Toronto Maple Leaf: The Best (and Worst) of Harold Ballard

The late Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard left a legacy which is one of the most controversial in the history of Canadian sports.

Ballard rose up through the ranks of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization during the 1940s and 1950s, and eventually attained decision-making power in the early 60s as alternate governor of the Maple Leafs hockey team and executive vice president of Maple Leaf Gardens.

Ballard now shared power with John Bassett and Stafford Smythe in Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd.

The 1960s saw the Maple Leafs dynasty that won Stanley Cups in 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1967. This auspicious start to the Ballard Era would be short lived.

Following the resignation of John Bassett and the death of Stafford Smythe, Ballard took total control of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Maple Leaf Gardens and turned the hockey arena into the “Carlton Street Cashbox.”

Despite this financial success, the succeeding decades would see Ballard transform the Leafs from league leaders to league laughingstocks.

As Maple Leaf Gardens was a gold mine that fans would faithfully fill to watch the Maple Leafs, victory was optional, and Ballard became seemingly less interested in winning hockey games than he was in making local headlines.

For the next 20 years,  Ballard amused himself while bemusing observers with some of the most memorable, curious, offensive and just downright bizarre public acts of any sports owner in history. Here is a list of some of his most memorable moments- or may we say: the best (and worst) of Ballard:

Number Five: Ballard Bests the Beatles

Under Ballard’s watch, Maple Leaf Gardens became much more than just a home for the Toronto Maple Leafs. It became a major venue for all manner of entertainment including large scale pop music concerts.

Ballard was no fan of rock and roll, but he loved the money it brought in, so he opened the gardens’ doors to the top pop music acts of the day.

The Beatles played the gardens on each of their three North American tours in the 1960s. The Beatles managed to pass through Toronto in 1964 without incident, but when they returned for two shows at Maple Leaf Gardens the next summer, Ballard used the opportunity to make some quick cash.

Ballard cashed in by adding a second show to what was to be a one show stop in Toronto. Apparently, he did so without informing Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

Epstein was furious and confronted Ballard about the sleight, and the two men apparently almost came to blows. Ballard had Epstein escorted off to the hot stove lounge to cool down before meeting with him again.

When the two met again, Ballard dared Epstein to cancel the second show, and Epstein capitulated. The band agreed to play,  and Ballard got his second show.

Not only did Ballard succeed in getting the fab four to add a second show, he profited further that hot August night by delaying the show for an hour, turning off the water fountains in the gardens, and instructing gardens staff to crank up the heat.

The throngs of captive teeny-bopper patrons were left with no other choice but to guzzle soft drinks from the gardens’ refreshment stands at three times the normal price.

Ballard Refuses to Display Player Names on Jerseys

By the mid-1970s, the Toronto Maple Leafs had never displayed player’s names on jerseys, but a decree from NHL President John Ziegler called for just this.

Ballard, who never liked taking instructions from anyone, including the league head office, considered the first American NHL commissioner as some kind of foreign interloper and was not about to be ordered around by him.

Needless to say, Ballard balked at the directive and refused to comply. When threatened with a fine from the league, Ballard responded by having the players’ names stitched on their backs in the same colour as their jersey backgrounds, leaving the names unreadable.

On February 27th, 1978, the Toronto Maple Leafs rolled into the Chicago Stadium for a road game against the Black Hawks with their newly tailored road jerseys.

The Leafs jerseys in those days featured white elements on a blue background and the blue lettering that Ballard had stitched onto the blue background rendered the players names completely invisible. Ziegler be damned.

The next night the Leafs were off to Long Island for a game against the New York islanders sporting the same jerseys. For these two road games at least, it appeared that Ballard had gotten away with flouting the Ziegler decree. The Leafs had a lengthy break in New York City before their next game against the Rangers on March 5th at Madison Square Gardens.

When the Leafs took the ice for the Rangers game, their surnames were conspicuously displayed for the first time ever on their jersey backs.

During the break between games, the league office had convinced Ballard that the fines threatened previously were very real and very substantial. Valuing dollars over principles, Ballard relented, and Toronto Maple Leafs players have had their names plastered across their shoulder blades ever since.

Ballard Awards Canadian Juniors Gold After the Punch-up in Piestany

Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard did not always play the role of the villain, although this is how most of the public viewed him.

There were times when Pal Hal was clearly the voice of reason and a homemade vigilante who was willing to stand up for truth, justice and the Canadian way.

Ballard’s charitable side has been well documented, at times, but this aspect of his personality was never on display more prominently or justifiably than in 1987 with his gift of gold medals to the unfairly disgraced and disqualified members of Canada’s World Junior Ice Hockey Championship team following the infamous “Punch Up in Piestany.”

During the final game of the 1987 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships in Piestany, Czechoslovakia, the Canadians were leading Russia by a two-goal margin in the third period and were well on the way to building up the four goal margin they needed to take home the gold medal.

That’s when the fighting began. The incident began with only a few players on the ice scrapping, but escalated to a full scale brawl when Russian players left their bench to join in. The Canadian bench followed and madness ensued.

As Toronto Maple Leafs president, Brendan Shanahan, observed from ice level as a participant, this brawl was unique in that it featured all players on the ice fighting and included sucker punches, kicks, head butts and various other fouls that broke the mold of NHL donnybrooks

The Canadians appeared to win the fight, but sadly, were thrown out of the tournament along with the Russians, losing another chance at junior gold.

Believing that the Russian players and coaches had engineered the brawl to deprive the Canadians of the gold medal Ballard had gold medals made and presented to the Canadian players upon their return from Czechoslovakia to Canada.

Ballard was quoted as saying: “I believe that Canadian boys deserve to have this these metals and I’m going to see to it that they get them. Imagine how these Russians engineered the whole thing over there Just because they have a lousy hockey team and were scared to go home finishing in sixth place.”

Ballard allows Punch Imlach to trade Lanny McDonald to spite Darryl Sittler

One Ballard stunt that at the time was particularly painful for Toronto Maple Leafs fans was the trading of one of the classiest hockey players to ever lace up skates, the buds’ all-star right winger, Lanny McDonald, to the Colorado Avalanche.

A move that was made not to better the team, but to spite the team leader, Darryl Sittler.

During the late 1970s, when he was an NHL star on the rise, Darryl Sittler found himself at a philosophical crossroads with the Toronto Maple Leafs owner regarding the NHL players Association and Sittler’s involvement in it.

As Sittler’s prominence as a player grew, so did his prominence as a member of the NHL Players Association. Ballard, a die-hard conservative and anti-union figure resented having his captain and star player in such a role and a divide between Sittler and Ballard was established and continued to grow as the Seventies drew to a close.

The bad blood got to the point where Ballard and his recently rehired general manager, Punch Imlach, wanted to trade Sittler to get him out of town, however, a non-trade clause in the captain’s contract prevented Ballard and Imlach from doing so.

Instead, Ballard got back at Sittler by trading his good friend and linemate, Lanny McDonald, to the Colorado Rockies along with defenseman Joel Quenneville for Wilf Paiement and Pat Hickey on December 28th, 1979.

In a response to McDonald’s unceremonious shipment out of Toronto, Sittler expressed his frustration with the situation by tearing his captain’s “C.” from his jersey and renouncing his captaincy.

In response, Ballard, infuriated by Sittler’s actions, likened the removal of the C from the Maple Leafs Jersey as akin to burning the Canadian flag.

Sittler played another year in Toronto but was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1982 for prospect Rich Costello. The trading of McDonald and  Sittler  dismantled the promising core of buds players, and the Toronto Maple Leafs would not play a winning season for the entire 1980s.