Leaf Aura; Blessing or curse

[stuart5035]

As a 50 year plus diehard, I have often mused about the effect of the Leafs “aura” (their incredible following throughout Canada and parts of the USA), whether good or bad?

In my more jealous and myopic moments I grow tired of opponents all of a sudden finding their “A” game and stepping it up several notches when playing in Toronto, the “NHL media capital”. Often many players are from the GTA and the province, and the stands are full of their family and friends-further fueling their new found intensity. Of course this “playoff atmosphere” is at its height when it’s a Canadian club in town.

And it isn’t just Leaf home games; witness the excitement in the Coyotes arena Saturday night; hitting a crescendo when the PA excitingly announced the game was on HNIC. Actually, any US destination that has a fair bit of vacationing Leaf fans seems to react the same (Tampa, Panthers, Vegas).

I have long been conscious of this, often noticing the remarkable difference between the Leafs “amped up” opponent and their peripheral games ( like how quickly the mighty Coyotes fell to the Flames today). I have never ran the “numbers”, I would think it interesting to somehow test this, not sure it’s even possible.

I know the negative (how many more times do I have to hear about the opponents goalie all of a sudden playing the game of his life against the Leafs?). But there is positive too; I have heard Leaf players loving all the intensity, feeling sorry for their counterparts marooned in the stale air of Carolina or being lucky to even be mentioned on the sports news in LA.

Is there something to be said for this? Does this create a more battle tested Leaf team than otherwise? Or does the constant high intensity wear on them. Is this a factor in how they thrill one night and then fall flat the next?

Does this apply to other teams? I believe the Montreal Canadians mystique is lesser, perhaps they are a comparable though? Certainly I don’t think thecexcellent Winnipeg Jets or Calgary Flames face the same reaction? For one they do not have the history of the Leafs, who were, for the longest time, the only choice for many English speaking Canadians.

I wonder what the players think about this? I hear the stories about not wanting to play in such an intense atmosphere (thankfully the old excuse of the pathetic Ballard controlled teams is gone).

Any thoughts?

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[Ciao]

TL;DNR all of it.

I like Leafs Nation being the big dog on the block.

Would you ever grow tired of being a Yankees fan? I wouldn't. I love the Blue Jays, but when the Bronx Bombers come to town they bring their own fans and there's something special in the air.

It all suits me.

 

[56 Years No Cup]

What aura is that? The aura of more than 50 years of not winning a Cup?

 

[Ciao]

The aura of the most fans and the biggest following. The most famous team and the centre of attention.

 

[dubey]

This board wouldn't be as fun if the Leafs weren't as popular as they are

What aura is that? The aura of more than 50 years of not winning a Cup?

Read the first line of his post (there's a lot of big words but you can do it)

 

[Bomber0104]

When you drop the self-importance, you realize the Leafs are just one team out of 31 that exist in a salary cap system designed to promote parity between rich and poor teams.

Any competitive advantage that's gained by having the most fans and highest ticket prices are almost entirely nullified by the fact we can only spend as much as every other team in the league.

Rather than basking in the success of the team as a business, I'd rather take satisfaction in seeing the team actually win something meaningful.

 

[Marshy]

We can outspend every other team in every way except player salaries. If that doesn't nullify the negatives (opponents ramping up against us, media pressure, etc.) then we deserve to be perennial also-rans.

No excuses. Period.

 

[Guided by Veseys]

I think it exists and like the Yankees we need to take advantage of it.
This team won’t surprise anyone and we need the management to create the right cast to thrive against the adversity you have highlighted

 

[Gabriel426]

Not sure if it is legal according to the CBA or whatever docs but if I run the Leafs, I would really use the MLSE financial might to create an advantage by giving the players personal assistants, chauffeurs, high performance cars, fly their families with private jets and all sort of other perks to lower their contract value. For example, during the Willie saga, I would literally offer Michael a 2mil/yr scouting job in Europe and wink wink, Willie signs for 5mil instead of 6.96mil. For JT, open a few practices and let JT’s wife runs it and that’s another 1-2mil off JT’s contract.

 

[Whaleafs]

It's definitely both. I can't think of another franchise in North America that is in a similar situation. The Leafs are the most popular team in the country (Montreal being close) but the GTA also produces a hugely disproportionate number of players that make the NHL, as does the entire province of Ontario. Meaning there are likely several Ontario kids on every team that comes through Toronto and there seems to be one that lights up the Leafs on Saturday night prime-time a lot of the time. The Yankees or Red Sox don't have this happen since there's relatively few MLB players from New York & New England who come home to put on a show on the big stage of Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Maybe Texas kids playing against the Cowboys in Dallas is comparable to the Leafs in this way ? Not sure. In any case, I'm sure this homecoming as the enemy effect has at least contributed to some of the grief Leafs fans have endured over the years. (Gretzky in game 7 in Toronto in 1993 comes to mind).

