Johnny Bower is enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was a four-time Stanley Cup champion and a two-time Vezina Trophy winner.
And, over the holiday season in 1965, Bower was also bigger than the Beatles.
Earlier that year, the Toronto Maple Leafs netminder was approached by Chip Young, a producer with the CBC. Young had written a little Christmas ditty. Aware of Bower's massive popularity in the city of Toronto, he sought out the Leafs goalei to be the vocalist on the song.
Bower was a reluctant crooner.
"I said, 'Look, sir. I can't sing,'" Bower remembered telling Young, as he recounted in his 2006 biography The China Wall.
He went home with the lyrics and discussed the idea with his wife, Nancy, who was supportive of her husband's recording the song.
"She said, 'You know, this is cute,'" Bower remembered. "'It's a nice children's record.'
"'If you only knew how to sing.'"
Eventually, he decided to record the song, titled Honky the Christmas Goose. A band was formed - Johnny Bower with Little John and the Rinky-Dinks. Little John was John Bower Jr. The Rinky-Dinks were a group of other children from Bower's neighborhood.
The night they went into the recording studio would be historic. It was the infamous blackout that wiped out the power grid across the Eastern Seaboard.
"I started singing, and all of a sudden all of the lights went out," Bower said. "I thought, 'Oh, John, now you've done it.'"
Of course, the lights came back on, the song was recoded, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Honky the Christmas Goose was released in time for Christmas, and the song shot up the charts like a rocket ship. The first 7,000 copies of the record sold before it had even arrived in stores.
In Toronto, it climbed as high as No. 29 on the CHUM charts. It pushed the Beatles' song Day Tripper out of the top spot as the most requested song on the powerhouse Toronto radio station.
Honky the Christmas Goose ended up selling over 40,000 copies, with all proceeds going to various charitable causes.