It’s been a few days since the Toronto Maple Leafs NHL hockey team lost to the Florida Panthers in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. I qualify the Leafs as an NHL hockey team because I have to remind myself that’s what they are. Not only did the Leafs lose, they lost ignobly, cursing and blaming each other for collapsing in front of a stadium full of fans. Watching video of fans throwing their team jerseys, the ones they bought at a hefty price, onto the ice in disgust made the spectacle worse. Sportsnet’s Donnavan Bennett (no relation), an insightful journalist and commentator, reflected on the special misery of Leaf fans and why this franchise continues to fall short. “Leaf fans are sick and tired of being sick and tired”, he lamented. “At some point that pent-up cumulative frustration will turn to apathy.”
For Leafs fans too young to remember the last time they hoisted the Stanley Cup in victory (a large swath of the population), growing up with the franchise is like growing up in an alcoholic home. There’s the endless promises of this time it’ll be better, the attempts at being on the wagon, and periods when things are actually good. But then there’s the inevitable breakdown of willpower and the inability to control the compulsion to fuck up. Meanwhile the family is collateral damage, bruised and scarred by demoralizing binge after demoralizing binge. It hurts loving an alcoholic. I can imagine it hurts being a Leafs fan. Year after year, the faithful return, stuck in a cycle of codependency. To break free requires full-out intervention.
I like to think of myself as a Leafs observer more than a fan, to protect myself from investing too much in an unreliable character. Hockey in this country has been elevated to a religion, which I don’t think is healthy, but its glorification is understandable. Sports is a unifier, a visceral, cathartic experience shared. There’s so little these days that will bring people out of their homes en masse to gather and cheer – grown men and women chasing a puck or a ball seems to be it. So how do the Toronto Maple Leafs tear their shackles asunder and rise to the level of Stanley Cup champions?
Is it still possible to do this in Toronto?
Perhaps they need to free themselves from Lakeshore and Bay and start afresh, to take a geographical cure and relocate. Become the Hamilton Maple Leafs or the Markham Maple Leafs, to create a new identity wholesale. To wipe the slate really, really clean. Or fans need to wear their Maple Leafs jerseys in the way St. Francis suggested the way to wear the world – loosely, without fierce attachment. Either way at this point, it appears that Providence is needed to show this team the way. Meanwhile, I hope the Leafs and their fans recover from this abject loss and seek wise counsel. Winning the Atlantic Division championship is somewhat of a consolation.
Now what?
Go Oilers Go!