The teams popularity is a curse as far as a lot of fans ever getting to see them in Toronto with the price of tickets even in the years they were bottom-dwellers of the league, but at the same time you can go see them in any other building in the league and there will probably be hundreds of other Leafs fans there too. Kind of a blessing of camaraderie behind enemy lines if you will.

Then there's the microscope of playing in Toronto. I listen to quite a bit of Toronto sports talk radio and the amount of nit-picking anything and everything about the teams as well as the over the top puff pieces is absurd some days. Not sure about print media or local TV since I don't live there but if there's that much of a supply of everything Leafs that means there's a demand for it. I could see how lots of guys wouldn't want to deal with that or coming here and not being able to handle it or whatever so maybe the stereotype of guys not wanting to come home in the past has some validity, or the ones that did not living up to expectations, either fairly or unfairly (Larry Murphy). I would think you would be able to tune out much of the media but the internal pressure of playing for the Leafs is a different animal than most you would have to think. The teams success the past few years, then the Tavares signing may be a paradigm shift from the way things have been for a long time, but hard to say.

The one thing that can't be overlooked however is the teams lack of success for half a century. After the last year of the Original 6 era, the Leafs only had one less Cup than the Canadiens and since then as we all know the count is 10-0 for Montreal. Not to mention the other 4 Original 6 teams that have ended long droughts or all the expansion teams that have won without Toronto getting even a whiff of the finals. The failure to foresee & adapt to changes in the league seems to be an organizational pillar post-expansion. They went all in with an older team of veterans for the '67 championship but could never rebuild and adapt to the post-expansion era whereas Montreal kept rolling and Boston hit their stride. Chicago & New York each made the finals twice in the 70s at least. The 80's Leafs need no further elaboration. There were some good runs in the 90's & early 2000's but then the 2005 lockout came and what happened ? The organization failed to foresee & adapt to the changes in the league just like after the first expansion and toiled at the bottom of the league for another decade. I don't know what the hell JFJ was trying to do in those years. I think Burke was trying to build kind of a poor man's version of his '07 Anaheim Ducks which failed miserably. We can be grateful now in a sense due to us eventually getting to the point we are now on the back of that last round of dark years but it's hard to explain why the franchise has been so unsuccessful under so many different tenures with so many different rosters the last 50 years. Maybe part of it was knowing the team would sell out every night whether the team was competitive or not. This seems like it could explain the Ballard years. Everything done during that time is so ludicrous to read about now that I don't know what else would make sense as an explanation, but I'd need more insight from older posters who saw those years themselves to give more perspective. Part of it is no question incompetence at the management, scouting, coaching etc. level. When there was no salary cap and you had either the first or second most profitable franchise in the league with endless amounts of cash to spend and can't, not even ONCE, buy a championship team like the Yankees have done forever & the Red Sox have done recently, there is something deeply wrong with your organization.


Having said all that I believe they are on the right path now. Shanahan cleared house like needed to be done when he came in and the moves they have made over the last several years and I believe we will get it done within our current window or 5-6 years.

 

[FraumBallard]

As a 50 year plus diehard, I have often mused about the effect of the Leafs “aura” (their incredible following throughout Canada and parts of the USA), whether good or bad?

In my more jealous and myopic moments I grow tired of opponents all of a sudden finding their “A” game and stepping it up several notches when playing in Toronto, the “NHL media capital”. Often many players are from the GTA and the province, and the stands are full of their family and friends-further fueling their new found intensity. Of course this “playoff atmosphere” is at its height when it’s a Canadian club in town.

And it isn’t just Leaf home games; witness the excitement in the Coyotes arena Saturday night; hitting a crescendo when the PA excitingly announced the game was on HNIC. Actually, any US destination that has a fair bit of vacationing Leaf fans seems to react the same (Tampa, Panthers, Vegas).

I have long been conscious of this, often noticing the remarkable difference between the Leafs “amped up” opponent and their peripheral games ( like how quickly the mighty Coyotes fell to the Flames today). I have never ran the “numbers”, I would think it interesting to somehow test this, not sure it’s even possible.

I know the negative (how many more times do I have to hear about the opponents goalie all of a sudden playing the game of his life against the Leafs?). But there is positive too; I have heard Leaf players loving all the intensity, feeling sorry for their counterparts marooned in the stale air of Carolina or being lucky to even be mentioned on the sports news in LA.

