Earlier this year during the COVID-19 lockdown, Lonny Bohonos was surprised to find himself on TV. But not as surprised as his 17-year-old son when Bohonos pointed out that, yes, that was him skating alongside Mats Sundin as the Leafs defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins in overtime of Game 6 in the 1999 Eastern Conference semifinals.

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His son was shocked when Bohonos scored the game’s opening goal.

Sure, his children were aware that their father, now a mild-mannered civil engineer, had a past life as a pro hockey player.

But up until that night, they didn’t fully realize how he had taken Toronto by storm in the spring of ’99. He scored nine points in nine playoff games. Only Mats Sundin and Sergei Berezin had more points for the Leafs that spring. But both of them suited up 17 times.

When the Maple Leafs playoff run was ended by the Buffalo Sabres in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final, it also closed the door on Bohonos’ NHL career, at the age of 25.

“Oh my God,” Bohonos recalled thinking as he watched himself on TV try to toe-drag through the Penguins. “I was not a very good hockey player.”

But for three weeks, he tried to convince a lot of Maple Leafs fans otherwise.

Lonny Bohonos felt good about his chances of cracking the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors’ roster as an 18-year-old in 1991. The Winnipeg native had scored at more than a point-per-game clip in Junior A.

But after eight games and just two points, then-Warriors head coach Mike Babcock sent him packing. Bohonos was a middling fourth-liner. Babcock wanted more defensive play from him.

“I wasn’t in his plans,” Bohonos recalled, with a chuckle.

It was only when Bohonos landed with the Portland Winter Hawks that his play elevated. Blessed with elite instincts in the offensive zone and a good set of hands, he scored 152 points in 70 games. Only one player has scored more points in a single WHL season since then: Mark Deyell with 159 points in 1995-96.

Quietly, he knew it was not enough. He’d heard the knocks on his game: varying compete levels from shift-to-shift and an inability to consistently take care of the puck in his own end. He hoped his offensive abilities would be strong enough to overcome those deficiencies and he wouldn’t have to do much to overhaul his game.

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He’d gone undrafted, and a trip to the Calgary Flames training camp as a walk-on opened his eyes to how much better he’d have to play in the NHL. He had a WHL scoring title to his name, but no NHL offers on the table.

“I can see why I didn’t get drafted, for sure,” said Bohonos. “The only person I blame is myself.”

After landing with the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch, then the Vancouver Canucks affiliate, Bohonos played 39 NHL games over four seasons. After being traded to the Leafs on Mar. 7, 1998 — straight up for Brandon Convery — he continued to tear up the AHL, leading the St. John’s Maple Leafs in scoring the following season and earning a seven-game look with the big club at the end of ’99.

When the Baby Leafs were bounced in five games in their first-round playoff series against the Frederiction Canadiens, without a contract in hand for the following season, Bohonos thought his time in the Leafs organization was over, especially following an off-ice incident toward the end of the Canadiens series.

The night before Game 5, Bohonos got into a fight outside a St. John’s bar with then-Fredericton Canadiens head coach Michel Therien.

Bohonos was charged with common assault, but the charges were eventually dropped after Therien wrote to the crown requesting that his complaint against Bohonos be dropped.

“It’s something in the past that I wish didn’t happen and could have been preventable. I take ownership of that,” said Bohonos. “I should have been a lot smarter.”

Meanwhile in Toronto, the Maple Leafs had scored only nine goals in their first-round, six-game series win over the Philadelphia Flyers. The team was looking for an offensive boost, and so on May 7, they took a flier on him and called him up to the big club.

In the days between the end of his AHL season, and his promotion to the Leafs, Bohonos took a day to do what he previously never had time to do in Toronto: enjoy the spring weather by spending time outside on one of the city’s many downtown patios.

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In the Leafs locker room, Bohonos’ sun-kissed skin led to rumours he’d been soaking up the sun in Hawaii. Then Leafs teammate Garry Valk remembers Bohonos struggling to put his equipment on without aggravating his sunburn.

Following the morning skate before Game 2 against Pittsburgh, Bohonos was told to take pre-game warm-up, but was given no assurances beyond that. In warm-up he was the extra forward.

“Stay out of the way,” he remembers telling himself.

