SPEAKING OF SPORTS
November 1999
by Barry Stagg
These are good times to be a hockey fan in Toronto. The Leafs are surging off to a great start and the team is giving every indication that it has benefitted immensely from the tough playoff run last spring. The vibes are so good that it seems as if they are too good to be true. This sort of cautious pessimism is, unfortunately, the usual lot of many long-suffering Leaf fans. The story on the Toronto roster is just not a mirage because there are so many good young players in that dressing room and they are developing quickly and competently under the firm tutelage of coach/general manager Pat Quinn.
While the baseball Jays flounder under a dark cloud of contract hassles and dubious player choices, the hockey team is showing signs of dynastic proportions not unlike the Imlach era of the sixties. Such success, coming as it does after some thirty years of rank desolation, can only be truly measured as a total resurgence of fortune after the Leafs win the Stanley Cup. That will take some doing as long as teams like the Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres continue to perform at championship levels.
The rebounding Leafs have stiff competition for supremacy even in the province of Ontario as the Ottawa Senators are defying the usual lassitude that permeates the nation's capital (courtesy of the usual over-concentration of federal officialdom) by actually being a very good team. Without the greedy and quite probably misguided Alexei Yashin, the Senators are running neck and neck with the Leafs in the first week of the season. As your worthy scribe toils over his venerable wordprocessor, the Leafs and Senators are set for a showdown on Saturday night at Ottawa's Corel Centre. Given the publication constraints of the Downhomer, you will have to get the results of that game from other alternative media sources. I recommend the Toronto or Ottawa Sun if you are in southern Ontario and I am sure that the Evening Telegram should be able to recount a reasonable summary of the battle for all our loyal Newfoundland readers.
The Leaf team is composed of so many foreign players that the ultra-nationalist former owner of the Leafs, the now deceased Harold Ballard, must be doing a spin or two in his present place of repose on Saturday nights at least. Russians are leading the charge with the big Swedish captain Mats Sundin commanding the infantry that General Quinn sends in to battle. Americans are ably represented by the recently re-signed Bryan Berard and there are even a few good Canadian players such as that little known goaltender Curtis Joseph. Cujo has received a small bit of publicity lately but the local media seems to feel that eventually he will achieve some minor measure of stardom. While Joseph may never be able to approach the heights (or depths) of such past Leaf goaltenders such as Jiri Crha, nevertheless, there is some hope that he will be able to at least falter along playing in the same way as those other Leaf goaltending underachievers Johnny Bower, Terry Sawchuk and Turk Broda.
Perhaps some readers may get the idea that I am a long suffering Leaf fan. Although I try hard to be neutral and dispassionate when it comes to hockey coverage, I must confess that, yes, I am a major Leaf fan going into my fifth decade of being such a creature. I can even remember the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. We aged ones can at least tell some of you youngsters about what it was really like when the Leafs went all the way.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.