Toronto Maple Leafs
From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
Template:OtherusesTemplate:NHL TeamThe Toronto Maple Leafs are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They play in the National Hockey League (NHL) at the Air Canada Centre (ACC). The organization is officially known as the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club, owned by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE).
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Franchise History
Early years (1917-27)
The National Hockey League was formed in Montreal in 1917, and initially consisted of five teams formerly belonging to the National Hockey Association. Its formation was a reaction against Eddie Livingstone, owner of the NHA's Toronto Blueshirts, by his fellow NHA owners, who accused him of creating "unfair advantages" for himself and his team. While the owners of the other four clubs—the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators and Quebec Bulldogs—had the votes to throw Livingstone out of the NHA, they knew such a move would result in protracted legal action. Their solution was to pull out of the NHA and create a new league, the National Hockey League, which effectively left Livingstone in a one-team league.
However, the Senators and the two Montreal teams felt it was unthinkable not to have a Toronto-based team in the new league, as Toronto was also one of Canada's most important cities. Furthermore, it was home to the Mutual Street Arena, at the time the only facility east of Manitoba with artificial ice. Therefore, the new league granted a Toronto franchise to the Toronto Arena Company, owners of the Mutual Street Arena. The team was called, appropriately enough, the Toronto Arenas.
Unfortunately, the Arenas did not put together many wins after winning the Stanley Cup in the NHL's inaugural season, and pulled out of the league midway through the 1919-20 season. However, they returned the next season as the Toronto St. Patricks, owned by longtime general manager Charlie Querrie. The St. Pats won the Cup in 1922.
The Conn Smythe era
Charlie Querrie lost a lawsuit to Livingstone, and Querrie decided to put the St. Pats up for sale. A $200,000 bid from Philadelphia was attractive, but Toronto Varsity Graduates coach Conn Smythe urged Querrie that civic pride was more important than money and urged him to accept his $160,000 bid for the franchise.
In February 1927, Smythe purchased the St. Pats and immediately renamed them the Maple Leafs. (The local minor league baseball team had already been using that name for 30 years, but over time the name would become most closely associated with the major league hockey team.) Smythe had put together the New York Rangers in 1926, but was fired before the season started. He kept the St. Pats' green uniforms for one year as a nod of colour to the old team's fans. However, the next season, the Leafs appeared for the first time in the blue and white sweaters they have worn ever since; Smythe did not want to make it look as though he favoured Roman Catholics. While the Leafs say that blue represents the Canadian skies and white represents snow, it is also true that top-level Toronto teams have worn blue since the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League adopted blue as their primary colour in 1873. Another theory is that Smythe changed the colours as a nod to his high school alma mater, Upper Canada College, whose teams have worn blue and white since 1829 and the University of Toronto whose teams have also worn blue and were called the Varsity Blues[1].
After four more lacklustre seasons, Smythe and the Leafs debuted their new arena, Maple Leaf Gardens, with a 2-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on November 12, 1931. Led by the "Kid Line" (Busher Jackson, Joe Primeau and Charlie Conacher), the Leafs would capture their third Stanley Cup victory during the first season in their new digs. They would go the distance in 1932, vanquishing Charlie Conacher's older brother Lionel Conacher and his Montreal Maroons in the first round, then in the semi-finals against the Boston Bruins, winning in the sixth overtime of the final game, and would not be overwhelmed in the Stanley Cup Finals by the hated New York Rangers. It was Conn Smythe's anti-Rangers revenge. The Maple Leafs went on a similar tear the next season, only to be upended by the Rangers.
The Leafs' star forward, Ace Bailey, was nearly killed in 1933 when Boston Bruins defenceman Eddie Shore checked him from behind into the boards at full speed. Maple Leafs defenceman Red Horner was able to knock Shore out with a punch, but it was too late for Bailey, who was by now writhing on the ice, had his career ended. Undeterred, the Leafs would reach the finals five more times in the next seven years, but would not win, bowing out to the now-defunct Maroons, the Detroit Red Wings in 1936, the Chicago Black Hawks in 1938, Boston in 1939, and the hated Rangers in 1940.
Toronto looked sure to suffer a similar fate in 1942, down three games to none in a best-of-seven final in 1942 against Detroit. However, fourth-line forward Don Metz would galvanize the team, coming from nowhere to score a hat trick in game four and the game-winning goal in game five, with the Leafs winning both times. Captain Syl Apps had won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy that season, not taking one penalty and finishing his ten-season career with an average of 5 minutes, 36 seconds in penalties a season. Goalie Turk Broda would shut out the Wings in game six, and Sweeney Schriner would score two goals in the third period to win the seventh game 3-1.