Is there something to be said for this? Does this create a more battle tested Leaf team than otherwise? Or does the constant high intensity wear on them. Is this a factor in how they thrill one night and then fall flat the next?

Does this apply to other teams? I believe the Montreal Canadians mystique is lesser, perhaps they are a comparable though? Certainly I don’t think thecexcellent Winnipeg Jets or Calgary Flames face the same reaction? For one they do not have the history of the Leafs, who were, for the longest time, the only choice for many English speaking Canadians.

I wonder what the players think about this? I hear the stories about not wanting to play in such an intense atmosphere (thankfully the old excuse of the pathetic Ballard controlled teams is gone).

Any thoughts?

Yeah.
Love it.
Well said.
Over 50 year diehard myself.
You gotta embrace it.
Bill Derlago and the old talk to the rook about not scoring too many goals.
They'll expect it all the time.
To.
Wendel/Conacher/Tiger/Motor City Smitty/Etc...
I will take the latter.
Every time.

 

[Gabriel426]

I think a lot comes down to MGT and the direction of the company. I have only been a Leafs fan since the early 90s and one of the things my friends and I always talked about when we were kids was the fact that Leafs was one of the last teams to draft Russians and other Europeans. It was pretty much bias more than anything else. Mats Sundin was the first Euro player who got drafted 1st overall by the Nords, pretty sure even if the Leafs got that pick, they would have picked a Canadian. I remembered as a kid with Friends, we pretended we are the Leafs GM and redraft their past 5 years draft and I think the Leafs could have drafted, Federov, Bure, Jagr, Seleanne, Nedved, Lidstorm, Fordsberg....but instead they drafted guys like Rob Pearson.
The other thing as you mentioned was money. The Leafs is a cashcow nomatter how you look at it. Thus, making the playoffs is always the priority, regardless of how empty the prospects and draft picks cupboard.
Lastly, the Leafs really didn't pay too much attention to the drafting and development till a few years ago. When you look at AJ or Brown, or Engvall or free signings like Rosen, Zai, Borgman, Moore, Par, Marchment and Oz, some of them are already NHL players while others might be in the AHL but you can make a case that they can be insert in the bottom pairings or bottom six players in the Leafs or other teams. That's cannot go unnoticed, esp in the cap world, where mid talents are dying out due to teams is going to pay their elite players and need to fill rosters with just solid cheap talents. They are really adopting an approach where other teams had done for 20 or more years.

 

[FraumBallard]

It's definitely both. I can't think of another franchise in North America that is in a similar situation. The Leafs are the most popular team in the country (Montreal being close) but the GTA also produces a hugely disproportionate number of players that make the NHL, as does the entire province of Ontario. Meaning there are likely several Ontario kids on every team that comes through Toronto and there seems to be one that lights up the Leafs on Saturday night prime-time a lot of the time. The Yankees or Red Sox don't have this happen since there's relatively few MLB players from New York & New England who come home to put on a show on the big stage of Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Maybe Texas kids playing against the Cowboys in Dallas is comparable to the Leafs in this way ? Not sure. In any case, I'm sure this homecoming as the enemy effect has at least contributed to some of the grief Leafs fans have endured over the years. (Gretzky in game 7 in Toronto in 1993 comes to mind).

The teams popularity is a curse as far as a lot of fans ever getting to see them in Toronto with the price of tickets even in the years they were bottom-dwellers of the league, but at the same time you can go see them in any other building in the league and there will probably be hundreds of other Leafs fans there too. Kind of a blessing of camaraderie behind enemy lines if you will.

Then there's the microscope of playing in Toronto. I listen to quite a bit of Toronto sports talk radio and the amount of nit-picking anything and everything about the teams as well as the over the top puff pieces is absurd some days. Not sure about print media or local TV since I don't live there but if there's that much of a supply of everything Leafs that means there's a demand for it. I could see how lots of guys wouldn't want to deal with that or coming here and not being able to handle it or whatever so maybe the stereotype of guys not wanting to come home in the past has some validity, or the ones that did not living up to expectations, either fairly or unfairly (Larry Murphy). I would think you would be able to tune out much of the media but the internal pressure of playing for the Leafs is a different animal than most you would have to think. The teams success the past few years, then the Tavares signing may be a paradigm shift from the way things have been for a long time, but hard to say.

