NHL Season 2008/09

[nevermore]

nachfolger von patrick stefan gefunden btw..

Wobei Stefan ja noch toller war einfach weil das Tor direkt im Gegenzug passiert ist.

[Funkmaster]

Wobei Stefan ja noch toller war einfach weil das Tor direkt im Gegenzug passiert ist.

allerdings war bei ihm zumindest zu 10% das miese eis schuld, da sich der puck ja versprang und er glorreich fischte

[ianrush]

Leafs Nation deserve our attention, but not our sympathy

The Toronto Maple Leafs are an abysmal mess from visor to blade, yet their arrogant fans always remain loyal

Toronto Maple Leafs fans on their way to watch another crushing defeat. Photograph: Fred Thornhill/Reuters

The one time I visited Toronto, the first things I did were what I always do when I'm in North America. I slid the keycard into the door of my hotel room, dropped my bags on the floor, turned on the television and searched through the channels until I found ESPN.

While doing this I made a mental note to keep it brief, that way I wouldn't fall asleep and wake fully clothed, starving, with no idea where I was, wondering why I was watching Nascar. Still, I thought, can't hurt to have a quick peak, before I pop out and have a look at the city. So I turned on — da na na, da na na — Sports Center, and something struck me: north of the US border, ESPN's hockey coverage lasts a good deal longer than it does in the US.

Outside, the streets of Toronto may have looked more or less the same as those of Seattle, the accents of its citizens may have sounded almost the same (eh), but in the bars, in the sports stores and on the magazine racks one crucial difference remained. Here, hockey is king.

With apologies to les habitants of Montreal, Toronto is probably the ice hockey capital of the world. The city is home to the Hockey Hall of Fame (which, frankly, isn't all that great), it's home to The Hockey News (which, frankly, isn't all that great) and it's home to Gretzky's, a burger joint owned by The Great One which, frankly, isn't all that great.

Oh, gosh, I almost forgot: Toronto is also home to the Maple Leafs, one of the NHL's 'Original Six' teams. And, frankly, they're absolutely awful.

With apologies to the inhabitants of Toronto, for me the Leafs have often struck a comical note. My favourite story concerns Conn Smythe, the architect of the club's early successes, resigning his position from the board of Maple Leaf Gardens (the Leafs' old barn) after the venue agreed to stage a boxing match featuring one Muhammad Ali. Smythe believed that Ali's decision not to fight in Vietnam rendered him a coward and a traitor, despite the fact that (a) the argument is clearly bonkers and (b) Canada also avoided the conflict, and gave living room to numerous American citizens hoping to lay low for a year or two.

Still, no amount of jocularity can fully obscure the fact that being a hockey fan in Toronto must be a gruelling business. The Maple Leafs are a vehicle incapable of carrying the expectations of their fanbase; a fanbase that is helpless when it comes to restraining the levels of intensity to which it regularly succumbs. It's difficult to imagine the many kinds of crackers Toronto would go if the Leafs ever decide to break with tradition and actually win something.

Not that there's much chance of this, like. Come the end of the current season, it will be 42 years since the Maple Leafs last drank from Lord Stanley's chalice. It was a lot easier to win the Cup back in 1967, too. For one thing, there were only six teams in the league, four of which would each year qualify for the playoffs. The on-ice season would be on ice by the middle of April, with each team having a one in six chance of claiming the main prize. Actually, it was more like a one in five chance, since in the 60s the New York Rangers performed about as convincingly as, well, the Maple Leafs do today.

Torontonians might at this point want to look away … who am I kidding, they've already looked away. In the years since 'Leafs Nation' last celebrated a championship, the Montreal Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup 10 times. The Edmonton Oilers — a team that only joined the NHL in 1979 — have won it five times. The Calgary Flames have won it once. The Vancouver Canucks and the Ottawa Senators (the current incarnation, who signed up to the NHL in 1992) have each been to a final on one occasion, and even this is more than the Leafs have managed.

As if it couldn't get worse, in 1977 Toronto got itself a baseball team. Since then, the Toronto Blue Jays have won the World Series. Twice.

This column has dealt before with hockey's love of euphemism (usually to describe the actions of athletes who might otherwise be in prison) but recently a different kind of euphemism made its way on to the airwaves. As the Leafs took to the ice for their season's opening game (a victory against the Red Wings), a TV commentator with a habit of prefacing any statement with the words "do you know what?" announced — DYKW? — that this season the Toronto Maple Leafs "are in rebuilding mode".

