Hate is such a strong word but when it comes to the Toronto Maple Leafs, that word gets said a lot.
If you’re a Toronto Maple Leafs fan reading this today, you’ve 100 percent screamed at your TV and said “I hate (insert player’s name)!”
You don’t actually mean that, because if you ever met that person in real-life, you’d say they were your favourite player in the world, but at that given moment, hate (and probably some other expletives) get used frequently. And you know what, that’s okay.
Sports are all about the love-and-hate. One day, you’re praising a certain player for scoring a goal and then the next day, you’re burning their jersey in the streets. It’s the fun part of being a sports fan.
Although, it’s not appropriate to scream anything too inappropriate at a player, it is okay to be disappointed with them if they don’t deliver in a crucial moment. For example, I have nothing against Matt Frattin as a person. From everything I hear, he’s a fantastic human-being. However, I think myself and one million people in Toronto screamed some pretty hurtful things at their TV in regards to Frattin missing a breakaway in Game 7 of the 2013 Eastern Conference Quarter-Finals against Boston.
For the professional athlete, that’s not a fun thing to go through. You’re living out your dream making millions of dollars, but still get screamed for messing up. Nobody grows up wanting to get scored on like Glenn Hall in the 1970 Stanley Cup Finals. They dream of being on the other side flying through the air like Bobby Orr did to secure a Stanley Cup on that same play.
However, things happen and one bounce can change a person’s career forever. Although sports are supposed to bring people together, sometimes that comradery comes from screaming “You suck” in unison with 20,000 of your closest friends.
Throughout the years, Toronto has had plenty of foes that fans have continued to harp on. This year it was Cody Ceci and Tyson Barrie, but things have gotten much worse for a few previous Toronto Maple Leafs players and executives.
Here are the top five most hated Toronto Maple Leafs members of all-time.
#5. Dion Phaneuf
If you were to tell me that Phaneuf would turn into one of the most hated Toronto Maple Leafs of all-time on January 31, 2010, I’d assume you were joking. When the team acquired Phaneuf from the Calgary Flames in a seven-player deal, I was incredibly excited.
Phaneuf was struggling a little bit in his fifth year in Calgary, but the first three seasons of his career were incredible. Named as finalist for the Calder Trophy in his rookie year alongside Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, Phaneuf scored an impressive 20 goals that season. His point totals progressed every year after that, before taking a step back in his fourth year.
During his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Phaneuf was a serviceable defenseman. He was definitely a top-four player, but Brian Burke and the entire organization treated him as the savior. Being named the captain of any team is a big responsibility, but following Mats Sundin in the biggest hockey market in the world is almost impossible.
However, that’s what Phaneuf had to do and it didn’t go particularly well. With so much pressure on his shoulders, he didn’t live up to it, and it didn’t help that he signed a seven-year contract worth $7M per season as well. After that contract was signed, the fan-base that hadn’t already turned on him, instantly revolted him and couldn’t wait to ship him out of town.
It was an unfortunate end to Phaneuf’s career in Toronto and a huge lesson to management that expectations are vitally important. If Burke hadn’t put so much pressure on thinking Phaneuf was god’s gift to hockey, then maybe his time in Toronto wouldn’t have been so grim and he would have just been another decent defenseman to ever play for the organization.
#4. Jake Gardiner
From one defenseman to another, Gardiner is another player that went from loved to hated very quickly. When Gardiner was acquired from Anaheim with Joffrey Lupul, it was one of the best deals the team had ever made.
Gardiner’s skating and ability to keep his head-up at the blue-line was something fans adored about him. He was the modern-day NHL defenseman that looked like a top-defenseman at times. However, that all came to a screeching end pretty quickly.
Although his offense was great, his defense wasn’t fun to watch and it proved to be costly at the biggest moments. Game 7’s weren’t particularly fun for any Toronto Maple Leafs player, but it was a living Hell for Jake Gardiner. I know that plus/minus isn’t the best statistic to follow anymore, but Gardiner was a minus-10 in his last three Game 7’s in Toronto.
When it’s that bad, that means something. Gardiner was on the ice when Boston scored to finish their miraculous comeback in 2013 and was also at the center of a horrific giveaway for Boston’s game-winning goal in 2019. Even if the Toronto Maple Leafs and Gardiner were able to come to terms on a league-minimum contract, I don’t think the Leafs could have done it.
Gardiner’s time in Toronto had been so tough in the biggest moments, that the fan-base would have been even more cruel to him if he returned. It’s unfortunate to see a fan-base destroy a player so much, but that’s what happened with Gardiner. There’s a main highway in Toronto called the Gardiner Expressway that fans would rather sit on for a week than have to watch Jake Gardiner ever play a playoff game in the blue-and-white.
