The Agony and Ecstasy (but mostly Agony) of Being a Toronto Maple Leafs Fan

1967. 1967. 1967. 1967. Am I getting annoying yet? Imagine listening to that constantly from followers of rival teams when you’re a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. It was their favourite chirp, and we’ve heard it so often, it doesn’t even bother us. We’ve heard the best and the worst of insults for decades from haters, but the one thing they don’t realize is, nobody hates the Leafs more than their own fans.

Seven games into a new season, the Leafs record is 2-4-1 (2 wins, 4 regulation losses, 1 overtime loss) and Leafs Nation is raging. According to our favourite social media experts, it’s time to trade the top goal scorer in the league, send a top 4 point producer to Siberia, get rid of two more elite skaters, fire the coach, kick the general manager to the curb, and launch the team president straight out of a cannon into the sun.

All righty then!

Before we do anything rash, maybe we should take a deep breath and think about this. Yeah, right! Leafs Nation doesn’t think about anything. We are reactionary at best, completely off the rails insane at worst, and which end of the scale we navigate towards entirely depends on the score of the last game.

So why do we keep coming back? I can only speak for myself.

I have been a fan of Toronto sports for decades, the Leafs specifically for at least 40+ years. I have never witnessed a Stanley Cup championship, or even a finals appearance in my lifetime. Well technically I have, but that was 1967 (hence the chirp) and I was far too young to remember. There have been some good years, but many more bad. One absolute requirement if you are to survive being a Maple Leafs fan is to have a sense of humor.

Some of my best memories came in the early 90s. We had a tough, talented gritty team with a much idolized captain in Wendel Clark, a man who could punch your lights out, then score 3 goals in the same game. He still remains my favourite Leaf of all time.

He, along with our resident superstar Doug Gilmour and lineup of talented and pugnacious warriors took the team to the Cup semi-finals in 1993 and 1994, in 93, coming one win away from what seemed a guaranteed trip to the finals.

Until the hockey gods stepped in, that was.

When Wayne Gretzky, the league’s biggest star, high-sticked Gilmour in the face, drawing blood, no penalty was called. Instead of the L.A. Kings being short-handed for 5 minutes, and Gretzky kicked out of the game, he was allowed to continue and shortly thereafter scored the winning goal. My Leafs would be denied their first trip to the Stanley cup finals since 1967, and I have never recovered.

We also had some good teams in the early 2000s. Captain and future Hall of Famer Mats Sundin would lead his team to the playoffs for 6 straight seasons from 1999 – 2004. They would never make the finals, but provided a lot of joy and were a fun team to cheer on for the fans. Our Leafs would then go on to miss the playoffs every year from 2005 – 2012.

When they finally made it back to the dance in 2013, they played a seven game series against the hated Boston Bruins. With our boys leading 4-1 with just over 10 minutes left in game 7, all was right in Leafs Nation - until it wasn’t.

Boston eventually tied the game and won it in overtime. It was one the greatest comebacks, or biggest collapses ever, depending on who you were cheering for. Bruins went on to the finals, Leafs were eliminated. The hockey gods had spoken again.

The team was gradually disassembled over the next few years, ending the 2016 season with the worst record in the league. Yay us!

No seriously, that was a good thing. The consensus number one draft pick in 2016 was none other than Auston Matthews, considered by all to be a generational talent and guaranteed future NHL superstar. Leafs, having the best chance to win the draft lottery due to their finishing last, did exactly that. We got Matthews, baby!

Combined with our #4 pick from the previous year, Mitch Marner, and our pick of William Nylander the year before that, the sun was shining on Leafs fans again. There was hope

Surprisingly, after being the worst team the previous year, Leafs made the playoffs in 2017. Leafs nation was elated. They were eliminated in the first round by Washington, but it was ok. They weren’t supposed to win. They weren’t even supposed to be there. The boys were just kids, they would only get better. The future looked bright.

When they made the playoffs again the following year and got eliminated by the Boston Bruins, it stung a little more but we were still optimistic.

Then they signed hometown hero and current captain John Tavares to lead and mentor the kids. The future’s so bright we gotta wear shades! Another first round elimination in 2019, and yet another in 2020 had us wondering if we truly were cursed. We were convinced the hockey gods really don’t like us at all.

2021 was our year. We knew it.

Due to Covid border restrictions, NHL had to reassign divisions. There was an all-Canadian division created temporarily and the Leafs were considered by far the best team in it. They were, at least in the regular season. After breezing through their 56 game schedule, winning the division as expected, Leafs prepared to play their first round playoff series against their historic and hated rival, the Montreal Canadiens, (Habs).

After taking a 3-1 lead in the series, outscoring the Habs 12-4, the road to round 2 was paved in gold - until it wasn’t. Montreal went on to win the next 3 games, handing the Leafs a first round playoff exit for the 5th consecutive year. Obviously, God hates us.

After blowing a 3 – 1 series lead to our archrival, the hated Habs, to add insult to injury, pundits were telling us fans that we should cheer for them when they made the Stanley cup final. We should support the Habs because they’re a Canadian team. They’re our Prime Minister’s favourite team, even.

Well, bite my blue and white bleeding, Maple Leafs loving butt. I will not cheer for them. You cannot make me.

They even lit the CN Tower in the Canadiens colours. The most famous landmark in our fair city was trolling us. What the fuck?

Even my own brother went along and cheered for them, my own lifelong Leafs fan brother was cheering for Montreal! Needless to say, I disowned the traitorous bastard. Only after the Habs lost to the eventual champion Tampa Bay Lightning, did I decide to forgive the S.O.B.

As if losing in the first round 5 years in a row wasn’t embarrassing enough, did you know we lost a game to our own Zamboni driver? Yes, I said that. Emergency back-up goaltender (EBUG) that night was a Leafs employee who sometimes served as a practice goalie and drove the machine that cleans the ice for our minor league team. He had to play in a game for Carolina, in our arena, when both their goalies were injured. The Hurricanes beat the Leafs 6 – 3.

Good for the EBUG for getting to live out a dream of playing in the NHL, but holy crap! With the top goal scorer, top 5 point producer, a superstar captain, and a few more elite players, we couldn’t beat our own Zamboni driver. Obviously that moment replaced “1967” as the haters’ favourite chirp; at least until we blew the series lead against Montreal last season, the newest insult now being “It was 3-1”.

So why do I still bother, you may ask? Why do I still cheer for a team that gives me so much hope and so much heartbreak? I have no idea, honestly. I’m either addicted or insane, maybe a little of both. Considering they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, I’d definitely go with that.

Will I keep cheering anyway? I will leave you with my FB post that I entered before watching that fateful game 7 against Montreal last season. Somebody help me, and Go Leafs Go!