Someone once asked Ken Dryden what he thought the golden age of hockey was. His answer: “When were you fourteen?”
Well, full disclosure: I was fourteen in 1967, the year of Toronto’s last Stanley Cup. I’d started playing hockey at 9, just after we arrived in Canada, and despite underwhelming size and talent, you couldn’t keep me out of the endless games of outdoor shinny that went on where we lived.
In five years, the Leafs were on their fourth cup; ticker-tape parades in convertibles were a given. The men in those convertibles, Armstrong, Keon, Baun, Pulford, Bower, Horton, Stanley, and so many others, were pinned to our walls because the Star's Weekend Magazine published full-colour foldout shots. We had Leafs' calendars every year, the team photo with teeth and without. They were men, not boys, nay they were gods.
With that kind of adolescence, it is no wonder it is so hard to dislodge my loyalty. Well, despite what I may have said in the immediate aftermath of the collapse to my friends, it is, in fact, impossible, I am almost ashamed to admit. This year's playoff series has tested that loyalty like no other.
It is much harder to win a Stanley Cup today than in 1967, when only six teams were in the league. But since then, baseball has come to Toronto and won the World Series, and basketball has come and won the NBA championship with teams that didn't even exist 54 years ago. The GTA is the biggest hockey city in the world, with more fans and more people who have played the game than any other hockey market. Board the GO train in Oakville hours ahead of any Leafs' game, and you are surrounded by blue and white sweaters of all vintages, with the names of favourite players. Tens of thousands of people far too young to remember the great Leafs' teams of the past mob Maple Leaf Square if they make the playoffs. If baseball and basketball can win championships, the Leafs surely can.
The late great Conn Smythe, who built the Leafs and Maple Leaf Gardens, had to have winning teams to fill the seats to pay the players to make winning teams. It was a virtuous circle. He bet the farm more than once, and when asked: "Is that in the budget?" he would respond: “Governments have budgets, and look at the shape they are in.” The Smythe era gave way to Harold Ballard, who rode the goodwill all the way to the bank but had no leadership and a history of complete failure as a coach behind the Marlies' bench. Ballard cheated the tax man and had no character. He could hardly have been a greater contrast to the iron-willed Smythe, who organized and served in his own artillery battery in WWII in his forties out of duty and patriotism.
It was hard to be a Leafs' fan in the Ballard years, but we patiently waited for it to end: we did not blame the team or the players. With no other NHL team in the city, the returns were guaranteed. The monopoly status of the team made it a certain money maker: so much so that it made sense as an investment for as risk-averse a buyer as a pension plan. Monopolies mean profits without the need for product or service quality in any industry, and the Leafs were no exception. Nevertheless, there were bright spots. Great players, like the Leafs first 50 goal scorer Rick Vaive, Darryl Sittler, Lanny MacDonald, Gary Leeman, Borje Salming and countless others. We admired them, for even though they never brought us the Cup, they put their hearts and souls into trying. Under Fletcher and Burns, men of character like Andreychuk, Clark, and of course Dougie Gilmour came oh so close to giving us the final of our dreams; Toronto and Montreal playing for the Cup, “just like when we were kids.” When we were kids, and the Flying Frenchmen faced our blue-collar, grinding, gritty, driven, hard-hitting Leafs, and we won. Yes, we. When Bobby Baun scored a winner on a broken leg against Detroit, we came third out of six in the regular season but were playoff tough. The men of the Toronto Maple Leafs knew that winning the Stanley Cup is not a matter of life or death. It is far more important than that.
In the intervening period, we got to watch great players like Gary Roberts, Darcy Tucker and Mats Sundin give their all, and we felt we shared their frustration.
In the last few years, there has been a real reason to hope again. Once again, as not since Smythe’s time, the math works: because of broadcast agreements, the owners, Bell and Rogers, will make substantially more money if a Canadian team goes deep in the playoffs, and even more, if it’s the Leafs: more viewers mean more advertising at higher prices, and no Stanley Cup final can draw as many viewers as one involving the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Brendan Shanahan was put in charge of finally turning things around. One of the winningest coaches in history was hired at a record price…a solution to the salary cap limiting player spending and a signal that ownership was committed. Both men had been part of the Detroit turnaround, from a similar drought to a series of Cups. Better and better players joined the lineup. There were disappointments, but the average age of the Leafs in 1963, the first of four Cups, was 27, Keon, the youngest player at 22. This new team was young and would need to gain strength and maturity. We were asked to be patient, and we bought in.
