Christopher Gudgeon - The Sound of One Team Sucking - Mindful Meditations for Recovering Leafs Fans

Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.

Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher and spiritual father to the Shanaplan

Weve all heard it. The sound of one team sucking. Our team: the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It starts as an almost imperceptible hum a month or so after the home opener, once the excitement of a new season wears off.

It builds in intensity with each defeat until, sometime after the All-Star break, the sound explodes an internalized shriek like the noise a star might make if you ripped its heart out.

Its a ritual for us.

We start the season with cautious optimism and, as training camp approaches, we promise ourselves that, this time around, we wont get carried away. Then the season starts and the Leafs win a few games, maybe even put together an impressive winning streak. Its still early, we tell ourselves: lets not get too excited.

But we slowly get swept up and, even as the losses pile up and the playoff prospects grow dimmer and dimmer, we are confident that this time the team will turn it around. And then things come unhinged: our scorers stop scoring, our goalies turn into human Swiss cheese, the power play looks more like a power failure.

When the inevitable happens and the Leafs are mathematically eliminated, once again, we hit rock bottom. Another season, which began with such promise, has ended in heartbreak.

The Leafs are not going to let us down again, we tell ourselves.

We endured Harold Ballard

We put up with countless bad trades and ill-advised free agent signings.

We have survived the longest-standing Stanley Cup drought, almost half a century of futility.

The time has come to stop caring; stop wearing our Maple Leafs underwear to work; stop checking the blogs for reports on pimple-faced prospects playing for Yunost Minsk or the Notre Dame Hounds; stop worrying about which players are overpaid, who should be traded, and why.

And were fine for a while. But then it happens, usually around draft day: we open our minds and hearts to the possibility that is the Toronto Maple Leafs. And the cycle begins again.

Lets face it, we have a problem. The fact is, being a Leafs fan is a kind of addiction: irrational, compulsive, dependent. We cant just stop cold turkey. We need help. And thats where The Sound of One Team Sucking comes in. Think of it as your own portable support group, designed to stand by you through another disappointing season (plus draft day!), help you maintain your focus and perspective, and guide your recovery as in the face of the Leafs certain futility you strive to live a more emotionally and spiritually balanced life.

Its going to be a long season, but with this book, youre going to make it through

Game 1

A journey of a single step starts with a thousand excuses.

Sugar Roy Carboyle, self-help guru and worlds foremost demotivational psychologist

12 Steps for Recovering Leafs Fans

1. Admit to ourselves that we have an irrational and uncontrollable obsession with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
2. Admit to our friends and loved ones that we have a serious Leafs jones going on.
3. Understand that only a power greater than ourselves some combination of Brendan Shanahan and Auston Matthews can restore us to sanity.
4. Turn our lives and team over to the care of Shanahews as we understand him.
5. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, or at least a short list of the slightly irritating Leafs-related things we do that bug our friends.