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

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It remains one of the great confounding mysteries how two men were so despised in the centre of the hockey universe where they both grew up, only to travel a relatively short distance down Highway 401, over the Ambassador Bridge, and suddenly ceased being, well, useless.

Scotty Bowman really is a genius.

Bowman was not involved in what followed a little more than a decade later, but Hal Gill also offered an interesting study in how a guy can spend large amounts of time in Toronto looking, well, like a taller version of Macoun sans moustache. Gill was a likable enough guy. Towering over everyone — 6’7”, 250ish pounds — he moved precisely as you would expect someone of those dimensions would. Brought in by John Ferguson Jr. in 2006 to try to upgrade a team that had missed the playoffs the previous year for the first time since the fire sale that saw both Murphy and then Macoun leave, there was no way the lumbering Gill was going to somehow transform himself into something he had never been up to that point in his almost decade-long NHL career. But don’t tell that to Leafs fans. Gill wasn’t so much disliked in Toronto as he was discounted. When you’re playing for a bad team — and this precise point could have applied to Macoun ten years earlier — steady, yeoman’s work at the back end isn’t appreciated. It’s especially not appreciated when your one enduring image is that of a hulking beast helplessly chasing faster opposition forwards in your own zone. Gill was a taller version of Macoun without the cross-checks.