Michael Leonetti - 100 Things Maple Leafs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

This book is dedicated to all the loyal fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Young or old, we all share the same passion for this special hockey team that is near and dear to our hearts. Our bond with the Maple Leafs is something that will never change.

Contents

Introduction

The first hockey season I can recall was the 196364 National Hockey League campaign, which featured six teams competing for the Stanley Cup. I turned six that year and my favourite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, were favoured to repeat as Stanley Cup champions for the third year in a row. The 6364 Maple Leafs was a club that featured many stars and future Hall of Fame players like Tim Horton, Johnny Bower, Allan Stanley, Frank Mahovlich, Red Kelly, Bob Pulford, Dave Keon, and captain George Armstrong. I followed their exploits on both television and radio and loved their home sweater with the rich blue colour base and the 35-point white Maple Leaf as the logo. The team played in Maple Leaf Gardens in those days and for most boys growing up in Toronto at that time, it was our field of dreams. The Leafs only managed a third-place finish that year but in the playoffs they rose to the occasion and won two seven-game series to capture their third straight title. As captain George Armstrong said after it was all over, We never lost the last game. The most memorable games that year came in the postseason. Keon scored three goals right in Montreal to get the Leafs back to the Stanley Cup final and then the Toronto side won both Games 6 (on Bobby Bauns overtime goal) and 7 against the Detroit Red Wings (a 40 win at the Gardens) to hold the crown. Needless to say it was a great time to be a Maple Leaf fan in the great city of Toronto and the team made everyone proud!

Three years later the Leafs once again won the Stanley Cup when they surprised the hockey world by beating Montreal in the final. Actually they had shocked the first-place Chicago Black Hawks in the semi-final that year and then behind the superlative goaltending of Terry Sawchuk and Johnny Bower, they edged the mighty Canadiens in six games. The Leafs got many great performances in the 67 postseason and none was better than Dave Keon (my hero) who was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the best player in the playoffs. The 67 triumph was the Leafs fourth of the decade and the city seemed somewhat blas about the win since it had become commonplace to see the Leafs hold a parade on Bay Street. If we Leaf fans had only known what was in store for us!

Since those great days of the 1960s the Leafs have experienced little success on the ice. No championships since 67 and not even an appearance in the Stanley Cup final. Sure there have been many great players to wear the sweater since the last titleincluding Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming, Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark, and Mats Sundinbut none have been able, despite their best efforts, to take the Leafs to a Stanley Cup victory. The best the Leafs have managed is five appearances among the final four teams competing for the Cup and that remains the same as the team now approaches the 201415 season.

The Leafs are a very successful business with an incredibly loyal fan base that brings millions of dollars to the organization year after year. Owners have changed, a new arena was built, coaches and managers have come and gone, the sweater has changed, but the lack of success on the ice continues unabated while the business side of the operation becomes more valuable as each year passes. It has become quite the conundrum and the organization must bear the burden of trying to get the team back to its glorious past while trying to still be the most profitable team in the entire NHL. Leaf fans can only hope that fresh faces and approaches from people like Tim Leiweke and Brendan Shanahan can find the right balance to keep the Leafs successful in every way, but it will not be an easy task.

This book is for Maple Leafs fans who enjoy rooting for the blue and white no matter what situation is at hand. These fans are a resilient lot with a great deal of patience for their local heroes. Covered in these pages are a wide variety of issues, controversies, trivia, and fun facts to give the reader something different on each page. Some points will bring large agreement and some might cause some consternation but Leaf fans can be assured of some thought-provoking fun, facts, and figures.

Torontos National Hockey League franchise will soon be celebrating its 100 th anniversary as a member of the circuit that began play to start the 191718 season. This book will focus on more current events and the more recent past than on ancient history (which has been chronicled many times already). We hope this will make for a more dynamic read and include a younger generation of Maple Leafs fans.

The city of Toronto (a cosmopolitan place with a diversity of cultures) and surrounding area deserves a great hockey team and the inhabitants of this part of the world are ready to embrace a new group of champions like never before (see the reaction of Maple Leafs fans when the team made the playoffs in 2013). We cannot be sure when a Stanley Cup championship is going to happen for the Maple Leafs but we can have some fun looking back while we hope the future brings back the glory days we were once accustomed to in Torontojust like when I was a young fan. Enjoy!

Mike Leonetti July 2014

1. The Maple Leafs Top Problem

For years now, many in the Toronto media and sports analysts in general across Canada (and even in the United States) blame the Maple Leaf fans who fill the Air Canada Centre game after game despite years of mediocre play by their favourite team for the state of the franchise. It used to be written that the Leafs had sold out every game since 1946 and although that was never exactly the case (especially when the team was a wretched organization in the 1980s), it is true that Leaf fans have stayed a devoted and caring group to the team wearing blue and white. The argument goes that empty seats would spur management to do more to make the Maple Leafs a winning club. Two years ago the Toronto Sun newspaper listed the top reasons why the Leafs were constantly failing and at the top of the list were Leaf fans who buy tickets and go to the games year in and year out. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.

Any sports team wants and needs to sell tickets to survive wherever they are located. Loyal Leaf fans have taken away the main worry of any sports team with consistent sellouts (although not quite every seat) and that should free up management to concentrate on what they need to do to make the team a winner. Money is not a problem for the Maple Leafs as fans and corporations are quite willing to pay top dollar (if not exorbitant rates) to see their local heroes play every winter. As a result the Leafs are a wealthy team and should use their resources wisely to build the best management group and team possible.

Maple Leafs fans are always optimistic about their team. (Harold Barkley Archives)

If the Air Canada Centre (and before that Maple Leaf Gardens) was half empty would it really make a difference? It might cause alarm but would the management of the team now decide they should make good trades and sign top free agents as a result? The answer is that the people who have run the Leafs since 1967 have all tried to make the team better but with mixed or outright bad results. Its not that they did not trythey were just not competent enough to get the job done properly. Under the ownership of Harold Ballard for instance it would not have made an ounce of difference if the Gardens was completely devoid of fans. Ballard really had no clue how to put a winning team together, but he loved being the boss of the Maple Leafs and all that went with that position. A similar scenario has been in effect since the team moved to the ACC with an indifferent ownership group focused on profits and not wins.