As I write this on Friday morning, the Toronto Maple Leafs are down three games to one in their opening round Eastern Conference playoffs series with the Boston Bruins. Though some in Leaf Nation remain hopeful that their boys may yet do the highly improbable and come back to take the series, most have resigned to the reality that Toronto is not long for these playoffs. Given that a series victory would now require winning three straight, with two of those games in Boston, even true believers recognize the Leafs’ flame will go out, either this evening or Sunday.
And yet, the Leafs have already won. So has the City of Toronto.
How can that be though – winning despite losing? Isn’t that the stuff of ‘moral victories’ and ‘youth soccer participation trophies’? Why is it that this series already feels like a victory lap for Torontoians?
The answer lies in two key dates: April 28, 2008, and May 4, 2004.
Those are, respectively, the day the Raptors gave Toronto its last playoff game, and the last day the Leafs hosted a postseason game at home.
For those counting at home, that’s five years and a week since the city had a meaningful sports moment, and nine years and two days since its favorite team was relevant.
To call this moment “overdue” is an understatement of hilarious proportions. These droughts are precisely why just being welcome to the dance has already made this year a success, no matter how or when the party ends.
Those outside our fair metropolitan may read this as tragically comedic: sports fans in the fourth-largest market in North America rejoicing in a first-round exit.
I am sure that anti-Toronto advocates around the country revel in the idea that the supporters of $1.32 sports and entertainment monolith are so broken and woeful that they are grateful just for the briefest of reminders of what postseason play feels like. And they would be right: it is slightly sad, and pathetic, and whatever other condescending and ungenerous thing you’d like to call it to see Toronto fans are grasping at straws. But that doesn’t make it any less real, or make the catharsis that came with Monday night’s Game 3 any more powerful.
This is not just about the Leafs, or hockey fans. Yes, this is the NHL’s largest and most loyal fan base. Yes, “Leaf Nation” is the idea that MLSE’s entire empire shaped around, and it is where this city draws most of its identity as a sports town from (for better or worse). But they do not walk alone here. The incredible buzz, the palpable excitement that has reverberated around Toronto for the better part of the last three weeks isn’t just for hockey fans. It’s for all of us. It is for this city as whole, and for this entire region.
That might seem grandiose and a bit absurd to some, but those who do not understand or appreciate that statement miss the power that sports still have. If you do not believe in the potential sports have to unite a people and bring a city together towards a common purpose, I have nothing for you. In that case, of course you would blow of this run as a few meaningless hockey games in May that will make a lot of money ($1.5-$2 million in profit per game) for an already very wealthy company.
But I believe people with that attitude miss the point. They are less hopeful, because they cannot believe in the very real power that sports has to inspire us and bring people together.
While I obviously enjoy, appreciate, and understand the game, I am not a “hockey guy”. Despite my family ties to the sport, the game is a passing entertainment to me – that is, it doesn’t flow through my veins the way basketball does. Basketball is my great love: it shapes the way I understand the world, and in my youth played the biggest role in defining my personality and character.
I relate this face only to underline that I am not a true diehard Leaf loyalist. Yes, I fondly recall being six and seven years old and embarking on trips to the Gardens with my father and brother to watch playoffs games, but if you cut me I do not bleed blue-and-white. I have spent the majority of my Saturday nights with CBC in the background right along with the rest of Toronto, but my support does not consume or define me. AND STILL, this trip back to the playoffs is especially meaningful. That is the power of sport.
There is no question that being back in the postseason has re-energized the Leafs’ base, but it has also re-energized the the city around them. The buzz is unmistakable because it is so earnest and so raw. And I guarantee you that a good portion of the folks down in Maple Leaf Square watching these games with 10,000 perfect strangers are not there because of their pure passion for hockey. (Yes, there are those people there too, and bless them). Yet there’s also a whole host of people there just to ‘feel’ something, that have come to ‘be a part’ of something larger than themselves.
Those people are who this playoff run is for.
They might be Raptor fans who haven’t see a playoff game in five years and who see no end in sight to their team’s devote commitment to mediocrity. They may be TFC supporters whose enthusiastic, optimism, and hope has slowly been ground out of them through mismanagement and pitiful on-field play. They may be Blue Jays fans, who are on a threat-watch for veering their bandwagon not just off the road but off a cliff after season upon season of unfulfilled promise and broken hearts.
Or, they may be people who do not even really love sports. There are plenty of people walking around The PATH, down Yonge and Bay streets, in blue-and-white that couldn’t name you five players on the Leafs roster.
And while normally I would get sanctimonious and go on a rant about fair-weather fans and how they are just tourists who should leave this moment to the rest of us, in this moment I find myself welcoming them. Even if their support is artificial, it doesn’t matter. We all needed this.
We needed to feel alive again, as a city and a region. We needed to have heroes, and villains, and to have an excuse to act like children (or maniacs, or both). Sports are what give us that chance. They let us forget about our buffoon of a mayor, and our dearth of an infrastructure, and our mounting budget crisis.
When this town has a playoff game to watch, we can forget for a few hours that the Gardiner is likely to fall apart and that we’ve given up what could have been North America’s greatest waterfront in the name of condos, profit and greed. Playoff sports let us come together and live in the moment, if only for a moment.
The team on the ice is overmatched by a faster, more talented team, and no matter how tough the Leafs are or how much they fight, they have been the underdog since this matchup was made on the final day of the regular season. Yet they are competing, and that is all we need to be loud, and rowdy, and make these moments special.
Again, it may be a cruel joke that it means this much, that Toronto – arguably one of the greatest cities in the world – is a city so in need of something to cheer for.
That need was palpable on Opening Night at Roger Centre last month, but the shine came off that emotion within a few weeks and we were reminded that this is not a baseball town.
And no, the Argonauts do not count as the winners that unite us, through no fault of their own. It is not that their accomplishments are meaningless, or because I do not respect determination and effort of every man on their team: it is because the CFL is a niche sport, and it while its appeal is profound elsewhere in our great country it does not move or captivate us here in a way that makes even non-sports fans stand up and pay attention.
No other team in Toronto matters half as much as the Leafs. That is a fact, and as a Raptors Lifer it is just something I’ve had to accept and move on from. Partially I think this is because hockey has been part of the country’s DNA for so long that non-sports people at least culturally understand it and have some general concept of the game. (In a column for another day I might make the case of how this is changing, of how this first generation of youth was born in the ‘90s who grew up in a post-Raptors reality with basketball in the home and on their televisions is changing that landscape, and that the game of basketball holds more appeal to Canada’s ever-changing demographic landscape than hockey – a sport rooted in outrageous whiteness and class-based privilege.) That discussion can rest for now; in this moment all that matters is the truth that hockey is still king, and that in this city, “Hockey = The Leafs”.
Next spring, getting invited to the dance will not be enough. In order to give Toronto that jolt of life, the Leafs (or perhaps another of the city’s professional team) will need to actually advance. But for now, the reminder of this feeling is enough. It has let us forget about life for a few hours, and given an unmistakable burst of energy and excitement to everyone here.
That will fade soon, and I will go back to raving about how this town accepts mediocrity far too often, and does not carry itself with the expectation of excellence that it should, setting us up for failure. Those rants about the power of having great expectations will still be valid, but they aren’t important today.
Today is about the kick in the ass the Leafs have finally offered this. It is about being reminded that magic and optimism can be found from something as silly and basic as a few grown men playing a children’s game. Funny how simple things can be.
Low Culture, High Concept 