The Top 5 Grinches in Toronto Maple Leafs History
The Toronto Maple Leafs have been plagued by some real Grinches over their franchise’s history. We rank the top 5 of all-time.
It’s the holiday season, which means it’s time to celebrate. Many will spend this time gathering with family and sharing fond memories together and spreading joy. This isn’t that kind of article. Instead, prepare yourself to be reminded of some of the darkest times in Toronto Maple Leafs history.
We will be your guide on this tour through history as you relive the things you have consciously forced from your memory. Prepare to learn about the top five Toronto Maple Leafs Grinches of all-time.
In order to get prepared, let’s establish first who/what is meant when we use the word Grinch. There haven’t been furry green players on skates cross-checking opponents, fans, and officials with reckless abandon as one would expect from the character imagined by Dr. Seuss. No. Instead, we will define our Grinch as the antagonist in Leafs history who had the ability to figuratively rip the hearts of Leafs fans out of their chests.
The most recent Grinch to taunt the Maple Leafs has been COVID-19. Despite wreaking havoc over the NHL, Toronto, and the rest of the globe, it doesn’t make the official list. Even though players like Auston Matthews were at one point positive with the novel coronavirus, COVID-19 has been a worldwide Grinch and not one specific to the Maple Leafs.
Some may expect the NHL resident Grinch, Commissioner Gary Bettman, to also make this list. You’ll be shocked to learn that he didn’t find his way into the top five. As we’ve learned from the story, the Grinch’s “small heart grew three sizes.” It hasn’t yet been proven that Bettman has the capacity to have his heart grow. More importantly, the public has never even seen proof that he has a heart.
Now that we know who didn’t make the list, let’s get to who did.
Grinch #5
The 2013-14 Toronto Maple Leafs were a terrible disappointment. They finished the season in 12th out of the 16 teams in the Eastern Conference. They had a total of 84 points at the season’s end. The roster that year included players like their Captain, Dion Phaneuf, goalie Jonathan Bernier, Phil Kessel, James van Riemsdyk, Nazem Kadri, Morgan Rielly, and Jake Gardiner. All of them are implicated in the making of the fifth Grinch on our list, the 2014 Leafs roster.
What transformed this group into a collective Grinch were the offensive actions they took at the end of their Nov. 20, 2014 tilt with the Tampa Bay Lightning. In a game that took place at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto in front of 19,089 fans, the Leafs played extraordinarily well. Van Riemsdyk, Tyler Bozak, and Roman Polak all picked up a pair of points each in a win.
There was nothing about the way the game itself was played that caused a stir. It was the actions postgame that had everyone talking. The Leafs had stollen their fans’ joy in an act of true Grinchiness.
Normally after a win, the Maple Leafs would gather at center ice and salute their fans. The players would raise their sticks above their heads in unison as a sign of respect to those who paid to see them play. On this day, the group on the ice chose not to proceed with this symbolic gesture.
In what became known as “Salute Gate”, the Leafs were heavily criticized for their decision. Don Cherry called it, “the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my life with Toronto.”
Cherry has proven that he’s not the authority on ideal behavior, but on this day, he echoed the sentiment of many fans. It’s likely the reason that the players themselves weren’t immediately forthcoming with their reasoning for the defiant act or who was the leader of the protest.
Grinch #4
The Toronto Maple Leafs have had many great general managers. They’ve also had some that would be best forgotten. One of them is can be referred to as a Grinch. That’s John Ferguson Jr. He did everything he could as the Leafs GM to make watching the team a painful exercise. He did this through a series of very questionable decisions.
At age 36, Ferguson took the managerial reins of the Maple Leafs from the team’s coach, Pat Quinn ahead of the 2003-04 season. He remained with the team until 2008. That was more than enough time to do cause significant damage.
There’s nothing more Grinchworthy than firing a legend. That’s exactly what Ferguson did when Quinn missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in seven years. He removed the coach along with his assistant Rick Ley to make way for Paul Maurice.
What was even more head-scratching was that Leafs finished the previous season with 90 points on a 41-33-8 record. They were just two points shy of the eighth seed and defending Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning.
Ferguson was also responsible for some truly terrible trades. He loved shipping out draft picks. He sent the New York Rangers a first-round (#24) and a second-round (#40) pick along with Maxim Kondratiev and Jarkko Immonen to acquire a 36-year-old Brian Leetch. That was a hefty payment for a rental player who didn’t return to Toronto the following season.
Ferguson also paid big for goaltender Vesa Toskala and Mark Bell. He gave the San Jose Sharks a first (#13), second (#44), and fourth-round (#98) pick. As much of a flop as that turned out to become, when it comes to trading for a goalie, there is one transaction that stands out as the worst of all-time. That’s a JFJ move as well.
Ferguson is the man behind the infamous Andrew Raycroft trade. To bring him to Toronto, the Leafs sent the Boston Bruins Tuukka Rask. As painful as that is, it’s only made worse by the knowledge that Boston would have taken Justin Pogge instead of Rask to make the swap.
Grinch #3
This next Grinch brings us back all the way to the 1993 Stanley Cup Playoffs. He is the first on this list that didn’t work for the Leafs organization.
