This flashback is for the Toronto Maple Leafs failed run again for the Stanley Cup 2021.

Toronto comedy legends Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster loved hockey and their highly-rated show dominated Canadian radio and then TV for nearly four decades.

The duo were members of Harbord Collegiate’s Oola Boola Drama Club, who wrote and produced their shows before signing a one-year contract with CBC radio in 1941.

They placed their promising careers on hold by signing up for the Canadian Army as infantry officers during WWII. Before long their comedic skills had them writing and producing The Army Show to entertain the troops.

The pair wrote hundreds of hugely funny skits, but one of their most memorable made Mimico residents proud of their imaginary hockey team called “The Mimico Mice.”

Wayne and Shuster would perform a 1946 mock match between the Mimico Mice, a two-player team, who would face-off against Toronto Maple Leafs, complete with authentic sound efforts from Maple Leaf Gardens and the late and legendary Foster Hewitt calling the play-by-play, using the names of actual Maple Leaf players of the era.

The sketch was a blast and guarantee to fetch a gut-busting laugh from hockey fans.

Shuster once said fans always remember and wanted to talk about the Mimico Mice. Here is a sample of their great comedic writing skills and love of Canada’s national sport.

“He’d go, ‘Wayne passes to Shuster, and Shuster goes down the ice.’ We’d lose about 110-0. Sometimes we got one goal for neatness,” Shuster said. “I still bump into people who say, ‘How are the Mimico Mice doing?'”

“We loved hockey anyway,” Shuster says. “I played pickup games and sold Eskimo Pies at Maple Leaf Gardens when I was in high school. Johnny was a regular at the games. He considered himself the number one Maple Leaf fan.”

Johnny and Wayne performed the hockey sketch for a U.S. audience on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. The bit involved brawling, yet highbrow, hockey players, and it ended with four players pulling out musical instruments to form a string quartet in the penalty box.

Through the late 1940s and early ’50s, Wayne and Shuster appeared on many Canadian and U.S. television programs but their breakthrough in the States came from The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan was so impressed by the Canadians that he invited them back 66 more times, a show record.

Wayne and Shuster, along with other artists, made it easier for other Canadian artists to penetrate the U.S. market.

The success of SCTV and their retirement in the 1980s finally opened English Canadian television to new voices of humour. Codco, Kids In The Hall, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Red Green and The Royal Canadian Air Farce were some of the successful shows launched in the 1980s and ’90s.

Here’s hoping The Mimico Mice bring home the Stanley Cup.