It is once again that time of year again, when spring rolls around, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are on, and the Toronto Maple Leafs once again get ejected in the first round. Only this year, instead of “nothing happening”, something did happen. For the first time in 19 years they made it past the first round. Albeit sloppily, and fraught with injuries, difficult plays, skittishness, and an overall lack of gritty, real old school hockey. But they did it.
Now of course, I am no fan of being obsessed with sports, because as we know, all sports are fake pseudo activities (except pro wrestling, it's the realist sport, it's hyper-real you can say). But bare with me, because while watching game 5 in overtime, and seeing any hopes of getting past the Eastern conference rounds dashed. Beaten by an outlaw mud show expansion team, that on paper (always on paper), was inferior to the leafs, it hit me. This is a metaphor in some weird and fantastical way, or seemingly nonsensical way, for the current state of Canada as a whole.
If you were a Millennial kid growing up in Ontario, you were lucky to have experienced the Leafs playing some of the most brutal and exiting hockey in their history. Matts Sundin as the captain, Cujo as the Goalie. Corson, Belak, Darcy Tucker and of course Tie Domi as enforcers disintegrating the opposition on the ice every single night. Hockey truly was wrestling in those days, as all early 2000s culture had a sort of Gen-x/Older Millennial edginess to it, a topic I have written about elsewhere.
But hockey was still “real” to the fans. It still had a sort of working class authenticity to it. A combination of speed, athleticism and of course physical toughness. This is when fights were still ever-present, and the enforcer served a vital role in making sure top players could even get to doing magic on the ice without the fear of being harassed by the other teams. I was of course drawn to this aspect of the game. I even had a Tie Domi jersey I received one birthday. I remember 2004 when the Leafs beat The Ottawa Senators to advance. It was a hard fought series, a typical bitter rivalry in what we call the ongoing “the Battle of Ontario” between the two teams. Ontario could easily sustain 3 teams of course in terms of our market, but that is another issue.
Firstly, there is a matter of history, and this is where as a Lifelong Leafs fan, allow me to indulge myself here. Because it is something I could never figure out when non-leafs fans talk about them. “why should we care about a team who hasn't won a cup since the 60s? Why does the Media focus on them so much?” there are a variety of reasons for this, one of them being brand recognition. Like people around the world who do not know the first thing about professional wrestling,who may have never seen a full match, but only know about it through pop culture references in the collective Noospehere. Who is the first wrestler that pops into their heads? Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Now, for those who have never watched a game of hockey, what do they recognize? A blue maple leaf, a C with an H in it, a yellow B.
In other words, the Maple Leafs as an original 6 team has the status of recognition, fairly or unfairly, and also the history that goes with it. Which is why I cannot understand the way hockey is set up now a days in terms of the players themselves essentially being reduced to journeymen. It's all about never getting over the salary cap and seeing who can get drafted to the team with the best offer. If you have the chance to play for a team with history, not necessarily an original 6 team, but those who have cemented a legacy, should that not be fought for? Especially when it comes to the Maple Leafs, to go on the ice with that jersey on means you are apart of something greater. The biggest franchise and brand recognition, the largest hockey market, the largest pool of fans, etc. And still nothing comes of it. Toronto, Ontario, and even Canada as a whole are ritualistically disappointed year after year (although the other provinces hate this notion of the Leafs being the flag-bearers of Canadian hockey. And rightfully so considering Ontario's relationship to the rest of Canada, Canada that isn't Quebec).
There is something metaphysical about the “Harold Ballard curse”1 and the Leaf's seemingly endless loosing streak. Especially in recent years when we were promised that the Leafs were on the cutting edge of the new state of hockey. One that is thoroughly defined by (and forgive me for using this word considering the odious plagiarist midwit who appropriated it) “refinement culture”. This is something that Sid on Breakfast Television explained succinctly by using the metaphor of the “Monorail” from the famed Simpsons episode2. A fly by night conman promises Springfield a golden opportunity, a light, fast, cutting edge Monorail, so long as they fork over everything they have. It will pay off in the end.