The one thing that can't be overlooked however is the teams lack of success for half a century. After the last year of the Original 6 era, the Leafs only had one less Cup than the Canadiens and since then as we all know the count is 10-0 for Montreal. Not to mention the other 4 Original 6 teams that have ended long droughts or all the expansion teams that have won without Toronto getting even a whiff of the finals. The failure to foresee & adapt to changes in the league seems to be an organizational pillar post-expansion. They went all in with an older team of veterans for the '67 championship but could never rebuild and adapt to the post-expansion era whereas Montreal kept rolling and Boston hit their stride. Chicago & New York each made the finals twice in the 70s at least. The 80's Leafs need no further elaboration. There were some good runs in the 90's & early 2000's but then the 2005 lockout came and what happened ? The organization failed to foresee & adapt to the changes in the league just like after the first expansion and toiled at the bottom of the league for another decade. I don't know what the hell JFJ was trying to do in those years. I think Burke was trying to build kind of a poor man's version of his '07 Anaheim Ducks which failed miserably. We can be grateful now in a sense due to us eventually getting to the point we are now on the back of that last round of dark years but it's hard to explain why the franchise has been so unsuccessful under so many different tenures with so many different rosters the last 50 years. Maybe part of it was knowing the team would sell out every night whether the team was competitive or not. This seems like it could explain the Ballard years. Everything done during that time is so ludicrous to read about now that I don't know what else would make sense as an explanation, but I'd need more insight from older posters who saw those years themselves to give more perspective. Part of it is no question incompetence at the management, scouting, coaching etc. level. When there was no salary cap and you had either the first or second most profitable franchise in the league with endless amounts of cash to spend and can't, not even ONCE, buy a championship team like the Yankees have done forever & the Red Sox have done recently, there is something deeply wrong with your organization.


Having said all that I believe they are on the right path now. Shanahan cleared house like needed to be done when he came in and the moves they have made over the last several years and I believe we will get it done within our current window or 5-6 years.

Excellent post.

 

[Jimmy Firecracker]

It's a curse in a salary cap world. Leafs could've been flexing their financial muscle when they were free and clear to from 68-04, but terrible ownership condemned this team to mediocrity. Sure now we have the ownership with vision and means to outspend anyone, but unlike the Yankees or Lakers, we have to deal with a hard cap because the NHL needs to do something to even the playing field for those pathetic teams in southern USA who can't turn a profit.

We also get Ontario boys who come home and decide to dial it up to 10 in front of their friends and family, but it's not extended just to Ontario boys. You'll get teams on Saturday Night or another prime time who decide to show their best on National TV against the much covered Leafs. Our current Leafs have time and again failed to anticipate this and have come out flat in these types of games time and time again.

The constant media microscope is also a nagging concern. Marner wouldn't even think about asking for $10 million if Dreger and the rest of these hacks didn't keep blowing hot air up his ass and giving ideas to the player's agents. I also guarantee that the media has deterred free agents from signing here. Why make millions in Toronto under constant scrutiny when you could make the same Stateside and hear not so much as a peep when you go in a slump? Granted, the allure of Toronto worked in our favour for Tavares, but it was very rare for that to happen, and we won't be able to rely on this method given the hard cap.

I think it's more of a negative. The 50 year curse is also something that also weighs on this city and franchise. Yeah no one part of the team now has anything to do with the previous 47 years prior to Shanahan coming along in 2014, but it's there. Just this big old stupid number mocking everyone. f*** Harold Ballard till the end of time. Should've easily been able to pull out at least one Championship between 1970-1990.

The media is crap, but us fans can be very bad too. As a whole we're pretty bloody bi-polar where a three game win streak is the sure signs of a contender, whereas a two game losing streak is the end times and we're nothing but pretenders. I'm not on a high horse in saying this, I do it too. But regardless, it can't be good having to deal with such extremes from the fan base. Though I guess it's also kind of a good thing that the fans now expect so much from this team. From 08-14 we'd be happy just making the playoffs, now we this franchise has higher aspirations.

All in all, I'd say the "Toronto Allure" is more negative, and is just another obstacle to climb over on the way to the Promised Land. Opposing teams will bring their "A" game, especially now that we're deemed contenders. The media will continue to be insufferable with their fear mongering regarding the cap. And the fans, even though God knows we all love this team, will continue to be hard on the boys down on the ice, bench, and press box.

 

[SHANNYPLAN]

lol, love that our money goes to teams like Arizona and Florida who can’t sell tickets, while we’re stuck spending to the same cap as those teams.

Babcock said it best last year when he said the cap is to help the “loser teams” (can’t remember what interview he said it in.

 

[Nineteen67]

As a 50 year plus diehard, I have often mused about the effect of the Leafs “aura” (their incredible following throughout Canada and parts of the USA), whether good or bad?

