I have been a Toronto Maple Leafs fan since I was knee high to a grasshopper. As a kid, my father and I watched Hockey Night in Canada in our cozy Kitchener home, cheering on the mask-less Johnny Bower as he recovered from a puck to the head.
Those were the days of the victorious Leafs. We remember those times with great nostalgia, when life was simpler and being a fan was easy.
Where has it all gone? What of the fanfare and the glorious feeling of being a winner?
It has been so long – 41 years – since Toronto hockey fans have walked tall in triumph and achievement.
Loss after loss has turned us into forlorn fans, walking with eyes down and with few happy tales to share.
When a Montreal fan says to us, “The Leafs suck,” we can only pretend to stand on guard for Mats, Darcy and Wade, because we know that the Leafs really do suck.
But do they? Are we really so downtrodden, depressed and mournful about our hobbled and tattered Leafs?
I’m not so sure.
Is there not the possibility that on some very deep psychological level, the Toronto Maple Leafs, a team in a city with more hockey talent than bagels on Bathurst Street, might be exactly what we want and need? Could it be that, subconsciously, we have created a Stanley Cup Free Zone for some very good, if neurotic and complex, reasons.
Consider this: the Toronto Maple Leafs are, and will forever be, great in the eyes of the true fan.
Memorabilia such as hockey pucks and bobble-headed Borje Salming dolls are difficult for store owners to keep in stock. There’s barely a man or woman in Thunder Bay, Niagara Falls, Bala or Thornhill who wouldn’t fight to the death to hold four Leaf tickets in their hands, to have the chance to take their beloved family to watch an opening faceoff at the Air Canada Centre and to hear the thud of Alexei Ponikarovsky being checked into the boards – despite their team being mired at the bottom of the standings.
Ask any junior player who is drafted by the Leafs how they feel. The inevitable response is: “I grew up on the Leafs. This is a lifelong dream.”
Our Leafs are icons. They are our Greek Olympians – strong, mighty and standing high on a mountaintop with sticks aloft. In our minds, it’s therefore insignificant whether they win or lose. The fact is, we are satisfied that the Leafs exist at all. We are content knowing that we’re able to celebrate our Canadian-ness through them and have a relationship with the only true royalty that our country has – pro hockey players.
Coupled with that is the wearisome reality that Torontonians, and perhaps Canadians in general, harbour a very well-developed sense of mediocrity in which we expect the cream to sink to the bottom. In some strange and tragic way, we actually celebrate our losses and stomp on excellence – except in one area: money!
We Torontonians just love money. Cash is what makes our city so appealing, not our warmth and not our greatness. And the fact is, the Toronto Maple Leafs are making bushels of coin, so why should they become more competitive. Leaf investors have gone straight to “Go” with bags of gold in hand. They’ve already won – perhaps not the Stanley Cup, but the economic Holy Grail: an unimaginable return on their Leaf investment.
Yet, on some very deep level, everyone in Leaf Nation is happy, and there’s really no need to change anything. The Leafs satisfy our desire to bow to something greater, the owners are filthy rich, and our sense of mediocrity is only strengthened by the fact that our team sits at the bottom of the standings.
Hail the Leafs: they’re truly the best team in the NHL, on some very deep psychological level.
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