This has been the Maple Leaf's strategy with the “big four” of Tavares, Matthews, Marner and Nylander for years now: A totally smooth, nimble, athletic and flashy team with the best sports science behind it. They don't need toughness, grit, enforcing, or even that good of a defensive line. All they need to do is dance around the other team and show a supreme level of “skill”, and pucks will fly into the net. Because after all, “the nature of the game has changed”, and the players along with it.
When I was growing up in Ontario, by far the largest pool of aspiring hockey players next to Quebec and Russia (and possibly New York or Massachusetts) I sort of witnessed this transformation with my own eyes without even realizing it. I saw upper middle class kids go through the ranks of Hockey, from Peewee, to various minors, Jr. B and eventually higher. Kids that had the money and time to spend on equipment, attend practises and games all up and down Ontario. Kids that you wouldn't exactly peg as tough, athletic for sure, but not rough and tumble. Why is this important? Because Hockey in its earlier days, up until around the 90s and early 2000s, was always seen as more of a working class sport filled with players that were much different than the well-paid athletes of today. For example, Phil Esposito even had jobs at block plants during the summers just to fund his way to the Bruins training camp in the autumn.
You really can't have the same level of violent spectacle when the average phenotype of player is selected for different skills and capacities along with rules that have selected out the role of the enfrocer. And when it comes to Canadian teams specifically. add to this the league's desire to expand into the Southern States. and the supposed hidden rule changes, salary caps and other (albeit conspiratorial and conjectural) measures being taken to make sure Canadian teams don't make it far into the playoffs, you have a completely different game. And yes, I know I sound like an old boomer here, like Don Cherry himself saying “these kids aren't tough now a days, they don't play hockey like they used to”. But sometimes a boomer truth is just that, a truth. And for that, they got rid of Cherry himself from Hockey night in Canada.
The current (perhaps beyond the time of writing this, former) crop of Maple Leafs are the perfect demonstration of this. Getting severely humiliated in a barely fought for game 5 by a team who did not have the same stats and figures on paper, or star power behind them. But had one thing (besides in my opinion, a few very dubious calls against the Leafs), and that was plain old regular, gritty, team-orientated defensive hockey. And when it really mattered, what stung worst of all, was that throughout their misadventures this year in Florida against meatball Ron's favourite sons in Tampa Bay and the Panthers, the big 4 by and large didn't show up to meet the challenge. Especially Austin Matthews, pulling an Ultimate Warrior on the team and barely phoning it in, to only sulk his way to the pay window afterwards (hopefully for the last time). And on top of that, it was truly astonishing to see guys down the ladder on the team barely making a million a year, a 20 year old kid who played a total of 6 or 7 games in the NHL, and an alternate goalie who barely attended a full season or training camp in the NHL, outperform the big 4. there is something fundamentally wrong with this equation, something that betrays that history of the Maple Leafs and every single fan in a blue and white jersey.
The Leafs were never like this before when it came to the roughness of the average player. They were the team up there with the Flyers and the Bruins who always had the best enforcers, from Tiger Williams, to Wendel Clark, to Tie Domi and Colton Orr. But now the top players on the team can barely skate past a hard defensive zone with larger players. Canada as well wasn't always know as the Trudeauean Petri dish testing zone of the progressive left. Canada was a largely agrarian loyalist colony, who's people had fortitude and the will to survive a harsh landscape. Who sacrificed and outperformed during both World Wars. Who up until the 50s, saw the “slow view of life” to quote Marshall McLuhan in an interview with the CBC. And hockey it's national sport, a sport that spoke to the unique conditions of the people who inhabited these lands. And the hockey fight a ritualistic spectacle enjoyed by both young and old. A violent insurance policy on the game's legitimacy and passion.
