because he felt they offered him a better chance to win a Stanley Cup. Well, umm, of course, but Cujo never won a Cup in the Motor City like so many former Leafs had done previously.
And so there you have it. What should, or could have been a crowning moment for the Maple Leafs and their fans — celebrating an Olympic gold medal, the pursuit of which had gripped both the city and country for a fortnight — only hastened the exit of arguably the team’s best player; certainly its best puck-stopper in the post-1967 era. The prolonged melodrama that played out from March through to early July was a little like watching your cute ex-girlfriend leave town with an aging rock star because she couldn’t get along with your dad.
There was an instance of that niggling feeling of discord in the ACC on the night after another major competition. March 2, 2010, offered no touchstone moments in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise. But it did remind its fans how completely and utterly inferior the team was that year relative to the action that had taken place during the previous two weeks. The Vancouver Olympics were about as proud a moment not involving military action that Canada has ever felt. It was like celebrating New Year’s for seventeen consecutive days, the hangover part nicely taken care of by a bunch of golden Caesars that Canadian athletes kept on serving up.
The Leafs, of course, had an understated role in the events of the men’s hockey competition. The chief decision-makers for the Leafs, general manager Brian Burke and head coach Ron Wilson, had the same roles for the U.S. team. This was just as bizarre then as it seems now. If an alien had descended from outer space in the lead-up to the Games, he would have been excused for thinking that earthlings had an odd sense of fair play.
“Wait,” you could almost imagine an alien saying, “how come the head coach and the GM from one of the NHL’s worst teams are in charge of one of the best national teams? And the same two guys also run a Canadian NHL team even though they are American and putting together the American team at the biggest hockey event to ever take place in Canada?”
Well, yes, of course, and those two men did a fabulous job for their country. If only they could have replicated that success with their day jobs in Toronto (Wilson, we now know, paid with his job for not even coming close). Wilson — the memory must still haunt him — showed why he is considered a good hockey coach everywhere else but Toronto by leading the Americans to within a hair’s breadth of the gold medal. But, thank God, Canada prevailed.
Two days after the overtime final won by Canada 3–2, Wilson was back behind the bench for a Leafs home game versus — no kidding — Carolina again. Even if you don’t like Ron Wilson, you couldn’t fault him if he’d thought he had been kidnapped and placed behind the Leafs bench. He wasn’t, of course, and his personal coaching nightmare resumed in a Tuesday night encounter that will not be remembered for the ages. In Vancouver, Wilson had Zach Parise, Patrick Kane, Ryan Kesler, Bobby Ryan, and Ryan Suter at his disposal, along with many others of the world’s elite, including the best goaltender on the planet at the time in Ryan Miller. Back at his regular gig, Wilson had the luxury of Colton Orr, Jamie Lundmark, Freddy Sjostrom, Christian Hanson, and Garnet Exelby. Wilson must have felt like he had driven home in a Ferrari and woken up with a Ford Pinto in the garage.
The Leafs did their level best to make their coach and general manager feel right at home again, which is to say that they played like complete donkeys, losing 5–1 and eliciting a number of sarcastic barbs from Wilson to the media after the game. Under normal circumstances, the game was about as exciting as you would expect from a mid-week tilt between two non-playoff teams coming off a long break. When compared to events of the previous seventeen days, it was like seventeen years of uninterrupted white noise.
“Welcome home, coach. Are you happy to see that things haven’t changed?”
But the game had a modestly entertaining side story playing out while the Leafs were getting their hats handed to them. Ponikarovsky, who had played for the Ukraine two long-ago Olympic cycles earlier, was announced as one of the pre-game scratches. As much angst as Ponikarovsky contributed to the collective mindset of Leafs fans over the years — he never fulfilled the potential hung on him for almost a decade — it was clear something was up. The trade deadline loomed a couple days hence and the big Ukrainian’s pending free agent status after the season made him prime trade bait. A few fans in my section — 311 greens — were dutifully trolling the Internet on their hand-held devices to try to get a hint of any tangible action involving Ponikarovsky. It turned out the big lunk had been dealt to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The return? A local kid named Luca Caputi.
Two days after watching the most thrilling Team Canada game of the modern era, talk suddenly switched to a trade involving a player who was a decade-long “what-if” as a Maple Leaf and a kid who, as it turned out, played just twenty-six games for them.
Only in Toronto.
7
Creating More Leafs Fans
Make babies or watch the hockey game? Can’t you do both?
No, this isn’t some crude rehash of the old joke about a certain sexual position and still being able to watch Hockey Night in Canada. It involves having secured Leafs tickets on the same night your wife’s meticulous charting tells her that she’s likely ovulating.
Now that’s a conflict.
Ask any couple who want to have children — it doesn’t just involving snapping their fingers. The whole process can be a bit stressful. Ask the male half of that coupling just how stressful when it also involves planning around the Leafs, and, if his wife were within earshot, the answer may permanently impair his ability to produce children.
The night was February 20, 2007, and the Leafs were in a futile struggle to get into a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Boston Bruins were in town and trailing the Leafs in the chase to get inside the top eight teams.
It was an important night not only at the Air Canada Centre but also at a nicely appointed semi-detached starter home in Toronto’s west end, where the Robinsons hung their shingle at the time. Earlier that day, my frantic searching on the Internet had produced two tickets for the pending Leafs–Bruins tilt. A $160-something-plus-fees purchase was allayed by colleague and good friend Jason Logan, who was willing to pick up his share of the tab. Arrangements were made to meet on the Jane Station subway platform in time to get downtown for a few prime-the-pump pints and what was supposed to be a spirited tilt, a rarity for mid-week games.
The only pending obligation to that point was to walk my dad’s dog, who was a house guest while my father was travelling. Aussie, the four-legged family member, was his usual accommodating self, bounding through our neighbourhood with that canine smile only yellow Labradors are capable of. He was just happy that someone was paying attention to him. To be honest, though, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to him at all — I was distracted and just wanted to get downtown.
Heading back up the driveway, Aussie was pulling me along, knowing a treat waited at the other side of our side door. Little did I know that there was also something waiting for me on the other side of that door.
Now, Mrs. Robinson has endured a tremendous amount of impulsive activity on her husband’s part since shortly after we met in the summer of 2000. (True story: we met at my family reunion — she was there as a guest of my cousin and is not an actual relative.)
Our first date a few days later included three table changes, ostensibly because the sun was in my eyes. In reality, I was so nervous, I needed to get out of the sun because I was paranoid that she would notice I was sweating (my sunglasses would have solved the sun issue but remained tucked nicely inside a pocket so as not to give away my ruse).
She didn’t notice a thing. The date went well, as did subsequent ones. I think she even started to like me. Poor woman.
We were married in November 2003. The Leafs were in the midst of a western trip and tied the San Jose Sharks 2–2 on our wedding night. The marriage got off to a good start: she said all the right things about my wedding speech, in which I made reference to not having children until the Leafs win