Apps told writer Trent Frayne in 1949, "If you want me to be pinned down to my [biggest night in hockey but also my] biggest second, I'd say it was the last tick of the clock that sounded the final bell. It's something I shall never forget at all." It was the first time a major pro sports team came back from behind 3-0 to win a best-of-seven championship series.
Three years later, with their heroes from 1942 dwindling (due to either age, health, or the war), the Leafs turned to lesser-known players like rookie goalie Frank McCool and defenceman Babe Pratt. They would upset the Red Wings in the 1945 finals.
The powerful defending champion Montreal Canadiens and their "Punch Line" (Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Toe Blake and Elmer Lach), would be the Leafs' nemesis two years later when the two teams clashed in the 1947 finals. Ted "Teeder" Kennedy would score the game-winning goal late in game six to win the Leafs their first of three straight Cups — the first time any NHL team had accomplished that feat. With their Cup victory in 1948, the Leafs moved ahead of Montreal for the most Stanley Cups in franchise history. It would take the Canadiens 10 years to reclaim the record.
The Leafs and Habs would meet once again in the finals in 1951, with all five games going to overtime. Tod Sloan scored with 42 seconds left in the third period of game five to send it to an extra period, and defenceman Bill Barilko, who had scored only six goals in the regular season, scored the game-winner to win Toronto their fourth Cup in five years. Barilko's glory, however, was short-lived: he disappeared in a plane crash near Timmins, Ontario barely four months after that historic moment. Barilko's legacy is still remembered over 50 years later, and The Tragically Hip's song "Fifty Mission Cap" is based on his plight.
New owners, new dynasty in the 1960s
Toronto was unable to match up with their Cup-winning teams of the 1940s and 1951 for a long time, and stronger teams like Detroit and Montreal won the Cup year after year. In fact, the Habs' 1950s dynasty closed with a last-round Maple Leaf sweep. They did not win another Stanley Cup until 1962. Before the season, Smythe had sold his shares in Maple Leaf Gardens to a partnership of his son Stafford Smythe, newspaper baron John Bassett and Toronto Marlboros president Harold Ballard.
And then, Toronto was able to reel off another three straight Stanley Cup victories from 1962 to 1964, with the help of Hall of Famers Frank Mahovlich, Red Kelly, Johnny Bower, Dave Keon, Andy Bathgate and Tim Horton, and under the leadership of coach and general manager Punch Imlach. However, Bathgate claimed after 1964-65 that all the autocratic Imlach said to himself and Mahovlich was insulting:
“Imlach never spoke to Frank Mahovlich or myself for most of the season, and when he did, it was to criticize. Frank usually got the worst. We are athletes, not machines, and Frank is the type that needs some encouragement, a pat on the shoulder every so often.” [2]
It was Bathgate's one-way ticket to the floundering Red Wings, but Toronto would, for a few more years, keep "The Big M."
In 1967, the Leafs and Canadiens met in the Cup finals for the last time. Montreal was considered to be a heavy favourite as analysts said that the Leafs were just a bunch of has-beens. But Bob Pulford scored the double-overtime winner in game three, Jim Pappin got the series winner in game six, and Keon won the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player of the playoffs as the Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup in six games.
In 1968, Mahovlich was traded to Detroit in a blockbuster trade. Then in 1969, following a first-round playoff loss to Boston, Smythe fired Imlach. Horton declared, "If this team doesn't want Imlach, I guess it doesn't want me." He was traded to the New York Rangers the next year.
The Ballard years
Following Stafford Smythe's death, Harold Ballard won a battle for control of the team during the 1971-72 season. One of the most detested owners in NHL history, he traded away many of the team's most popular players. He also blocked Keon from signing with another NHL team when his contract ran out in 1975, forcing him to jump to the Minnesota Fighting Saints of the World Hockey Association. Ballard assumed (correctly) that games at Maple Leaf Gardens would be sellouts regardless of the team's on-ice quality, and refused to raise the payroll any higher than necessary to be profitable.
During the 1970s, with the overall level of talent in the league diluted by the addition of 12 new franchises and the rival WHA, the Leafs, led by a group of stars such as Darryl Sittler (the all-time leading scorer for the franchise), Lanny McDonald, Keon, enforcer Tiger Williams, and Börje Salming were able to ice competitive teams for several seasons. On February 7, 1976, Sittler would score six goals and four assists against the Bruins to establish a NHL single-game record that still stands more than 30 years later. But they only once made it past the second round of the playoffs, besting the New York Islanders, a soon-to-be dynasty, in the 1978 quarter-finals, only to be swept by their arch-rivals the Montreal Canadiens, in the semi-finals.
