DANIEL STYLER
<Staff Writer>
In 2004, I was significantly younger than I am now. I was at that stage where sports probably mean a little bit too much, and whether my favourite teams won or lost felt like the end of the world. And I can honestly say that when the NHL lockout began in that year, lasted an entire season, and cost my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs the chance to torment me and the rest of their profoundly loyal fan base by losing in excruciating fashion, I was upset.
I cared because the Maple Leafs had been relatively successful in the years leading up to the lockout. They didn’t win a Stanley Cup, but they tried. They made the Conference Finals in 1998-99 and in 2001-02. They were a well-run organization with what seemed like the perfect mix of star players and role players, and they never lost an important game to the Ottawa Senators. They had one of the best hockey players that I have had the fortune of watching in my twenty-something years as a hockey fan; that’s right, Don Cherry, Mats Sundin was really good.
I think what is most striking about the incompetency on display for all to see from everyone involved in the NHL labour negotiations currently taking place is how differently I feel this time around. My frustration and disappointment has been replaced with one of the worst of all human emotions: complete apathy.
When Gary Bettman and his militia of idiots put an offer on the table earlier this week that experts saw as a step towards the possibility of starting the season on time, I just didn’t care. I also didn’t care when Donald Fehr and his militia of idiots rejected that same offer and proposed a new offer that was seen as a step back by Gary Bettman.
Why?
The answer to this is straightforward. Since the last lockout, the Maple Leafs have had seven seasons to make the playoffs. They have failed each time, and have often done so in spectacular fashion. Mats Sundin retired. They have shown little to no progress over these seven years, and the most recognizable figure within the organization, general manager Brian Burke, hasn’t exactly lived up to his aspiration to build the team as one filled with “truculence” and “belligerence.” In fact, they often seem like they are the easiest team in the league to play against; they take stupid penalties, cannot kill penalties and back down in the face of physical contact.
They’re a team that consists of an inconsistent star (Phil Kessel), a couple of significantly overpaid players (Dion Phaneuf and Mike Komisarek), underperforming former prospects (Nikolai Kulemin and Tyler Bozak) and a shitty goalie (James Reimer).
That all adds up to a relatively anonymous group of players who are not particularly likeable or memorable. Even worse, as the league’s most profitable franchise in the apparent “mecca” of hockey, they have become irrelevant.
And as they’ve become irrelevant, I’ve become increasingly more apathetic to their failures. It’s not that they lose (in fact, I’ve recently adopted a really terrible basketball team to cheer for in light of the fact that I don’t anticipate to watch hockey this year: the New Orleans Hornets), it’s how they lose.
I could handle a team that is self-aware enough to recognize that it is time to break down and rebuild and in doing so attempt to achieve success in the right way: shrewd trades and drafting, and the occasional game-changing free agent. Instead, the Leafs have consistently hovered at the level of mediocrity, and the only year that they’ve been truly terrible and warranting of a number one or two overall draft pick, that draft pick had already been traded (and it turned into Tyler Seguin, who is now an upcoming star for the Boston Bruins).
Just like I’m apathetic to their failures, I’m also apathetic to the fact that they may not play this season. The eight hours per week that I would usually spend watching their games can be spent doing more or equally unproductive things: studying, browsing Reddit, throwing a ball against a wall or training to run a marathon.
Continuing to watch the Leafs during their seven years of futility and poor decision-making was masochistic. I just didn’t know how to quit them (the whole situation was very Brokeback Mountain, minus the forbidden cowboy love).
Now, I’ve been forced to quit them. And, for now at least, I’m happy with it.