Results tagged “hockey”

The success of Battle of the Blades has brought Maple Leaf Gardens back into the national spotlight. The show’s mix of glamour and excitement fits some of the visions Conn Smythe had for the building when it opened its doors to the public seventy-eight years ago this week. Built in an almost unimaginable span of five months, the building that became a temple for generations of hockey fans is a testament to the executives who used their persuasive skills to raise the necessary funds during the Great Depression.

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of the Toronto Maple Leafs' start to the 2009/10 hockey season. It's not just the lack of wins that's puzzling: it's how bad the team's looked in compiling its 0-6-1 record. Right now, the Leafs seem bereft of talent, ideas, leadership, and desire. Surely they won't be like this all year?

One game, one blown third period lead. And while Leaf fans can take a lot of positives from tonight's season-opening, 4-3 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens, it’s a game Toronto really should’ve won. The Leafs were all over Carey Price’s net the entire game (final shot tally: 46–27). They were also leading with under five minutes left to play—then squandered a weak tying goal (thanks in part to Mike Komisarek, who spent just under a quarter of his Maple Leafs debut in the penalty box) and a totally preventable game-winner (the usually reliable Luke Schenn will want to forget his role in that one). Of course, it’s only one game, and all the work Brian Burke put into shoring up the team’s defense should eventually pay off…but these late collapses will have to stop. Last year, the Leafs’ eight blown third period leads resulting in losses cost them a shot at the postseason. If this year’s team is going to compete, improvement in this one category would be a pretty good place to start.

We can picture it now—a giant, disembodied head floating in the locker room of Maple Leaf Gardens, hovering near his microphone as he interviews battle-scarred hockey players preparing to dazzle the rest of the country with their skills over the airwaves on Saturday night. Interviewees were too focused on the game ahead to notice the lack of a body…

When Brian Burke arrived in Toronto last November, he promised a Maple Leaf team full of "pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence.” He wasn’t kidding: barely seven months into his tenure as the Leafs’ thirteenth general manager, Burke has begun creating exactly that.

Nazem Kadri is the newest fresh-faced teenager to arrive in Toronto with the responsibility of resurrecting a moribund franchise—this, after the Maple Leafs selected him seventh overall from the London Knights in tonight’s NHL Entry Draft. In the end, Brian Burke’s aggressive pursuit of a higher draft position yielded nothing; speculation that the Leafs would trade up in order to select Brayden Schenn, brother of Luke, ended when the younger Schenn went fifth overall to the Los Angeles Kings. Kadri will likely need at least another year of junior hockey before joining the big club. And we’re fine with that: now that there’s a regime in charge with apparent commitment to rebuilding, we’re happy to put our faith in Burke and his plan. Welcome to the Maple Leafs, Nazem! You're forgiven for being a childhood Habs fan.

Lou Turofsky's favourite photograph was a sedate shot of an exhausted newsboy curled up on a building's front steps. It's a compelling choice, yet surprising given the countless sports stars, celebrities, and royalty that Lou and his brother Nat photographed in Toronto over the years. Today many of their photos of sporting events and city life remain recognizable—frequently republished on this site and elsewhere—but the Turofsky name and their story are largely unknown.

May is a good month to follow European football soccer, not so good to follow the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Amid rabid speculation that the Phoenix Coyotes face an insurmountable debt load, the team filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier today. Following the announcement, Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie put in a US$212 million offer to buy the team, under the condition that it is relocated to Southern Ontario. (His previous bids for the Nashville Predators and the Pittsburgh Penguins were unsuccessful.) Chatter of moving or creating a team here has re-ignited in recent weeks, but the NHL refused to confirm any of the speculation until today. The Globe and Mail is reporting that the NHL's management, which has an acrimonious relationship with Balsillie, plans to fight the offer, but Balsillie hopes to avoid this battle (which hurt his previous bids) by building grassroots support for the team—he's encouraging all fans of the proposal to visit www.makeitseven.ca in order to voice their support.