In July 1979, Ballard brought Imlach, a longtime friend, back to the organization as GM. When the Leafs traded McDonald, a close friend of Sittler, to the moribund Colorado Rockies on December 29, 1979; a member of the Leafs anonymously told the Toronto Star that Ballard and Imlach would "do anything to get at Sittler"[3] and traded McDonald to undermine Sittler's influence on the team. Sittler, along with other Leafs who were members of the NHL Players Association, was agitating for a better contract. Angry teammates trashed their dressing room in response, and Sittler temporarily resigned his captaincy. NHL executive director Alan Eagleson, who was also Sittler's agent, called the trade "a classless act."[3] Sittler himself was gone two years later, when the Leafs traded him to the Philadelphia Flyers.
The McDonald trade sent the Leafs into a downward spiral. They finished five games under .500 and only made the playoffs due to the presence of the Quebec Nordiques, a refugee from the WHA, in the Adams Division. Ironically, Ballard had opposed taking the Nordiques and three other WHA teams into the NHL for the start of the 1979-80 season. He had never forgiven the WHA for nearly decimating his roster in the early 1970s, and the addition of three Canadian teams (the Nordiques, Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers) significantly reduced the Leafs' television revenue.
For the next 12 years, the Leafs were barely competitive, not posting another winning record until 1992-93. They missed the playoffs six times and only finished above fourth in their division once (in 1990, the only season where they even posted a .500 record). The low point came in 1984-85, when they finished 32 games under .500, the worst (in terms of points percentage) in team history. They only made it beyond the first round of the playoffs once (in 1986, advancing to the division finals), and won only 11 games in seven playoff appearances. Many times, they made the playoffs with horrendous records. In 1987-88, for instance, they finished with the second-worst record in the league, and only one point ahead of the Minnesota North Stars for the worst record. However, the Norris Division was so weak that year (only the Red Wings finished with a winning record) that the Leafs still made the playoffs. Many Leafs fans consider Ballard's tenure as owner to be the darkest era in team history. The Leafs' poor record resulted in several high draft picks but Wendel Clark, who was taken first overall in 1985 and would later captain the team, proved to be the only one that panned out.
Resurgence in and after the 1990s
Ballard died in 1990, and supermarket tycoon Steve Stavro, a longtime friend of Ballard's, bought the team in partnership with the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.
After 1991-92, ex-Calgary Flames GM Cliff Fletcher took over the team. In 1992-93, the Leafs began a resurgence. Doug Gilmour, who had come over from the Flames the previous season, scored 32 goals and 95 assists to lead the team in scoring. Dave Andreychuk had come to the Leafs from the Buffalo Sabres and would score 25 goals in his first 31 games as a Leaf as well as being the league's leading power-play goal scorer. Netminder Felix Potvin was also solid with an NHL-best 2.50 goals-against average. Toronto finished with a franchise-record 99 points, good enough for third place in the Norris Division. The Leafs dispatched the Detroit Red Wings in the first round with an overtime winner from Nikolai Borschevsky in game seven, then won the Norris Division Final by defeating the St. Louis Blues, also in seven games.
With Montreal facing the New York Islanders in the Wales Conference final, Canadians were once again dreaming of a Montreal-Toronto Cup final, as the Leafs faced the Los Angeles Kings, led by the great Wayne Gretzky, in the Campbell Conference final. The Leafs were up 3-2 in the series, but lost game six. Gretzky's hat trick in game seven would finish the Leafs' run, and it would be the Kings who would move on to the Finals against the Canadiens.
Those hoping for an all-Canadian Stanley Cup final in 1993 had to make do with an all-Canadian Western Conference Final (newly renamed from the Campbell Conference) in 1994. The Leafs, however, were no match for the Vancouver Canucks, losing in five games.
After two years out of the playoffs in the late 1990s, the Leafs made another charge during the 1999 playoffs after moving from Maple Leaf Gardens to the new Air Canada Centre. Mats Sundin, who had joined the team from the Quebec Nordiques in a 1994 trade involving Wendel Clark, had one of his most productive seasons, scoring 31 goals and totaling 83 points. Sergei Berezin scored 37 goals, Curtis Joseph won 35 games with a 2.56 GAA, and enforcer Tie Domi racked up 198 penalty minutes. The Leafs eliminated the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but lost in five games to the Buffalo Sabres in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Maple Leafs would reach the second round in both 2000 and 2001, losing both times to the New Jersey Devils, who would make the Stanley Cup Finals both seasons. The 2000 season was particularly notable because it marked the Leafs' first division title in 37 years, as well as the franchise's first-ever 100-point season. The season ended on a particular low, however, with the Leafs being held to just 6 shots in the final contest (game six) against the Devils.
