Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

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I’m not sure fans need the Leafs to win the Stanley Cup to make all this longing fade away. The NHL, like all the professional sports leagues, is an incredibly difficult milieu to cast your lot in. There are thirty teams, and only one wins the championship each year. Former Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment head Richard Peddie used to shamelessly exploit this fact to justify the Leafs’ lack of success. What Peddie ignored is the one simple thing that Leafs fans want, and that’s a chance to feel good again. Make the playoffs, win a round or two, make spring synonymous with playoff hockey again. Those four springs in Toronto — 1993, 1994, 1999, and 2002 — when the Leafs made it to the penultimate round made everyone feel alive. Of course, you wished it lasted a bit longer, but Toronto was gripped with a belief, a feeling that was in the air. It was as if the warm spring air was somehow connected to the hockey team; as if the Leafs were helping us breathe. Everyone, even those who wouldn’t know a hockey puck from a grapefruit, believed in the Leafs. Get to that stage often enough and the Leafs will eventually win the Stanley Cup and the numerals 1-9-6-7 will go back to meaning Canada’s Centennial.