It’s that time of year again, the time when Canadians feel obligated to throw their unconditional support behind the last Canadian team playing for the Stanley Cup. This year's bearer of "the Cup dreams of an entire nation" (as TSN's Jennifer Hedger put it) is the Vancouver Canucks, who eliminated the St. Louis Blues in a surprisingly easy four-game sweep. (Neither of the other two Canadian playoff participants, the Montreal Canadiens or the Calgary Flames, made it out of Round #1—although at least the Flames didn’t get swept, nor did their fans litter the ice after the team was eliminated.) The question is: should Leaf fans be doing likewise?

If you've ever been watching television and immediately jumped to back up the DVR lest your eyes had deceived you (a certain Super Bowl halftime performance perhaps?), yesterday's broadcast of Sportsnet's Hockey Central may have been one of those moments.

With the NHL regular season wrapping up this weekend, we thought we were finished with “predictable digs at Maple Leaf fans in the sports media” for another year. But then along came Pierre LeBrun, who writes for (among other things) ESPN.com, to take one final shot: in his season-ending wrap-up column, LeBrun awarded Leaf fans with his “Suckers United Award.” “Once again, they packed the joint at the Air Canada Centre for a crappy team that missed the playoffs for a fourth straight season,” LaBrun snickered. “Ticket prices are going up, and Leafs fans can’t wait to open their wallets. The Cup drought is 42 years and counting.” (Meanwhile, we could've predicted the content of Damien Cox's riposte to the standing ovation following the Leafs' season-ending win over the Ottawa Senators before even reading it.) Baiting Leaf fans is, of course, a hallmark of slapdash, second-rate hockey writing—yet while we shouldn’t be letting men like LeBrun or Cox affect us, we’re getting sick of hearing about how stupid we are (“sucker” is ultimately a euphemism for “idiot”) because we happen to cheer for a losing team.

For the Toronto Maple Leafs it's all over but the shouting, which leaves them with one last thing to do this season: spoil someone else’s. Two of their four remaining opponents are still jostling for playoff positions; beating Montreal (tonight) and/or Buffalo (next Wednesday) would put a tiny bit of gloss on a meaningless final week. Cheering against another team, even if it's the Canadiens, is the last refuge of the sports loser, but it’s the best we can do for the time being. There certainly wasn't much to cheer about last night, an 8–5 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers which was nowhere near as close as the final score suggests (the Leafs were down 5–0 after the first period and were trailing 6–0 before mounting an abortive "comeback"). But the game was at least somewhat noteworthy because of Christian Hanson, the former Notre Dame star—and yes, the son of the Slap Shot actor—who played 17:38 in his Maple Leafs debut. Again, it's not much, but it's the kind of thing you look for at the tail end of yet another lost season.

The Montreal Canadiens' 4–1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks yesterday night mathematically eliminated the Toronto Maple Leafs from postseason contention, thus assuring the Buds of a fourth consecutive playoff-less year. The Leafs haven’t been in a playoff game since Jeremy Roenick eliminated them in the 2004 Eastern Conference semi-finals. Not to belabour the point, but this is the longest such streak in franchise history.

When travelling by train between key games during the Stanley Cup playoffs, the last thing a hardened hockey player wants to suffer is indigestion. If King Clancy and his teammates actually did pop a few tablets to rid themselves of "the poisonous wastes that slow a man down," they helped the Maple Leafs defeat the New York Americans two games to one during the 1936 semi-finals.

Trade deadline has become an odd sort of ritual for Canadian sports fans. It’s frankly tedious, yet it’s also undeniably gripping—because trade deadline, in one way or another, symbolizes hope for almost every NHL team.

