On the day of the deal, the Maple Leaf who never was waited for a telephone call that never came.
“It would have been nice for somebody to call,” Raffi Torres said on the telephone from San Jose, half-kidding, half-not. “I would have thought that might have happened.
“I know it was just a paper transaction. My GM, Doug Wilson, called to tell me what was going on. I never heard from the Leafs. Never heard a thing.”
His phone was ringing non-stop that day in late February, buzzing with text messages from family and old friends, from people he grew up around, most of them learning of his trade to Toronto — just not of the unusual circumstances.