Then Spezza, Muzzin, Tavares, Simmonds, Thornton were added to the roster. Men of character and experience to offset the callow if amazingly talented youth that made up the team. That youth too had had some seasoning. Tavares, an Oakville boy who grew up sleeping in Leafs' bedsheets, left the captaincy of a strong team to come home on a quest to bring the Cup to Toronto. Desire, that contagious element of leadership that must be an ingredient in any contending team, was now guaranteed. A new coach, one with a knack for working with younger players, we were told, was brought in.
Over the 2020-21 season, Matthews, Marner and Nylander blossomed, Matthews won the Rocket Richard trophy, and the team topped the Canadian division.
Little wonder that they and we beamed with hope as they faced the hated Habs, suppressing our memories of chokes past. Their leader was eliminated in the first game, and the Leafs had trouble finding their legs. But after four games, they were up 3 games to 1, with three more chances to get the single win they needed to advance to the next round.
We all know what happened. They barely showed up for the first two periods in games 5 and 6. Players younger than even them delivered fantastic performances for the Habs. The Leafs let Montreal gain the momentum in both of those games, and despite forcing overtime twice, the fear of making mistakes and the lack of flow it introduced meant that, in fact, they made more. It seemed as though they thought they could score by aiming directly at Carey Price’s glove…when they finally decided to shoot. Marner and Matthews, the most potent combination in the league in the regular season, were completely stymied.
I’ve used the words like “men” and “character” to describe the teams that earned my loyalty in years past. Unfortunately, in games 5, 6 and 7, these were missing elements. Matthews played hard, 200-foot hockey, but without Marner to demand space and combine, he was kept off the scoreboard. Marner just didn’t show, and when he did, as often as not, it was to make a game-changing mistake. Nylander scored some goals but needed to add some physical presence to force some room to move. Spezza was one of the few inspiring sights on the ice. He must be even more heartbroken than the fans to have taken a home town discount to play in Toronto, give it everything he had, and have it end so ignominiously.
Missing Muzzin and Tavares, the new coach, Sheldon Keefe, needed to put fire and confidence into a team that should have had enough depth to finish off this series. After the first period in game five, you’d expect, after a year of building the team up, that the coach would have torn a strip off them, given them a taste of accountability and consequences. Without access to the room, I can’t know what happened, but I am pretty sure it wasn't that based on the play on their return to the ice.
Carey Price was, as always, brilliant. But this is on the Leafs. It was their series to win, and they squandered the upper hand. That is why this one hurts so much. We can’t blame Ballard; we can’t blame disinterested ownership or management. The boys we trusted to be men when it mattered let us down. The grit and backbone that made the great Toronto teams was nowhere to be seen. This was a loss by lack of character. They had all the other ingredients, from talent to ownership commitment. And after all, they are living the dream of tens of thousands of Canadian boys.
The deep anger and disappointment are beginning to wear off. We remember that character is built through failure, and that the Detroit turnaround went through periods like this, and that they are still young.
I have loved watching Marner and Matthews all season, but if management decided the way to send a message that character and accountability and grit and hardness matter was to trade his $10 million salary for three grinding players filled with desire and something to prove, I would not fault them. And if the coach lost his job and we brought in an unforgiving hardass along the lines of Mike Keenan, I would bite my tongue.
Stewing over the summer might be enough; that’s up to ownership and management, but if harsher measures are taken, I, for one, won’t complain. It is past time the best hockey market in the world had a performance worthy of the loyalty of its fans. It needs to happen before enrollment in hockey dwindles more and more, and Canada winds up fading from international prominence in the game, frittering away one of its unifying assets. The performance of the Toronto Maple Leafs is hardly the stuff that inspires new Canadians to join in our love for our national game. If you get to a game next season, the right sign to hold up to the cameras is "YOU ARE NOT FORGIVEN, BUT YOU CAN BE".
It is also past time we had another team in the GTA. New York hasn’t nearly the fan base for hockey that we do, and it has the Islanders, the Rangers, and the New Jersey Devils. Cross-town hatred and animosity would inspire hunger and drive greater desire, and the pass our players get from their fans, where they are loved regardless of results, would be a lot more contingent.
Of course, that brings up the old joke: Why doesn’t Hamilton have an NHL hockey team? Because then Toronto would want one too. Get used to a summer of hearing these from Habs fans and even from Toronto fans trying to anesthetize their grief. At least next year, when we do win, we will have a parade.
