by Barry Stagg
July 1996
Leafs on the move?
There is no point in being conventional when you write sports for the Downhomer. In that case the July column must be about hockey. Hockey is, or maybe more appropriately was, an important industry in the Atlantic provinces. Now it looks as if there will be no team in Sydney this year and the Charlottetown team has been closed down. The word is about in the sports pages that the Atlantic provinces may soon only have two teams, one in St. John's and the other in Fredericton.
It has certainly been a long run for the American Hockey League in Atlantic Canada beginning with the Halifax Voyageurs and the New Brunswick Hawks operating out of Moncton. The times are changing though and with less and less government money by way of grants and subsidies going around teams are disappearing from Canadian minor league towns and heading off back again to the United States. The big move now seems to be toward locating in the southern United States where hockey is on the upswing what with the appearance of the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup finals and the cross-state rivalry between the Miami Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning. None of this bodes well for the future of American League Hockey in Eastern Canada. Not only have teams fled Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island but the Cornwall Aces have also shut down their Ontario base. When long time hockey towns like Cornwall cannot support professional hockey, the future for all minor professional hockey in Canada is in peril.
In St. John's the bickering and uncertainty continues with respect to the building of a new stadium. That is an obvious sticky point for the Toronto organization and it is virtually certain that if a new stadium is not built , the Maple Leafs will pack their equipment bags and move on. The city fathers of St. John's would do well to remember that the Toronto Maple Leafs have moved their farm team three times since the 1970's. Hockey historians will recall that Toronto shared operation of the New Brunswick Hawks for years and that when the Leafs left New Brunswick they put their farm team in St. Catherines, Ontario. Then in the mid eighties they pulled up stakes and moved to Newmarket just north of Toronto. It was from Newmarket that the trek to Newfoundland began. There is no certainty that professional hockey will remain in St. John's without the cooperation and, in effect, the subsidization of the team by City Hall. That is the way of professional hockey in the nasty nineties.
Having said all of that, the St. John's Maple Leafs will still be in town for training camp in September. They will have a new coach in Mark Hunter, one of the famous Hunter brothers from southwestern Ontario, the other Hunters being Dale Hunter, a somewhat notorious member of the Washington Capitals and Dave Hunter, a member of the Gretzky-era Edmonton Oilers. Hunter is probably being fitted for the old boots that were worn by young Marc Crawford when he was the St. John's coach. Crawford came out of junior hockey like Hunter and but for the early-on success of Pat Burns, he would have almost certainly moved up to the Leaf coaching job by this time. Crawford of course has no complaints since at this time he finds himself in the Stanley Cup finals with the Colorado Avalanche.
The Leafs will have a young team with plenty of recent draft picks as the team goes all out to recoup its loss of young personnel over the past few years. There will be no Felix Potvins in the lineup this year but fans will see a young, aggressive team if Hunter is able to transmit his own intensity to the on-ice squad. Look for tension in the front office this year as the stadium deal continues to linger on at the boardroom level. Until the stadium is safely built and occupied by the team there will be a danger of the team announcing that with great regret they must move on.
This is the time for the jaded baby-boomer fan to stop worrying about that thirty year government pension and that Florida vacation and instead to get down to Memorial Stadium and cheer on a good, outstanding Newfoundland industry that manifests itself as a hockey team. Once professional hockey is gone from St. John's it will be gone for a long time. Remember there are no certainties. If Brian Tobin can serve as the unctuous undertaker of the cod fishery then Bill Watters will have no problem doing the same for hockey on behalf of the Toronto Maple Leaf organization.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.