What - no love for J Airplane / SS? JK!
My recollection is that I started to comprehend what I was watching when I was about 5 in 1970. Huge Hab fan cause my 6 older sibs and parents were al TO fans. Lately I'm convinced that the cups Toronto won in the 60's, or at least the 67 cup, was because Montreal let them!
When you read up on that 1967 series you realize that there were a lot of older guys on both clubs.
Montreal retooled in the next few years--adding the Mahovlich brothers, Mickey Redmond, Marc Tardif. Jacque Lemaire, Guy Lapointe and Ken Dryden. In 1970 the Canadiens also drafted a guy named Guy Lafleur. It set the stage for a great decade.
The Leafs, in contrast, never accumulated the same restocking and depth in the roster.
Watch some of that old footage from 1967 and it looks like smurfs compared to today's players. Look at the stats in that series and there were all kinds of guys who were less than 5 foot 10 inches and 170 pounds.
Hard to imagine those clubs playing against the NFL sized las Vegas Golden Knights of today.