The Maple Leafs, the NHL franchise in Canada’s biggest city, haven’t won a Stanley Cup since Centennial year. Most years, they don’t even have a sniff at making the playoffs.
How is it possible to be that bad for so long in such a big market, with access to all the gate and television receipts?
I understand Harold Ballard did his best to run the team into the ground in the late 70s and 80s, but he’s been eating dandelion roots for a long time.
How come the Leafs suck?
Why single out the Maple Leafs? Their last Stanley Cup win was 1967. The Chicago Blackhawks haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1961.
because I’m interested in Canadian teams.
I don’t get it either.
I can only assume incompetence.
P.S. I went to a few Toro’s games. They stunk too. Though I did get to see Gordie Howe score a game-winner.
Wow. Where do I begin.
OK.
So, the Maple Leafs are not as bad as the media and non-fans make them out to be: really.
The Leafs were a storied franchise until Harold Ballard bought them. All of the history is available on Wikipedia, etc.
The Leafs after the Ballard years, in the 1990s, were finally making a rebound and made it to the semifinals three times in that decade, but couldn’t bring home the cup.
During the 1990s GMs Cliff Fletcher and then Pat Quinn always felt that the team was just on the verge of winning a Stanley Cup, and they may have been right, judging by the playoff results. So, instead of looking to build the team organically, they both opted to trade away the future for immediate results. Certainly Fletcher trading Clark for Sundin was, in retrospect a good move, a lot of the other trades involved draft picks for veterans, which didn’t pan out well.
The late 90s Leafs and early 00s Leafs were willing to mortgage their future by also trading draft picks for immediacy and hoping for a miracle, which didn’t happen.
The lockout in 2005 was actually good for the Leafs. Under the new CBA the Leafs would no longer just be able to throw money and free-agency acquisitions at the problem. And so, since then they have restructured the management and have sincerely started to build from the bottom up. Cliff Fetcher was brought back and started to get rid of the old guard, some of whom had “no trade” contracts. And now Brian Burke is on board and has dropped some decent players in favour of acquiring draft picks. The Leafs have a lot of draft picks going into this years draft, for the first time in a long time, and will no doubt be trading picks for assets before and during the draft.
Look, when you finish last or at least in the basement of the league you get good draft picks, right? When you finish in the top-to-middle of the pack, you get mediocre draft picks. The Leafs, after the Ballard years, had some really decent seasons, and tried to capitalize on their success by going after any and all free agents who could help them realize the dream. Money was no option before the new CBA.
After the new collective bargaining agreement throwing money at the problem is no longer an option. All teams need to stay within a certain salary cap. Realizing this, and finishing near the basement once again has strengthened the Leafs prospects. They acquired a franchise defenceman in Luke Schenn last year and they will be picking what, number 5 or 6 this year in the first round. Plus I believe they have 2 second round picks and possible 2 3rd round picks this year.
The Leafs will be back. The problem was: Ballard refused to pay players their worth in the 70s and 80s. The 90s were really good, but they came up short and sold the farm for one last shot at it. The 00s find them back on track rebuilding with youth and finally a great management.
Whew!
My step-mother worked for 25 years inside the Leafs organization, and Leaffan’s analysis is pretty cogent. I’ve heard a lot of fans opine that the Leafs just didn’t care about success, knowing that they could sell out the arena for every game regardless of the team’s record. However, everything I’ve heard from insiders is the exact opposite: there was enormous frustration at falling short, especially in '93 & '94 when they reached the semi-finals.
Fletcher, the double former GM, warned before the beginning of last season that fans should be patient for a few years. As Leaffan says, it appears that they’re taking rebuilding from the foundations up seriously now.
so, forty years of bad management? that seems excessive…
Although their current roster doesn’t seem to be the case, and I have serious doubts about the truth of this story, I have heard people complain that the Leafs don’t like/won’t sign non-North American (specifically non-Canadian) players. Basically accusations that management had an attitude that “the euros” don’t play well.
Was this ever true or based on anything even close to resembling fact? Was there a bias that led them to ignore better players because of where they were from?
As I said, I doubt this, but I’ve heard it from a couple of people at school and I think on the CBC comments boards (though I take everything there with a very large grain of salt!)
One of my friends reasoned it this way: “The Leafs suck because they are from Toronto, which sucks. They are just doing their civic duty to maintain the face of the city” 
I didn’t say that at all!