In Game 6 of that year’s Western Conference final, the Toronto Maple Leafs were just a win away from proceeding to NHL finals. At that time, there was only one referee assigned to the games along with two linesmen. The ref for this game was Kerry Fraser.
Fraser didn’t earn his Grinch stripes for the actions he took; it was for one he didn’t. When the Los Angeles Kings superstar Wayne Gretzky’s stick came up and clipped Doug Gilmour in the face, Fraser’s whistle stayed out of his mouth.
The act took place in overtime and should have sent the Great One to the penalty box on a major penalty. However, due to the non-call, instead of Gretzky sitting for five minutes, he was able to stay on the ice.
Fraser described this moment in detail in a piece published in the Player’s Tribune. He was candid about how he saw the events unfold.
“Gretzky gets the puck. He shoots it, and my eyes go to the net. But Jamie Macoun blocks it. The puck rebounds between Gretzky and Doug Gilmour. When my eyes go back to Gretzky, I see a motion. Gilmour goes down. Did Gretzky’s stick follow through and catch him? Gilmour’s bent over now. He’s got blood on his chin. And I have no idea what happened. That’s a helpless, helpless feeling. Under the 1993 rules, if Gretzky high-sticks Gilmour and it draws blood, it’s a five-minute major. He’s gone. It was a huge call to make — a worse one to miss.”
Gretzky’s impact was felt almost immediately. After the very next faceoff, he scored and ended the game. It sent the Kings Game 7 instead of the Leafs to meet the Montreal Canadians to battle for the Cup.
Gretzky played out of his mind in that deciding game. He factored in on four of Los Angeles’s five goals. Gretz picked up a hat trick and an assist, leading his club to a 5–4 win over Toronto. If only Fraser had made the call.
Grinch #2
There’s a lot of pain for Toronto Maple Leafs fans as they remember the creation of these Grinches. This one will be no different. The second Grinch on our list is a full team, the Bruins. They make it for their actions in the infamous playoff game on May 13, 2013.
It was the seventh and deciding game of the first round when Toronto looked like they were about to pull off the improbable. The Leafs were poised to eliminate the fourth-seeded Bruins, the heavy favourites in the series.
The Leafs were in a commanding position when Kadri scored 5:29 into the third period. This put the Buds up 4 – 1. On most nights, that’s enough to guarantee a win. Cue the Grinch.
The Bruins weren’t willing to allow themselves to be beaten. Nearing the midway mark of the third period, they began to claw their way back into the game. Boston managed to somehow come back from a three-goal deficit in a playoff game for the first time in 23 years. The last time they had done it was on Apr. 11, 1990.
Boston completed the comeback by tying the game with just 51 seconds remaining in the third period. Patrice Bergeron scored his second goal of the series, assisted by David Krejci and the ageless wonder, Jaromir Jagr.
The dagger to the heart of the Leafs came once again off the stick of Bergeron. He tucked in his second goal of the game 6:05 into overtime. Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand assisted on that series ending goal. Rumour has it that on a cold winter’s night in Toronto, if you listen very closely, you can still hear Leafs fans’ screams echoing from that awful night.
Grinch #1
The biggest, baddest Grinch in Maple Leafs history is without a doubt, the most-vile owner Toronto Sports has ever seen. We’re talking about Harold Ballard, a man who once called his daughter a “reptile”.
Ballard is responsible for firing the Hall of Fame coach, Roger Neilson. After his dismissal, Ballard decided to bring back Neilson upon hearing complaints from his players. In order to try and sell tickets and line his own pockets, Ballard attempted to make a spectacle out of the “new” coach of the team. He told reporters that he had found a “mystery man” to be the team’s new bench boss and instructed Neilson to wear a paper bag over his head pre-game in his return matchup. Thankfully, Neilson refused to give in to this stunt but it may have factored into him being fired for a second time by Ballard at the end of that season.
Ballard could have had his own top-10 Grinch moments but there is one specific incident that stands out to really demonstrate why he tops our list.
When the Toronto Maple Leafs were celebrating their centennial anniversary, the franchise named and ranked its top 100 players to ever pull a Toronto NHL sweater over their head. Dave Keon was at the top of that list, named the greatest player in the organization’s 100 years of operation. Unfortunately, Ballard had angered Keon so much that for years the star player wanted nothing to do with the Leafs.
Ballard was known to dislike Keon, the captain of the Leafs since 1969. That’s why the Grinch ensured that his club did not re-sign Keon when his contract expired. Although Toronto could have gotten a decent return in a trade for the star player prior to the expiration of the contract, Ballard demanded a far too exorbitant compensation. It made any trade impossible.
Unrestricted free agent rules weren’t in place at the time, which allowed Ballard to continue to make overly lofty demands in return for another team signing Keon. It made it so that other NHL clubs couldn’t sign him, despite his incredible talent.
With no teams able to sign the star forward, Keon was forced out of the NHL. He then joined the World Hockey Association (WHA). Luckily, when the WHA-NHL merger took place years later, the Hartford Whalers were absorbed into the NHL and Keon was once again able to compete in the world’s top league.
Ballard wasn’t just a criminal who owned the Toronto Maple Leafs, he’s also the organization’s ultimate Grinch.
Next. Top Ten Trades In Leafs History. dark
From all of us at Editor in Leaf, we wish you a happy and healthy holiday season. Most importantly, please remember, don’t be a Grinch!