the philosophy we have about the game."