20 years of miserly ruling under Ballard. He refused to pay good money for players, and as soon as their contracts needed renewing he would rather trade them.
The turn-about after Ballard’s death was almost instantaneous in the 90s. Cliff Fletcher did a great job turning the team into a smi-finalist three times in that decade. What’s so bad about making to the final 4, three times in I believe eight years?
Since they had money to keep throwing at free-agency they did that rather than build the team from the bottom up. Due to the new CBA they cannot do that any longer and are in fact re-building from the bottom up.
Complete bullshit. Borje Salming was one of the first Europeans to play in the NHL. The Leafs have had plenty of Europeans over the years.
Ballard had a reputation for not liking [specifically] European players, but he allowed management at least enough leeway to hire Salming, as Leaffan notes. And, of course, Sundin (a Swede) was the Leafs captain for 10 years. At one point in recent history, the Leafs had so many Russian players that there were jokes about having shifts where only Russian was spoken on the ice.
According to Wikipedia, Ballard was busy cooling his heels in jail at the time of the Salming signing.
Do you remember how Ballard humiliated the gentleman Inge Hammastrom?
(cite)
Luck.
For one thing, it’s not true that “most years they don’t even have a sniff at making the playoffs.” In fact, they DO make the playoffs most years, and when they don’t are usually close. Their current run of four straight years out of the playoffs is the longest in the history of the team, and they missed by one point one of those seasons, and two in another. Since 1967 they’ve also made the conference finals four times, once missing the Finals by just a single goal.
Since 1967 you have two franchises, really; the Ballard Leafs, and the Post-Ballard Leafs. The Leafs WERE very badly managed under Harold Ballard, to be sure, and the product they put on the ice was usually bad, due to Ballard’s intereference and mismanagement of the team. Post-Ballard, however, they started putting some excellent teams on the ice. It’s been rough the last four seasons, but that’s part of the natural cycle of a sports franchise.
As it happens, the post-Ballard Leafs didn’t win the Cup, but that’s just the way it is in sports; some teams get lucky, and some don’t. In a league with many teams - 30 now, and 20 or more for most of the period we’re discussing - it’s inevitable that some teams will go a very long time between championships. If they just barely miss their best chance, as the Leafs probably did in 1992, it can be decades before the next great chance comes along.
I’m not sure if I’d agree that the Leafs of the early 00’s were an excellent team(the early 90’s are another story). They got to the conference finals twice, yes, but they were manhandled both years, and in 2002 it was by a Carolina team that honestly wasn’t very good. The Leafs, frankly, were lucky that they kept drawing the Senators year after year – they had little success against other teams in the playoffs.
1993 actually.
Let’s not forget that the Chicago Black Hawks haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1961, and the Detroit Red Wings went from 1955 to 1997 without one. I would have liked to see the Leafs win a Cup in the years since 1967, but they’re not the only team that has had long slumps.
“Blackhawks,” one word. Sorry.
Of course, there are more. Of the six 1967 expansion teams, two have never won the Stanley Cup (the Kings and Blues) so they’re waiting just as long as the Leafs. The two 1970 expansion teams, the Sabres and Canucks, are also waiting.
You find this in any sport. In baseball, Texas has two franchises that have been around since 1961 (Rangers) and 1962 (Astros) and have never won the World Series; the Cubs have famously gone 100 years without winning, the Indians 61 years. The Expos/Nationals/Natinals, Brewers, and Padres all started operations in 1969 and between them have 120 seasons combined and 0 World Series victories. In basketball, the Cavaliers and Clippers have nothing to show for 38 seasons, so on and so forth. NFL? No Super Bowls for the Vikings, Oilers, Bengals, Eagles, so on and so forth.
Championship droughts are just part and parcel of pro sports; if you want dozens of teams in a league, and only hand out one trophy a year, it’s mathematically certain.
Well, it’s not like management was frantically doing all of the things that Ballard normally wouldn’t let them do just because he was in jail. Incarcerated or not, he was still the owner, and the one signing the paycheques. My step-mother worked for the Leafs organization from 1978 until 2003, and she is adamant that nothing that happened during Ballard’s tenure occurred that didn’t have to be approved by him first (although, she does recount some rip-roaring, days long arguments that sometimes went on before approval was finally given).
Oh, I’m certainly not under the impression that he was exiled to Siberia or anything. I guess I’m imagining a situation where they say, “Let’s try to get away with this once while Ballard’s a tad distracted. With any luck, Salming will become a star and we get to keep our jobs.”