He was one of the last players off the ice.

“Just to take it all in,” he said. “It’s the playoffs, right?”

As he walked off the ice assistant coach Rick Ley told him to check the lineup written in the dressing room.

“You see your name on the first line with Sundin and (Steve) Thomas and you’re going to start the game, you start sweating,” said Bohonos.

He grabbed a bottle of water and started chugging it to calm his nerves.

As he recalls, Sundin walked over to him, looked him in the eye said: “Let’s go out there and have some fun.”

“Wow,” Bohonos remembers thinking to himself. “That’s the captain.”

With every touch of the puck, he reminded himself: Give it to Sundin.

During a TV timeout, then Toronto backup goalie Glenn Healy caught his attention.

“You know what Lonny?” Bohonos remembers Healy saying, “Go stand in front of the net.”

He paused.

“OK,” Bohonos said.

He was a half-wall player in the AHL. But on his next shift, he parked himself in front of the net and shovelled in a rebound off a Danny Markov shot.

When he returned to the bench, he said “thank you” to a smiling Healy.

He later added two assists for a three-point game. It was the start of a five-game scoring streak.

His second-period goal in Game 6 against Pittsburgh sparked the Leafs’ comeback from a two-goal deficit, before they won the game in OT.

Against Buffalo in the Eastern Conference Final, Bohonos had an assist in each of the first two games. He went pointless in the next two games. In Game 4 of the series, a 5-2 Sabres win, Bohonos logged just 15:22 of ice time, well below the 19:51 he had been averaging up to that point.

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Head coach Pat Quinn had seen enough. When Bohonos stepped off the ice at Marine Midland Arena after Game 4, he didn’t know it at the time, but his NHL career was over.

Bohonos had overlooked what players around him had done to stay in the league since skill with the puck is only part of the equation. Valk and Todd Warriner, for example, were both offensive players before the NHL but settled into unglamorous roles on that 1998-99 Leafs team and went on to have long careers.

“I should’ve figured it out on my own,” said Bohonos.

The following season, the deck was stacked against him. The NHL reduced each club’s roster size from 24 to 23 players. Left-winger Jonas Hoglund had been signed as a free agent over the summer, replacing Bohonos on the team’s top line in training camp.

“I felt I should’ve gotten an opportunity to play with the same type of players that I did in the playoffs. And I don’t think that happened,” he said.

Not getting an opportunity to reunite with Sundin and Thomas stung.

“I was mad,” said Bohonos. “I was upset.”

The Leafs wanted to send him back to St. John’s. Bohonos felt he had nothing left to prove in the AHL, so he went closer to home and signed a one-year deal with the IHL’s Manitoba Moose.

The following season, the Leafs were interested again in signing him, but only if Bohonos was willing to start his year in the AHL. Instead, Bohonos signed on with Swiss team Davos. He would play five seasons in Europe.

His last pro hockey game came with Germany’s Mannheim Eagles. Bohonos was carrying the puck through the middle of the ice as he had thousands of times before. He inadvertently fell into the midsection of a fellow Canadian, Denis Pederson, and didn’t get his hands up in time.

“Everything went tingly,” he recalled.

At 34, he had suffered a broken neck. He was not paralyzed, but every specialist he saw gave him the same diagnosis: continuing to play was too risky.

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“You want to go out on your own terms,” Bohonos said of his decision to walk away.

Bohonos now works for the city of Thunder Bay and coaches various teams in the Thunder Bay Kings minor hockey association. His players weren’t born when he made his playoff run with the Leafs, but he sees many of the same attitudes he possessed.

“A lot of people want to blame someone else,” he said, reflecting on his career. “But the only person I should blame was myself.”

His playoff run was memorable, but it never changed who he was as a player: skilled, but flawed. Twenty-one years later, he doesn’t blame Toronto’s coaching staff for not getting another chance. He realizes he should have tried to become a more well-rounded player.

He tells his players today to listen to their coaches, because he never did.

“You look back and you ask ‘What could I have done? Who didn’t I listen to?’” said Bohonos. “If you really want to play hockey, a lot of the stuff you have to do on your own, off the ice.”

(Top photo of Lonny Bohonos and Mats Sundin by Ken Faught/Toronto Star via Getty Images)