At one time, there was a pipeline from the mining districts of northern Ontario to the NHL. For many boys it went from the Canadian Shield to Toronto’s St. Michael’s College to the upper echelons of the hockey world. Names like Lindsay, Keon, Mahovlich and Horton first attracted notice as school kids and rode that pipeline to hockey immortality. So did one of this year’s Hockey Hall of Fame inductees, Richard Terrence Duff, who hung up his skates 35 years ago.

Leaving Kirkland Lake with two dollars in his pocket and a borrowed sports jacket on his back, young Dick Duff was taken in hand by the Maple Leafs organization, brought to the big city and enrolled at a local school. His education was entrusted to the Basilians, the teaching order that ran St. Mike’s, a private Catholic high school affiliated with the University of Toronto.

Noted for producing over 150 NHLers, over a dozen of whom have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame, as well as leaders from all segments of society, the school’s motto translates to “Teach me goodness, discipline and knowledge,” a lofty ideal that it has achieved for over a century and a half.

After initial homesickness, Duff thrived in his three years at St. Mike’s, both in the classroom and on the ice, learning the lessons and developing the attitude that would serve him well, both in the NHL, where he played over a thousand regular season games, and beyond. After leading the team in scoring his last two seasons with the St. Mike’s Majors, Duff graduated from high school. He was also ready to move on in his hockey career as well.

In the fall of 1955, a 19-year-old Dick Duff broke in with the Toronto Maple Leafs and secured a spot on the left wing. At 5’10” and weighing in at just 163 pounds, Duff wasn’t a big man but he was tough, gritty and determined to win, all traits associated with guys who skated away from a life underground in the mines. He scored 18 goals and assisted on 19 others in his rookie campaign, serving notice that he intended to stick around a while.

The Leafs were in a rebuilding phase and Duff matured as the team improved year by year, climbing back to respectability after their glory years of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Duff reeled off three seasons of 25 goals or more and led the team in scoring in both 1957-58 and ‘58-59. When Toronto handed the reins to Punch Imlach, it made life difficult for many players. Duff wasn’t one of them. He did everything asked of him, a dedicated team player as accomplished on the defensive side of things as he was at putting points on the board. Fast, shifty and smart, Duff also had just enough of a mean streak to make bigger players think twice about mixing it up with him.

Montreal’s five-year stewardship of the Stanley Cup came to an end with their 1960 victory. Chicago won the most recent of their three titles in 1961 and then Toronto reclaimed it, holding it for the next three seasons.

A clutch player is one who can come through with his best performances when the stakes are the highest. Duff was a clutch player, essential to the first two Leaf triumphs. He picked up 13 points in the 1962 postseason including the winning goal that allowed the Leafs to parade the Stanley Cup before their fans for the first time in over a decade. In the spring of 1963, he set a playoff record that still stands, potting two within a minute and eight seconds of the opening face-off in the finals.

The following season Duff took the hardest hit of his hockey career when Toronto sent him to the New York Rangers in exchange for Andy Bathgate. He did not enjoy his time in the Big Apple and was thrilled when he got the news that new Montreal GM, Sam Pollock, had traded for him.

Freed from a losing atmosphere and back in a town where hockey was at the top of the sports ladder, Duff took to his new team immediately, fitting in smoothly alongside Jean Beliveau and youthful speedster Yvan Cournoyer. The 1964-65 season ended with another parade for Dick Duff and his team, this time down Ste. Catherine Street in Montreal.

So did three of the four other seasons that Duff spent with the Canadiens as he hit the 20-goal mark twice. As was his habit, Duff played a solid two-way game for the regular schedule and turned it up a notch when the springtime came around, his gritty play setting the example for many of his younger teammates. In the 1968-69 playoffs, his last with the Habs, he picked up 14 points on the way to his sixth Stanley Cup mention, second only to team captain Beliveau. His six goals were more than any other man on the roster recorded.

Duff left Montreal, bound for Los Angeles shortly after the beginning of the 1969-70 season as the Habs made room for the youngsters who would form the dynasty that dominated the next decade. He finished up his career with the Buffalo Sabres, retiring in 1971.

Turning his hand to scouting and coaching, duff pent several years with the Toronto organization after hanging up his skates and was pressed into service for two games as head coach in 1079-80. Long active in charity work, Duff is guided by the moral compass he developed as a youth at St. Mike’s. It’s a very simple philosophy, as he explained in a 2005 interview.

“Your life is important. You’re important and you have to develop yourself as best you can to be productive to your society and conduct your affairs in a proper way. Which means you don’t cheat people, rob them, or mistreat them.”

When his selection for enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame was announced this past spring, there were a few rumblings among fans and the media that other, more recently retired men might have been better choices. No objections seemed to come from fans who remember seeing Dick Duff at work.