from the Henderson and Sittler examples cited above, the most memorable Canadian hockey moments of recent times are any combination of the three Canada Cup triumphs between 1984 and 1991 and the two Olympic gold medals won by the men’s team in 2002 and 2010. Non-Canadian triumphs in that era of note: the U.S. victory in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and the Czech and Swedish triumphs at the 1998 and 2006 Olympics, respectively. Leafs involvement? Aside from Sundin’s pivotal role in Sweden’s long-overdue win, that sound you’re hearing is crickets (defenceman Aki Berg played for 2006 silver-medal winners, Finland).
Even the U.S. “Miracle on Ice” team, a squad that later sent so many players to the NHL after winning Olympic gold at Lake Placid in 1980, had nary a Leafs prospect on it.
But there is a quaint ritual that takes place at the Air Canada Centre after successful World Junior tournaments and also after the Salt Lake Olympics. It’s the honouring at centre ice of the returning Canadian heroes, gold medals draped around their necks. The glint from the gold baubles almost takes the sting from the salt in the wounds being felt as the players are introduced. On many occasions during Canada’s World Junior run of gold medals from 2005 to 2009, Leafs fans were even forced to endure more than a few young Canucks walking out to centre ice knowing full well that (1) this kid is going to be beating us some day (see Richards, Mike) and (2) prospects like these kids are what other teams have, not us.
But, like so much of the Leafs history, even when there are rare moments to celebrate, there is almost always an asterisk, a tinge of the bittersweet. For example, in 2002, when Curtis Joseph was honoured for returning from Salt Lake City with his Olympic gold medal, and then-Maple Leafs head coach Pat Quinn was likewise feted for his masterful job leading the boys wearing that other Maple Leaf to victory.
Mats Sundin never won a Stanley Cup, but he led Sweden to the 2006 Olympic gold medal. Sundin’s role in that victory is the most notable international performance by a Leaf since Darryl Sittler’s 1976 Canada Cup–winning goal.
Courtesy of Getty Images.
Joseph had been given the starter’s job in Salt Lake — a questionable move given the small matter of Martin Brodeur’s multiple Stanley Cup victories in New Jersey and the fact he had beaten Joseph the previous two springs in head-to-head playoff battles. Giving his netminder in Toronto the nod over a player as accomplished as Brodeur showed remarkable loyalty by Quinn. One problem: Cujo got funnelled almost from the moment the puck was dropped in the first game versus Sweden. The Swedes, chock full of their so-called golden generation, all in their prime in 2002, shook off an early allowed goal and made Canada look like, well, sorry Swedish hockey fans, Belarus.
The images of Sundin running roughshod over a Canadian team coached by Quinn and with Joseph in goal was about as surreal as hockey played in June at the ACC. Joseph, Quinn, and Sundin were the three key cogs in what was one of the best post-1967 Maple Leafs teams, and now they were opposing one another, with the Swedish captain helping turn Quinn’s exterior so red that the big Irishman appeared as if he was about to explode.
Curtis Joseph rarely became unhinged in Toronto, but he was also never comfortable in Team Canada’s net during the 2002 Olympics and lost the starting job. His performance likely hastened his exit from the Leafs.
Courtesy of Graig Abel.
It all worked out, of course. Canada found its stride a few days later, Sweden fell to the aforementioned Belarus, and Quinn eventually led the team to an extremely memorable gold medal win over the U.S. with Cujo firmly stuck to the bench and Brodeur between the pipes.
Back in Toronto, both men went to collect their congratulations, and the awkward moment at centre ice had the feeling of father and son running into each other in the coat check of a strip joint.
It wasn’t Quinn’s fault. He gave his guy a chance and he failed to do anything with it. When Brodeur was given his long-overdue opportunity, he ran with it and helped the country win its first men’s hockey gold in fifty years. Joseph? Though his character was never in question — the man has never lost his humble appeal — it was plainly obvious that if he could have kept his mask on that night, he would have.
In the end, the Leafs dispatched Carolina in the game following the ceremony — ironic, because it was precisely the same Hurricanes who defeated the Leafs in six games in the Eastern Conference final later that spring. Joseph played well both during the first game back and the rest of the season, but then left for greener pastures, signing with Detroit because he felt they offered him a better chance to win a Stanley Cup. Well, umm, of course, but Cujo never won a Cup in the Motor City like so many former Leafs had done previously.
And so there you have it. What should, or could have been a crowning moment for the Maple Leafs and their fans — celebrating an Olympic gold medal, the pursuit of which had gripped both the city and country for a fortnight — only hastened the exit of arguably the team’s best player; certainly its best puck-stopper in the post-1967 era. The prolonged melodrama that played out from March through to early July was a little like watching your cute ex-girlfriend leave town with an aging rock star because she couldn’t get along with your dad.
There was an instance of that niggling feeling of discord in the ACC on the night after another major competition. March 2, 2010, offered no touchstone moments in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise. But it did remind its fans how completely and utterly inferior the team was that year relative to the action that had taken place during the previous two weeks. The Vancouver Olympics were about as proud a moment not involving military action that Canada has ever felt. It was like celebrating New Year’s for seventeen consecutive days, the hangover part nicely taken care of by a bunch of golden Caesars that Canadian athletes kept on serving up.
The Leafs, of course, had an understated role in the events of the men’s hockey competition. The chief decision-makers for the Leafs, general manager Brian Burke and head coach Ron Wilson, had the same roles for the U.S. team. This was just as bizarre then as it seems now. If an alien had descended from outer space in the lead-up to the Games, he would have been excused for thinking that earthlings had an odd sense of fair play.
“Wait,” you could almost imagine an alien saying, “how come the head coach and the GM from one of the NHL’s worst teams are in charge of one of the best national teams? And the same two guys also run a Canadian NHL team even though they are American and putting together the American team at the biggest hockey event to ever take place in Canada?”
Well, yes, of course, and those two men did a fabulous job for their country. If only they could have replicated that success with their day jobs in Toronto (Wilson, we now know, paid with his job for not even coming close). Wilson — the memory must still haunt him — showed why he is considered a good hockey coach everywhere else but Toronto by leading the Americans to within a hair’s breadth of the gold medal. But, thank God, Canada prevailed.
Two days after the overtime final won by Canada 3–2, Wilson was back behind the bench for a Leafs home game versus — no kidding — Carolina again. Even if you don’t like Ron Wilson, you couldn’t fault him if he’d thought he had been kidnapped and placed behind the Leafs bench. He wasn’t, of course, and his personal coaching nightmare resumed in a Tuesday night encounter that will not be remembered for the ages. In Vancouver, Wilson had Zach Parise, Patrick Kane, Ryan Kesler, Bobby Ryan, and Ryan Suter at his disposal, along with many others of the world’s elite, including the best goaltender on the planet at the time in Ryan Miller. Back at his regular gig, Wilson had the luxury of Colton Orr, Jamie Lundmark, Freddy Sjostrom, Christian Hanson, and Garnet Exelby.
