#1. Rick Vaive
Although Vaive has been talked about more this season than any other season, as Matthews attempted to break his single-season goal record, it has always felt that Vaive doesn’t get the credit he deserves like some other Toronto Maple Leafs’ greats.
In terms of Leafs’ royalty, Vaive has more career goals than the following:
- George Armstrong
- Frank Mahovlich
- Wendel Clark
- Lanny McDonald
- Ted Kennedy
- Syl Apps
Vaive’s seven-year run in Toronto is not talked about enough. He never scored less than 32 goals in a season and had a three-year run of 50-plus goals from 1981-1984.
There have only been five seasons in Leafs’ history in which a player has scored 50 or more goals and Vaive holds three of those. For a team that’s been around since 1917, that’s incredibly special.
Although the team’s that Vaive played on during his tenure never had a winning season, Vaive couldn’t be blamed for that.
Harold Ballard should take most of the blame, as he dissembled a great Leafs’ team at the end of the 1970s that included trading away Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald.
As the best player on the Leafs’ roster for most of his tenure, before Wendel Clark arrived, Vaive could only do so much himself. The goaltending throughout his time in Toronto was awful and even he scored a few goals a night, the team always seemed to allow more than they scored.
If Vaive played in the 1970s or 1990s, I think he could have been one of the most popular Toronto Maple Leafs of all-time, but instead he’s looked at as one of the few bright spots during a terrible decade.
As a result, Vaive’s definitely underrated as it’s taken almost 40 years for any player to come close to his goal scoring records.