In 2002, they would dispatch the Islanders and their trans-Ontario rivals, the Ottawa Senators, in the first two rounds, only to lose to the Cinderella-story Carolina Hurricanes in the Conference Finals. The 2002 season was particularly impressive in that the Leafs had many of their better players sidelined by injuries, but managed to make it to the conference finals due to the efforts of lesser-known players who were led mainly by Gary Roberts, who put up a heroic fight, although they would eventually fall to the Hurricanes.
Joseph left to go to the defending champions in Detroit in the 2002 off-season; the team almost immediately found a replacement in veteran Ed Belfour, who came over from the Dallas Stars and had been a crucial part of their 1999 Stanley Cup run. Belfour could not help their playoff woes in the 2003 playoffs, however, as they lost to Philadelphia in seven games in the first round. The 2003-04 season started in an uncommon way for the team, as they held their training camp in Sweden, and playing in the NHL Challenge against teams from Sweden and Finland. That year, the Leafs posted a franchise-record number of points (104) and finished fourth in the Eastern Conference. They also managed a .628 win percentage, their best in 43 years. They defeated the Senators in the first round of the playoffs for the fourth time in five years, but lost to the Flyers in the second round in six games. The Leafs did not make the playoffs in 2006, finishing tenth in the Eastern Conference.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are the only Original Six franchise to have not reached the Stanley Cup Finals since the 1967 NHL Expansion. The Chicago Blackhawks, the only other Original Six team not to win a Stanley Cup since 1967 (their last title came in 1961), have been to the Finals three times since then.
2006 to present
The Toronto Maple Leafs are currently the crappiest team in the universe. On January 28, 2006, the Leafs lost their eighth game in a row, their first streak of that length in 10 years, before head coach Pat Quinn joined the team. Quinn would likely have been let go at this point, but the Leafs wished to avoid any embarrassment and controversy since Quinn would be the coach of the Canadian team at the upcoming Winter Olympics. The streak was snapped on January 30, 2006, with a win against the Florida Panthers.
Despite a late-season surge, which included more NHL ice time for third string goaltender Jean-Sébastien Aubin who had spent the season with the Toronto Marlies, the Maple Leafs' American Hockey League affiliate, the Leafs were eliminated from playoff contention for the first time since 1998 on April 15, 2006. This marked the first time that the team missed the playoffs under coach Pat Quinn, and as a result he was fired along with assistant coach Rick Ley five days after the regular season ended. Defenceman Aki Berg left the team shortly afterwards. Paul Maurice, the coach of the Marlies and a former NHL head coach who led the Carolina Hurricanes to victory over the Leafs in the 2002 Eastern Conference Final, was announced as Pat Quinn's replacement. After much speculation on whether Bryan McCabe would remain a Maple Leaf or not, Toronto wrote up a five-year contract, which McCabe signed on June 28. At the 2006 NHL Entry Draft the Leafs selected Jiri Tlusty with the 13th Overall pick. On the same day, the Leafs traded 2005 first round pick Tuukka Rask to the Boston Bruins for Goaltender/2004 Calder Memorial Trophy winner Andrew Raycroft.
Now in the 2006-07 season the Maple Leafs are led by veterans such as Mats Sundin, Bryan McCabe, and Tomas Kaberle and are assisted by young players such as Kyle Wellwood, Matt Stajan, and Alex Steen. Some additions to the team are Hal Gill (Boston Bruins), Pavel Kubina (Tampa Bay Lightning), and Michael Peca (Edmonton Oilers). These new recruits were signed to replace the talent of Eric Lindros (Dallas Stars), Tie Domi (retired) and Ed Belfour (Florida Panthers). Paul Maurice has turned them in a different direction from the way old head coach Pat Quinn and brought the team up-to-date with all of the new rules. On June 30, 2006 the Maple Leafs bought out the contract of long-time fan favourite, Tie Domi. In addition to Domi, the Maple Leafs also decided against picking up the option year on the contract of goaltender Ed Belfour. Both players became free agents on July 1, 2006, effectively ending their tenures with the Toronto Maple Leafs.