In my more jealous and myopic moments I grow tired of opponents all of a sudden finding their “A” game and stepping it up several notches when playing in Toronto, the “NHL media capital”. Often many players are from the GTA and the province, and the stands are full of their family and friends-further fueling their new found intensity. Of course this “playoff atmosphere” is at its height when it’s a Canadian club in town.

And it isn’t just Leaf home games; witness the excitement in the Coyotes arena Saturday night; hitting a crescendo when the PA excitingly announced the game was on HNIC. Actually, any US destination that has a fair bit of vacationing Leaf fans seems to react the same (Tampa, Panthers, Vegas).

I have long been conscious of this, often noticing the remarkable difference between the Leafs “amped up” opponent and their peripheral games ( like how quickly the mighty Coyotes fell to the Flames today). I have never ran the “numbers”, I would think it interesting to somehow test this, not sure it’s even possible.

I know the negative (how many more times do I have to hear about the opponents goalie all of a sudden playing the game of his life against the Leafs?). But there is positive too; I have heard Leaf players loving all the intensity, feeling sorry for their counterparts marooned in the stale air of Carolina or being lucky to even be mentioned on the sports news in LA.

Is there something to be said for this? Does this create a more battle tested Leaf team than otherwise? Or does the constant high intensity wear on them. Is this a factor in how they thrill one night and then fall flat the next?

Does this apply to other teams? I believe the Montreal Canadians mystique is lesser, perhaps they are a comparable though? Certainly I don’t think thecexcellent Winnipeg Jets or Calgary Flames face the same reaction? For one they do not have the history of the Leafs, who were, for the longest time, the only choice for many English speaking Canadians.

I wonder what the players think about this? I hear the stories about not wanting to play in such an intense atmosphere (thankfully the old excuse of the pathetic Ballard controlled teams is gone).

Any thoughts?

They have been pretty good on the road this year. Maybe it’s a positive for the players.
I’ve been to a lot road games as well and lately, I find some of the fans are little too arrogant and forget they are guests.

 

[Nineteen67]

It's a curse in a salary cap world. Leafs could've been flexing their financial muscle when they were free and clear to from 68-04, but terrible ownership condemned this team to mediocrity. Sure now we have the ownership with vision and means to outspend anyone, but unlike the Yankees or Lakers, we have to deal with a hard cap because the NHL needs to do something to even the playing field for those pathetic teams in southern USA who can't turn a profit.

We also get Ontario boys who come home and decide to dial it up to 10 in front of their friends and family, but it's not extended just to Ontario boys. You'll get teams on Saturday Night or another prime time who decide to show their best on National TV against the much covered Leafs. Our current Leafs have time and again failed to anticipate this and have come out flat in these types of games time and time again.

The constant media microscope is also a nagging concern. Marner wouldn't even think about asking for $10 million if Dreger and the rest of these hacks didn't keep blowing hot air up his ass and giving ideas to the player's agents. I also guarantee that the media has deterred free agents from signing here. Why make millions in Toronto under constant scrutiny when you could make the same Stateside and hear not so much as a peep when you go in a slump? Granted, the allure of Toronto worked in our favour for Tavares, but it was very rare for that to happen, and we won't be able to rely on this method given the hard cap.

I think it's more of a negative. The 50 year curse is also something that also weighs on this city and franchise. Yeah no one part of the team now has anything to do with the previous 47 years prior to Shanahan coming along in 2014, but it's there. Just this big old stupid number mocking everyone. **** Harold Ballard till the end of time. Should've easily been able to pull out at least one Championship between 1970-1990.

The media is crap, but us fans can be very bad too. As a whole we're pretty bloody bi-polar where a three game win streak is the sure signs of a contender, whereas a two game losing streak is the end times and we're nothing but pretenders. I'm not on a high horse in saying this, I do it too. But regardless, it can't be good having to deal with such extremes from the fan base. Though I guess it's also kind of a good thing that the fans now expect so much from this team. From 08-14 we'd be happy just making the playoffs, now we this franchise has higher aspirations.

All in all, I'd say the "Toronto Allure" is more negative, and is just another obstacle to climb over on the way to the Promised Land. Opposing teams will bring their "A" game, especially now that we're deemed contenders. The media will continue to be insufferable with their fear mongering regarding the cap. And the fans, even though God knows we all love this team, will continue to be hard on the boys down on the ice, bench, and press box.

Dreger et al set the market?

 

[Nineteen67]

It’s part of the premium the Leafs have to pay. Living in Toronto is hard, playing in Toronto is harder.