by Barry Stagg
May 1998
Toronto Maple Leafs: Celebrity Theatre
Like something out of an x-rated version of Aesop's Fables, the Toronto Maple Leafs are lurching toward oblivion at that end of the 1997-98 hockey season. With cerebral leader Ken Dryden firmly ensconced in the front office, the Leafs are going through their paces on the ice as if they were a bunch of demoralized government workers sticking to the letter if not the philosophy of a very labour-oriented collective agreement.
The most self-conscious of the Toronto hockey stars recognize that this is a dismal team full of over-paid players. When supposed power forwards can make a cool million for scoring less than ten goals then obviously both the hockey team and its salary structure are in deep trouble. Of course paying millions of dollars for mediocre performance is not uncommon in any professional sport be it the sport of hockey or baseball. The Leafs are one of many bad teams in hockey that fill out a roster with over-paid players more or less to go through the motions on the ice so that the turnstiles can click through to provide the multimillion dollar profits for team owners.
In Toronto the cream of the corporate world are in the owners' chairs. Grocery baron Steve Stavro is linked with the teacher pension industry and real estate developers and banks to maintain ownership of both the Leafs and the equally pitiful basketball Raptors.
In the moribund Leaf organization only the St. John's Maple Leafs are playoff bound. It is a faint hope for the Leaf hockey system that St. John's will produce enough good players with winning attitudes that someday the sad sacks with the large bank accounts will disappear from the big league roster and be replaced with some of the young tigers putting in their time on the ice at Memorial Stadium.
Already this year, defencemen like David Cooper, Yannick Tremblay, Daniil Markov and Jeff Ware have been called up to play in Toronto. They are all young and with enough potential that they may form the nucleus of the Toronto defence in the next century. The only forward of any consequence who has jumped from St. John's to Toronto is recent acquisition Lonny Bohonos but his impact will only be known next season, if he survives the expansion draft.
All in all the Toronto hockey situation is now on a par with the days of Harold Ballard. Absurdity, foolishness and a sense that paying customers are being taken for fools is once again the standard currency of discussion among hockey fans and people who generally observe the commercial variants of sport as played out in Toronto. It does make for a certain amount of entertainment but unfortunately the entertainment is more in the form of figuring out the new variations on failure that the hockey team brings to the ice down on Carlton Street.
Anyway, it will be" wait until next year" for certain for the major leaguers in the home dressing room in Toronto. Here is hoping that more than a few St. John's Maple Leafs are on the roster next season and that several of the over-paid and over-rated lads of this year's team are playing elsewhere come the fall.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.