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“The Leafs�� are the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League. They represent, on the ice at Air Canada Centre, the largest city of a nation where hockey is at once a culture and a sort of civic religion. They bear on the front of their blue-and-white sweaters the national symbol of Canada �� the maple leaf. They have won the second-most Stanley Cup titles in NHL history �� but they have not won a Cup since all the way back in 1967. All of these considerations are important to keep in mind when chronicling the history of the Maple Leafs, and Brian McFarlane does so in his 1995 book The Leafs.

McFarlane is an Ontarian, a former Maple Leaf Gardens commentator, a frequent contributor to Hockey Night in Canada, and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto (for his writing). He has written prolifically about the great Canadian game �� perhaps most memorably when he crafted his “Original Six�� series of short histories of the six teams that constituted the entire NHL from 1942 to 1967: the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Black Hawks, the Detroit Red Wings, the Montreal Canadiens, the New York Rangers, and of course the Toronto Maple Leafs. All of the books are very good. In the case of The Leafs, the fact that McFarlane is writing here about a team to which he has a variety of personal ties may give this volume from the series particular immediacy.

The Leafs abounds in vivid stories from Maple Leafs history that demonstrate well McFarlane’s ability to convey the speed, the drama, and yes, the violence of hockey, as when he tells the story of how Leafs left winger Ace Bailey, a future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, endured, at the Boston Garden in 1933, a particularly brutal hit that ended his hockey career and almost killed him.

McFarlane explains that the famously tough and combative Boston Bruins defenceman Eddie Shore got tripped by Leafs defenceman King Clancy, became angry that no penalty was called, and decided to retaliate. It is not clear whether or not Shore mistook Bailey for Clancy, but what happened when Shore raced up at full speed and struck an unsuspecting Bailey from behind is all too clear:

The players on both teams, most of the fans, and the men high in the press box heard a crack that might be compared to the sound of smacking a pumpkin with a baseball bat. Bailey’s head hit the ice and he lay on his back as though his neck were broken. His legs, bent at the knees, began twitching. (p. 57).

The Bruins�� team physician recommended that Bailey be administered last rites. Luckily for Bailey, two of the best neurosurgeons in the world practiced in Boston, and they worked skillfully and diligently to save Bailey’s life, while Canadians from Gander to Victoria prayed for the stricken player to survive his injuries. Luckily, Bailey did survive; and a few weeks later, when a benefit game was held for Bailey at Maple Leaf Gardens, “Bailey and Shore met again, at centre ice. When Shore offered his hand and Bailey took it, indicating there were no hard feelings, the crowd erupted in a tremendous ovation�� (p. 59).

McFarlane chronicles, with evident relish, the glory days of the Toronto Maple Leafs under their legendary coach Clarence “Hap�� Day. His famously tough coaching style had record-breaking results: “In nine seasons behind the Leaf bench, he had captured five Stanley Cups��, including one Stanley Cup victory that was particularly memorable: “In 1941-42, his Leafs made history by losing the first three games of the final series to Detroit, then storming back to take four in a row to capture the Cup�� (p. 101). No team in NHL history had ever come back from being down, 3 games to none, to win four straight games and capture the Stanley Cup; and no NHL team has ever done it since.

Left wing Bob Davidson, who played on that “comeback Cup�� team, described two factors that gave him and his fellow Maple Leafs powerful motivation not to give up after falling behind 3 games to none. The first was that “Jack Adams, the Detroit manager, went on radio and said his team would wrap it up in the four games. He sounded pretty cocky and it made us mad�� (p. 79). The other motivating factor came from closer to home:

Hap Day, our coach, read us a letter from a little girl in Toronto who said she’d be ashamed to go to school the next day if we lost four straight games in the finals. That inspired us to do our best. Even so, we fell behind 2-0 in the second period [of Game 4]. Then I scored a goal that got us going and we won 4-3. We just took off after that and wouldn’t be beaten. After we captured the Stanley Cup, [centre] Syl Apps and I went to visit the little girl who’d written the letter and told her how much she’d helped us. (p. 79)

The years 1967 and 1972 were both momentous years in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs. For all Leafs fans, 1967 holds profound significance as the year when “the Leafs celebrate Canada’s centennial by defeating Chicago and Montreal in the playoffs to capture their 11th Stanley Cup�� (p. 204). It was a great, and seemingly an auspicious, occasion �� the club that longtime owner Conn Smythe worked so hard to establish as “Canada’s Team�� winning the Stanley Cup on the 100th anniversary of Canadian confederation. But any Leafs fans who might have thought that the centennial Cup win would be the beginning of a Hap Day-style run of Cup victories would have been severely disappointed. The Leafs have not won a single Stanley Cup since then.

And 1972 was an important year in Maple Leafs history �� if not a happy one �� because it was in 1972 that Harold Ballard, “at the age of 68…takes over control (71 percent) of the Maple Leaf organization�� (p. 204). In an indicator of how tempestuous the Ballard years would be �� for the Toronto Maple Leafs team, the city of Toronto, the province of Ontario, and a great many hockey fans throughout Canada and beyond �� the Leafs�� new majority owner made national news for another, non-hockey-related reason: “In October, Ballard is sentenced to three years in jail after standing trial on 47 fraud and theft charges involving an amount of $205,000. He serves 12 months�� (p. 204).

Ballard was the sort of sports-team owner that frequently gets referred to as “mercurial.�� He quarrelled with his players, with Toronto sports media, with political leaders, and generally with whoever else might be around. He cultivated a leadership style that was widely seen as autocratic, and he garnered publicity and controversy in abundance. What he did not manage to garner, during 18 years as majority owner of the Maple Leafs, was a Stanley Cup for Toronto.

Author McFarlane had his own run-ins with Ballard. He describes how “In 1968 I went to work for Harold Ballard�� (p. 156). He expressed surprise at how small the salary was for the job of publicity director for the Leafs, but took the job. Working for Ballard was not, for McFarlane, a positive experience:

After nine months on the job, it was over. Ballard didn’t want to spend any money implementing any of my plans, and I had had enough of Ballard and the Gardens. One day, on the eve of my summer vacation, one of Harold’s flunkeys came around and mumbled something about Ballard wanting to close down the publicity department. That was enough of a hint for me. The job was going nowhere anyway. So, without ever speaking to Ballard, I went on vacation and never came back. (p. 157)

No doubt Ballard has his defenders �� but many an urbane, civilized, unfailingly courteous Torontonian has been moved to vocal expressions of anger when the name of Harold Ballard is mentioned.

A resident of the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area) born on May 2, 1967 �� the day the Leafs won that last Stanley Cup �� is now well into their fifties, and the people of Leafs Nation are still waiting for that long streak of futility to end. I, too, hope that the Toronto Maple Leafs will soon return to Stanley Cup glory, and will look forward to toasting their future success with a glass of fine Ontarian cabernet sauvignon from the Niagara Peninsula, on that much-to-be-anticipated day.