Cover
PETER ROBINSON
Dedication
For Jody
You’ve enabled a man who hasn’t quite grown up
to chase his boyhood dream
Foreword
This book explores how the mind of a Toronto Maple Leafs fan works. I experienced this passion firsthand, and I still hear from many of those people who bleed the blue and white. It is almost like the love parents have for their children, in that it has no conditions or boundaries. There have been heart-wrenching moments on the ice over the past forty-five years, but this book opens the door to some of the stories that weren’t covered by the mainstream media, but which still grab your attention — like Mike Sundin’s overtime heroics or a sprawling, series-clinching save by “Cujo.”
Anybody who passionately follows a sports team will understand the feelings that resonate through these pages, how their daily lives are influenced by the ups and downs of their team during the season.
This book reminded me of those crazy times I enjoyed as a player in Toronto. One that sticks in my memory is the night I left the Air Canada Centre after we beat the New York Islanders in Game 7 of the 2002 playoffs. I remember walking outside after the game. The traffic around the ACC was like a parking lot, but probably the happiest parking lot in Toronto’s traffic history. People were jumping out of their cars to high-five pedestrians and others stuck in the traffic melee. That showed me the thirst for success the Leafs Nation has and the large space those individuals reserve in their hearts for the lucky twenty players who wear the blue-and-white jersey each and every game night.
I understood many of the qualities that define a Leafs fan, having had the chance to wear the cherished Leaf crest on my chest for almost six years, but this book helped me to grasp the lengths to which fans will go in order to realize their dream of watching a Leafs game live.
Alyn McCauley
Former Toronto Maple Leafs forward (1997–2003)
and Los Angeles Kings scout
June 2012
Kingston, Ontario
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the many people who helped me in this project; but first, some context.
I was finishing the manuscript as the Leafs were beginning an epic slump that would see them fall out of the NHL playoff race for the seventh consecutive season. The ugly slide cost head coach Ron Wilson his job. More telling was the anger that exploded amongst the team’s fan base — myself included — and the declining reputation of Leafs GM Brian Burke among the team’s supporters that took hold during this time. Having come undone as they did also scuttled any suggestion of a hopeful parting theme in this book. No one expected the 2011–12 version of the Leafs to win the Stanley Cup, but there was real hope up until about Valentine’s Day that the team would make the playoffs and provide genuine optimism for the future.
We all know how that turned out, and as painful as the lost 2011–12 season became, it meant that there would never be a better time to examine the sheer extent of emotions experienced when you’re a Leafs fan. There have been many quality books and stories written about the hockey team, but they tend to reflect the journalists’ take on the various goings-on at Air Canada Centre. The intent of this book is to provide a fan’s perspective on the joys, as few as there have been, and overwhelming angst involved in following the team. To that end, none of the traditional methods of covering a hockey team were followed in putting together this book. Instead, I assumed the vantage point of a fan sitting in Air Canada Centre, not in its press box. To me, and I would hope that readers also feel this way, that’s a key difference.
That said, many people deserve a heartfelt thank-you for helping me with the completion of this book.
First, to the staff at Dundurn, many thanks to you for taking a chance on a first-time author, but most of all for the professionalism and expertise in finishing the project. Like Dundurn, my agent Brian Wood rolled the dice with a neophyte. He was an immense help in getting the ball rolling.
James Ansley, Jason Logan, and Stephen Hubbard are three very dear friends who have all helped me — James and Jason directly with the manuscript, and Stephen for his many years of helpful advice and affording me writing opportunities. Wendy Thomas has also been of great assistance on both this book and also during many, many years in my regular work. I would like to express my gratitude to Cliff Kivell, who has been the publisher of many magazines that I’ve edited and has always been generous in allowing me to work on other projects. I’m also grateful for the help of Gord French and Britney Mackey at various points along the way.
Long ago, I had a elementary school teacher named Jack Williams who I’ve since lost touch with. I haven’t seen him in decades, but he planted the seed for much of my life’s work to this point.
My father, Ron, has always supported me even though I gave him ample reason for him to want to clobber his middle child, especially during the first half of my life. Thanks, Dad.
There is not nearly enough space here to list all the entertaining characters I’ve met down at the Air Canada Centre; but I would like to make special mention of John Wilczynski and Sean Davis for being such great guys to watch games with and to spin the yarn with on the golf course.
In closing, I will leave you with words written by a man named David Lowe around the same time the Leafs were going into the tank in early 2012. They were forwarded on to me by a relative and I pass them on here simply because they are perhaps the most fitting of any saying or metaphor I’ve seen: “Being a Leafs fan is the worst relationship I have ever been in.”
It can’t be that bad, can it?
1
Sacred Bonds
On the evening of December 9, 2010, a man named Angus Ronalds pushed his son, Riley, through the concourse of the Air Canada Centre in a wheelchair. Earlier that year he had buried his wife, the mother of their two young children, after she died from a rare form of cancer. Within weeks, Riley, his oldest child, was stricken with the same type of cancer, which has a tendency to attack much more aggressively in successive generations.
The pain and sorrow that Mr. Ronalds must have been going through is unimaginable. His son had just weeks to live, but aggressive chemotherapy had allowed him to realize a few dying wishes: going to Disney World, and celebrating one last Christmas and his birthday.
That night the two were fulfilling another one of those wishes as they attended a Leafs–Flyers game. In the moments leading up to game, I approached Angus and re-introduced myself. I had been to his wife Heidi’s funeral earlier that year but I could tell that he didn’t recognize me (my wife and Heidi had taught together at a Toronto-area public school).
“He’s terminal,” said Angus of Riley’s condition when I asked. “We’re just enjoying what time we have left together.”
Little Riley died shortly after his fifth birthday, on February 1, 2011.
It’s a question that confounds many people across the hockey world and even some who consider themselves Leafs fan: Why? What is it about a hockey team that makes Angus Ronalds’s story so common, even with its extraordinary and utterly sad details? Ronalds wasn’t the first father to bring his terminally ill son to see a Leafs game, and he certainly won’t be the last.
The team has been mostly a losing