Ah, the Battle of Ontario: remember how it used to matter? Remember how an undermanned Leaf team eliminating a powerhouse Senator team from the playoffs became an annual rite of spring? So do we—but those days are behind us for the time being. The Leafs and the Senators limp into tonight’s contest in suburban Ottawa mired in twenty-fourth and twenty-seventh place, respectively, in a thirty-team league. The Leafs were supposed to struggle this year; the Senators certainly weren’t, and they certainly weren't supposed to be the second-lowest-scoring team in the league, not with their Big Three (Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza and Daniel Alfredsson) providing the offence. So why would you waste a perfectly good evening watching two teams jostle for draft position? Because tonight could be your last chance to see several players, Nik Antropov and Tomas Kaberle among them, wearing the Maple Leaf uniform. The NHL trade deadline is next Wednesday, and the Maple Leafs will look much different in one week's time. That, if nothing else, makes tonight’s Battle of Ontario worth watching in our eyes.

Given his flair for the dramatic, it seemed almost inevitable that Mats Sundin would cap his return to Toronto with a game-winning goal. He did exactly that, scoring the shootout winner as his new team, the Vancouver Canucks, came from behind to beat the Maple Leafs 3–2. A scattering of boos accompanied Sundin throughout the game—but a first period video montage of Sundin’s Maple Leaf career allowed the fans to applaud their former captain, and they seized the opportunity. By the end of it, Sundin was on the brink of tears; then, as he’s tended to do throughout his NHL career, he saved his best for last, beating Vesa Toskala with a perfect backhander for the winner. Seldom has a Leaf loss felt so sweet.

Mats Sundin returns to Toronto tomorrow. It'll be nothing if not interesting.

Ten years ago today, Maple Leaf Gardens hosted its final National Hockey League game. And ten years further on, we still haven’t learned the building's ultimate fate—still haven’t learned what'll happen to "the Grand Old Lady of Carlton Street," the last of the famed Original Six arenas.

Looking back at Toronto's skyline from Algonquin Island with the ultimate backyard rink in the foreground.

If Luke Schenn represents the future for the Toronto Maple Leafs, then the future got a little bit brighter last night. Schenn was instrumental in Toronto's wild 5-4 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. His bone-crunching hit on Penguins superstar Evgeni Malkin set the tone; in the subsequent melee, Schenn fought Tyler Kennedy and took him down not once, but twice, before skating to the penalty box with the crowd chanting his name. In the third period, he made an unexpected dart in from the blueline before setting up Matt Stajan's go-ahead goal. Finally, Schenn was named the game's first star. That the best game of Schenn's young NHL career occurred on a night when the team honoured former captain Doug Gilmour did not escape attention. More nights like this, and Schenn will be wearing the captain's "C" himself someday.

The Maple Leafs begin the unofficial second half of the NHL season tonight in Minnesota. But the week's big event occurs Saturday, when the team honours former captain Doug Gilmour before their game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

It's happening. The Toronto Maple Leafs are actually tanking.

Bryan McCabe is back in town tonight—and like the protagonist in “Boots or Hearts,” he’ll probably be all squint-eyed and confused when he steps onto the Air Canada Centre ice as a member of the Florida Panthers and hears nineteen thousand fans (many of them wearing replica McCabe jerseys) booing him.

Mats Sundin—last seen shilling for PokerStars.net and, before that, captaining your Toronto Maple Leafs—is a thirty-seven-year old man headed west. He signed with the Vancouver Canucks yesterday afternoon.

Mats Sundin is no longer a Maple Leaf: he's off to the Vancouver Canucks, choosing to sign with the team because they have better Stanley Cup prospects. We'll have more about the move tomorrow, but suffice to say we, along with most everyone else, have been wondering how he's lasted here this long.

Tomorrow, for the first time since March 16, 1996, the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be playing on a non-holiday, regular season Saturday. They play tonight in Buffalo; they won’t be in action again until next Tuesday.

The Brian Burke saga, or at least the first part of it, is over. We’re as surprised as anyone—Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment tends to struggle with straightforward tasks—but today, Burke was officially unveiled as the new President and General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.