Quite marvellous sophistry, don't you think? As if you couldn't guess, this phrase is an obfuscating, long-handed way of saying that this season the Leafs will once again be crap.

But yet the majority of fans have remained loyal. Personally, I'm slightly wary of the common consensus that tickets to see NHL hockey at Toronto's Air Canada Centre are almost impossible to come by. This is also said of the Boston Red Sox, yet this season I was able to stroll up to the ticket windows at Fenway Park and pay my way in. Either way, unlike Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League is fast becoming a prohibitively expensive evening out, and the Maple Leafs are at the prohibitively expensive end of the market, despite the failures of the 'on-ice product'.

There are some supporters who have succumbed to apathy. At the end of last season empty seats could be seen in the Air Canada Centre's expensive lower bowl. This, it was explained, was not because the Leafs hadn't sold these tickets, rather that the ticket-holders weren't in attendance to see these games. Entry to the ice level seats at the ACC cost somewhere in the region of C$400. Many of these seats will have been bought in the name of corporate entertainment and, by March, the Leafs were anything other than entertaining. But still, how bad must a team be before you'd happily pay money to not watch them play?

This is not the place to wonder where the next generation of Maple Leaf ticket-holders are coming from. But it is the place to wonder when the next winning season might come. The Leafs are a mess of executive infighting, lousy draft picks, terrible trades and bad management from visor to skate blade.

The part of me that wants to get this column written so that I can go to bed is tempted to say it would be good for hockey were the team to once more find their mojo. But I'm not sure this is at all true; in fact, I'm not sure that it would be good for anyone other than Toronto were Toronto to once more find their mojo. The NHL needs the Maple Leafs, but it needs the Los Angeles Kings and the New York Islanders too; it doesn't need them to be successful, it just needs them to be.

If it sounds like I have a downer on the Leafs then, well, that might be true. But perhaps it would be truer to say I have a downer on the element of their fanbase that believes that success is a divine right and that can neither accept nor understand the fact that this ain't necessarily so. Superpower self-pity is difficult to like and impossible to ignore. Which is why the Toronto Maple Leafs are a team that are always worth watching

[Fex]

Havlat gerade mit einem ziiiieeemlich sicken Tor zum 1-1 für die Hawks.

[nevermore]

Brunnström erst der 3 Spieler in der NHL-Geschichte, der bei seinem ersten Auftritt einen Hattrick erzielt.

[Funkmaster]

was für ein spiel gestern - homeboy laraque lässt im ersten heimspiel nichts anbrennen

der ausgleich der bruins aufgrund einer kaputten bande

am ende der Sieg im ungeliebten SO - trotzdem oarg, wie leichtfertig die habs mit führungen umgehen...

[Bam_Margera]

Garon

Vanek Schon wieder ein Shorty

[moasta]

stream any1?

[nevermore]

Mah, Gaborik zur Abwechslung mal verletzt. Ich schätz mal Havlat folgt ihm bald.

[themanwho]

Wie kommt NASN eigentlich auf die wirre Idee, PHX@OTT zu zeigen, obwohl TOR@NYR, VAN@BUF, EDM@CAL und SJS@ANA auch spielen?

[kloawansch]

ich geb mir das rangers spiel...bis jetzt nichts spannendes passiert.

[nevermore]

Für diejenigen, die sich in den HFBoards herumtreiben:

The insanity quickly spread to the Montreal Canadiens' HF Boards, because Saku Koivu wasn't in practice, either. While the idiocy of the Habs trading a center for a player like Gaborik wasn't enough to derail the rumor, the fact that Koivu is actually injured may do the trick. But again, never underestimate the HF Boards. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. And we mean that as a compliment.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_dadd...?urn=nhl,115490

[themanwho]

SHO für Toskala und Valiquette. Hatten wir zum letzten Mal glaub ich vorletzte Saison mit Huet/Auld.

[nevermore]

SHO für Toskala und Valiquette. Hatten wir zum letzten Mal glaub ich vorletzte Saison mit Huet/Auld.

Bäckström und Smith schließen sich an.

[Funkmaster]

A. Kostitsyn wird zumindest heute gegen die Cats fehlen - warum?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB7y_nGkVVU