Toronto Maple Leafs: Why I'll Bleed Blue and White for Life!

I was born in Toronto in 1970 and the first glimpse I had of this game was on a Saturday night sometime during the winter of 1973.

At once I was mesmerized, and since I was quite a rambunctious child, I’m sure just my captivation by something that kept me still thrilled my mother immensely.

If I were to tell you I remembered which team we were playing or who any of the players on the ice were, I’d be lying.

But I knew I had found something special.  It was called hockey, and my city's team was called the Maple Leafs.

I bled blue and white from then on.

They had won the Stanley Cup just a few years previous, though little did I know how long that drought would last.

I was young and had started playing the game, but I wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch the whole Leafs game.  I think I was five or six when I figured it out.

I had to watch it all, to the end.  There was no other option in my mind as my addiction to the sport grew, but how?

My first con: I asked my mother while watching the end of the first period, “Could I watch the whole game if I let you eat the rest of my dinner?”

Now don’t get me wrong, I was lucky there was always enough food on the table. But I had, at my young age, learned to put two and two together.  So with my love of hockey and my mother’s love of food, I made my play.

I think my mother let me watch the rest of the game just because of how funny my proposition was, and of course, I parlayed that one offering into a lifelong religious routine from that immediate point on.

In grade one, hockey cards were everywhere, before and after school in the hallways and at recess, playing knock-downs and topsy’s and trading them. They were only 25 cents a pack and you got 10 cards plus a stick of stale gum that was crunchy; it was great!

My grandmother Nellie Taylor would give me a dollar to buy hockey cards if I gave her a kiss, as most grandparents would back then.

I would run to the store to get those cards with that glossy picture, the team’s logo, the player’s name, and his number on the front. It had that little story about the player on the back, how long he’d been in the league, which way he shoots, the position he played, and his statistics from the past year.

Trading those hockey cards, playing the game, and watching those games, instilled in me a love for that game, one that if ever I’m old and senile and can remember only one thing, it will be hockey.

There was a player that came into the league in the late 70s by the name of Wayne Gretzky, The Great One.  He and a bunch of other young players that grew and dominated together on the Edmonton Oilers.

Every year after which, while watching my Leafs, I hoped for a young team and I waited for a player to come up through the ranks and onto my team.

A young star that would develop into half the player that Gretzky was, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

Year after year, Toronto’s general managers would trade away the youth on the team for a veteran or a bag of pucks or something.

That player would go to another team, some would do well and some wouldn’t.  But the ones that did do well, I always wished were on my team still...my Leafs.

As I grew up, I began to understand and now continue to learn about the inner workings of the game.

I’ve heard many general managers over the years say they were going to build from youth.

The city gets frustrated, the pressure gets to them and they crack, making yet again the blunder of impatience.

Finally, Toronto’s GM Brian Burke has stuck with what he said he would do, and as God as my witness, I am more excited about watching this team as it grows than any other Toronto has put on the ice throughout my life.

These growing pains are going to hurt, but the average age of the roster that played on March 7, 2010 against Philadelphia was 26.2 years old, and was officially at that point the youngest team in the league.

My dream of seeing young skilled players gel and grow as a group into perhaps a dynasty now has sparks of hope.

I will bleed blue and white from many wounds over the next couple years, but that blood, I hope, won’t flow in vane anymore.