lit a candle 3h agoso I never watched him play, wasn't even born until decades after he'd hung up the skates, but there was this stat that stuck with me, that he was the oldest living Maple Leaf, and there's something about that title, oldest living anything, that gets me every time. like he was the last one holding a door open to 1956 and now the door's just closed. I looked up his one big season, 50 games, 12 points, and it's not much on paper but I don't know, ninety five years is a long time to carry a small thing like that and make it matter. anyway. didn't know him. just thought about it a while.
Their story
Ronald Hurst was a Canadian ice hockey right winger whose brief National Hockey League career with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the mid 1950s later gave way to a longer second act as the franchise's oldest living alumnus. Born in Toronto on 18 May 1931, he grew up in a…
Ronald Hurst was a Canadian ice hockey right winger whose brief National Hockey League career with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the mid 1950s later gave way to a longer second act as the franchise's oldest living alumnus. Born in Toronto on 18 May 1931, he grew up in a large sports minded family, the youngest of seven children whose father William had been wounded in France in the First World War. Hurst played junior hockey with the Weston Dukes and the Toronto Marlboros, sharing dressing rooms with future Leafs such as George Armstrong, Ron Stewart and Eric Nesterenko, before senior stops in Saint John, Charlottetown, Ottawa and with the Soo Greyhounds.
Called up from the Pittsburgh Hornets in 1955-56, he made an unforgettable NHL debut in New York when a puck cut open his eyebrow on the bench after Armstrong ducked and he did not. Stitched up, he finished the night and went on to a solid rookie season of 12 points and 62 penalty minutes in 50 games, plus two playoff assists. Sportswriters nicknamed him Brawny Ronny and The Try Guy for a work ethic that repeatedly saved him from demotion, and Rangers coach Phil Watson once complained that the diminutive Leaf had kicked the devil out of three of his left wingers. In 1956-57 he appeared in 14 more NHL games before finishing his playing days in the American Hockey League with Rochester and Hershey. A broken leg ended his career around 1960 after roughly a decade as a professional.
Away from the rink Hurst built a civilian life as a stockbroker and in real estate, enough for him and his wife Beryl to buy a farm near Newcastle, Ontario. They raised four children, including daughter Megan, and became grandparents and great grandparents. In later years he lived in a retirement home in Streetsville, remained a fixture at monthly NHL Alumni lunches as a warm up comic and storyteller, and still followed baseball as closely as hockey. When told he was the oldest living Maple Leaf he wore the distinction with pride, and friends such as Dick Duff visited him after a bad fall with an Alumni signed Leafs sweater.
Hurst's death at the age of 95 was revealed on 17 September 2026 by Toronto Sun columnist Lance Hornby and confirmed in tributes from the Maple Leafs, the Maple Leafs Alumni and the NHL Alumni Association. Exact place and cause of death were not made public. He is remembered as a colourful link to the six team NHL, a player paid ten dollars a game who never lost his affection for the sport, and as the quiet senior face of a franchise that outlived almost all of his teammates.
Those who sat with him in his nineties heard tales of jailhouse nights before Hap Day never found out, ice capades slides at Madison Square Garden, and borrowing Tim Horton's gloves for a Beehive photograph. Those stories, and the Leafs organisation's formal farewell, now stand as the public measure of a career that was short in NHL games and long in memory.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Toronto Sun (Lance Hornby); HockeyPatrol; Maple Leafs / NHL Alumni tributes.
In their own words
“They treated me wonderfully. But my first game, I got hit in the eyebrow by a puck, just sitting on the bench in New York. George Armstrong saw it coming and ducked. He had better reflexes than me.”
Recalling his NHL debut, Toronto Sun interview with Lance Hornby (2025)
“It's a whole different game, salaries are just wicked. But all things are very different now, aren't they?”
On the modern NHL, Toronto Sun (2025)
“When informed he was the oldest Leaf, he was so proud. He tells everybody he meets.”
Daughter Megan, quoted by Lance Hornby
Photos
1Ron Hurst as a Toronto Maple Leafs era player
by People Forever
the oldest living Leaf title is a strange kind of fame, you're right