The Toronto Maple Leafs are owned by the two largest telecom companies in Canada. They’re the richest team in the sport of hockey. News about the team and its players dominates the airwaves. While all fandoms of professional sports teams have obnoxious and unsavoury elements, “Leafs Nation” can be uniquely annoying to opposing fanbases simply through frequency and duration of exposure. The Leafs aren’t lovable losers; they’re hateable losers of the highest order. They’re the spoiled, snotty rich kids that get beaten by the ragtag bunch of misfits in a sports movie for children. Everyone who isn’t a Leafs fan hates them, and rightfully so.
The Leafs may have 13 Stanley Cups to their name, but they all occurred prior to 1968. They occurred before the moon landings and before the widespread adoption of colour TV. They occurred when the National Hockey League consisted of 8 teams or fewer. They occurred before the popularization of the butterfly style of goaltending and before helmets became mandatory. In other words, they all occurred during hockey’s extended infancy. It was barely a real sport. As a result, those championships do not count. Throw them in the trash. Since their most recent fake Stanley Cup victory, they are 0-for-53, and that’s the only statistic that matters.
Mats Sundin is the reason I became a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. More precisely, it was a book about Mats Sundin that I found in a McNally Robinson bookstore that convinced me to abandon Mario Lemieux’s Pittsburgh Penguins and jump aboard this sinking ship. I saw a cover with a hockey player on a display shelf in the children’s section and asked my mother to buy it for me. She did. That accident is why I’ve ended up where I have, nearly two decades later. Mats Sundin was one of the few NHL players to make it into the Hall of Fame without having won either a Stanley Cup or a major individual trophy. He had a couple of Second All-Star Team appearances, but that’s it. You might even say that Mats Sundin – the Leafs’ all-time leader in goals and points – was a loser. It’s fitting, really. (Please ignore his accomplished international career with Sweden, as it undermines my point. Thank you.)
After Sundin’s departure, my next favourite Leaf was Phil Kessel. He was a goal-scoring whiz and led the team in points in all six of his seasons in the blue-and-white. He’d come screaming in along the sideboards, bending his stick so far back you’d think it was gonna snap in two, and rifle the puck past the goalie’s left shoulder or outstretched glove hand. This tendency was what earned him the nickname “Phil the Thrill,” but this is not what he is primarily remembered for in Toronto. He is remembered for the fact that the Leafs made the playoffs merely once in his six seasons, and even then failed to exit the first round. He is also remembered for his icy relationship with local media, eventually culminating in a Toronto Sun story falsely claiming that he frequented the same hot dog vendor before every game. Regardless, Phil Kessel was clearly a loser. He had to go. And so, the Leafs shipped him off to Pittsburgh, where he won Stanley Cups in each of the next two seasons. Maybe he wasn’t the problem after all.
Nazem Kadri picked up the mantle of my affection after that. I called him “my large rowdy son.” In fact, he was so rowdy that he got himself kicked out of multiple playoff series for dangerous hits. Although his passion could never be questioned, this behaviour clearly didn’t endear him to management, who subsequently traded him to Colorado. At least there he’s on a team that’s capable of winning a playoff round. I’m happy for him. And now it’s William Nylander who holds the distinction of being “my favourite Leaf,” but I’ve learned that nothing good can stay. He’ll probably be traded to Vegas or Carolina after yet another inevitable early exit in this year’s playoffs. I’ll be upset about it for a week or two, but then I’ll move on. There’s no use dwelling on things I can’t control.
Getting mad at the Toronto Maple Leafs for being losers is like yelling at a raincloud. It may help you feel better in the short-term, but it doesn’t make a difference. The rain will always come, and the Leafs will always lose. That’s why I pledge, for this upcoming season and all others to follow, to face their losing ways with as much equanimity as I can muster. Their failures are not my own. I am not the Toronto Maple Leafs. So why should I allow myself to feel crushed when they fail? It is only natural. It is the only thing they know how to do.
ruminations of a sad oaf. 