But those days are gone, and it's traditions with it, unless something dramatic happens (or if Gary Bettman steps down as commissioner. But hay, since we are using wrestling analogies, even Vincent Kennedy McMahon himself found ways to make wrestling less violent and more “kid-friendly” too). The Toronto Maple Leafs, rightly or wrongly, are at the tip of the spear in terms of the current trends in hockey, and perhaps the country itself, as everything becomes fodder for the never-ending culture war. Forsaking grit and tradition for flashy schemes and what amounts to nothing but an economic and cultural contractualism. There no longer is being apart of a team as a representative of it, but a contractor, a temporary hired gun, not bound by anything beyond an economic agreement. Refinement culture that dictates certain elements of tradition cuts into “progress”. I even saw some Florida fans commenting on how this is evidence of rough and tumble Americana beating the effeminate wokesters from the North. At least meatball Ron lets his teams opt out of wearing rainbow training jerseys if they want to.
But maybe it simply isn't a matter of having players who have the will to win, instead of journeymen looking for the best deal. And maybe it's not due to the rules of the game itself changing. Maybe on some spiritual level, the Maple Leafs are doomed to never breaking the cycle. Maybe the Ontario fans themselves are their biggest weakness. The fans in Toronto gas them up, and then silence themselves in disdain if things don't go the right way. There is always endless pressure on the Maple Leafs by the fans and by the media. At least Montreal fans are willing to viciously critique the Habs when they suck. But in Toronto, they keep coming back for more, even in years where they didn't make the Playoffs. And every visiting enemy team revels in the ability to silence one of the most consistently packed stadiums in the league. Maybe this year the Maple Leafs will do some soul searching and go back to an older form of hockey, cutting their losses and focusing on a more structured set up. But Canada might not any time soon, then again, stranger things have happened in the times we are living in.
There was a line that always struck me from the Bret Hart documentary Wrestling with Shadows (1998), where they included a heel promo he did in the middle of Madison Square Garden. Like most things Canadian when sold to an American audience, there is always this strange double articulation. Bret was the symbol of Canada for a time, Canada's favourite son. But in America he was a heel (the bad guy for non wrestling fans) who betrayed his former clean, good natured character for ressentiment and his own self-image as “the best there was, the best there is, and the best there ever will be”.
Wrestling with shadows was the documentary which captured the events of the infamous “Montreal Screwjob”, but before that, in the documentary Bret cuts this promo that speaks to the average leaf (leaf as in Canadian) attitude towards America: “In Canada we take care of each other, we have health care, we look out for one another, and we don't have Gun violence and Racism!”
it's an odd and largely media/culture based form of anti-American leftward nationalism, if you can even call it that, which Canadians embrace. It differentiates us, the “meaning in the bland” a Zen Koan spoke of once. The meaning of small differences which hangs in the air when it comes to sports or cultural events and political issues especially, that involves Canada vs. America. It's something leafs hold onto when faced with the reality that by in everything but name, Canada is America's most geographically close and direct colony.
Which is why there is a sort of silliness to these ephemeral culture war issues, like the wearing of the pride warm up jerseys. Maybe the Maple Leafs and all Canadians teams do feel that there is this secret agreement that the league will never let a Canadian team even approach the final series, let alone win a Stanley Cup ever again. Even though the American controlled league itself has “gone woke” (a phrase I cringe saying), the Canadian teams must signal even harder (because in terms of the character of North American politics and the way political issues are framed, Canada is the bluest of blue states after all). And thus the perception that Canadian teams, and especially the Maple Leafs, being edged out of fair competition in the Playoffs has a political dimension added to it. The culture war from the 2010s onward is this strange alchemy of politicization and an inverted depoliticization of all life (because life and politics become one in the same, as they always were). So now something as innocuous as beer brands or hockey is taken in up its wake. Or maybe all of this is because bloggers, posters and journalists have a bombastic and mendacious nature that drives them to make a heated spectacle about absolutely everything. But that's all besides the point.