Important note: Gardiner never deserved the ire of Leafs fans. He had the unfortunate habit of making it really ugly when he made an error, but a statistical analysis of his play showed he was an above average top pairing defender during his prime. You could make a case study about confirmation bias using Jake Gardiner, but you’ll never change how a good portion of the fans feel about him.
#3. David Clarkson
Is there a bigger fall from grace than the David Clarkson signing? Here’s a player that signed a seven-year contract worth $36.75M and ended up only playing 118 career games in the blue-and-white.
When he was first introduced, people were calling him the next Wendel Clark. Clarkson idolized #17 growing up and even wore #71 as a tribute to him. As one of the biggest free agent signings that off-season, Clarkson seemed like a great piece for a Leafs team that just made the playoffs the year prior.
Although Clarkson had once scored 30-goals in an NHL season, that wasn’t a typical season for him. 10-15 goals with 30 points was the normal year for Clarkson, which included multiple fights and a lot of hits. I really don’t know how the Toronto Maple Leafs thought Clarkson was worth $5.25M per season, or to compare it to a current player, $250K more than Morgan Rielly.
The narrative of the hometown kid who loves Wendel Clark was awesome, but he unfortunately wasn’t a very good hockey player. After getting suspended for the first 10 games of his Toronto Maple Leafs career for leaving the bench to fight, things continued to spiral out of control. He was essentially making $1M per goal, as he finished with five goals and 15 points in his first season in Toronto.
He may have doubled his goal-total one year later but that wasn’t enough for Toronto to keep him, as they traded him at the NHL deadline that year. It was sad to watch but fans went from loving him to hating him in only a few months.
#2. John Ferguson Jr.
For the last two people on this list, we’ll be reverting to executives, instead of players because we can’t talk about “hate” and the Toronto Maple Leafs without these two.
I was going to put Andrew Raycroft in there instead of JFJ, but that didn’t seem fair. It felt like the person in-charge of acquiring him seemed more fitting for this list because even the players on the team hated JFJ. If you don’t believe me, tune into TSN’s Overdrive and hear what Jeff O’Neill thinks of Ferguson Jr. I can “neither confirm or deny” that he was a terrible G.M. for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
When JFJ joined the Toronto Maple Leafs, that was the day that everything kind of went south. During his tenure as an executive, he fired Pat Quinn, signed Jason Blake to a terrible contract and most famously traded away Tuukka Rask for Andrew Raycroft. As we previously spoke about before with Raycroft, it’s tough to get mad or hate Raycroft as a player, because the G.M. made the terrible move.
It’s much easier to get angry at Ferguson Jr. for setting the franchise back 10 years with that one move. Speaking of terrible decisions that fans continue to talk about today is the “Muskoka Five.” If you’re unaware of this group, it was built up of Mats Sundin, Tomas Kaberle, Darcy Tucker, Bryan McCabe and Pavel Kubina, who JFJ had all given no-trade clauses to.
By giving all five of those players no-trade clauses, it gave the G.M. little leverage to rebuild the franchise. As was their right, non of those players waived their no-trade clause and the Toronto Maple Leafs had to let their contracts expire, instead of trading them for assets. Not only was the Tuukka Rask deal unacceptable but those five contract clauses are one of the reasons it took so long for the team to be good again.
#1. Harold Ballard
For the younger fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, you probably know of the name Harold Ballard, but don’t really understand why. With happy memories of Mats Sundin and Auston Matthews running through your head, the tough stretch of the 1970s and 1980s are fortunately not engrained in your brain.
For those of you out there that lived through the Ballard years, you probably still flinch when you hear his name. The Toronto Maple Leafs were the most successful hockey franchise, right beside the Montreal Canadiens, but that all sort of changed when Ballard took over. He was a grumpy old man that always held a grudge and it was either his way or the highway.
There were many instances over the years that still haunt fans and players, for that matter. His handling of the Dave Keon situation was awful and Keon (who was voted as the greatest Maple Leaf in history) essentially cut all ties from the Toronto Maple Leafs because of how Ballard treated him in 1975. Ballard owned his rights and refused Keon from playing for any other NHL team and it wasn’t for roughly 40 years until Keon participated in anything related to the Leafs again.
Ballard fired Roger Neilson, which enraged the fans and players and then traded Lanny McDonald away, which frustrated Leafs captain Darryl Sittler. The relationship between Ballard and Sittler worsened until he finally shipped Sittler out of town, which didn’t help the team’s record at all. In fact, under Ballard, the team was abysmal and they didn’t have a single season where they were relevant.
In terms of a business-man, Ballard knew how to make money, but fans couldn’t care less. They grew up watching successful Toronto Maple Leafs teams, but what Ballard provided was garbage. He’s easily the most hated person in team history and if it wasn’t for him, maybe the team’s last Stanley Cup wouldn’t have took place in 1967.