Say whatever you want about the late, great, exceedingly affable Toronto Maple Leaf goaltender Johnny Bower, who died a week ago at the age of 93, but say this, too: he was an extremely speedy shaver.

This is going back ages, to those ancient times when the Leafs still reigned as Stanley Cup champions. They’d triumphed in the spring of 1967, as you maybe don’t really remember, an unlikely crew of conquerors as ever there was in NHL history, anchored in goal by the elderly tandem of Bower (42 at the time) and Terry Sawchuk (37).

At some point after that springtime surprise, Bower took up as spokesman for the Sunbeam Shavemaster Shaver Model 777. Maybe you’ve heard tell of this fabulous machine; possibly you had one, once, to tend your own face. Did you prize above all things getting the trimming done with maximum dispatch? Bower seems to have been so eager to prove how hasty his Shavemaster could do the job, he challenged four of his NHL compadres to a race.

Sawchuk was there, with an electric shaver with rotary heads. Ed Giacomin of the New York Rangers brought an old analogue “band” razor. Then there were Canadiens: Charlie Hodge with (and I quote) a flat-headed electric shaver with reciprocating cutters, Gump Worsley wielding a stainless-steel blade in a safety razor.

In case you thought this was an unofficial stunt, sorry, wrong, no: this was official. So much so that three NHL trainers were on hand to time the proceedings: Montreal’s Bob Harney, Bob Haggert from the Leafs, and Frank Paice of the Rangers.

The goaltenders hadn’t shaved for a day, I guess. That’s what I’m told. Of course they got dressed up in full gosling gear (no masks, obviously). Given the go … well, who’s kidding who? You knew how this was going to go. Bower won. It took him and his six-bladed 777 — believe it or don’t — a mere minute to mow his mien. Six “husky” blades did the job, the admen from ’67 tell me, with “over two million cutting actions.”

Bower was sold, it seems — enough to make the sell. His testimony is on the record: “I don’t think any shaver,” he advised, “can beat Sunbeam for speed and comfort.”