In the Documentary, Vince is interviewed by Jim Ross, an interview that cemented his legacy forever as the greatest heel in the business. Because the heat Vince the evil boss generates is real, in that wrestlers actually get into disputes and get burned bu the machinations of the business. Everything actually is rigged, and there is this coy and often not thought about agreement that reality and fiction are blended into one; Vince utters the infamous words “I didn't screw over Bret, Bret screwed Bret”.
So finally, one can say that in spite of the perception, and perhaps the reality that the National Hockey League is against the Maple Leafs. That other teams can bash them about without consequence, while they are punished to the letter of the law, and that in fact all of Canada is screwed by the league. In the end, perhaps that is true, and also, just maybe, the Toronto Maple Leafs screwed the Toronto Maple Leafs. And even thought America gives us a raw deal in every single dispute, and will always overshadow us on the global stage, and we love to blame them for all of our problems, from gun crime to the culture war, Canada screwed Canada.
1https://theleafsnation.com/news/the-untold-story-of-the-curse-of-the-toronto-maple-leafs
Toronto traded its soul for multiculturalism in 1972. Even the accent has chanced... listen to film from 1933 or even 1964.... and despair.... But worse.... it then rushed to trade its soul to be “big league” which is why you couldn’t get people to an argo game even though I remember when young white boys and men from Hamilton and Toronto brawled in the stands..... little did we know the CFL was funded and survived beyond reason to africanize our sensibilities... get used to cheering for blacks and see them part of our communities and inculcate their manners, esthetics and music.... long before they could touch hockey or Cherry. Then came the big league jays... and POC culture made greater inroads with a few titles and then the real death knell.... basketball... arrived on the scene.... baltimore here we come.... crass, vulgar violent and utterly devastating the last vestiges of loyalist culture... again long before they could africanize every hockey nite in canada ad.... in soylent green every apartment came with a girl.... now every canadian space came with a black dude... still only a few percentages of the non gta population.....literally every ad.... or make the Chinese girl n every beer ad the best kid on the street hockey team.... and then guilt for the slaves we never had.... and yet there hockey remains.... what it was... despite the treason of Canadians and nhlers... saying nothing where cherry was ritually crucified... and we wait.... for the rebellion or european canada’s final demise because it can only be one or the other ... but that rebellion won t come in southern ontario... my once home land... where they can never quite figure out the cause of discontent.... the swarming of ttc drivers, another act of gun or random violence, another plea to end addiction and gangs... the tribalism that has replaced western civilization ....what was.... south african levels of bland materialism.... abd decay.... while the people bemoan Trump, or Tucker or white “supremacy” or abortion rights.... and cheer a raptors or a jay win and listen to hazel maye as if she were howie meeker or could be and the nation drifts unknowing into utter irrelevance... a globalist puppet state... a successful experiment in ritual conquest and cultural rape and de westernization... not even with a wimper... more of a last dying breath in an old folks home where no one cares or can even pronounce your name
Tangential, but as an American soccer fan primarily forced to watch European soccer leagues (as it usually has the best rivalries and technical play in my opinion), you see the same with all of the largest clubs. Young talent that's stuck through multiple seasons of mediocre-to-awful play because of a love of the club's history warm the bench, while big names are just biding their time before being sniped by a club willing to cut a bigger draft deal or doing their pre-retirement tour. Bonus points if you can name the club from that description.
You see the same in our home pro leagues. The great American past-time, baseball, is a sport for nerds whole like crunching math stats. As an American nerd, it bores me to death. Football, instead of leaning into medical advancements to keep the plays (and rare fights) as rough as yesteryear while being safer, has lost the martial appeal. No wonder, considering how bad hockey fans have told me hockey has gotten and football was usually always tamer.
A dead horse at this point, but it's all a hollowed-out propaganda tool riding on the coattails of storied clubs-turned-soulless brands. Our ancient mythos are burned for being unscientific, our recent history is torn down for being racist, and our current-day hero stories are being pruned into marketing schemes.