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In our series on the retiring broadcaster, how Alexander Ovechkin, Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby often caused the Maple Leafs grief.
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Published Nov 27, 2025 • Last updated 11 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Washington Capitals left winger Alex Ovechkin skates with the puck past Toronto Maple Leafs’ Matthew Knies during a game last year. AP PhotoArticle content
Completing 44 seasons calling the Maple Leafs on radio and TV, Joe Bowen is retiring in the spring.
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During this final season for the Hockey Hall of Famer, Postmedia will tap into Joe’s vast storybook of select Leafs opponents, many famous players and bygone NHL arenas. With the Leafs in Washington on Friday and Pittsburgh on Saturday, he reminisces about two of the quirkiest rinks and three of the league’s greatest players.
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Games against the Capitals and Penguins since the 1990s have been difficult for the Leafs, from when Mario Lemieux was in his prime and since Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin arrived in the early 2000s.
But the uber-talented trio provided some iconic hockey moments in the modern era, always ensuring a full house when those stars come out in Toronto. But Bowen is happy Ovechkin arrived after team departed their original barn in Landover, Md. — the Capital Center.
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One of the darkest arena settings, media and patrons would quip that coal miners helmets should’ve been handed out at the door. The building designers focused on illuminating centre ice (and centre court for the NBA’s Washington Bullets) like a theatre stage, thus the further back you sat, the more dim the surroundings.
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“It was unusual for me that we got to work games from right in the seats, about 40 rows up from the benches,” Bowen said. “But there wasn’t a great hockey rivalry between Washington and Toronto. And Landover was in the middle of nowhere (about a half-hour drive from D.C.) with not much to do.
“One time we all got snowed in there. It seemed there was only one plow in the whole area.”
The Caps did make the 1997 Stanley Cup final, just before moving downtown.
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“They were starting to get good and Ovie comes along in 2005 and since has 45 goals against Toronto (among his career 908, tied for his second-most against any non-divisional foe).
“It’s hard not to like visiting Washington now. I’m an American Civil War buff and loved touring Ford’s Theater, the Smithsonian and the Bull Run battlefields in Manassas, Va.
“My dad drove us to Gettysburg in 1959 and got a photo the day that (former U.S. president) Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill were there.”
A younger Bowen also witnessed a rare sight — the crude retractable roof at the Civic Centre in Pittsburgh sliding open in 1967, a few months before the Penguins were hatched.
“(It was) the second NHL arena I’d ever been in other than Maple Leaf Gardens and it was for a Frank Sinatra concert,” Bowen said.
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“But, wow, was Mario ever something to watch, another player who just lit up Toronto whenever he played them. The worst was Boxing Day there in 1991, a game that road teams used to hate because they had to travel on Christmas and were sleepy from being stuffed with turkey.
“Kevin Maguire got our first goal and then, pow, Mario had two and five assists in a 12-1 win. I can’t remember why, but Grant Fuhr was kept in net for all 12, really taking a bullet for the team.
“That certainly wasn’t a great season. Gordie Stellick (Bowen’s on-air analyst) and I looked at the schedule after that night and couldn’t see a game we’d win for the next month. A few days later, Cliff Fletcher made the Doug Gilmour trade and everything changed.”
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Bowen and the Leafs also were there the night in 2000 that Lemieux came out of retirement after beating cancer, his retired No. 66 jersey lowered from the Igloo’s rafters, getting an opening-minute assist and a later goal in a 5-0 win.
“But I did enjoy calling Gary Valk’s playoff overtime goal there in 1999 to win that series and get to the conference final,” Bowen said.
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“What a fine hand-off from Mario to Sid as their next star and what he, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang have done through the years at the new place (PPG Paints Arena next door to the razed Igloo). Crosby is such a role model and here we are, 20 years later, he’s still big in the Canadian Olympic team’s plans.”
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Bowen also is an ardent explorer of the Steel City’s long athletic history when he gets free time there.
“I’d listened to Game 7 of the 1960 World Series (Pirates vs. Yankees) on my transistor radio at school in Sudbury. A teacher caught me in class, but all he wanted to know was the score. I raced home in time to see Bill Mazeroski’s winning homer on TV.
“My dad knew I was a big Willie Mays fan and, not long before he passed, he timed our driving vacation to see my grandparents for a game the San Francisco Giants played at Forbes Field. I’ve been to that site, where Babe Ruth hit three home runs in his final game (1935). There’s a stone marker where one ball landed, the only one ever hit out of Forbes.”
“Pittsburgh has always been a great sports town.”
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